“If I were compelled to sum up Melbourne in a single building, it would be this one, with its striking terracotta and dark-green faience-glaze facade.” – Sophie Cunningham
Walking along Swanston Street, I went in any building or entrance that caught my eye. I came across an escalator going downwards, into a $2.80 Japanese mart, Daiso, where little knick-knacks were illuminated by faint 2700K lights. I also found a thrift shop with a sign outside saying 50% OFF EVERYTHING – it was an ocean of unorganised racks and mismatched colours; they had a decent playlist on the speakers and I Shazam-ed two songs. My favourite stop was a slightly dodgy building with a short stairway that led to a shop called RetroStar Vintage Clothing – if it weren’t for the sign outside, I wouldn’t have known that this place existed.
I came out of the shop with two tops and a pair of cute earrings (that were already dusty from age) and noticed that there was a stairway leading upwards on my right. I thought about how this might be a good bet for Assessment 2. Out of curiosity, I went up the steps and found the entrances to a shop selling buttons, and a place that offered Tarot reading. There was another set of steps ahead of me, but I dared not venture ahead – it seemed to get darker as the floors got higher. My curiosity turned into a small wave of fear. I turned back, and hastily found my way out of the space, which I then recognised to be the Nicholas Building.
The next time I was there, I was with my group mate, Nicolette, and we traversed up the stairways, one after the other, from the ground floor, all the way up to the ninth floor – the tenth was boarded up with no hope of entry. We also found our way to the vertical stairwell, where the toilets were situated. All of them were locked, though … Just like the door that led back to the building. We looked at each other in utter shock, upon realising that the door only opened from the inside. Making our way down to the lowest floor, we finally found relief as the door easily swung open.
We decided to pick this building. This would be the building we document for our upcoming assessment. I thought about what I might focus on, and perhaps, after these various experiences, perhaps one thing I would like to zoom in on are the elements of being trapped, or simply the experience of being in an enclosed area.
Today’s plan involved us visiting Testing Grounds, an outdoor art space for experimental projects, and artsy gatherings. Before that, however, I met up with Nicolette, who I will be working with to complete Assessment 2. We talked about how we might tackle this assessment, and looked up several interesting places that we could explore. Our research led us to think about cat cafés, rooftop gardens, and lanes in Melbourne. The things we came across were pretty entertaining. We haven’t decided on one yet, but we will soon.
Back to Testing Grounds – it was a brilliant experience, as I had never encountered a place such as that before. We met as a class at the Arts Centre, before walking over to Testing Grounds. On the way there, we walked on this bridge from which we could see the entire Testing Grounds site from above.
I remember first looking at it and thinking, “Why are we here? What’s down there? I don’t see a thing.” The place looked somewhat barren, with a couple of wooden boxes artistically positioned in the fenced up space. It looked like a construction site.
As we went down the bridge and into the place, I got to see everything as it really is. The boxes were really crates in which resided beautiful plants still wet and gleaming from today’s slight drizzle. A happy, energetic dog was playfully running about with her bright green toy. There were pastel-coloured doors for the outdoor toilets, a piano under a shed with books randomly atop of it, and a disco ball casually hanging right outside a little hut labeled ‘STUDIO’. All these things were left unnoticed when I was on top of that bridge, and to see everything up close was simply beautiful.
All this seemed a little surreal; especially just knowing that this place was nestled right next to a busy road, teeming with noise and cars. This place seemed almost like a sanctuary from the bustling outside world.
As we walked back that day, I saw flowers growing out and over the fence, into the space of where the road was. It was nice to see that a little bit of life had found its way to the tough, tar road.
We started off today’s studio class looking at everybody’s work on Assessment 1. It was very absorbing, being able to look at my classmates’ work; taking a tiny peep into their lives. The use of photography, film, and sound was great, and we ended the ‘presentation’ with displaying our work in the form of a slideshow on our individual devices. As a group, we stood at the back of the class and looked at everyone’s screens, photos and videos looping away, with the room filled with recorded sounds and noises.
Robbie also showed us a couple of cool videos, such as Tokyo Reverse and Stainless, 42 Street. Those were my two favourites. It’s fascinating how these artists and videographers have taken such an ordinary space, displaying its beauty in ways so unique.
