When I arrived to class today Indri and Nicole were mid-discussion with Robbie about our ideas for our final assignment. I semi joined the conversation, but mainly jotted down some notes I was gathering from their chat:

(Random notes jotted down quickly)

• Compact experience that is documented. Set it up as an experience
• Primary part? Or just a section.
• What are our aims and outcomes?
• Outcome = live performance? Or a series of interactions that you experience in the same place?
• Identity focused. Different realities online, presenting yourself in a new and different way.
• Character building exercise? Program is about constructing characters that match their personality.
• Idea of dealing with a virtual space, finding a way to be in it – whether it’s through the screen, suddenly everyone is in the same space. Uniting in the same space. Conversations coming from that space.
• Creating an environment that we are all able to be a part of.
• Physical consideration – webcam – changing something in the physical site but it’s available through the virtual

 

The plan so far is to get the footage done asap so we can start compiling everything together. We have lots of ideas, but aren’t sure the order of them, or the narrative structure. So with all the footage done first it will be easier to work this out because we can visually see what works and what doesn’t.

 

Exploring how sacred space for people can be online.

 

Today I also had an interesting thought. The video requirement is between 3-4 minutes. Our video starts with the opening of a laptop/online and screen environment. It then bookends itself with the laptop shutting and the screen fading to black. In between the opening and closing shots/segments, a range of online activity is displayed. This suggests that even though people can only be online for 3-4 minutes, they are able to participate in so much activity. Whether this be communicating with friends, family or strangers, downloading, uploading, editing, searching, learning etc. So the video length itself could be an interesting aspect to explore, putting it into literal perspective.

So good because our whole group is in the same boat. We have very similar ideas and visions of how the final product will look like. Whenever each of us expands on a particular idea, we can all agree and build on it because we have the same mindset in what we’re aiming to produce. Makes the process a lot easier in terms of equal collaboration and time management.

This project is a lot more liberating in what we can consider and explore. Which is exciting. We aren’t locked into specific questions and restricted with our delivery like we were in assignment 3, rather have the opportunity to be free in our work and in expressing our ideas.

 

Started class with a little exercise based on our previous assignment, to get us thinking about assignment 4. These were the four steps:

1. Write down 20 words that relate to your assignment 3
2. Then cross out 10 that don’t really relate as much as the others
3. Now link two of the remaining 10 words together, to make 5 pairs
4. Write 10 words relating to the new idea

So interesting how this little exercise allowed us to easily narrow down our idea. We didn’t have any idea that we wanted to explore how public vs private space is used online, it wasn’t until we did this little word exercise that we came to the conclusion!

Got our minds working and allowed our ideas to collectively come together.

 

Ideas for assignment 4 video:

Video ideas

• Starting in a dark room with purely the laptop lit. Slow zoom towards with eerie music, sounds of mac starting up, phone on charge etc. sounds of technology
• Cuts to a close up of the brightness on mac turning up
• Then video turns more up beat and fast paced, shots of computer and being online

Overall aims/ideas

• Exploring physical and non physical presence while online
• Exploring in a public yet private way
• Privatising part of yourself through becoming anonymous online (public space)

Challenges would be capturing a non-physical space, and how to actually do that. Making our idea come to life.

Site = website

 

Discussing our idea to the class

Feedback pointers:

• Can the virtual self be the real self?
• Representing yourself differently online.
• Robbie suggested to narrow it down – allowing a broader conversation.
• Research will give us ability to grow
• Interesting how to document our ideas

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.

 

Blog Posts:

Place, Placeness, Placelessness

Reading

Group Meeting Catchup

Readings for Inspiration

Footage Day

Editing

Group catch up

First Day of Presentations

Our Presentation in Class

Assignment 3 POWERPOINT

Assignment 3 VIDEO

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zA7T9pVXNqAMOR339IWUtmeA3TNGyu8L

Nikki Indri and I thought our presentation went really well! It’s a lot easier to explain the reasoning behind our ideas and decisions so a powerpoint format was perfect for our delivery and so the class can fully understand and follow.

FEEDBACK

• Great use of capturing people in their element within the chosen environment
• Idea of physical presence not needed to fill a space
• Robbie thought it would be interesting to capture the environment at night time – see how it differs, different animals, activities, people using the space differently
• Everyone really liked the idea of the intersection. However, Robbie thought it created a rushed atmosphere rather than the cruisey pace people would go through it with. It worked for the bikes as they are rushed.

We are still decided our direction for assignment 4. But still interested in looking at how people use a certain space differently and make it sacred in their own way. More interested in the ‘everyday’ rather than staged use of space. Fully capturing people in their element.

Other people’s presentations.

• Loved the use of light
• Interesting to see everyone’s interpretations of the criteria, and the different sites they used

 

Going through our final powerpoint today we realised that the photos for the first question did not relate at all as they didn’t include an intersection. So, to broader the question so focus it more on a communal area in general rather than the particular intersection, we changed it to ‘common space’ rather than ‘intersection.’ The intersection works as part of this ‘common space’ we explore. And it will be easier to explain this in our presentation. Explaining our thought process to the class and our final result choices.

Editing in suits

Starting mixing our sounds with our visuals

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Our video is quite basic and plain however it works. It works because it stays true to the environment, in that it’s the sort of sounds you hear at the park, and the same sort of things you see.

The children laughing and talking (“Look at me daddy”) are raw and genuine. These are genuine sounds from children you’d hear at the park, on the playground and running around. We caught them in their sacred element – exactly our aim.

I also love the use of footsteps in our video. We use the same footstep footage in each of the four ‘cross over’ shots (below)

however each time they are used differently. The first one is just the original footage without any editing. The second there are three of the same footage, one sped up to 200% and each staggered at different times. Same with the next two.

EDITING DAY

In the editing suites. Working on our video, photographs and powerpoint.

It’s so funny because after looking at our footage all together, we realised that our questions didn’t really match up in terms of what we were aiming to express/convey through our footage. So we decided to retweak the questions.

Tweaking the questions based on our footage:

Question 1

Before: How does time of day play a part in how people interact with their sacred place?

After: Does an intersection create a sense of community?

• No it doesn’t. even though the park is meant to be a communal space, we didn’t observe any physical interaction.
• We found no different in time of day in what people were doing. The footage over the three hours was essentially the same. So we decided to re-word our question.

Question 2

Before: How does one person’s perspective and interpretation change from another’s when viewing the same space from a different position?

After: What is the importance of looking at a certain space past the basis of what we initially observe it to be?

• Taking away interpretation. It’s more about how we observe space and our level of selfishness in what we observe and notice.
• Through different angles, looking at it’s purpose (children’s sacred space) and the finer detail (photos, up close of structure)

Question 3

Before: How does physical interaction with a place impact its emotional connection and level of sacredness?

After: How do people use a shared space and make it sacred in their own way?

• Observing people in their natural environment
• Seeing how people use space differently
• Works better with the footage of the skate park and people reading/sitting in their natural environment.