project details —
This book visualizes my experience of tinnitus masking. I wrote a metaphorical narrative to describe how masking is a crucial form of my tinnitus management.
In the book I explore how typography and collage as formal devices can communicate experiences associated with my perception of tinnitus sounds, and as an interference and rhythmic disruption. Masking is the process of using external sounds to layer over my internal tinnitus which makes the sounds in my head temporarily inaudible—but still present. Tinnitus is a perpetual interruption of silence (auditory negative space) that I manage daily by using sound to layer over sound.
In the metaphorical narrative I represent tinnitus as an omnipresent ghost to which I am bound for life. I wear masks to temporarily escape the ghost’s haunting embrace.