The concept behind my self portrait was to demonstrate the different environments, people and experiences that have shaped who I am. I wanted to illuminate numerous aspects of my personality by creating a juxtaposition representative of how people may perceive me on the surface and how I see myself. During the editing stage I realised that a couple of my media creations didn’t portray ‘me’ in an effective way, so the process itself fuelled my creativity.

Each of my images is connected, as they all give me a sense of “home” when I look at them. My sound recordings are quite varied – city noises representing my adjustment to Melbourne culture, me singing an original song both because I love to sing and because the lyrics resonate with where I am in my life now, and nature sounds because being outside and closing your eyes, you can feel at home anywhere in the world.

My first video shows where I have come from (Shanghai) and where I am now (college in Melbourne). The video of my sister sitting in my Grandma’s dining room writing a Chinese character brings together my family and my life experience. In the walking video I am on my way to college so this is symbolic of my new life. The reversed video of me drawing over my scars is supposed to illustrate that I like to be creative and have fun, but that when this is stripped away I am also strong (I think this video in particular is the most successful part of my work).

Editing these elements together gave me a sense of piecing together different parts of ‘me’. I wanted to create an abstract representation completely undefined in terms of time, so I mostly used blur and cross dissolves to build seamless transitions and create a fluid effect throughout the video. I think the least successful part of my work is the opening title, as it doesn’t completely connect with the rest of the elements in my video. For future projects I also want to work on my soundtrack layering skills.