GETTING INSPIRATIONS

My thoughts

Before the beginning of the first semester of my final year, I found myself capturing small little moments in life using my phone whenever I found something interesting, especially when I was outside or travelling. When I came back from my trip and was having a conversation about it with my friends, I realised how much I had relied on my phone. It got to a point where I would have forgotten the pictures I had taken and would have to search for that specific photograph to remember certain details.

It was scary because losing my phone would feel like having dementia. This dawned on me - how fragile our memories are. When we rely so heavily on technologies, we tend to lose sense of our surroundings and often lack being in the present moment.

When I was back from Japan and scrolling through TikTok, I saw multiple videos of people captioning "Sounds that will make you miss Japan". It features seconds of abstract sounds from different specific places and just by watching that video evoked a strong feeling of nostalgia in me. I could immediately picture scenes of me weeks ago, in that same country or place, listening to the same sounds. It was a trend so popular even Singaporeans were hopping onto (eg. our traffic lights, train and the iconic uwu bird sound). That was when I realised how powerful visual-sound memory association was, and became increasingly interested in this topic.

For example, sounds of the Japan Shinkansen or the bustling nightlife will remind me of images 2 and 3. Even with sounds as simple as the rustling of leaves or sounds of chants and prayers will remind me of parks and temples respectively.

Motivated by these influences, I decided to embark on a journey of research and self-reflection. I recognise that what draws me to sound-triggered memory is its multisensory abilities to evoke emotions and visual memories, stronger than words do.