‘Maps, Things, Boundaries’

 

My gallery of 100 videos is a spatial representation or map of the beach-side from St Kilda to South Melbourne. It is a list of objects that exist along this landscape. Maps simplify and make “reality” easier to understand.

 

 

For this project I set the following constraints:

• Start from St Kilda Skate Park
• Walk towards the City
• Take a video every 30 seconds
• Each video must be 5 seconds in length
• Film facing inland
• Take 100 Videos

 

I choose these constraints as I did not want my ‘selective noticing’ to affect what was filmed. I did not choose things I found interesting as I wished to create without imposing. I simply documented what was in front of me. In the words of Bogost I attempted distance my project from ‘‘anthropocentric narrative coherence in favor of worldly detail’. Therefore, when I look at my list I attempt look at how these things exist in their own world, rather than what humans use them for.

 

When we look at a conventional map we see the topography of the land, yet the objects that inhabit the area are not revealed. It is easy to draw a map of roads and boundaries but it is difficult to represent objects and their facets in such a way. The use of video however allowed not only the mapping of the landscape but the objects that inhabit it, allowing examination of these ‘things’ and their facets in detail. I call this study ‘ontological cartography’.

 

The list maps the structure, shape, color and movement of individual entities along this particular beach-side. Through this we able to see what these objects mean beyond our own existence. When I go to the beach I normally look out to the ocean and take little notice of the objects around me. By examining these videos I am able to focus on the specific objects along the St Kilda beach-side.

 

Maps have boundaries and interestingly I learnt that the placement of ‘things’ acts a boundary for the beach. The brick wall meets with the sand acting as a barrier between nature and the vast amount of man made things beyond it. I am leaning towards commenting on this with my final AV work.

For the first stage I set out knowing only the constraints and the overly general topic of the beach-side and extracted the idea from there. For the next stage of this ontograph I would re-shoot videos to focus on the objects more closely academically and visually. Rather than having a video which contains a fence I will have multiple videos showing the facets of the fence. For instance the ground, the wooden post, the paint, where the chain link connects with the post and the chain link itself. My mistake the first time around was attempting to map a large area and therefore a large number of objects. I have now realised I can present more detail by narrowing down my documentary to a singular object per shot. To truly map an object I must capture all facets of it. Then I will be able to draw more questions and understand further in relation to my idea of mapping.