It’s so Fascinating to see how much I’ve already learnt and how far I have come over the past 5 weeks of Sacred Places. During the first few in-class and at home exercises, I found myself constantly questioning the process, and struggling to fully engage with what I was observing. I was lazy in my research. Tending to often brush past finer detail in order to ‘get the job done’. It wasn’t until commencing assignment 2 where this all changed.
I was finally able to dive deeper into the meanings and stronger messages behind certain objects in certain spaces; their reasoning, what it signifies in the larger scheme of life, it’s placement in the world and how it is perceived by different people – in particular how I perceive.
In the end I didn’t have a personal favourite phrase that I studied. Each was so incredibly different and unique, and gave a different insight into the world as a whole.
PHRASE ONE: Finding excitement in boredom.
Is boring really boring? Or is it only what you make it? What if you looked at it differently? With a changed mind set and open eyes, the ability to find some level of excitement within what would normally be classified as boring becomes a whole lot easier, and super fascinating. For example – a white wall. Sounds boring right? Wrong. It tells a story. The white wall I used in one of my photos was initially boring to me, and has been my whole life. But when looking deeper, and studying it as a whole, I found so many traces, smudges, marks and different shades that all tell a story.
PHRASE TWO: An empty full space.
This one has really intrigued me since the beginning of the course – our first soundscape observation exercise out in the open indoor space. I went into it with such a small mind – how on earth am I going to pick up sounds in such a big empty space? But is it empty? Could it be that the emptier a space, the fuller it is? One of the soundscapes in my video is a radio and a TV changing channels. This refers to filling up the space with sound, feeling as though there is company. A photographed my empty dining table, all set up perfectly with four chairs. Is it an empty space because no humans are in it? Yes. Is this selfishness? Do humans need to be present in a space in order for it to feel full?
PHRASE THREE: Noticing the irregular
I have always been interested in patterns, so for this project I decided to mix it up a bit and reverse it, looking at the irregular patterns rather than the obvious pattern. It basically makes me notice things that I wouldn’t have normally noticed. I am often selfish in what I notice in the world. I notice the regular, every day, obvious things that should be noticed – and completely shut out the finer detail. So, to demonstrate this I used patterns.
PHRASE FOUR: Coming alive
I love the idea of being able to tell a story with only one of the five senses. So, I told stories through purely both sound and visuals. The photos are of objects that’s sound is easy to picture in your head. When looking at the photos, people should be able to sonically imagine what that object’s sound would produce if it wasn’t in a still photograph. And vice versa – picturing the physical actions when hearing the sounds.
This whole process has encouraged me to leap out of my comfort zone, and in doing so I have such a wider understanding of the world. I will take these skills of deeper noticing and reasoning into practice and use them into my next exercises and assignments to come in the course.
Three main blog posts throughout assignment 2:
I loved giving feedback on everyones work in the class. Everyone took such different and interesting directions with their words. It was funny to recognise that I was the only one on my exhibition day who used four phrases rather than just single words. I found it was more beneficial in explaining my ideas, because one word would have been a bit too broad. Also a different and abstract way of going about it.
Feedback I wrote down for other’s work:
