After my sound recording experiments, my tutor suggested I watched “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a scene from Twin Peaks.
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” led me to research more about language and communication. I started by looking into the meaning and origin of the famous five-note sequence that plays as a theme in the film.
Composer John Williams worked with Spielberg to come up with the movie’s distinct five-note musical method of communication between humans and aliens—which Spielberg partly based on the Solfège system of musical education—a year before shooting began.
I was interested in exploring the idea of music as a method of communication, as well as the Solfège system’s concept of assigning a written syllable to a sound. An image I found while reading about the Solfège system led me to explore other methods of communication.
I even found a list of gestures explaining what each gesture means in different cultures / countries.
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I was mostly intrigued by the scene from Twin Peak’s. Wondering how that would sound when speaking Portuguese, I decided to replicate the idea and record myself reading my poem backwards. I would then reverse the recording, so that the words were actually being said in the correct order.
Elephant Days 