After our experiment in which we experienced hearing loss, I became increasingly interested in the ability to localize sound. We can tell where a sound is coming from incredibly fast. When we drive a car and we hear another car’s horn, we can tell where it is without even looking, allowing us to swerve to avoid a crash. When I play golf and I hear “fore!!” coming from another fairway, I can tell without seeing the golfer who yelled, where the ball is coming from and which way to run. The experiment made me even more interested in the ability to localize sound, after I walked through campus with only one earplug in. I thought that my ability to localize sounds would be completely shot with hearing limited in one of my ears. But it wasn’t. Sure it was effected by the earplug, but in general, if a fried who was across the quad called my name, I would still know where the sound was coming from.
All of this got me thinking about ventriloquism. If having an earplug in one ear was unable to have an effect on my ability to localize sounds, how are ventriloquists able to make people hear their voice coming from a puppet on their lap? I have always been interested in ventriloquism, as one of the creepiest forms of performance in the world, and this experiment made me finally hop on the internet and find out how it works. While the Wikipedia article I read goes into considerably more detail about the brain functions that make ventriloquism possible, it turns out that ventriloquism is nothing more than a visual illusion. We are so used to associating speech with a moving mouth, that when we hear the words, and see the puppet’s mouth move, our brains tell us that the sounds are coming from the puppet’s mouth rather than the ventriloquist’s. Ventriloquism is nothing more than merely training so that you can speak words without moving your lips, tongue, or throat in a noticeable way.
I was disappointed that there was nothing more impressive behind ventriloquism, but if nothing else, this experiment and our discussions in class lead me to finally answering a question I had had for a long time.
FEBRUARU 23, 2008
