This week was the first week back at uni and an introduction to what the studio ‘real media’ is going to look like. Starting off the first class by putting our phones in envelopes and making or at least attempting to make some origami was a really nice way of switching off from our devices and doing something practical with our hands and doing something creative away from the ‘digital’.
Our next task involved filming 30 landscape clips each being 20 seconds, this exercise made me really realise how long 20 seconds can feel when standing still and capturing what is going on around me. I tried to capture videos that juxtaposed each other such as a busy chaotic environment with many people moving in and out of the fame, and then focused, still videos such as a quiet empty library. We then listened to music and edited the clips together whichever way we wanted to. Again, it was nice to be creating something that wouldn’t be judged or ‘marked’ but simply playing around with creativity.
In our second class we were asked to write down all the different types/platforms of media we use, and then note how many were non-digital. This reminded me of how much of our lives are surround by the digital world as the only things that I could think to note down was books and notepads both of which I don’t even use every day but do use in general.
I tend to struggle with reading academic papers as I feel my eyes glaze over and after reading a solid paragraph I think to myself what did I just read, however having the reading printed out definitely does help, this week’s reading ‘The textility of making’ inevitably ended up leaving me a bit lost as I got muddled up in the myriad of analogies author Tim Ingold was using, however, one idea that seemed to stand out to me was that “(art) does not, in other words, seek to replicate finished forms that are already settled… rather, to join with those very forces that bring form into being” (Ingold 2010, pg 91), what I gathered from this is that when creating art, the person should not seek to replicate other works but rather let the art become what it needs to become.
Ingold, T 2010, ‘The Textility of Making‘, Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol 34, pg 91-102.