After articulating my ideas to a friend for the upcoming assignment, I’ve finally decided to narrow down to the four following prompts:

ROUTINE, TRANSCENDENCE, ATTENTION, PERFORMANCE

These have been inspired by / extracted from past observations and boiled down into prompts that I find interesting and relevant to my situation. From here I shall break down what I find interesting about each of these prompts, how they apply to me and what specifically about them I’m planning to investigate.

ROUTINE
This is a loaded word that I find can be both enticing and repulsive. I feel that I operate at a more productive level when I have a routine in place as it provides me with the means to re-access certain streams of consciousness. At the same time, when I am pinned down by certain routines and structures I feel a bit claustrophobic and creatively strained. I think what separates these notions of routine is whether or not I feel like I’m making progress towards goals. If a routine can stimulate me to be forward-thinking, momentous and spontaneous then I am determined to maintain it, otherwise it is something I try to avoid. This dichotomy of routine is something I will attempt to represent in the assignment.

TRANSCENDENCE
After thinking more about the notion of heaven/hell that I extracted from my last major observation session, I felt that this could be refined into an exploration of transcendence. I am particularly interested in the ways that space can be organised in pursuit of transcendence. Home is often a sanctuary that people become familiar with to such a degree that simply stepping into it can relieve tensions formed through being in the outside world. In this way, it is separate from the world and exists as a multimedia reminder of our personality, memories, and values. What have I/has been organised in my home environment that offers the possibility of transcendence? Is transcendence always a positive thing? Am I attempting to transcend to distract myself? These are all questions that connect to following prompts.

ATTENTION
If there’s one ability that we have that I feel can influence our experience of the passage of time, it’s the ability to harness and focus attention. I see some of the observational practises of this class to be mindful activities, where opening an awareness of the present moment helps to find pure spontaneity within it. This gives a certain significance to each moment, enabling us to avoid the tendency to group experiences together into compartments that gradually grow larger and more vague. I am particularly interested in the ways different mediums demand different degrees of attention and begin to influence our broad capacity to concentrate. What you do and don’t pay attention to influences who you can be. How an idea, or a distraction, can have so much gravity. Attention-grabbing. Attention-seeking.

PERFORMANCE
In every social situation we become performative based on the circumstances. Here I think of Sartre and his notion of bad faith, that over-commitment to a character or role within society, the sacrifice of humanity. For the purpose of this assignment, I am considering how I perform in my own home. I feel that this could be directly connected to routine, as I am performing in a certain way to establish and carry out any routine. How do I perform within my own space? How do I perform in the spaces I share with others in my home? What is happening in the moments where I feel as though I’m not performing? Is this even possible?

For yesterday’s class we were split up into groups of four to hear the presentations of those that weren’t able to present last Thursday. We gave feedback and extracted two one-word prompts from each presenter. In my group, the first presenter spoke about gaining new awareness of very minute and discreet details in his living room, such as imperfections in the coats of paint on the walls, which ultimately influenced IRREGULARITY as a prompt. From this same observation, he noticed that the roof was significantly higher than he had ever noticed/presumed, leading to a strange reorientation in the space, from which we extracted SCALE as a prompt. His next observational practice was a sonic exploration of the neighbourhood sounds from his backyard, resulting in what he described as a “slice of suburbia” with no particular sounds seeming too detached from the suburban space that they were born from. From this, we decided upon SUBURBIA as a prompt.

The next presenter was particularly struck with how the quality of a light can dramatically influence how we feel. She connected this to how light is employed in cinema to immediately evoke feeling, which we briefly explored as an effect that feeds from reality into cinema and into reality again. From this observation, we decided that TEMPERATURE would be our last prompt to explore.

After this, we set out into the campus with our phone cameras to observe and document whatever we could in relation to these prompts. The first site that drew my attention was the design of a wall that stood next to one of the classrooms nearby. Made up of a series of wooden blocks of varying tones and uniform size acting upon each other to create a ripple effect, the imperfections in the wood and scuffled marks left on many felt to me connected to the IRREGULARITY prompt. In the photo, I decided to include the key card access sensor, which seems alien and disconnected from the effect and feeding even more into this idea. I’m drawn to the fact that there is a striking, almost animated effect to their grouping and a unity to their presence, and that it is actually the irregularity in the individual blocks that emphasises the effect, furthermore enhancing the unity.

