When I first heard about this project brief, I wasn’t overly thrilled about it. How was I supposed to explore the space that is my home when it is so tiny and run down, and really, a place that I don’t actually spend much time in? I also don’t like creating pieces or projects that focus on myself in any way. I always find it challenging and quite confronting.  I began to think about how I could go about this project in an interesting way, and seriously, nothing was coming to me. I eventually thought that maybe I could focus my photos, sounds and videos towards the flaws of my apartment. I was planning to do this through a series of close-ups that would expose fine details of in each individual surface or texture. But even the thought of that didn’t excite me. However as I began taking this angle, regardless of whether it excited me or not, I came up with another idea. This being that all the photos and videos should be from the point of view of my dog, as he inhabits the household more than myself. So most of my photos and videos I’ve taken have been by lying down or crawling on the ground. The result is a perspective of my apartment that is quite askew and at times blurry and random. I realized that in doing this, I actually discovered parts of my home that I hadn’t really paid much attention to previously. Such as the way the oven looks when you’re looking up at it from the kitchen floor, or how big the balcony door seems when you ‘re only a foot tall.  Some of the photos are also quite blurry. Iw as planning to go back and retake them but it then dawned on me that that might not be necessary. I chose to use them as they were due to the fact that Mo (my dog) doesn’t have the same quality of eye sight as humans and therefore the blurriness actually worked quite well with my subject matter. Overall, I wouldn’t say this is my finest work, but I do think I’ve come up with something interesting at least.

Today’s class saw us visiting the Percy Grainger Museum, located right next to Melbourne Uni. It was really interesting to see how someone can literally put themselves into a place. The museum is actually autobiographical. So Percy had actually created the place himself, sending important belongings and things that made up his life over to the museum to be preserved. It got me pondering about the many ways someone can live on. For someone like Percy, a famous composer, his memory would forever live on in the music he created. However this clearly wasn’t enough to satisfy him. My interpretation is that all these other aspects of his life featured in his museum contributed to the way that he was able to create his music, and without them, things might’ve been entirely different for him. Percy thought it important that his memory encompassed everything that he thought made him who he is.

Today we discussed ideas for our first project brief. This brief revolves around the idea of home as a space and how that can be explored through sound, images, and film. With my apartment, I’ll be focusing on flaws and perhaps lack of space and how this contributes to the aesthetic of my home. I think most of my footage will appear in the form of extreme close ups as to to draw attention to what usually may not stand out. As my apartment is not a huge space, this should be an interesting challenge for me to produce something interesting.