Video Link: https://youtu.be/DcADYnu5DTo

This week, we examined the damages posed to the environment through human interaction. I found Anna L. Tsing’s concept of drawing attention to and attending to ‘what’s left’ a fascinating concept and a new worldview to explore practically and theoretically. In order to “live inside this regime of the human and still exceed it” (Tsing, A. L., 2015), Tsing proposes that we must observe the damages in great detail, but also focus on the prosperity in our landscapes. In my experiment this week, I focused on the enormous growth of sea moss around the rocks between Tamarama Beach and Mackenzies Bay. Without excessive human contact over the winter period, moss spreads rapidly across the eroded sandstone pools. 

These rock pools used to brim with shelled creatures and small corals, but over the last decade, have become increasingly absent of life. That is, until the chilly winters when soft moss spreads across the expanses. This week, I chose to borrow some of the eco-cinematic techniques I had learnt from past weeks to emphasise the ‘mushroom at the end of the world’ within my landscape, including limiting my camera movement, extending shot durations and accentuating audio from the natural environment. I recorded separate audio of the waves and the trickling water to suggest the seeping water that the moss thrives on and increased the volume to draw the viewer’s focus. Similar to the Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene interactive website, I aimed to unite sound and visuals to reveal the interaction between humans and nature, or perhaps more what the lack of it produces. Like Tsing’s idea, I aim to notice both the damage of imposed human structures, and the hopeful aspects of the landscape. 

For further improvements to such a video project, I would seek to take higher quality close-up shots of the sea moss and analyse its qualities with higher detail. Additionally, I would like to capture the sounds of the sea moss or rock textures somehow, perhaps by interacting with the features of the landscape with my own hands. 

Tsing, A. L. (2015). Arts of Noticing. The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins (p. 17–25). Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873548

Tsing, A. L., Deger, J., Saxena, A. K., Zhou, F. (2021). Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene. Redwood City: Stanford University. http://doi.org/10.21627/2020fa

Exploring movement in natural landscapes proved to be a fascinating, holistic analysis of the ways unseen forces interact with the tangible features of the environment. I sincerely believe I will take this realisation away from this week after learning from the class discussions, readings, case studies, and practical activities. 

In his book, MacDonald proposed that recent developments of ecocinema in film and technology have allowed for increased immersion into art forms representative of our world (MacDonald, 2012). He writes that they convincingly surpass our ability to register the imagery as separate from our reality, at least “in memory” (MacDonald, 2012, pp. 18). He introduces various artists and filmmakers who have produced works of ecocinema, including Andrej Zdravič with his work Riverglass: A River in Four Seasons (1997). This artwork uses several film techniques to draw out a meaningful experience for viewers, including extended durations of shots and the physical submersion of the camera underwater. While we discussed this artwork in class, another work, Sip My Ocean (1996) by Pipilotti Rist, came to mind. In the gallery, audiences are encouraged to lie on cushions as they observe projections of underwater and natural scenery on the ceiling. It is an experience of “emulsion” that I am sure Zdravič’s Riverglass encourages. It compels viewers to contemplate their place in the presence of nature, as if we are interacting with the features of the environment like they are with one another.

I took Hannah’s advice to approach this final experiment as fieldwork while taking my ‘Ways of Moving’ footage. Suddenly, I was sensitive to parts of the land I had not been prior. In my video, I tried to emulate the still camera of the works we observed in class and allowed the subtleties of the wind in the branches, the ripples of the dirty water, and the blades of grass weighed down by bugs to capture the attention of the viewer. It was a fascinating experience to study the grand sweeping of wind over plains of grass just as much as it was interesting to view the delicate webs of spiders shine in the flickering light. Without editing too much, I tried to juxtapose some of the larger movements with those smaller motions to draw attention to these patterns. During this experiment, I also felt my bias towards more dramatic movements fade as I noticed with a more attuned gaze.

In the future, if I were to create a similar video, I would like to focus on one particular aspect of movement, such as wind or light, rather than multiple. I believe this would enhance the effect of my piece even more. Additionally, I would appreciate having the technology to immerse the camera within the environment entirely, as in Riverglass and Sip My Ocean. My peers have suggested that this video could become an audiovisual nature documentary. They appreciated the angles I used to hone in on the subtle movements, and so this may be a feature I could carry into an extended film. I could use audio to accentuate this, focusing on a sense of direction that aligns with these angles.

Carbonell, I. (2021). The Mississippi Multiverse. Anthropocene Curriculum. https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org//contribution/the-mississippi-multiverse

MacDonald, S. (2012). The ecocinema experience. In Ecocinema Theory and Practice (pp. 17–41). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203106051-6

Rist, P. (1996). Sip My Ocean. [Audiovisual artwork].

