Participation. Our group all contributed to the soundscape in a collaborative way. Taras and I recorded the sounds from the locale, and trialled voice overs with the guidance of Zitni. Zitni then compiled the sounds and made the soundscape, again with the guidance of Taras and I.
I bought some food into class today if that counts too.
Constraints in writing and making inform my thinking of how it is the ruling which fashions what is good about the work, not the work on its own. (A single sentence without the letter E, a lot harder than I thought it would be.)
A few examples of constrained writing.
Weird examples of films recut without a key aspect. ie Finding Nemo without water.
Both are very different processes of constraint. The latter is satirical or absurd, but still a process of noticing.
a convivial making.
the truculent clamour of things.
Lack of causation. Stop thinking in snapshots of time.
Life is bigger than us.
Working: initial sampling and investigation.
notice the patterns from this.
Use patterns to make rule and inform the next part of the work.
Essay writing. Not really my forte. Nerves. Deadlines. Pressure. Not knowing what stuff is important enough. Not knowing how much context I need to give to the reader regarding definitions and assumed knowledge. Not having done english in year 12, so no real structure. I feel like my arguments flow in the same way they formulate in my mind – for better or worse. My tone is a bit more conversational too.
What I did find helpful was the pomodoro sessions. I usually take a long time to kick off writing the bulk of the essay. I tried to not backspace anything during this session, and just let my ideas spill out, and try curate from then. This way, I built my essay in the reverse of how I normally do (normally gathering quotes first, but now I let my own ideas do the talking and have the quotes as a support.) The quotes speak to me instead of vice versa.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I have submitted. In a way I feel like it has given me more questions and curiosities about OOO than solutions. It has made me more inclined to investigate the practice a bit more. All in all though, I learnt a lot from the essay and reflecting on the process of creating the soundscape.
On Tuesday we received the soundscapes from Offenburg.
They were a lot more diverse in their approach than ours were – or perhaps just had a bigger variation in skills level.
It was kind of funny that we had just assumed that they would be doing their soundscapes in English. Or rather that we had put no thought into potentially reading ours out in German. There is being anthropocentric, and then there’s that…
We were paired with Gruppe 6. They had chosen the room locale. It had a very eerie feel to it; a reciting of objects echoed by a group of voices. A sort of buzzing sound was was also prominent throughout the soundscape. Other than that, it felt very empty. Like being in an empty room. I think it gives us a lot of creative freedom to add in our video to the exquisite corpse.
http://htwins.net/scale2
This web tool shows the scale of the universe through size relations. It was an interesting way to picture the place we have in the greater (and smaller) picture of the universe. Interestingly, humans are closer to the size of the entire universe than to the planck length.
A new perspective.
It was interesting to see how objects that seem very disconnected from each other shared similar sizes. Uluru being close to the size of an AM radio length, blue whale being the same size as an average U.S house etc.
Universe / Human ratio = 5.16×1026
Human / Planck length ratio = 1.1×1035
I finished work Sunday night / Monday morning, and was emptying the bins when I saw a pair of shoes on fire in the alleyway. I wish I filmed it because i’ll probably never see it again.
I just thought it was really peculiar. Like a thing that exists, that isn’t thought about as being real until it is seen. It was like seeing a UFO or something.
Have you ever sat and watched a pair of shoes burn? It takes about 30 minutes for it to reach the soles (high tops, however) and the burning rubber smells dreadful. It also burns brighter than I thought. Not that I had ever thought about it.
Objects.
I’ve always thought that it is impossible to show truth on film. Documentary itself is a process of mediation and decisions made by the documenter. They choose what is being filmed, how to film it, and the editing of it. The director is constantly looking for what to film next.
This week I took in a tidbit of knowledge to apply to my ontological studies – Surrender my agency to the camera. Have less thought in what i’m filming and have less opinions on what is important. Let the place or subject speak to me, instead of the opposite.
What is the space saying? I shouldn’t go into something thinking, ‘okay so we are recording water today, what does water sound like? what feelings do we associate with water? I should make it sound peaceful etc.’
instead of just listening for a bit, recording more. This will ultimately help capture the reality of things. It may be less convenient for an audience to digest, but it is real.
This week we went about recording and editing our 1 minute soundscape. We elected to record the locale ‘by the water’. More specifically, we chose to record the fountain feature outside of RMIT. The process involved firstly hiring out the equipment – a zoom h4n recorder, a GoPro, and a shotgun microphone. I thought this would give us a wide enough scope to record a variety of objects, from atmosphere to more specific sounds, and even under water.
While recording, we pretty much wandered around the area trying to notice what we could here, and to also see how other objects, like people, interacted with the water feature. Some people were studying nearby it, some younger kids where amazed to see water on their excursion of the inner city. Helicopters flew over head, the distant sound of clashing cement, birds etc. were all not physically by the water, but their sound formed some part of what it is to be by the water.
The following day we compiled and labelled the sounds, and recorded the voiceover. I drew the short straw and had to have my voice recorded. I wonder if the soundscape would have a different affect if it were another voice.
What did I learn? I feel like this is hard to pin point. I think i’m just becoming more immersed in the whole concept of Object-Orientated Ontology. It’s hard to put into words, but I feel like I understand where it is pushing me with my media making, and assessment. What is the benefits of the practice? It helps to portray a locale more holistically, where the sum of individual parts means creates a better visualisation of how the place is. It is, potentially (and what i’m most interested to know) a better (or just different) way of documenting something.