Misophonia

According to Wikipedia:

Misophonia, literally “hatred of sound”, is a form of decreased sound tolerance.

Immediately I was struck by the literal meaning of Misophonia. Hatred of sound? How could someone hate sound? I continued my research into the condition to better understand the condition.

According to Misophonia.info:

Misophonia sufferers typically have strong negative emotional reactions, ranging from annoyance to extreme rage, to a variety of sounds–frequently associated with mouth and nasal sounds such as chewing, slurping or breathing. However, reactions can be triggered by many different sounds such as sniffing, pens clicking, heel-tapping, typing, dogs barking and so on. For some, simply the sight of one of these behaviors can trigger an intense reaction. Some Misophonia sufferers also have purely visual triggers such as jiggling legs or other repetitive movement which can set off a reaction. Each individual has different triggers and also has different emotional reactions. While mild sufferers of Misophonia may feel tense or irritated, more severe cases involve uncontrollable outbursts of anger and even the visualisation of violent encounters.

I also found this video from an ABC News program on Misophonia:

So I started to think about how I could recreate what someone one with Misophonia experiences. I thought of a room with a projection with random flashes of videos and sounds of common triggers (chewing, coughing, cracking knuckles, etc). Perhaps slowly fading to white-noise, bliss for Misophonia suffers. Maybe I could provide headphones with white noise to listen to or earplugs for viewers to escape the torture of the sounds.

Update: Interestingly, as I prepared to present this concept to my Electronic Arts class, I discovered that this was an updated version of the ABC News news special because the original contained sounds that would trigger reactions for Misophonia sufferers. This has led me to reconsider how my installation might affect those with Misophonia.