The second I noticed the rainbow staircase I almost automatically photographed it with the TEMPERATURE prompt in mind. This seems like a fairly surface level interpretation of the prompt, and while I think in the moment it probably was, as I reflect on the photo I think that the stairs contribute a sort of transitory nature to the notion of temperature. We ascend and descend stairs as we progress towards a destination, just as temperature itself is in flux although we emphasise the definite experience of certain temperatures – “hot”, “warm”, “freezing”, etc. I feel that the colours represent those approximates we impose on the fluctuating experience of temperature, like snapshots of its effect on us.

For the SCALE prompt, I was drawn to a view I was able to get from an upper level looking down at people boarding an escalator. There are three people in the shot, one in the foreground at the highest point of the escalator, one just about to board deeper into the shot and someone exiting the building towards the outside light. Each perspective is in motion, on different trajectories, or different stages of the same trajectory. The person at the bottom of the escalator is preparing to ascend; the person already on the escalator is preparing to depart (or soon will be, potentially just drifting at this stage) whereas the person in the background is preparing to adjust to the outside world. In the moment of taking this photo, I decided to convey scale in a perspectival way, capturing three disconnected perspectives and forcing them into a single cohesive image. As it was pulled up in class, Robbie was immediately drawn to the beanbag and noted its allure, which I think does pull focus because of the frame and lighting it finds itself within. Comparatively, the beanbag is stationary and unmotivated, although its sagging presence suggests the its frequent use and introduces a ghostly presence into that room.

Lastly, I chose to photograph a small communal setting of a table and chairs set up by a collection of microwaves, vending machines and a sink to satisfy the SUBURBIA prompt. This was probably my most surface level photograph and to me signified a constructed sense of home, an arrangement made to contribute a homely sort of comfort to the students. My group was also attracted to the 70s throwback chairs and the humour in using these as an attempt to allude to the feeling of home.

This exercise was quite brief and I feel as though I could have been more active in the time allotted, however I enjoyed the experience of cooperatively establishing prompts to then individually explore. Robbie emphasised the importance of developing a method, which for me in this exercise was to snap a myriad of photos almost automatically as I happened upon various sites. It would be worth my while to experiment with other methods to see what results I get.

After having practiced both sonic and visual/other sensory observation in class, I felt pretty well equipped heading into this assignment. I experimented with a few different spaces, immersing myself in the soundscape of a train ride into the city which gave me some interesting insights into the notion of personal space, how we conduct ourselves on the train, the sound of movement and how the amount of people on a train affects our comfort within the space. I also spent time observing in coffee shops, where I noticed the specific sounds of someone assuming a role. In this case it was the hurried, precise sounds of the barista as they prepared all of the orders, which sounded quite different to how someone might if they were preparing one for themselves in the comfort of their own home, or to how someone would likely sound with much less experience.

Eventually I attempted a sonic observation session in the morning at a friend’s studio apartment on the upper level. I sat staring out an open window (fixing my visual gaze on the trees outside helped me broadly ground my sensory focus which is something I found interesting and will continue to experiment with), having not long woken up, and began documenting what I heard. I took note of the sounds of routine in the morning, particularly in the chirps of the birds from above and the scheduled bin collection in the form of heavy, mechanical sounds from below. These polarising sounds formed a sort of traditional heaven/hell dichotomy in my mind and began to play off each other in quite a musical way, with the polyrhythms of the different bird calls forming a melody that sat atop the grinding industrial percussion of the garbage truck below. The morning commuter traffic that I could hear distantly coming from Burke St provided a calming ambient backdrop to the rhythmic interplay in focus and established a distance and direction to the soundscape. I realised there was a linearity in the way I was noticing these sounds and forming this narrative, with each new sound appearing like a new musical element joining the composition. Eventually some sounds from within the room grabbed my attention: a phone notification chime, the clinking of a spoon against a bowl, and ultimately the hungry rumbling of my stomach, each sound gradually sucking my attention away from the soundscape that was expanding out into the world and drawing me back towards my body and own perspective.

The visual site that I had the most profound observational experience within was during the class in which we went to the state library reading room. In that space, I was struck by the arrangement of the space and how it could create a communal sense of privacy, with everybody utilising the space and each other’s involvement in the space to commit to their own personal studious pursuits. I found that I was drawn to events that occurred within the frames that decorated the perimeter of the room, and the significance they gave to those events that could be seen within them – for instance, I found that arched frames gave an almost ceremonious feel to a mother holding their child up to marvel at the majesty of the room (it was a true Simba moment).

