Framing a Story

For the next assignment, we were given a phrase, and then told to make a 5 frame story with the help of the phrase. Simple enough? But one of the frames had to be a frame from the the shadow assignment. This simple twist was enough to derail any idea that initially entered my mind.

The phrase I was given to work with: The one who flew over the cuckoos nest

After quite a lot of thinking, and many chocolates later, I thought of a simple poem to go along with my story. This also happened to be my first crack at writing a poem.

There was once a man named Jonquil

Who wanted to paint his masterpiece somewhere tranquil,

So he went to place called Julep

Where he could paint a field of tulips,

He drew all day till night

Overnight a storm had destroyed the tulips fields with all its might,

Seeing the fields bare of his beautiful muse, Jonquil was horrified

Such was the shock that the thought of painting had Jonquil terrified.

The next part is the best bit. We put all our frames in a box, and each person pulled out 5 frames each and we went about making another story with the same phrase.

Here's what I came up with,

There was once a girl who followed fashion religiously. The latest fashion headline read, "Thinner than skin is in!" She went to The Master to try help her fulfil her wish of becoming thinner than skin. The Master agreed to help out, and went looking for a potion. He found a potion and gave it to her in the form of a lemonade. She quickly drank it and suddenly there was a flash of light, and she turned into a wisp of smoke. The Master sat back and smiled, pleased he could fulfil her wish.

The Universe was slowly coming to an end. As The Creator looked up the Universe slowly tearing itself apart, he heaved a sigh of relief. He had finally retired. As he looked back at his long past, he reflected on the biggest mistakes he had made. Fashion, he thought, was a big mistake. But then he remembered something even worse. Sour lemonade. Absolutely diabolical, he thought.

I loved making these small stories and poems up within the given limitations. They say control kills creativity. I disagree. Control enhances creativity. It gives a chance to truly push the boundaries and come up with something stunning.

Keep The Change

"A change is as good as a feast." It is isn't it? Its always nice to have something new. Change is what keeps us going, its what keeps us motivated. It brings spontaneity and excitement in our lives.

Change is taking place everywhere around us. As time ticks by, things are changing. There are a few kinds of changes. Changes that happen instantaneously. Changes that take place over a long period of time. Change in the meaning due to change in context.

Breaking a cup, candle burning through its wax, or even drinking a bottle of soft drink, all classify as changes that take place instantaneously.

The evolution of cooling systems, ways of telling the time, and change of producing light, all constitute changes that take place over a long period of time.

Change in meaning due to change in context is a very interesting assignment. The object chosen is the same, but the use and the context in which it is used, changes. Every object has different uses, and in different contexts. The interesting bit is that we don't tend to think of the different contexts a single object can be used. A knife, for example has one primary use. Which is to cut. But it can be used to cut vegetables, or to kill, or as a religious symbol. Single use, different contexts. Exciting assignment.


But it's funny isn't it. We all want change. But not change that can surprise us. As long as we see it coming, its all well and good. The moment we see something that we don't expect to see, we get scared.

Number 5 is Better Than 8. But Why?

For the final assignment of the week, we were to go out to an area and study the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures of that area. Easy enough? Then we were told to represent our feelings onto a 10cm x 10cm thumbnail with colours.

Now, read the bit above again. Feelings. It's close to impossible to represent feelings physically. I mean how do you express your feelings, on paper? I genuinely thought the faculty had gone bonkers. Still, I stuck at it, spending time at my area, and experiencing all what it had to offer to my five(+1) senses. Initially, I came up blank. It was all black, no matter what I ate, to what I heard and to what I smelt. But slowly I started to get a hang for it. When you eat something, a dash of, well, a feeling pops up. But when you try to touch it, or try to see it clearly, it disappears. You become conscious of the fact that you are reaching into your inner feelings, and just like a chemical reaction, the colour disappears when you disturb the solution.

The best bit about this assignment was that I was forced to go out there and experience everything, which was extremely enjoyable. All those snacks, all those smells and those sounds. Often we aren't patient enough to pay attention. If the volume is too low, we turn it up. If there's not enough light, we switch on more lights. We simply don't have the patience to observe. But while observing the surroundings with each sense individually, I slowly started to immerse myself. If we simply concentrate, we wouldn't need to turn up the volume, or switch on more lights. We can hear and see a lot of things. But our brains aren't properly receiving the sensory impulse of those organs.

But slowly and steadily you start to catch a glimpse and then fully experience those feelings. It might sound far fetched if I called the feeling other-worldly, but its a new sensation, and a very pleasant
sensation at that.