Zdravič, A. (1997) Riverglass: A River in Four Seasons. [Audiovisual artwork].

Experiment 1 – Ways of Looking Blog Post:

Experiment 1 – Ways of Looking

Experiment 2 – Ways of Listening Blog Post:

Experiment 2 – Ways of Listening

This week, I learnt that noticing natural sound ecologies can raise awareness for human impacts on the environment. Before class, I visited the same park that I had in Week 1 and attempted the four ways of listening (Bruglio, 2019). I found that when switching between Passive, Active, Directed and Full Body listening, I noticed the ways that human-made noises dominate the landscape. 

Similarly, in my one minute sound piece, I sought to capture this phenomenon. The soft textures of natural sound such as the wind in the leaves, trickle of smaller creeks from the river, and bird calls were often drowned out by the noise of construction and even less obviously human-affected sounds like the harsh drag of leaves on concrete. I found I could analyse the environment “as a set of dynamic relationships” and in terms of the “Diversity and density of species, the abundance of vegetation and the profusion of foliage (affecting reverberation)” (Paine, 2017). I attempted to capture the broad sweeping of the wind through the cleared plains, sheared of their past growth for recreational services. Additionally, the beauty of the magpie call and trickle of the river is drowned out by the roaring of the machinery and passing cars: a sad reminder of our authority over the land.

According to my peers, if I were to recreate a piece evoking a certain message in the future, I should seek to mesh the sounds together more towards the beginning and create drama by introducing the harsher sounds more suddenly near the end. There are two artworks I would like to consider if I were to try this project again. Dylan Martorell’s sonic vocabularies fascinatingly offers a musical summation of the shapes of leaves. This dedication to providing an instrument to the overpowered voices of nature is a promising means of raising awareness for environmental value. Also, David Haines and Joyce Hinterding’s Pink Steam from the 2022 Sydney Biennale depicts all the aspects of the environment that humans miss such as infrared rays and muons, “cosmic rays colliding with the earth’s atmosphere” (Haines & Hinterding, 2022). Hopefully with my final video task I can commit to portraying the sounds and textures of the environment in such a way with a scientific approach. 

Broglio, R. (2019). Ways of Listening [Libarynth]. Dust and Shadow. https://libarynth.org/dust_and_shadow/ways_of_listening

Haines, D. & Hinterding, J. (2022) Pink Steam. [Audiovisual artwork]. The Cutaway, Barangaroo, Sydney. https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/david-haines-joyce-hinterding/

Martorell, D. (2020). sonic vocabularies [Audiovisual artwork]. https://www.dylanmartorell.com/sonic-vocabularies

Paine, G. (2017). Acoustic Ecology 2.0. Contemporary Music Review, 171–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2017.1395136

Sharp silhouette

Secret window

Decay

The weight of dew

Winter honey

Over the course of the first week of Invisible Environments, I discovered many new ways in which we may notice our environment and the reasons for why giving our attention to these matters is so crucial. Although I was not present for classes during Week 1, I enjoyed the practical photography experiment. In alignment with what I had learnt from Attunements about “Practicing panesthesia – an awareness of all sense at once” and the art of interviewing “beyond the human” (Carbonell, et al., 2021), I set out to capture little narratives within the landscape that hid from the glaringly obvious. 

At a park down by the Yarra River, I took time to attune myself beyond the surface level imagery of the landscape: the tiny buzzing of bee wings on wattle, the decay of leaves, and the striking silhouettes of trees. It was an enlightening experience within a location so close to home. I believe that my approach to this task brought about a deepened connection to my local place of nature, bringing about an awareness of the delicate ecosystem that had previously gone unnoticed. Another fascinating concept I had in mind while completing this photography task was from Landscape (Taylor, 2016), which suggests that “landscape is a socially constructed entity that is an important element of nation building. It reveals how each landscape in our society reflects the socio-political power structures and “inequalities in a society.” The park I thought of as a simple plain of preserved nature is actually a groomed, European-style space for recreation and purely human enjoyment, a reflection of human’s control over natural spaces. In my photography, I initially aimed to focus on the tiny stories that were unaffected by this hierarchy, but discovered that each one had the residue of human control, ranging from the non-native foliage visible to the power lines in trees. I feel that if I were to take part in a similar media task again, I would seek either a new location less controlled by humans, or specifically analyse the human effects on the landscape.

Carbonell, I., Tsing, A. L., & Tsai, Y. L. (2021, September 14). Attunements. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/attunements 

Taylor, D. (2016). Landscape. In J. Adamson, W. Gleason & D. Pellow (Ed.), Keywords for Environmental Studies (pp. 146-148). New York, USA: New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814760741.003.0049