Following up from all that we went through in today’s studio session, we got the brief for Assessment 2, and it requires close investigation of a particular place of our choice, considering various notions that give us further insight into how one might view a certain site. The class will be working in pairs, and I’m looking forward to what each group will come up with.
My roommate and I eat on the floor because there’s no space for a dining table.
The rustling of the sheets every night, as my roommate finds a comfortable spot in bed. The difficulty of closing my bathroom door, and the pain of getting it open. The entrance to my room, a colourful – and dangerous – array of shoes and more shoes; a Minesweeper affair. These are the things that have grown on me. These are the things that make my home.
Last week, as I took hold of the assessment brief, my first thought was, “There’s nothing interesting about my tiny two-bedroom studio.” As the days went by, however, and I did the readings and engaged in studio classes, I found that there are quite a lot of stories behind the place in which I currently reside; this student accommodation, RMIT Village, which I now call home.
I love cacti but I can never take care of them. This is my shrunken cactus which now resides in my bathroom.
I remember once having a conversation with my roommate, about two months back. We just got back from getting groceries. I lumped everything on our small kitchen counter and said, “I’m tired. It’s good to be home.” My roommate looked at me and said, “It’s kind of weird, don’t you think? That this place is now our home.” We talked about it, and realised that we have gone from saying I’m back in the Village to I’m back at home.
It might be true, that this really is home to me now, or it may be for the fact that saying “home” is easier on the tongue. I don’t quite know.
One thing I do know, though, is that there are many things about my dwarfish abode that grant me comfort, and ignite within me memories from long ago. For the past couple of days, I observed the few things that comprised and happened in my little space, and found that the few things I have hold many stories.
I talked to my roommate about it as well, as we have lived the past five months together, and it was only fitting that we discuss together about the many things that we have gone through since coming to Melbourne. Apart from exploring life in a student accommodation – as compared to back in Malaysia where I lived with my mother, brother, and dog – I also looked into days spent with my roommate in this two-bedroom studio.
My artistic mess. I’m not the best at being tidy.
What I have prepared is a collection of places and sounds in my student accommodation that I have made significant contact with, and also several artefacts that have impacted me in various ways. I came here with only a bed too springy for comfort, a dusty study table, a small kitchen with a roll of brand new cling wrap left by its previous owner, and a bathroom with stubborn strands of hair still lurking in the corners.
I have found that home isn’t just a building you go back to after a long day of work or classes. It is a venue you daily project your life and feelings onto; a place where you are always comforted.
Today we visited the Grainger Museum, and I really enjoyed it. This museum is a special one, as it was built and filled up by its subject, Percy Grainger. Focusing on the process of creativity, Grainger formed a museum around that concept. The long and narrow hallways were made such so that people could have a more intimate connection with the artworks.
I kind of liked the fact that classical music filled the hallways; that should be expected from a museum established by somebody as artistic and talented as Grainger. I remember having discussed the topic of music being played at museums in my Music in Popular Culture class last semester, and how it was often disallowed at regular museums. It’s just something different, and that’s what made it interesting.
What intrigued me most was Grainger’s interest in paraphilia – what can I say, it’s the odd things that are most interesting – and how he felt as if he would not have been able to make art if it were not for these forms of sexual expression. It was a deep secret, but also something he felt that was of great importance.
I don’t want to stray too far away from the whole topic of space and place, but I guess after having visited this particular museum, it led me to think about how a particular plot of land can still belong to Grainger even years after his death. He has made a home for himself right there, and his presence is still well-known despite him not being physically there.
In today’s studio, we were all given the opportunity to share about the places in which we currently reside. It was interesting, listening to everyone’s stories and their experiences with the places they live in.
I’ve only been here in Melbourne for five months, living in a student accommodation. I explored the elements of my home earlier in the week and actually found it rather dull. But as I listened to my classmates and actually thought about it, I found that there is so much more to a space than just what it looks like on the surface.
Here are some of the points that stood out to me when Robbie was talking about it in class:
1. A house as a structure, and home as a substance.
2. We are projecting our lives onto spaces.
3. It’s not about dimensions (meters, diameters…). It’s about how you feel. Are you comforted?
Having that said, before it came to my turn to speak up in class, I thought about the various things in my place that made it home to me. The few things that made an impact revolved around the relationship between my roommate and I. The both of us are friends from back in Malaysia, and we’ve always had a good relationship – we do practically everything together and it’s all really nice because we can also sit comfortably in silence whenever space between us is needed. That’s probably something that I will be looking into while working on my first assessment.
