About Me
Hi, I’m T(h)om(as). I have recently finished studying BA (Hons) Graphic Design at Falmouth Univesity, graduating with First Class Honors.
I see projects as opportunites to push the way I work and further my understanding of design. My practice is concept and research driving, using different mediums and disciplines to deliver informed and innovative outcomes that explore the potential of communication through design.
I’m always up for. achat so feel free to pop me a message about any work!
Instagram:
@tomthorntondesign
Contact:
tomthornton.work@gmail.com
Object Mark Sound
105mm x 297mm
14 pages
Followed by a 4 section split-page book, with the top section contiang 10 pages and the other three containing 32 pages
Object Mark Sound is a project exploring the foundations of communication. Prompted by a brief titled ‘interactions’, it explores whether we can express raw experience before it’s confined by language.
The publication is split into two parts:
An opening essay that gives context to the project and explores the relationship between expression, language, and communication.
A four-way split-page section that lets readers rearrange and compare material gathered from participants through a multi-sensory study into 327,680 possible combinations.
The multi-sensory study was designed to explore whether we can separate interaction from language, to communicate something more representative of individual experience.
What does pre-linguistic communication look like?
After designing a method to explore this question, I ran a pseudo-experiment. Participants blindly touched unfamiliar objects, removing visual and auditory influences that are linked to language. They created marks to represent the tactile sensation, then vocalised these marks as abstract sounds. I then transcribed these sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which uses symbols that directly relate to speech articulation; unlike the more arbitrary relationship between symbols and meaning found in most writing systems. From ten objects, I gathered thirty-two each of marks, sounds, and transcriptions.
Although all participants interacted with the same ten objects, the resulting material varies widely. This reflects how language, through its need for recognition and translation, often abstracts and simplifies expression in order to communicate it. Resulting in communication that is less representative of the individual’s experience.
In contrast, the diversity in the material from this process reveals how differently people interpret the same stimulus when freed from the limitations of naming or defining, highlighting the level of subjectivity in how we interact and interpret the world around us.
Readers are invited to become participants, flicking through and comparing the material in each stage, rearranging each page to think about how each is linked. With no correct answer, how the reader chooses to order the publication creates room for discussion and reflection on how they interpret meaning from the world around them.
An interactive copy can be downloaded here.