Learning How to See With Sound

The minute I slip on the VR goggles, my entire world is reduced to darkness. Shadowy blue figures—people maybe?—glide through my field of vision. They look like ghosts made of shimmering grains of blue sand.

Sound immediately registers as something significantly more important in this world. I can hear the tree leaves rustle in the wind. The sound of a man folding a newspaper next to me. A man's voice—calm and British—describes the scene, guiding me through this world.

This is Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness, an immersive virtual reality experience brought to Jakarta's Kota Tua neighborhood by the British Council. It's ironic that my first experience with VR technology—something that has been heralded as a way to dramatically expand our visual perception of art and entertainment—is a 14-minute film where your sight is taken away.

But that's part of what makes Notes on Blindness so effective. By reducing my vision to shadows and darkness, it forced me to focus on the sound. Sound in Notes on Blindness comes at you from all angles. It utilizes 3D sound, recorded in a way that mimics the way things sound in the actual world. Those trees rustling in the wind? I can picture exactly where they are in this world. The man reading the newspaper? I can turn my head to where he would be.

The short VR film is based on the audio diaries of John Hull, a British author and academic who lost his sight at the age of 43. Hull narrates his new world, guiding the viewer along on a journey through a world of darkness and sound. In one chapter, titled "On Panic," text on the screen asks you to move forward. With the VR goggles still blocking my vision, it's easy to feel the dread of wandering through a world you suddenly can no longer see.

In the end, Notes on Blindness was a surprisingly effective way to begin to understand what it's like to live with blindness. And the narrations of Hull added a nice storytelling element to it all. His description of falling rain as the sound slowly surrounds stands out as one of the best parts of the film. You can hear everything from the distant rumble of thunder to the sound of rain hitting a tea cup. It's an immersive experience that shows that in the world of the blind, sound is king.

Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness is available for public viewing during the Digital Design Weekend in Kota Tua, North Jakarta, from November 19-20, 2016.