Robbie also showed us a couple of works by various artists, and the one I liked most would probably be the Wikisinger.
He sings the same song in fifteen different places. Not only did I find this a really cool concept, but the quirkiness and melody of the song was just as intriguing, and the visual properties of the entire video was just so nicely planned out. The video sort of reminded me of Wes Anderson’s films – which I absolutely love, by the way.
Robbie also introduced “I Am Sitting In A Room” by Alvin Lucier to us. It was my first time listening to it, and I found the whole concept incredibly fascinating. The moment I got home today, I actually listened to the entire thing, and it was great.
I’m feeling a little more confident now and managed to get a couple of ideas from today’s studio session, and I look forward to working on my first assessment and the few ahead of me. We’re going to be visiting the Grainger Museum tomorrow, so that should be interesting.
For our upcoming assessment, we are to consider the elements of the environment we live in and study closely the spaces of our domestic home.
I quite liked how we were given the opportunity to focus on the architectural components of the house we are currently living in, drawing it out on big pieces of paper with colourful pens. This is what I came up with in the time that we were given.
I didn’t have enough time to write everything I would’ve liked to, but I did get a couple of ideas as to what I want to pursue for my first assessment. I thought about all the small connections and memories entrenched within my little abode, and will continue to do so over the week.
So, my second semester here at RMIT has begun and I’m definitely looking forward to learning new things and meeting new people. One week has gone past, just like that. Our first studio class was cancelled, and Brian took over our second one this week.
What does it mean when we think about the word home? In today’s studio class, for our first exercise, we were told to illustrate what home means to us. This was what I came up with:
As I thought about it, as much as home can be a building or an area of constituted objects and artefacts that signify a home, it is also a space where there have been social connections and personal experiences of some sort. It is a place – or even a person – that makes you feel as if you belong. It is where friendships, memories and connections are made. Moreover, it is a place in which you can be yourself, with no care of what may be thought of you.
In a simple sense, home is the place we would go back to. For instance, after a long day at work, going home is often a luxury. For most people, it is the place in which they find both solitude and comfort. You can be whoever you want to be when you’re alone at home – think comfortably walking around or cooking in just a baggy T-shirt and underwear. I can assure you that most girls (and perhaps some guys) would be able to relate.
We talked about the concept of home a little more in the studio, read an excerpt from Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space”, and also watched a short TED Talk titled “Where is home?” by Pico Iyer. I was opened to new perspectives of what home is and what it could be.
I particularly enjoyed Iyer’s TED Talk. The part I found most interesting is when he talked about staying at the monastery, and how the silence felt so much like home. He wrote a lot while he was there, and took long walks. It was in this seclusion, away from the busyness of every day life, that he regained a sense of belonging.
We sat in silence, with nothing but muddled thoughts and the four walls that have kept us entertained – or rather, drained – in the past three hours. We had been sitting in that room for far too long, tired and uninspired. It felt like we were going nowhere; that all our ideas had been concocted in vain and for reasons unknown.
Today, I look back and realise just how far we’ve come.
I walked into this studio thinking that we would simply be making YouTube videos (or stuff like that) but ah, how I was greatly mistaken. In fact, as expressed in this blog post, I look back and know that this studio had begun to make me think about online video more broadly than just what can be found on YouTube. It was something I thought about even as I worked on a completely different course.
I did not do much blogging at the beginning of the semester – that, I would have to admit. However, as I scrolled through my blog, I noticed how much more active I had become over the past few weeks. I treat that realisation as a learning curve in itself, that the more I get myself into something, the more excited I get about it, and the more motivated I am to share my experiences with those around me. I found this most apparent in my posts about our prototype progress. Being aware of this progressive change helped me to strive towards being a media practitioner with initiative, motivation and enthusiasm.
It was through blogging that I was able to construct my thoughts a little better. I could see things from different perspectives, and even thought of different ways that I might help my readers better understand what I wanted to say. Like in my first assessment, I came up with a mind map as I was thinking of points for my case study. The more we progressed into the weeks, the more I realised how writing things down or drawing on paper not only gave me a foundation which I could work from, but at a glance also simplifies things for other readers.
