Seeing the Unseen

Venice:

• Sounds of rain dripping
• People chattering in piazza
• walks to and from hostel
• footage of people walking
• footage of kids playing soccer in the street
• footage of shadows

So far the footage has been limited but the layers are coming together.

Developing my skills for mindful noticing was a difficult task when I began thinking about it too much.
I’ve found that knowing how I notice already meant that I just took out my camera, iPhone of DSLR and I allowed myself to capture whatever my senses directed me to.
Pulling focus to things that I was forcing myself to notice muddied the waters too much, so allowing my organic perception of space was a better way for me to gather my media.
Of course, knowing the base of my interests also helped me in accumulating the information that I was looking for but ultimately, I enjoyed the nature through which my media was collected.

Is noticing negative?
Noticing in a creative capacity isn’t negative but it does beg the question, as discussed in class, whether or not the things we were noticing for the projects would be things we would have taken note of, had we not have been actively engaging with our environments more so than usual. Did I pick up on paint strips, puddles of water, reflections and lines in the sky more than I would usually? Yes, of course but it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that depending on the sort of noticing you’re wishing to explore and evolve, it may not be as organic as an endeavour as you may have imagined it to be.
Being aware of our environments is a survival instinct, it’s innate, so we’re not venturing too far from our biological imperative.

As a result of these internal drivers, I did feel that because of my understanding of self, having already been an observer of particular things – (the reason I wanted to take this studio in the first place), I did have the ability to ‘deatch’ so to speak, and to notice things without a sense of urgency or need. I do feel we notice things because of something inside of us that is drawn to something in particular and I did find the early explorations of noticing in a group partner’s environment to be interesting in a comparative sense.

My final work drew heavily on this comparative element.
When I was in the country, I was always finding elements of the city.
When I was in the city, I was finding the country and then sometimes I didn’t and I embraced the discordance.
The jarring effects were interesting to create in the editing process, audibly speaking. Sometimes, the poetics I had been actively looking for weren’t there and so the space between the imbalance was interesting to explore.

I began noticing the way the trees would move, sometimes swaying in the breeze. I distinctly remember looking at a bush of yellow flowers against fence posts in a field, with Melbourne in the background, thinking that the posts reminded me of the buildings and that the audio I had recently collected in in Italy of women squabbling in the streets could be a great overlay to the aggressively moving flowers in the wind – it was already coming together in my mind.

The challenges of creating a non-fiction and non-linear piece of work was a difficult task.
Movies, stories and life in general are built on the foundations on a beginning, middle and an end and through my editing process, I grappled with whether I was ‘doing it right’ or not.
I still think to myself whether I feel I have done it well enough but having worked on it and played it back to myself a lot, I just had this feeling that it fit – it works for me.

I like the harmonious interludes that are conflicted by the city noises, the hums of engines, the bike bells, trams and people.
The country overlaid with city noises creates an interesting perspective of these spaces and opened up a new layer of noticing for me once I tapped into the idea of contrast vs poetics, from my original prompt.

Above all, I feel that working on this studio enhanced the way that I see things that were already in my peripheries.
The way I view my surroundings has increased and my sense of awareness has heightened too.
My appreciation for the simple things, especially the audio aspects to the work; wind through the grass, people’s chatter, hums of the atmosphere, have increased and its been nice (and a little anxiety inducing) to have those mental reminders to notice over the course of the semester.

How will I apply this to my work as I continue?
I genuinely feel that the fundamentals of this studio have been really important overall.
While they were difficult to grasp in the beginning, my understanding of what it meant to really ‘see’ began to take shape the more I got out into the environment and engaged with it.
Talking about it was a little too abstract for me but seeing the footage in front of me, setting up the shots, walking the streets knowing I was recording it all, led me to understand the greater purpose of it all – especially on playback.

I’ll be taking a lot of the base of the works, longer shots, remembering to pause and take in the surrounds, more of a European approach to filmmaking (Tarkovsky) will be woven into my future projects.
Reminding myself to continue to make will be the first hurdle to overcome but I’m sure I’ll begin to notice the changes from there on in.

Pitch:

For my final task 4 assignment, I aim to create a layered piece of work that opens up the channels of what comprises a city and the country.
I have an unusual set-up in that I will be overseas working throughout the final duration of this studio and my locations are somewhat limited to urban environments and time to collect media is also quite limited.
However, I would like to use these constraints to work for me somehow, in that I would like to use what limited media I am able to collect and find the narratives embedded within those collections.
Not interested in restricting myself too much, or wanting to over-analyse the footage I’ll be collecting, I’m interested in finding motifs in my environments, both urban and suburban.
Audio will play a large role in my sensing of the space, to take myself out of my comfort zone and test myself on noticing and seeing through hearing.
I’d like sounds to guide me through a space and would like to fuse both the visual and audio together for a final piece. While not wanting to write anything in stone just yet, I am seeing a larger picture coming to form in my mind of the layered themes I’d like to create.

