Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Silent Light

The season of christmas continues to give.

Crunching through the snow in the dark is a wonderful experience after a long day of work. That sound you make when you step through the snow. What else does it sound like in the world? As a teenager I remember visiting a museum in Japan for television, and there were a variety of sound effect devices (no computers involved). Things like hollow cups to make the sounds of horses clomping, but most interesting were these little bags you would squish and it would sound like footsteps in the snow. I wish I knew what they were. Were they just bags filled with styrofoam powder? This is how I remember them vaguely ...

In addition to smoothing out our visual field, the snow also dampens the noises that we hear. It is like having non-toxic sound-absorbing foam from an auditorium sprayed all over the place. Wait ... maybe nature had the idea first of silencing the surroundings before the audio engineers. Doesn't matter.

Silent night, lights are bright, I feel no fright.

The mystery is solved. Fredrik Lundh writes, "Cornstarch? (or some other starch; here in Northern Europe, it's always done with potato starch. I assume arrowroot would work as well)."

Posted by maeda at March 17, 2005 12:58 AM