Reflection:
Thinking back now to when we were first assigned groups and had that initial brainstorm of location possibilities and general ideas, I can’t help but realise how much we’ve all learnt from each other. If this was to be an individual task, I feel as though the strength and depth of each of the three questions wouldn’t have been explored or delivered to the extent that we did, and my project would have been so narrow minded. Working with both Nikki and Indri was awesome because we each had such strong ideas and creative visions so were easily able to bounce off each other, and we were able to get each other where we wanted to be with our individual ideas.
I had never been to Edinburgh Gardens before, however Nikki had and said it would be interesting as there were many places within it as a whole. This really fascinated me as we were fully exploring place as a communal area, and placeness within such a public area, but also placelessness as there is potential for place to get lost in such a large park such as these particular gardens. So I was really excited to explore this space.
Initially, my first idea surrounded the visual observation of perspective, and having different perspectives on the one objects. Throughout this semester so far I have learnt to be more open minded in my observations, both visually and sonically, so I wanted to express that through someway within this assignment. I wanted to dive into the aspect of looking past what we initially observe a certain space or object to be, and looking at it’s beauty, structure, materials and wider purpose, past just what it’s actual purpose is. At first, the question we had to explore this aspect was ‘how does one person’s perspective and interpretation change from another’s when viewing the same space from a different position?’. This was an interesting question, and we thought we’d explore it through setting up three cameras all capturing different perspectives. However, it was more focused on the way we were seeing the object (being the swing set) rather than what we were actually observing through the three different lenses. So, we re-tweaked the question to ‘What is the importance of looking at a certain space past the basis of what we initially observe it to be?’. Perfect. Immediately shifts the main focus to finding the detail in an everyday structure, and looking past what we know it is. It requires deeper observation and not just our current understanding of it’s structure and purpose. The photos we took for this were really interesting and worked really cohesively in bringing our idea to life, as we really emphasised the deeper observation by closely zooming on the imperfections. For example, observing the cracks in the paint and thinking about it’s use, age, trace, sacredness.
I also loved Nikki’s idea of incorporating child’s laughter into the video over the top of the swing set shots. It suggests physical presence of children without there actually being it, and because we are capturing what we would classify as a child’s sacred space.
Throughout this investigative journey, I have continued to broaden my understanding of what makes a place ‘sacred and who it might be sacred to. I enjoyed observing such a public place and every day individuals within it, using it for their own purpose and in their own element. Very much looking forward to the next assignment, to follow one particular direction and conduct more research and develop a greater understanding of what place and space means to different people.
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