I think overlapping of both the environments in my research will work well together, hopefully forming a narrative of sorts once paired.
I’m interested to see where this leads.

In the week 9 Thursday workshop we did a lot of planning for task 4.
Meeting with Hannah and discussing ideas with the other students in the class really helped me develop my ideas further with the certain constraints that I had to work in personally.

Timeline:

September 22nd -29th

• Notice movement in urban environments
• (Venice) bridges, alleyways, nature, anomaly’s

September 30th-October 6th

• Finalise the locations in which I’ll focus on
• Use various mediums ie: phone, camera, recorder
• Use different apps to record my choice of footage
• Narrow down the footage in projects
• Narrow down elements in footage that correlate with one another

October 7th-13th

• Begin to overlap and layer footage with
• Decide on length of footage and screen time

October 14th-20th

• Begin editing
• Reflect
• Submit

What matters to project four?

• Layering and overlapping of footage
• Emphasis on similarities
• Narrative
• Duration/length
• Patterns
• Evocations
• Environments chosen (urban/suburban)
• Editing – or no editing

Biggest, Big, Littlest

Biggest: Evolving and showing what the similarities and differences there are in the environments as one is escaped from (city) in favour of the other (country) and yet there are elements of each place in both if we look close enough.

Big: The media collected (sound & video) are pivotal to helping us understand these similarities and differences as our senses are crucial to our perceptions of environments, yet personal to each of us.

Littlest: The means in which I captured the footage, focus of equipment and myself, clashing of footage (audio & video), environmental accessibility.

Challenges/Risks:

• Organisation
• Over analysing
• Locations
• Time frame and restrictions
• Being overseas and foreign places, not having access to locations
• Editing process
• Planning
• time time time

Going on from what I mentioned in my previous post about actively noticing affecting the subject matter, I thought it might be interesting to return to the simple form of noticing that I remember being tested as a kid in primary school as an exercise on noticing.
We would be asked to go out into a space and upon our return, we would have to write down all of the things we noticed – which reminds me of a class activity that we did in our first week or two of this studio.
– I would like to create more comparative work to see how my abilities to notice, how my interests are possibly changed and my awareness heightened through visiting the same area over the course of a few weeks.
I watched a video by Jim Carrey on his artwork and he made an interesting point about how what we create (and notice) is a reflection of what our insides are trying to communicate to us.
‘Something inside you is always trying to tell a story’.

All my queries are in reference to the above; wondering why I focus on the things that I do; ripped and dripping paint, faces (art, murals and physical), particular angles and classical architecture – what is it that I attach to these things in every place, even outside of this project.
My interests lay dormant but when they’re called upon, they manifest in similar ways – so I’d not only like to spend more time in the same place but I think actively seeing new places and collecting media outside of class will aid in finding more pieces to the puzzle.

I found these activities to have come at a really great time for me. Actively noticing is a deeply personal experience, even if you’re in someone else’s area of choice. We still attach meaning to different things and we find moments of interest within our frame.

Prompt: I find that there is always an aspect of grouping within my media.
I realise that I notice things that compliment one another.
Buildings, lines and curves – forming narratives of place, so I would like to continue to notice things collectively in contrasting environments.
As we began the project through working in pairs in unfamiliar places, I would like to continue that idea of noticing the unfamiliar.
I wonder if I can find poetics in the space through the collecting of sounds and videos.
I would like to continue creating a sense of space through the use of video and sound and finding patterns and rhythms to these collections in specific spaces.
In particular, I would like to divide the experiment in both a country setting and an urban one.
I would like to work on the similarities of both and find the narratives embedded within.

I guess I expected there to be more people traffic and more noises from the street.
The people were lightly scattered and cars took priority driving up and down the tram tracks.
I spent a good hour in the street with 8-10 trams passing by both ways, their bells sending echoes through the air.

Remembering the discussions in class while I was out in the streets helped me focus on the poetics of the place.
I sat in my car for a while, using the comfort of the indoors to cast my net across the street, looking up and noticing reflections on the windows of buildings opposite one another.
Tram lines and street wires intercepted one another, all expected of Smith Street.

Oscar and I collected our media similarly, opting to stand still and allow external stimuli to enter the frame, initially positioning it in a complimentary setting.
Our way in collecting the media was essentally the same.
Setting out to try and find collections was harder than was expected because once you head out into the space, it’s really up to the surrounds and anything that enters the space to create that collection.
That being said, I believe that our minds play the primary role in selection of subjects and things of interest.

Oscar collected images of of a lot of flowers on grave sites that constrasted with the man made stone graves – softness vs hardness.
Through these videos, he focused on the beauty of decay, life after death.

I collected videos of classical architecture with poorly written tags in bright to neutral textas and paints – old vs new.
The writing and street are exhibited the underlying aggression of the neighbourhood, as people took to the public streets to voice their opinions on any surface they could find at eye level.

