Reflecting upon the Entangling media course comes with looking into various affordances of the different media used and chosen formats for our multimodal project. I’ll take from relevant course readings and stories investigated in and throughout the course of the semester that raise the question as to why we chose to use different mediums or media modes to bring our project to fruition, this will allow for an in depth analysis.
Over the course of the semester we have looked at an array of Multi-modal non-fiction creative stories that have reflected my own thoughts on storytelling. Inspired by ‘My grandmother’s lingo’ and the use of limited text to put an emphasis on the imagery and audio. I could imagine it being transformed into a children’s book that adults could also gain insight from. In the future I’d like to explore a more scrolly telling approach, similar to the way the story of snowfall was expressed through scrolling, clicking and listening. I believe the concepts I have would fit that medium and style.
I remember attending the Immigration museum. At the time there was an exhibition on immigrants fleeing from war and conflict. My favourite space included multi-modal nonfiction stories on survivors. It had rooms with projections of interviews, interactive questionnaires and memorabilia along the walls. I enjoyed the digital and physical aspect of the exhibit and that’s what inspired me to create a zine for my final work. It is something people can hold and flick through, while using their device to visit links to videos, images and audio. For the exhibition I’d like to have a projection or screen handy for stills and moving images, with the zine sprawled across a table in front for people to read and engage with. Another exhibition that really inspired me was the ‘Althea Mcnish’ show in London. Althea Mcnish is a renowned textile artists from the Caribbean. The show was extraordinary. According to ‘The Introduction’ (cite Victoria and Albert Museum. (n.d.). V&A · Althea McNish – an introduction.) ‘Althea McNish (1924 – 2020) was amongst the first, if not the first, designer of African-Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition. Her designs injected much-needed colour and life into the post-war fashion and textiles industry from the 1950s onwards’. Her designs were ones that I could imagine being tattooed, textiles and tattoo art combine together quite nicely. Her etchings reminded me of the sketches you see as a tattoo artist is developing flashes to transfer onto skin. It made me think about tattoo art as a phenomenon in the art scene. As you walked through the exhibition there was audio plumbed through the floors and visuals along the walls. I was handed a small zine at the beginning of the exhibition.The zine had pages in conjunction with the rooms you viewed throughout the show. It was really valuable to have something to take home to remind me of the show. I would like to include that in our exhibition as it gives the audience something to hold onto, to remind them of the stories they read/watched. I still have the zine to this day and flick through it occasionally to bring me back to the space/environment of the show in London.
Stepping beyond uni and showcasing the project In the real world seems daunting but it’s very notable for further development. I would love to see the zine purchasable in a bookstore like Metropolis in curtain house, or see it published at the NGV book fair. This would allow for further consumption of a physical book that has links to video interviews and audio to emphasise the story. I think it would also be useful to publish a digital version of the book, like an e book that people could read online. Not everybody would have access to the physical book so having it digitised would broaden audience consumption. Along with the online book, I’d include moving image at the top of a website similar to the snow fall article we read earlier in the semester. It was engaging and brought the story to life in a way that gave the writing some visual context.
Imagining how I could improve the work comes with a few challenges as I feel as though the work is still in progress and has a lot of potential to have its core topics and themes reach an apotheosis. Developing the work could be having the project exhibited at a festival in the form of a tattoo stall where people can receive small, simple tattoos of their liking and read/engage with the zine while getting their tattoo, similar to how you read a magazine when you’re at the hairdressers. The stall would be inside a tent, with projections over the walls creating an immersive experience where the overall aura is that of a sterile, cool lit tattoo parlour. I believe the multi-modality of the project could be improved, while the zine would include qr codes linking to different media modes, we could create a website with scrolly telling instead, this would consolidate the project under the one format. It was said in assignment three that there was some vagueness around our concept. I would like to improve that by focusing on one subject’s story about their tattoo career and how they navigate through the art world to create a series of works for clients ect..
I have always been drawn to working in groups as I enjoy delegating tasks and finding out what assets team members can provide to the task at hand. I enjoyed the times in class where we would share our ideas with each other about different multimodal stories we looked at in class. I always find it interesting to hear others’ interpretations of various works and bring forward my ideas on what stands out to me about a media work, usually it’s the story itself or the medium used to convey a narrative. While working on ‘Stories beneath the skin’ a concept I generated through my love for the tattoo world and the subculture. I found it hard to express my ideas and thoughts on what the project to come to be difficult at times as I was still in the developmental stage. Once the idea caught on with my other group members we got traction and started interviews with tattoo artists from Naarm/Melbourne and gathered our ideas about how we could present our work. It was hard to take on the role of ‘the initial idea creator’ as it put pressure on me to have it make sense from the beginning. There were occasionally gaps in communication, as a group we struggled to get various tasks completed due to inevitabilities of absence and sickness.
references:
‘home made tattoos’ book from RMIT library
SBS (n.d.). My Grandmother’s Lingo. [online] SBS
www.wmgallery.org.uk. (n.d.). What’s On | Exhibitions | Althea McNish: Colour is Mine | William Morris Gallery.