Onomatopy of Anarkali

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Mapping the sounds of Anarkali:

Anarkali Bazaar is the oldest and busiest market of Lahore, Pakistan. It sells textiles, garments, jewellery, food and many other items. There are many layers which overlap to create the complex environment of that area e.g. people, traffic, vendors, architecture etc. What intrigued me the most were the sounds of that place and when I thought about mapping them, I wanted to take the challenge of how something as intangible as sound would be visualized.

One can feel the essence of the chaotic nature of Anarkali through the layers of different sounds starting from the obvious to the least ones which overlap to add up to the liveliness of that area. I have brought those sounds out of Anarkali and deformed the existing representations and recreated those sounds through line, shape and movement to form a separate identity for each. I observed the flow of the line quality appeared to be in a handwritten manner.Hence, taking this forward I have constructed it through designing the typeface of onomatopoeia of those sounds.

Panorama of Anarkali Bazaar (Market)

PROCESS WORK

Documentation

I started off with documenting all the sounds of Anarkali. I used the methods of audio recording and drawing sounds.

This is the compilation of all the recordings of sounds present there, in order of the obvious ones to the least.

Documented sounds through line drawings observing the intensity of each sound and the movement of the source of it.

Experimentation

I did an experiment in which I made people listen to just the sounds and asked them to react to it in whatever way each of them perceived it. Few did it by different actions or movements through their body and others scribbled lines accordingly.

Onomatopoeia of the sounds of Anarkali
Another way of documenting the sounds of that place was finding the onomatopoeia of all, I listened to the recordings multiple times and tried to figure out what word phonetically imitated each of them.

Onomatopoeia
/ˌɒnə(ʊ)matəˈpiːə/
-noun

the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g. cuckoo,sizzle ).

٭ existing items that are named after the onomatopoeia of the sounds they make.

NARRATIVE

“One can feel the essence of the chaotic nature of Anarkali through the layers of different sounds starting from the obvious to the least ones which overlap to add up to the liveliness of that area.
What will happen if I bring out those sounds from Anarkali and deform the existing representations and recreate those sounds through line, shape and movement to form a separate identity for each? ”

IDEA

After my experiments, in which line, shape and movement played an important role, I observed the flow of the line quality appeared to be in a handwritten manner. Hence, taking this forward I want to deform the existing representations of sound e.g. equalizer or wavelength, and recreate it through designing the typeface of onomatopoeia of those sounds which will use the elements of line and shape creating a separate identity for each of them. And movement will be achieved through mixing motion and text using animation in a manner, intended to convey a particular mood and intensity of each sound.