THE PETERTRON
Final reflection
I know this was my first studio, but I have a feeling it’s going to be hard to top. I thought I had a lot more time before the semester started, and when I finally went to put in my preferences for which studio I’d like to do, I found that the due date had gone sailing past me. I had but a few options afforded to me, one of which, Weird Feelings.
I had no clue what to expect. Despite having read the pamphlet, I was still quite lost as to what the class was about. I arrived for my first class, and it was Steph teaching! I immediately knew that what ever it was that we were going to be doing, it was going to be backed with lots of passion and a huge amount of knowledge.
Needless to say, I found myself instantly pulled into the class and the topics we discussed. Each class I felt as if I was putting a name to feeling that I had always had, but never quite realised.
Uncanniness was what stuck out to me the most and was the driving force behind my final project. More specifically, the idea of abject faciality (Cameron, 2017). Humans are so trained to recognise faces, that we have an innate ability to tell when something isn’t quite right.
One of my goals with The Petertron was to play with this sense in the viewer. I knew I couldn’t just have my face on a screen, people are too familiar with this. By using the peppers ghost effect, I think I as able to effectively separate my face from the screen and create more depth in the image. I believe this allowed the footage on The Petertron to create that weird uncanny itch in the back of peoples’ head. At least I hope so.
I also wanted the Petertron to be interactable, to have some sort of action to it. At the very beginning of the semester, we discussed the idea that technology now attempts to replicate old tech to associate an experience with using it. This experience is what I aimed to evoke in the viewer through the DVD player.
I think to further this uncanniness, there needs to be a further degree of intractability, or some way to make the audience feel as if they are not only observing The Petertron, but it also observing the viewer. Some way the viewer could talk to it. For now, my only idea is to attach a camera on a small motor to the top of it, and have it follow people as they move around.
I will continue to work on The Petertron, I want to refine the video to fit into the reflection better and create an uncannier version of myself. As well as this, I think I’d also like to put subtitles above my head, so people don’t have to listen. I found when exhibiting, the volume of the audio was far too low, which made it very difficult to hear.
Moving forward in my general digital media practice, one of my biggest take aways from the class is the idea of remediation (Ravetto-Biagioli, 2016). We see this in the way technology seeks to replicate old, and in more abstract ways like how so many stories can be boiled down to the same plot. It is ok to do something that has been done before, what matters is that it is infused with your own personal experience. Not everything, or more likely, not anything I make will be completely innovative and groundbreaking, but it will be mine.
I’ve also very much enjoyed how much the things we learned can be seen in everyday life. I was at my parents for lunch, paying respects my god mother, and they began talking about baby photos being taken on phones compared to film cameras. I had to hold myself back from going full weird feelings on them. I also managed to use Matthew Brehmer’s ‘Visualising the Weird and Eerie’ in my Politics and Communication essay to discuss how to effectively mobilise youth with infographics over social media.
This studio has been so much fun, and I had so much fun working with Steph and my classmates to create this exhibition. This has been one of the only classes I’ve had where I feel I’ve properly connected with others in my class, and it makes me feel very proud and happy to have done it. From solving problems with each other to just grabbing a beer, doing Weird Feelings with Steph and my class mates has been amazing!
Cameron, Allan. (2017) “Facing the Glitch: Abstraction, Abjection and the Digital Image.” Indefinite Visions, edited by Allan Cameron et al., Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 334-, https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474407120.003.0020 Links to an external site..
Brehmer, Matthew. (2023) “Visualizing the Weird and the Eerie.” ArXiv.Org, https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2309.01763
Ravetto-Biagioli, K. (2016) The Digital Uncanny and Ghost Effects. Screen, 57(1), pp. 1-20. doi:10.1093/screen/hjw002.