Sonic Doing&Thinking Week10 – Feedback

The pictures are better on radio.

—by Bonnie M Miller and others

I was not convinced by this statement at first. Because in my understanding, the pictures on video are more accurate and visual. while the pictures on radio or sound transmission, vary from person to person. And each person’s perception of the sound determines the final picture presented to that person.

However, after listening to “Touching the Elephant”, I have to admit that the statement “The pictures are better on radio”. The work documents the process of a blind lady touching an elephant. The lady cannot see the elephant, and we also can’t. The lady imagines the elephant through her sense of touch and we imagine the elephant through sound. In the case of this piece, the way it is expressed on the radio allows the listener to have the same experience and feeling as the lady. If this clip had been presented on video, the audience would not have had the experience. Video is more direct, it gives the viewer direct access to the information, which is its advantage, it makes it easier for the viewer to know what the creator intended. But this is also its disadvantage, it lacks the process of guessing and imagining, it lacks the sense of experience. If this work is presented on video, we can see the elephant directly, we can know what it looks like, but we lack the same experience as the lady. There is no process of feeling, we get a direct result, which is actually quite uninteresting.