Here are a few sounds I heard at the area I was studying at, and try to guess what each of the sounds represent.




This is also called synaesthesia.

synaesthesia |ˌsɪnɪsˈθiːzɪə| (USsynesthesia)noun [ mass noun ] Physiology & Psychologythe production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.
To explain this phenomena, I shall now use memes. Also known as pictures which are often humorous.

For more synaesthesia related memes, please visit this website.

If you haven't gotten the idea yet, don't worry. You probably synaesthete without realising it. Theres a reason why you like some numbers more than others. Or why you prefer certain sounds or colours, and even names. It's all down to synaesthesia.

When read a number or a name, or listen to some music, the so called feelings machine in your head starts up and starts spewing feelings. These feelings are influenced by your past experience and can still be influenced by future ones. Whenever I think of a bottle, I think of a Coke bottle, because the shape of the bottle is the one I remember the most.

For me, the number 5 is more attractive than number 8 is maybe because I enjoyed the multiplication table of number 5 more than I did of the number 8. There are many more influences, which include sports, and other media.

As the for the (+1) sense, or the Sixth Sense, is what we feel when all the senses combine to give us information. We use our Sixth Sense all the time, and we don't realize it. Only in dangerous situations can we feel that strong urge or push from our brain. For example, if you stand on the edge of a tall cliff or building, you brain physically forces you to step off. It would've realized this on taking in the perspective view from our eyes, the altitude from our sinuses and other various bits of information from the other senses. The sixth sense can also be called an instinctive reaction.

(Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink is a great read for more information our sixth sense, and also tells us the magnitude of power the sixth sense posses.)

The Hidden and Revealed

Next we studied where and how camouflage takes place. So we did plenty of research, and lo and behold. Suddenly the animal kingdom starts to seem very high tech. Our stealth fighters and anti-radar systems have nothing close to the camouflage firepower of the creatures who live in the rainforests, or on the ocean floor.

Camouflaging As Coral

Cuttlefish Displaying Hypnotic Patterns To Confuse Prey

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish are one of the smartest sea creatures. They are covered in million little chromatophores, cells which contain different pigments. They can control the colours in them by relaxing and contracting the muscles around them, allowing different pigments to show through the elastic cells.

Camouflage also occurs in human society and in our environment. Changing one's personality to blend into a group, or changing one's ways and habits to look 'cool' or to fit into one's peer group is something we might see others doing or doing ourselves. Even eating high calorie foods is a camouflage to make ourselves feel better after getting a bad grade, or after a break up.


The opposite of camouflage, contrast, also makes for a good read. Animals such as the Poison Dart Frog, and the Mimic Octopus display bright colours to ward off prey and warn them of their poisonous characteristics.

Trippy Much?

Mimic Octopus Camouflaging and then Revealing

Similarly, contrast also regularly takes place in the human society. Some people wish to stand out, so they buy expensive clothes, cars and other material object to make themselves stand out from the crowd. Why do people want to be famous? To stand out from the crowd. Some people also prefer to read certain books or watch certain movies and even dress oddly to stand out. Strange isn't it, the human society.

The Dark Side

For the first assignment we were told to study shadows. Now shadows aren't exactly high up in your list of things to observe, so when you do sit down and start studying them, its shocking how we have managed to miss out on a parallel world that is right at our feet.

Here are a couple of shadows I found around the campus,

As the Sun moves across the sky, the shadows change their shape, obviously. But we don't tend to take this very seriously, and like many other things in life, this change is taken for granted. But watching the shadow of an object change is like watching a movie that runs throughout the day. It's fascinating. The shadow slowly wraps and moves.

The pictures below are of the same shadow.

The same shadow, a couple of hours later. The form has completely changed and new objects are now in view

Before studying Colour and Composition in the first semester, I thought I was blind. But now I'm seeing now more and more of the world. It is as if someone has just switched on the lights. It's beggars belief as to how much we don't perceive, even though we can physically see it. There are whole new worlds out there, lying undiscovered. It's all very well sending men to the Moon, and fulfilling our ambition to send a probe to the outer edges of our local Solar System, and yes, it is exciting to see new worlds out there in the universe, but if we all just looked closely at our surroundings, there are universes just waiting to be discovered, right at our feet.

An additional assignment was given to this. We were given a list of Martian sounding names, and told to create shadows based on the words/phrases. This sounds pretty odd, and it doesn't get any better. So based on the pronunciation of the word, we were to create shadows. This is where our practical learning of synaesthesia started.

I chose the phrase plip-plop.

This is what I created.