I found the feedback in class to be really interesting and motivating, a lot of suggestions for investigations were offered as well as genuine interest and excitement across the board. The feedback I received for my presentation noted the intersection of different sounds across time – in this case it was the sound of the phone chime, a sound generated in the past, colliding with the present sound of actual chirping birds – as something with potential for further experimentation. Robbie also noted the conditioning of historical narratives as potential contaminants for observation, with the notion of heaven and hell weaving its way into my observation of the interaction between morning birds and garbage trucks.

Every single presentation was full of fruitful points of discussion, and I felt that the ideas all dovetailed into one another pretty seamlessly. I was particularly intrigued by the notion of urgency in sound and how that might factor into an individual perspective and the experience of focus. The idea that a sound, although familiar to us, can take on a different identity through the imagination also grabbed me, with the potential for the mind to form a narrative out of a collection of sounds being something I am also interested in experimenting with (with the aural geographical work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Seeking Ursound reading staying with me as a big point of inspiration). I also found the idea that a person can completely reanimate a space to be full of investigative potential, with perception and perspective influencing not only the seer’s experience but also those around them.

At this stage I feel that sonic environments are intriguing me most, although I am open to whatever we continue to experiment with. I’m looking forward to recording space and seeing how recorded artefacts can affect our memory of the space and potentially future experiences of those spaces.

VISUAL SITE (Top Left)-1lqk2qn

SOUND SITE (Lower Left)-212c6t5

SOUND SITE (Lower Right)-22jhqci

SOUND SITE (Top Right)-297uf6m

SOUND SITE (Top Left)-255q8dd

VISUAL SITE (Lower Right)-1oqgv9c

VISUAL SITE (Lower Left)-1364lw2

VISUAL SITE (Top Right)-1uqcfp2

I arrived late to this class only to find that Robbie was running late. With the class all waiting in an air of uncertainty as to whether or not Robbie would arrive, the space already had a slightly tense atmosphere that had me thinking about how a space carries certain expectations and meaning. Robbie did eventually arrive, releasing the tension and surprising me when he announced that it was in fact accidental and not planned to have us thinking about the aims of the studio.

Robbie introduced himself via some of his artistic work, comprising a series of abstract site-specific sculptures that recycled and reimagined the spaces that they occupied. This was a great insight into Robbie’s expertise in relation to the course and gave me confidence as well as more curiosity in what we’ll be exploring.

We spent the majority of the class introducing ourselves via our aims with the subject and respective courses at large, each of us finishing with the recollection of our earliest memory. This provided some fascinating insights and everyone described their memories in such a way that they were flavoured with personality and nostalgia. As I searched for my earliest memory I realised that a lot of early, seminal experiences for me were engrossed in video gaming. I feel a great deal of sentimental attachment to certain video games from my early childhood as a result of this. My brother’s role in guiding me through games as a way of teaching me to read and understand certain mechanisms also means that he is attached to this sentimentality.

In recalling this memory I feel as though I have some direction already in the sort of spaces I might be investigating, i.e. visual spaces and how they can be experienced. I have recently developed a very keen interest in the field of video game music and sound design so I feel as though some research into visual spaces may compliment my passion.

How I listen

Being a musical person, I am always drawn to music whenever it is playing or even when I have a moment to myself. I feel as though I’m almost always listening to music, with looping fragments of musical moments always swimming around my head. I’m more passionate about the sonics than I am the lyricism often attached to music, so when I listen to music I am very conscious of the arrangement in both a musical and technical sense and am drawn to the coordination of layers and instrumentations. This means that it often takes me quite a few listens before I can digest lyrical content as I am more naturally drawn to the phrasing, timbre and overall sonic character of the vocal.

As a result, I feel as though I’m quite an inattentive listener in a more broad sense. I am often quite oblivious to my surroundings and have to focus quite intently on conversations as I am wont to drift frequently. However, when I am engaged with something I feel as though I can absorb a great deal of information. When I am consciously activating and attempting to focus my listening abilities, I am often trying to weave together a story to give me a sort of temporal understanding of what I am listening to that I can recall if I need to.

Admittedly, I didn’t engage with the content of this course as thoroughly as I should have at the beginning. Nowhere near. I wasn’t really recording many observations, I definitely wasn’t reflecting, I wasn’t allowing myself to gain anything. I knew this at the time, even though I told myself that the things I was observing weren’t worth recording, and dug myself into a hole where I felt like I needed to feign a number of observations in order to meet the criteria. This, of course, resulted in contrived observations that were not even worth translating to writing, let alone a film down the line.