Going to our places was an eye-opener. I know we both felt that because we were actively noticed, we focused on things that we may not have noticed otherwise.
So, it increased our awareness for one and allowed us both to read into things a little deeper.
Crossing the street became a composition, rather than just a simple task of getting from one side to the other.
Trees blowing in the wind were now a time to stop, think and recalibrate – allowing us to slow down.
Another aspect worth noting was the tempo at which this project was undertaken; slow and calculated.
My eyes moved slowly, grazing over the landscape, noticing movements like I was some sort of predator.

Overall I feel we did really well with collecting media with similar undertones.

After having seen the Patrick Pound exhibition, Oscar and I took note of the collections that were created.
The large scale of work acquired, in contrast to such a select subject pool was fascinating and led Oscar and I to explore our own collection for this second noticing task.

Our aim for this exercise is to head to each other’s chosen places and let the space and it’s rhythms evolve. Oscar had predominantly been to a street in Fitzroy during the evenings, saying it was the hustle and bustle of people and restaurants, bars and clubs that overwhelmed his senses. As he was always there with purpose, he couldn’t reflect on the place and recall anything else but the events he attended and his friends around him.

I sent Oscar to the Carlton Cemetery. Having gone there many times as a child with my mother, who told me ghost stories as we rode through on our bikes, the place was etched in my mind. Mostly there at night, the place held a certain appeal to me, whereas the day was associated with a purpose – attending a funeral procession.
The positioning of the cemetery intrigued me as well. Located on a busy road, the once large cyprus trees shielded the old and cracked graves from the passers by; now removed and open to the foot traffic and cars alike.

We decided that we would take approximately 10 videos each, breaking them down to 5 long videos (approx 15-30 seconds) and 5 short (1-3 mins) each.

Living in the area, I was accustomed to the rituals of passing through, day and night.
I knew the footpaths, the artwork, businesses and people – the fact that this place could open itself up to me further was a stretch.
The Fitzroy I knew some 10-15 years ago was an escape from the plain grey backdrop of metropolitan Melbourne.
I still remember my mother telling me  something and I must’ve mentioned something as a kid about someone’s fashion sense, “anything goes”.
It held a lot more weight back then and clearly enough to have resonated for me to have quoted her this far down the track.
What you see in Fitzroy has become ubiquitous with the rest of Melbourne. One large bleeding canvas of paint and grit.
I expected to hear tram bells, horns and general traffic chatter against the low murmurs of cafe life and whatever native species of bird was flittering about the streets, fighting over crusts and crumbs.

I didn’t expect to see too much that I hadn’t seen before.

I struggled to set myself the guidelines within which I would begin to develop my media for this first exercise.
However, faced with the prospect of having to focus in and notice things around me sparked an existing interest in light, shadows, movement, stillness and reflection.
Creating boundaries was and is still difficult for me but I  decided to set alarms on my phone to remind myself to notice.
Already quite an observant person, I found that the act of actively noticing was something that I had to adjust to, as most things tend to go ‘unnoticed’ in that I don’t document all my findings by taking a photo or recording them.

10am:
I found myself on my way to work as my first buzzer went off, cutting through to the park near my house to avoid the icy wind. I saw a puddle of water on the cobble below and noticed that by looking down how I could delve deeper into my environment and take in more of my surrounds.
It was a glimmer of light that first caught my eye as soon as the alarm went off.
I used my dslr to frame different shots, noticing angles of the houses around me that took on a new perspective now that I was focusing.
The light breeze created ripples that looked to charge the reflection with a surge of power, creating new dimensions and perspectives – it was just so simple and captivating.
The process of elimination is another element of noticing that interests me. What is it that we deem interesting, worth noticing and worthy of accumulating or sharing?
I feel noticing is an intrinsically personal a thing. Why did I notice this puddle and opt to ignore something else?

I’m also drawn to shadows and lights that take their narrative and cast it onto a new surface to create an entirely new one.
Take a tree on Cardigan street, the wind rustling through its branches. I can see the textures of the wood clearly, the grain and the coarseness of its branches, their wirey tendrils reach out across the road, making pathways for the birds that perch themselves high up there. Their plumage is clearly visible from where I stand, I can take in the textures, sounds, movements and the infinite three-dimensional details of the scene.

When you add sunlight to the equation, it trickles through the branches and casts a silhuouette onto the wall opposite, painted soft pink, the branches are simplified to a soft grey shadow – the entire scene is now a two-dimensional, un-choreographed shadow puppet show.
By no means reduced in that it is lesser than 3D, just simplified, opening up a new avenue for exploration.
The branches dance across the wall, now appearing a soft custard yellow, bathed in sunlight, the colours and story begins to evolve, adapt and change.
It becomes a poetic display of nature, without texture or detail, it’s now a rhythm and dance of the branches and birds. The lights and shadows perform a ritual of day to day – therein lies my interest in the intricacies of simplicity.