Throughout my work in the studio, a few key themes have emerged for me. Two themes that have really interested me and that I’d really like to explore in my final project are materiality and memory. Ideally, I’d like to find a way to combine or demonstrate both ideas in my final project, but I’m not entirely certain how I’ll do this yet.

One idea I’m currently considering is interviewing a few people about either their perceptions and feelings towards old media technology or asking them to respond to a home movie that is of a family other than their own. Either way, I’d like their responses to be focused on the materiality of the technology rather than the content. Then I might edit video along with the interview, including archive footage, that could either support or question the points they’re making, as I think I want to present a balance argument that shows the merits and restrictions of both old and new technologies, as I don’t believe we can say outright that old or new media is better, and I don’t want my final product to suggest as such. Possibly I could do this by interviewing someone I know who really appreciates older technologies and someone else who prefers newer ones.

Another format that is interesting me at the moment is remixes or mashups. I like the idea of finding seemingly unrelated pieces of footage and combining them to create new meaning. I’ve had a look at artists such as soda_jerk and I quite like the look of editing footage over the top of each, however I think this a very unrealistic style for emulate in this project, particularly considering the time constraints. Instead I might gather footage from different sources, and either edit them in different styles to create a contrast, or manipulate them to give them a similar look. I’ve also been interested in a while in doing small, paint-like (the program) animations over video to draw attention to certain parts of the frame. Whether or not I use this particular technique, I know I want to use this project as an opportunity to improve my editing skills. I feel like I haven’t been pushing myself in terms of editing lately, so that will likely be an area of focus for me in this project.

Overall, I think I want my final project to reflect on what I’ve learnt this semester about attitudes towards types of media. There appear to be a few qualities that people prefer in their technologies that relate back (more often than not) to either the materiality or memory and nostalgia. While I don’t believe these qualities make one technology superior over another, they can help us to understand why we may see a surge in interest or popularity in a technology we may have thought was “dead”.