"Our eyes perceive images, in order to paint pictures on a canvas," she says. "But modern humans are often too dependent on visual stimulus, in my experience," she relates. (Porter has been teaching for 30 years.) "The practice of just sitting and listening is becoming a lost activity, and this project shows how something simple, like sound, inspires our senses and our ability to express ourselves."
Porter has her students listen to sound effects like jungle birds, train whistles, the sea, and so on from audio CDs played on a DVD player. As they listen, they write down the track number of the sounds that particularly spark a mood or excite a sensory memory. From those memories and ideas, students then compose a short, three- or four-paragraph piece of writing using word processing software.