The initial task for this assignment was bringing our past ideas together. Collectively, we had water our best course of action was to talk about the plastic that hands (and the humans that control them) leave around to pollute water. Humans polluting the water is a very current and real issue today so it worked well to be able to bring our ideas together to talk about something relevant. Though it did not come without its struggles, the single page format worked well for us in the end. The initial sound of the ocean at the start represents the ‘clean’ ocean, which then contrasts with the sounds of the ocean and plastic halfway through the piece. We chose this so it would play at the start and continue for roughly the amount of time it would take a reader to read through the rest of the piece to the next video. “Field recordings give basic information about places and events” (Casack 2013), this idea was to fully immerse the reader with both sound and sight. The text tells the story, while the images act as a form of evidence, proof of what is happening, as well as breaking up the text and making it more visually pleasing.

After my lack of knowing how to properly embed media into a blog post in the second assignment, I was happy with the aesthetic of this one. The way that it is set out creates an assemblage of sorts. For the piece to achieve its intended effect on the audience, all types of media are required. While the text is the spine, Bennett 2010, states that “no…type of material has sufficient competence to determine… the trajectory or impact of the [audience]”. Therefore, without the others, each single piece of media would lose impact and meaning. The images just be images and sounds without the context of the text, while the text would become lacklustre. I think our piece does well to bring these together to create something more powerful, and I think the idea of bringing different media components together to tell a story paints a more vibrant and clear picture than on their own which is an idea to develop further in the next assignment. What else can we add? How can we mix the material further?

As far as the overlook goes, post receiving feedback of using stock photos on our final product, we found our personal photos just weren’t aesthetic as the original photos we had in place were. However, it was nice to use more of our own material.

In the next project, we will have the ability to use physical space which will add an extra element into our work. Incorporating more of a tangible form of media will be interesting to experiment and workshop with to blend it with digital works. We have some ideas using physical water and ink ideas to demonstrate how a single drop of ink can pollute water, as well as exploring ideas of “sonic-journalism” (Cusack, 2013).

Here is the link to our previous assessment.

Assessment 3

Alexander, B (2011) “The Next Wave of Digital Storytelling Platforms.” The New Digital Storytelling: Creative Narratives with New Media. ABC-CLIO, LLC: 29–43. [accessed 10^th Sept.]

Bennett, J (2010) The Agency of Assemblages. In Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, London: Duke University Press, pp. 20–38 [accessed 10^th Sept.]

Cusack, P (2013) Field Recording as Sonic Journalism. In A. Carlyle & C. Lane, eds. On Listening. Devon: Uniformbooks, pp. 25–29. [accessed 7^th Sept.]

Ingold, T (2011) ‘Rethinking the animate, reanimating thought’, Being Alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description Routlege: London, New York 67-75 [accessed 11^th Sept.]