In class, we have been discussing Anna Tsing’s Arts of Noticing to inform our development for assignment 4. In her discussion of human noticing, Tsing describes our time as the ‘Anthropocene’, in which “human disturbance outranks other geological forces” (pg. 19). Tsing argues that humans tend to have a focus on themselves and events in their own world and neglect to pay attention to the other “worlds” around them- such as those in nature- as they do not lead to progress in society.

She goes on to state that we must reorient our attention to things we’ve neglected as “they show us how to look around rather than ahead” (pg. 22). I feel this is very relevant to our research prompt as by noticing particular aspects of nature and industrialised society, we are able to think introspectively about how advancements in society have affected natural environments. By noticing the world as “patchy landscapes, multiple temporalities, and shifting assemblages of humans and nonhumans” (pg. 22) it also gives us an insight into human behaviour and their patterns of engaging with their surroundings.

Additionally, Tsing discusses the idea of “precarity” as a part of the human experience, and that “unpredictable encounters transform us”. We would like to explore this idea by paying attention to these unexpected encounters in reality, to present an authentic version of real life. As nonfiction media practitioners I feel that this would be an effective way of producing a realistic document of media.

In class I also engaged with the biggest, big, small activity in order to outline the direction we wish to take with our assignment before the final exhibition. We determined that the biggest thing we wanted the audience to be able to notice through looking at our work is the interconnected nature of humans with the spaces they inhabit. We also laid out all of the tangible tasks we needed to achieve for our final production, which included accounting for risks during production. One risk we are considering is ensuring that we have as little involvement with what we are observing as possible, in order to produce a voyeuristic view of our surroundings.