"The enchanting music of sign language" by Christine Sun Kim
Summary:
Christine was born as a deaf
woman. She was taught to believe that sound wasn’t part of her life. But she
finally find another way which can change if sound was very much part of her
life. She told about English Sign Language (ESL) based on her experience. As a
deaf person who living in a world of sound she can understand the sound in two
ways, those are first, watching people response the sound, the people like
loudspeaker for her and she learn and mirror that behavior. Second, in the same
time she learn to create the sound and see how people respond to her, this is
sound etiquette. Deaf culture, movement is equivalent to the sound. Now sound
is her new art medium. She surprised knowing sound has similarities with ESL
and music. For example, a musical note cannot be fully captured and expressed
on paper. And the same holds true for a concept in ASL. They’re both highly
spatial and higly inflected meaning that subtle changes can affect the entire
meaning of both signs and sounds. She told that envision of piano is like representative
of sound. This represents how time is expressed in ASL. She said that ASL a
rich treasure that we can learn and take a part and she make us realize to
open our mind to take part in our culture and experience our visual language.