Major Project ‘Whose Sphere’ – Lilli Trobbiani
https://www.mediafactory.org.au/lilli/2024/11/04/whose-sphere/
A5 Studio Reflection:
‘Whose Sphere’ is a work that touches on the content we looked at in the final weeks of the semester, those being the ideas around ‘uncanny’ and ‘the uncanny sublime’ in the way it presents differing perspectives of the scale of things, which generates a feeling of dreaminess, and the sort of allurements one gets from looking into the ‘smaller world’ beyond our own. In my work, the ‘smaller world’ is quite literal and takes shape in a polly pocket love heart capsule rotating amongst a sand pit and plot of grass. It was a tangible sculpture I made, to sit alongside my video work. There was also an eeriness that prevailed when I thought of my sculpture being situated next to a video that it’s the ‘protagonist’ in. It was featured in two separate spaces, and I find it sort of relates to real life, and moments that are captured and filmed. Sometimes the real thing can seem a little underwhelming, but when it’s on a screen and ‘temporary’ , its level of ‘coolness’ is enhanced and even more cohesive. Maybe similar to how we identify each other and ourselves on the internet? It can be a facade and make people question others’ authenticity and reputation- it’s all of a different scale when posted/videoed or recorded. Or… is the real thing that’s in front of us truly authentic, because of it existing in the world’s physical space? It’s often difficult to get a grasp of the internet and its data by looking at graphs and numbers, or spreadsheets. My work engages the audience by giving visual queues to how that feeling might be videoed or built and is a visual and auditory showcase of what actually goes on in my mind when I think of ‘Big Data’ for example, the ‘three v’s’(volume, velocity and variety) elapse into one and blur into one.
One of the main feelings provoked in me was the idea around scale, the digital being far more infinite than the analogue world and how James Bridle approached the ideas around digital technology and ‘aesthetics’ not necessarily pertaining to the idea of something being ‘so aesthetic’ but also a more in depth look at something, a movement or a place and time in the past. I wanted to focus on “The New Aesthetic” reading by James Bridle as it talked a lot about the “appearance of the digital language of digital technology and the internet in the physical world”. I knew that my physical existence in the digital landscape was always something I noticed, and I wanted that feeling to be just as positive as it was occasionally overwhelming and bad. A lot of provocations from the class were a little negative at the beginning, seeing social media and digitalisation as ‘scary’ ‘overwhelming’- to which I agreed. I did want to convert some of those feelings to more positive and nice ones. I was fascinated by how we as people in the physical world become a part of the digital world, and how ‘we’re there but not there’ like in Mark Beasley’s work ‘Peer to Peer Sunset’ we feel connected through the presence of someone on the other side of a computer or browser. I remember in class, students questioning if such a work would hold the same degree of speciality and remoteness in its engagement, I feel like in 2024 with algorithms and TikTok this work would be ‘sweet’ and ‘undiscovered’ briefly until it would wind up glitching because of too many users being on it.
The studio is definitely responsible for changing the way I look at the internet, data and digital media. The feelings this studio has evoked in me are ones I have felt before but never been able to have an explanation for or had time to develop and look into, and for that I am incredibly satisfied by this semester and feel that I will take so many aspects away, ones I like and ones I find challenging about the digital world. The main impact is in not being so trusting and allowing apple apps to ‘always’ know my location or for instagram to use me to help with their advertising and Cookies I never actually took the time to learn about their purpose, but willingly would always ‘accept’. In this studio we learnt about the luddites, after finding out about where ‘clog’ gets its name I quickly reimagined my wardrobe and began wearing the ones I bought in London. It was interesting to cross examine and relate the luddites of the 19th century with the ‘modern’ luddites of the 21st. I started to be quite analytical and pick apart all the different experiences I’ve had with a 21st century luddite. A lot of it seems to come down to people being afraid that ‘authenticity’ will be compromised and that the new methods and ways of experiencing the world and making things is ‘deceitful’ and may affect their employability, products and livelihood. I definitely feel a bit like this with AI and the advancements in digital media, while the advancing nature of media is interesting it also comes with a lot of confusion around how it actually works and one’s contribution to it. It would look like someone who uses Etsy instead of Amazon when looking for their day-to-day life products or maybe someone who’ll cry over the acceptance email to volunteer at an indie music festival instead of the newest iphone 16 release. This is just my imagination of someone who would be luddite-ish these days and it has made me rethink how I interact and exercise agency (or the lack thereof) over the internet, ads, social media and even art.
If I were to extend my media artifact and improve it, I would involve spoken word and even some titles throughout to give the work more of a definitive narrative and story. I worry that my final work was a little too abstract and unintentionally aloof. I would like to also choose two main themes or thoughts to attribute to my work. I definitely see myself going back to the drawing board with this work and doing one of many things, either refining and reworking “Whose Sphere” to make it more cohesive or applying the things I’ve learnt from this studio to another brand new experiment or work unrelated. I am confident that I’ll now always refer to the things I learnt in this studio for my future as a media practitioner who is still very green.
Throughout the semester we had a number of crits, where we would come to class with our experiments, drafts and ideas. It was really useful to receive feedback from classmates. I liked the method in which we would share our works and get different feedback on what the student thought worked, what they would suggest changing or developing. The collaboration in organising the exhibition also made me feel like my work had an ‘umbrella’ to be beneath and it was really exciting to know that we had all developed work almost as a symbol and representation on what we took away from the content in Weird Feelings, as it was quite varied from week to week, this is what kept it so engaging and thought provoking. I always left with a thought I had recognised but never got to explore. Also, getting feedback from Steph on experiments and pitching to the panel was collaborative as they steered me in a direction of figuring out how I would execute my idea effectively and gave me an idea of how my work was understood and comprehended.
References :
Kitchin, Rob, and Gavin McArdle. “What Makes Big Data, Big Data? Exploring the Ontological Characteristics of 26 Datasets.” Big Data & Society, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016,
Bridle, James. “The New Aesthetic.” British Journal of Photography, vol. 159, no. 7804, 2012, pp. 66–71.
Freer, Scott. “MAGRITTE: THE UNCANNY SUBLIME.” Literature & Theology, vol. 27, no. 3, 2013, pp. 330–44,
Brain, J. (2018). The Luddites – Historic UK. [online] Historic UK.
Anon, (2022). The Art Object in a Post-Digital World: Some Artistic Tendencies in the Use of Instagram › electronic book