Interconnectivity of Sound and Visuals (Chapter 3)
Media elements, such as sound and images, are not powerful on their own. These elements are dependent on each other for strength and work in unison to achieve the goal of the piece. “Motions” compiles sound and images which create the feeling of powerlessness. A study completed by Nadya Calderon, Bernhard Riecke, and Brian Fisher tested the effect of music on the respondents' ability to view visualizations. The subjects listened to music as they analyzed graphs. The result ended up being not statistically significant suggesting this type of music was ineffective ("Augmenting Visual Representation").
This shows that simply randomly combining music in combination with visualizations may not always be effective. This does not in any means prove music is ineffective. It would be ridiculous to claim the music in "Motions" specifically does not have an effect on the reader. In a different paper published by a student from MIT, he claims that “Sometimes, though, we use music as a trick to misdirect our understanding of the world,” (Marvin Minsky). He explains that music allows our subconscious to focus on patterns distracting it from other things allowing the conscious to be affected by it (Marvin Minsky). This aligns perfectly with “Motions” by suggesting that the sound works in tandem with the images to trick the brain. The music "misdirects" the brain in such a way that the narrative more closely approaches realism. By directly affecting the subconscious, the reader is better able to become immersed in the work as a whole as wandering thoughts are kept at bay. Immersion allows the reader to buy further into this sense of powerlessness thus strengthening the empathy and message sent by the story and felt by the reader. Using music alone fails to achieve the same outcome and is heavily supported by the surrounding media. There is no story without the text. By using these in tandem, these elements are fortified.
