Hi, I am Lilo and birds sound drive me crazy!
In the last class of How To Count Birds we were asked to listen, record and play with bird sounds. I had a lot of struggles since those sounds are something that I have been running away from my whole life.
From a very young age, I had a lot of problems with different noises and birds in particular because I wake up very early in the morning when they start singing and they are basically everywhere. My best friend in the past 20 years has been my ear plugs and I don't remember when was the last time I slept without them. When I was young I went to a sleep lab who diagnosed this disorder as part of my ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Background noise according to them makes it hard for me to concentrate and that is why while sleeping, in class, walking in the street, wherever - bird sound is annoying to me.
Imagine a backpack to which all the noises the ears hear are collected. In the backpack of children with ADHD are the teacher's voice, children's steps, the rustling of books, the whistle of a physical education class, a dog barking outside, the zipper of a pencil case opened, the clock ticking, a chair tow, the children chatting, an ambulance siren, a ball bouncing outside, the air conditioner, the breaths, the voice of the teacher from the class next door, a phone call outside, the squeaky class door, a bird chirping outside, a pencil falling on the floor, the pen squeaking on the board and more and more… In all cases this is a very busy bag, imagine.
Having said that, I am still not really convinced on why the noise not only makes it so distracting for me as well as make me angry, in terms of nervousness going all over my body (I hope this does not sound like I am a lunatic).
While reading about this online I found (thank god) that I am not the only one, there are a lot more people who have been very sensitive to noises and find birds singing particularly annoying. I found an interesting disorder called Misophonia that has been recognized as an official medical disorder since 2001 by neurophysiologist Powell Jastreboff, who wrote an article on the symptoms and process of noise tolerance.
Misophonia is a "hatred or dislike of sound" and is defined as a condition in which emotions, feelings, negative thoughts and behavioral avoidance arise in response to specific sounds. Those who suffer from misophonia experience sounds that "drive them crazy". Reactions to the disturbing sound can range from anger and nervousness to panic and a desire to run away.
I also read about Hyperacusis, a hypersensitivity to external noises or noise intolerance, which exists in about 10% of people. A large proportion of them also suffer from ringing in the ears (inner tinnitus, tinnitus). The phenomenon of hyperacusis is related to the control of voice regulation in the brain. Patients who suffer from hypersensitivity to sounds can feel discomfort to the point of real pain in the ears.
I think my purpose for this project is to have a research about this disorder and try to break down a pattern from those sounds that potentially will lead me into new conclusions. I have been fascinated by sound and the choices we have to play with it in ICM class. For my last project in the previous semester I created a hearing test to see our hearing capability, and if the level of frequency we can hear predicted our age.
This week, I decided to record the birds while bird watching. I found a very beautiful bird that I have never seen before:
I found this website with different bird voice recordings around Tel Aviv that I asked for their permission to use, http://www.yardbirdsil.info/mazeget/Birds%20voices.htm.
So, my main idea is to do research about Bird tolerance to human disturbance and try to break it down into visual patterns. I would like to create some sort of a ‘hearing bird test’ and try it on other people to see the different results and breakdown the results into data visualization.
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