{"id":7464,"date":"2018-05-14T13:45:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T13:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/16\/a-dictionary-for-your-ears\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:02:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:02:19","slug":"a-dictionary-for-your-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/a-dictionary-for-your-ears\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dictionary for Your Ears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, you could watch steak sizzling in a pan or ravens communicating in the wild \u2013 but those moments come alive when you experience them with your ears, not just your eyes.<\/p>\n<p>This past spring semester, 23 Furman students contributed to a digital dictionary that you can <a href=\"http:\/\/sonicdictionary.duke.edu\/exhibits\/humans-vs-nature-breaking-dichotomy\">hear online<\/a>. You can read it, too, but this collection is all about sounds, from the steak and the ravens to a lightly clicking keyboard and a musician\u2019s outdoor soundcheck.<\/p>\n<p>The Furman exhibit, \u201cHumans vs. Nature? Breaking the Dichotomy,\u201d was created as a project for the English course, Literature and the Environment. It\u2019s featured on The Sonic Dictionary, a growing collection of more than 800 sound recordings created by university students.<\/p>\n<p>Mitchell Freyermuth \u201918 compared the recordings to photography, in that they can share an experienced moment with the world. But while a monument can be photographed over and over, a specific sound in a single moment can be more fleeting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat sound might not happen like that ever again,\u201d Freyermuth said.<\/p>\n<p>Michele Speitz, professor of English literature, asked her students to research the sounds they collected, providing written narratives that would ground the recordings in philosophical or scientific theory. She doesn\u2019t want listeners to merely enjoy the sounds or mourn them \u2013 she wants them to think.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted the students to have to strive and reach a little bit higher, so they really were getting a chance to educate future audiences,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not preachy and it\u2019s not na\u00efve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Claire Pullen \u201918, who spent most of her growing up years in Aiken, wanted to find a sound that would capture the impact of nuclear weapons production along the Savannah River.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan the sound of years of pollution be summed up in the sound of a receptionist sending and receiving emails about the latest cleanup?\u201d Pullen said. \u201cHopefully it\u2019ll help people continue to ask those types of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sonicdictionary.duke.edu\/exhibits\/humans-vs-nature-breaking-dichotomy\">Click here to listen to\u00a0\u201cHumans vs. Nature? Breaking the Dichotomy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, you could watch steak sizzling in a pan or ravens communicating in the wild \u2013 but those moments come alive when you experience them with your ears, not just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":7465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-english"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}