Eventually Robin spoke to me about this. He told me that it was a far better idea to look ahead and attempt new observations rather than to imagine some for the sake of marking. This was really valuable advice and helped me push forward and start thinking more about the aims of the course. These first few weeks I think were conducted well by Robin and were a good introduction to the ideas in the course, with footage shown to us that ranged from Lumiere to Akerman which were clear examples of what Robin wanted us to attempt. I think my attitude was the issue and Robin’s conversation with me prompted my engagement from there onwards.

The week 7 pitch was another great turning point for the course as it forced me to seriously think about the sort of things I’d been observing and what I felt could be most potent as the content of film. The anticipation of this pitch actually had me observing things in a particular way in the weeks leading up to it, as I was gradually forming a concept that tied together a number of moments I was experiencing. This was really rewarding and I felt that having the pitch where it was a great way for me to engage with the content outside of class and be translating the things I was observing most of the time on some level. It was at this point I think that the objective of Translating Observation became really apparent to me, and I felt that I had grasped a new, refreshing approach to filmmaking. This for me was the idea that I could practise the translation of the world around me as I saw it in such a way that I could also make connections that I may have missed before, connections that could serve as the basis for a film.

As I have detailed in my post on collaboration, the process of making the film that I proposed went extremely well and was shared with two talented creatives. What I didn’t note is that the making process was possibly the most unique out of any film I’ve made as it was built upon the translation of observations through conversations with Penelope and Lydia. This was our script, our pre-production. The crossover of minds in this instance did not pollute the idea but instead enriched and crafted it. In this group I learnt that a strong friendship and established connection makes for a process that is greater than the film that is born from it. This did not feel like a uni assessment – it was an exciting and rewarding investigation.

I am proud of the film. I was proud of the idea when I pitched it, but I am far more proud of what came together and really glad that I chose to properly engage with the course as the semester continued. While I could regret not engaging earlier, maybe it meant that I could do so more passionately later on, once I had broken out of the disillusionment that I originally held me back. The course was conducted really well and I think that the lessons to be taken from it are subtle but profound. I have gained new ways of making, new ways of observing, a newfound passion for translating observations and a new approach to filmmaking. Thanks Robin, Penelope and Lydia.

A few days after I pitched my film in week 7, I received a message from Lydia asking if I’d be happy for her to be a part of the project. Her request was really sincere; she sounded like she genuinely liked the idea for the film and I was chuffed that someone wanted to be a part of it. Penelope expressed the same sort of interest at the next class and it was almost instantly that we formed a connection and common focus. I felt that Penelope and Lydia were both motivated and excited to produce a film and wanted to help mould and refine what it could be. That first class was great and the dynamic worked so well that we got a bit ahead of ourselves and thought that we’d basically planned the entire film out already.

It was important that we formed that friendship and connection as early as we did because I feel that it only got stronger throughout the course of making the film, which meant that we could all rely on each other and contribute equally. Even though the film was originally an idea that I pitched, after the first conversation I was completely open to their equal contribution and conceptualisation. This proved to be another essential aspect of our collaboration: at no point was there any ego involved, every view was considered and I think ultimately the decisions that were made were for the sake of the film.

Our collaboration was, for at least the first half of the process, almost solely built on discussion. We used our separate experiences and views to flesh out a coherent concept that we could then pursue with the camera. While this may have dragged on a little too long as it did mean that we had to compromise slightly towards the end due to lack of footage, it was important for the sake of the connection we had built because that became the integral part of the process. Without such a strong friendship, the film definitely would not have come together as well as it did, if at all. For a concept as abstract and based on feeling; for a film made with equal creative input, we all needed to believe in it.

Our collaboration was also marked by a degree of independence. All of the footage and material that we used for the film was shot independently by each of us, which means that the film accurately portrays our equal input, our individual interpretations of the subject matter. For this film, this process worked really well and I think that the abundant, early discussion was essential in enabling the process.

I am so lucky to have had Penelope and Lydia as a part of the team. They are exceptional, bright people who only want to help and create and without them this film would not have come together. From this experience I know how important the relationship and common ground you establish with the people you work with is, and how discussion can be a really valuable pre-production tool to refine a concept with the aid of several different minds.

Penelope brought the footage of her grandmother to the suites this week, which looked fantastic and is a nice contrast to the footage of Max. Penelope did a great job of filming her grandmother in such a way that it does not even remotely seem staged and her grandmother hardly appears aware of the camera’s presence. While it is a very different composition and subject to the footage of Max, the feel and concentration appears very much the same, which has me confident that the film will feel consistent.