I remember presenting my findings from Project One to the studio, and watched as my fellow classmates did the same with the types of online video practices that they found appealing to them. It was from them, that I began to see the potential of online video, and how much I had been missing out on. I knew of the existence of documentaries, computer game excerpts, comedy shorts, and interactive videos – the Web 2.0 was teeming with them. I enjoyed them, yes, but never did I take the time to break them all down, or to look at them from different perspectives. To be in an environment where there are different types of students, and seeing how each of them resonate with ideas on online video, is something I am grateful for.
I remember being a little unsure about Project Two, not knowing what was expected out of our work. For a moment I even regretted that we chose video reviews to explore for the rest of the semester (though that brief thought was soon eradicated). Not only were we having difficulties coming up with ideas for our sketches, but we even saw three hours of work go down the drain.
There was a day in the studio, when Seth talked about how we should create as many sketches as we can, and how each one of them is meant to be something that is quick and disposable. Upon hearing that, I realised just how focused Jia Jia and I were on perfecting it, that we had thought of ideas too far-fetched, and that we had to pull ourselves back on track. It was only then that we started to come up with ideas for more instantly, and we became less afraid of creating something that was wrong, because it is in the mistakes and criticism that we learn.
These aided our presentations as well, in the sense that we were beginning to construct them better, from start to finish, getting points across in a quick yet effective manner. In our presentation for Project Three, before proposing it to the panel, we shared our ideas first with our classmates. It was then that Seth suggested we talk about how we progressed from tech-reviews to these café travel reviews. I appreciate comments like that, because it is a reminder to pay more attention to detail; to structure proposals in ways that are easily understood not just by the people who have journeyed with us, but by those who have yet to know about it.
As I was looking through what I had blogged about over the past twelve weeks in the studio, primarily for the purpose of this portfolio task, I came to notice how some of my older reflections have feedbacked into recent sketches and iterations. For instance, as I realised the importance of background music from one of my classmate’s presentations, we also came up with our first sketch leading to our prototype guided by that realisation. And as I reflected on the importance of GIFs in this post, we in turn discovered Cinemagraph and ended up using that for our final prototype.
People tend to think that it’s all about the big things – the bigger, the better. Well, perhaps to a certain extent. But in this context, it is far from true. We began the semester with the work of another in our hands, and today, we have made for ourselves something we can take ownership of and are proud to call ours. One of the best things about learning something new is having the ability not only to practice it, but to receive something out of it. It’s not about the big things – it’s about the little steps taken towards it; the journey.
*Note: To ease reading, I have compiled my entire studio experience within five different categories. You may view these categories at the top of this page.
Reporting We were given 10 minutes to present today. Since Jia Jia and I had practiced our parts yesterday and had ourselves timed while we were at it, we were pretty confident that the time constraint wouldn’t be a problem. So we did our presentation, and as it turns out, Seth suggested that we go with a different idea, and not the one on “transmedia non-narrative”, which I blogged about here. He said that he commends us for having a go at it, but felt that it was a tricky subject, seeing as how the term “transmedia” is one that often refers to storytelling and the narrative element. We talked to Seth after our class, and he recommended that we come up with our own idea and use theory to support it, and how we should focus on the scrapbook element because that is what is most unique.
Relating As I reflect on the presentations that were done previously and how we struggled to fit all our points in, I realise how we have begun to structure them in ways that were both quick and effective. Also, since Seth has given us a different perspective to look at – the scrapbook element – for our report, hopefully Jia Jia and I will be able to come up with something more feasible.
Reasoning There is more to what you think you see, and consulting others helps to move you forward. In this case, Seth’s constructive criticism during our presentation gave us an opportunity to delve deeper into what we have already been working on. His suggestion to pursue something different would help us better ourselves not only as students, but as media practitioners.
Reconstructing Since the submission of Project Four is due next Sunday, Jia Jia and I will be meeting up after this weekend to think of new propositions for our final report. Taking what was suggested by Seth, hopefully we will be able to come up with something that not only better illustrates what we have done over the semester, but also puts out an idea in a practical and critical manner.
