Seeing the Unseen

For our first workshop we visited Patrick Pound: The Great Exhibition at NGV Australia and thought about how collecting things together allows us to notice new things and discrete details.

Four our second workshop we discussed Ian Bogost’s “Ontography” chapter from Alien Phenomenology. Or what it’s like to be a Thing. While, the reading considers some new and unfamiliar ideas we talked about how making lists allows one to see multiple connections between things and how exploded view diagrams allow us to see that all things are made up of many unseen parts. A question asked was can lists be poetic?

We then did this exploded views exercise based off the Bogost reading, where table groups listed what they noticed in each others media collected as part of Task One. Most found these exploded views allowed them to see things within their media that they hadn’t noticed while filming because they were focusing on a particular thing.

We then spent some time on our Task One blog posts which are due tomorrow (28th July) evening at midnight.

In the last hour of the workshop we discussed Task Two as I’ll be away next week. Task Two is about collecting media in a place someone in the class finds familiar. We selected a location and then got to into pairs to start on the prompt post be deciding on a formula for noticing. For example, I will collect 5 videos every 3 steps I take in my pair’s location and they will do the same as me. Other prompts were based on more a list of things to film. The prompt and noticing posts should be completed by the beginning of week four. If you have any questions regarding Task Two please post them as comments to this blog post so that we can have an open discussion rather than me answering the same questions via email.

Some quick reminders – I’ll be away next week, so Sophie Langley will be doing a two day masterclass with you about noticing with sound. The readings are up, so please read in preparation. Lyreca and Kris you’ll be doing the studio update video next week so please remember to upload the video to vimeo/youtube and send a link to Paul by 5pm next Friday.

Firstly, I gave an overview of the conceptual ideas behind the studio by going through these slides. This studio is project-led and prompt driven.

Then, you created your own student submission folder by going to the studio’s Google Drive folder, going to student folders and creating a folder with your name and student number. In this folder you added your submission checklist by copying the checklist into your submission folder. This checklist is where you will submit all of your tasks for Seeing the Unseen.

Then, we discussed the John Mason “Forms of Noticing” reading in groups by dividing it up into sections and responding to these questions (which is a good model for a reflective blog post):

1. Provide a brief overview of your section
2. Pick a quote/idea that interests you? Why do you find this interesting?
3. What don’t you understand/ confuses you/ baffles you in some way? This might be a quote or a larger idea
4. Pose 2 questions about noticing which emerge for your group from this reading.  

The questions about noticing we posed were:

1. How do you develop the skill of purposefully noticing?
2. Is noticing a negative thing?
3. Different people notice different things, so what influences people to be selective of different things?
4. Can noticing be personal and circumstantial?

We then did this exercise based off Mason’s noticing reading on what we already notice.

Finally, we “set” ourselves something to notice over the following week with media. This can be photography, sound or video and will become your noticing post for Task One which I went through. By next Thursday’s class you should have completed your prompt and noticing blog posts.

Here is a list of the who’s doing what for studio updates and exhibition (worth 20% of task four’s mark).

Next week we will be going to the Patrick Pound exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV International at Federation Square for our Wednesday session. Meet at the info desk at 12:30.