Silence. It is most commonly defined as the opposite of sound. But for me, its the absolute truth. And contrary to the popular belief, 'silence' has its own 'sound', its own domain. And this 'sound of silence' was introduced to me in a lecture I attended recently. In the meantime, I got to learn many exciting facts about human brain too.
Mr. Balasubramaniam Shekhar, Professor of quantitative
methods and information systems at Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru
(IIM-B) was the one who unraveled different facets of Silence and its latent features in the lecture “Sound of Silence” which proved to be a interactive and
interesting session.
As a
race we may have reached the stars, but it’s strange that how little we know
about our brain. Hence, to generate the interest in the audience he started off with a fascinating fact that 70% of all the information
processed in the brain is visual! Seriously! I didn't know that! A
short clipping of sand art shown to support his stand mesmerized the audience
who eventually got lost in a world of shifting objects, where change was the
only thing constant. The metamorphosis
of images gave full scope for one’s imagination.
The
images in the sand art and some of the water colour paintings that followed
were not complete by themselves. Sometimes they were vague or gave the onlooker
a sense of missing an element or two. In other words, there was visual silence
or a kind of incompleteness. But this deficit is immediately fulfilled by our
own brain which completes the image by borrowing pieces from our imagination.
Hence, the visual silence never bothers us. To make it easily understandable to
the audience, Mr.Shekhar borrowed a scene from recently demised actor Dev
Anand’s much acclaimed movie, ‘Hum Dono’. Though the most of the scene is shot
in darkness and the actors’ faces are only partly visible, our brain fills in
the gap and comprehends the various aspects and settings of the scene
effectively.
This limited or
reduced information or ‘silence’ compels our mind to imagine, think creatively
resulting in greater grasp of the things as demonstrated in the example above.
That is why reading a book is better than watching a movie of the same book, as
the brain has the freedom of imagination. Our most popular perception that a
book is better than its movie adaptation now has a scientific reason to back
the claim. All thanks to Mr.Balasubramaniam
Shekhar!
It seems not only
reduced information, our brain also favours metaphors! Hence, in an automobile
ad (Volkswagen), a hand which presents itself as something else appeals to us. “...a strong
metaphorical content is necessary [to understand the things around us].
Metaphors are an essential ingredient for imagination” says Mr.Shekhar. (This made such a great impact on our listeners that, very next day, my news feed in facebook was filled with similar video about city of Kolkata!)
Though the name
“Sound of Silence” sounds like an oxymoron, silence certainly has its own
‘sound’. Apparently it has many of the sound’s characteristics like echo
(reverberates for a relatively long time in space) and shadow (momentary
existence in time and space). And these characteristics are not limited to
visual, but also aural. In 0 dimensions aural and visual silence is achieved
for example, in meditation where there is the presence of nothingness. To
demonstrate visual and aural silence going hand in hand, he takes up a scene
from the movie, 'To Sir with love'. The scene communicates silence so well that
one does not feel that there is silence, as it is being communicated.
Mr.Shekhar
repeatedly mentioned that he wants to “give [you] silence without giving silence”.
Therefore, when he talks about echoes, he gives us intermediary silence, i.e.
echoes are the reminders of impending silence and the silence that existed
before the echo. Silence, a single piece object, but alone cannot do anything,
so mild reminders of silence such as echoes exist. Sound never dies but
perception differs. They come very close
to silence, hence reminds us of silence. Nevertheless the moment has to pass to
fully to acknowledge it.
He also
gave a new perspective of looking at whispers. Whispers, too go very close to
silence, but never meet it. Also, it has an additional characteristic to it, it
conveys intimacy. Whispering is
communicating intimacy in a subtle way. “Subtlety has more impact than
obviousness” says Mr.Shekhar.
The audience not only got
to look at silence in a new way but also get to hear and watch some of the best
compositions of yesteryear music maestros such as R.D.Burman. Using everyday examples, Mr.Shekhar aided me in understanding something as profound as creative potential of silence. Unlike many previous seminars and lectures, the 3 hours of my life were worth spent.
(Wish I could still write about this amazing lecture. But, due to time and space constraints, I can't go on and on. Also, you see this article was meant for the college magazine. With some slight changes I have posted here)