Penelope had also asked her brother to be interviewed on the topic, and it just so happened that he resonated with the film’s content and had written a poem about it. Penelope recorded him reciting the poem – it’s stunning. The poem is beautifully written and articulates how I picture the film in ways I couldn’t have written myself. His voice is perfect for it as well and I am stoked to be able to include it as part of the film. At this point we are planning on introducing the poem as the intro to the film and maybe having it run as a motif throughout (Penelope might ask her brother to write a little more and flesh it out a bit).

I’m yet to record Katherine as I haven’t teed up a time with her but having these new elements makes it easier for me to approach the filming with her and will establish further consistency. After feeling a little overwhelmed by the approaching due date throughout the week, I am now looking forward to producing more and seeing how everything comes together.

On Monday, Lydia, Penelope and I began toying with the footage I had shot. They were both pleased with it and I think having it helped to keep us all on the same page. Robin came in to check out our progress so far and noted that although the footage was perfectly exposed, the shot was not level, which is made apparent by the skewed poster behind Max. I hadn’t even noticed this until he pointed it out, which surprised me because I’m usually very conscious of that sort of thing when shooting. Reflecting on the actual shoot, however, I was so engaged in what Max was doing and how he appeared that I failed to even consider the background. Robin pointing it out has made me realise that it is really important to avoid these things if possible because people will pick up on them and be bothered by them, which will detract from what’s important in the shot. This will be at the forefront of my mind as I shoot other subjects.

We caught up again on Wednesday to record another conversation, this time aiming to capture something useable and, more importantly, actually capture something. Fortunately we did successfully record the conversation and it was our most lucid yet. It felt as though the topic was clearly and collectively understood. We articulated what we had gathered so far from our collective and independent rumination on the subject, including the different times and places that prompt these moments of flow and engagement with the present for each of us. I think most importantly for my own understanding was Penelope’s point that a lot of people including herself feel most able to slip into this mindset when hanging out with friends. Up until that point I had only properly considered how people can achieve this state on their own, engrossed in some sort of activity.

We are now setting out to shoot new subjects: Penelope will be filming her baby cousins, Lydia will obtain footage of and an interview with her dad and I will aim to film my friend Katherine, who is an extremely talented visual artist and is completing a painting as part of her own uni assessment so to film her would be ideal. The process of making this film has been the most group rumination I think I’ve ever experienced for a university assessment and possibly any film I’ve ever been involved in making. I hope that our newfound lucidity translates well to the edit we string together.

I ventured to Max’s once again with the EX3 and before I did anything else I set the camera up. We placed a ZOOM in front of the bass amp and I had him sit where he was comfortable playing. The spot was good and I think I exposed the image fairly well, the light on his face is gentle and there is a healthy amount of shadow as he looks down at the bass guitar, which to me is a nice visual metaphor for his engrossment in the instrument.

I filmed him playing for about 2 or 3 minutes. It appeared to me that he managed to inhabit the focused state I was looking for within the first 20 seconds, which made the process really interesting and quite intense to be a part of. There is something particularly intrusive about filming someone focused on improvised instrumentation. The musician is exposed in that moment and cannot hide behind confidence in a composition. He was only listening to himself. With this in mind, I think the best footage I shot was a CU of his face. It clearly represents his relationship with what he is doing, the sort of concentration and expression that will only appear on his face when engaged in this specific act of improvisation. I think that the CU is effective and communicates the message of the film – I plan to continue these shots for future participants and will urge Penelope and Lydia to do the same.

After Max finished playing we set up the ZOOM recorder and began our interview. It began as a casual chat about some of the work he’s been doing for his photography subject and how he finds the relationship between himself in that role and the subjects he is shooting, and how to achieve the purest possible material. This was a neat starting point to talk about the prevalent themes in my film. The conversation was quite lengthy at roughly 40 minutes, the most in-depth discussion focusing on the process to accepting and being yourself, which Max felt is the most essential stepping stone to being able to engage with the present moment. It was an interesting approach to the topic as he deconstructed what it means to be yourself, speaking primarily about the people that you surround yourself with, the conversations that you have, the habits that you form and the environments/mental spaces that you inhabit. These are all factors that he felt have a significant impact on your ability to be comfortable with who you naturally are, which in turn significantly affects your ability to ‘live in the moment’.

I feel that I collected some really strong material and am glad to have finally gotten the ball rolling. While the discussion with Max was great and insightful, I feel that I may have let the interview go on for too long as it will be a lot to sift through and cut. Having lots of material is far better than having none though so not complaining.