‘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 review.

My video work and sculpture are acts, they emote to timelessness and scale. They both nod to liminality and the illusory.

The two works represent how we feel our size in a digital landscape that’s boundless and difficult to grab a hold of. Displayed by the feeling of being on the edge of understanding and letting go, having digital and real experiences take the reins and disband in the atmosphere of time and space- you fall in. Will time and the digital continue to merge, or will time struggle to keep up?

It’s like the moment before you get dumped by a wave or spring off a diving board, you relent slightly and feel your weight within the world.

WHOSE SPHERE

Production bible: one

Production bible: two

Production bible: three (yay!)

‘God eye view’ as opposed to ‘birds eye view’, what’s the difference between the two? This was a really interesting question raised in class when looking at surrealism and the uncanny sublime. I felt as though it related to my work, whose getting the perspective of our world from such a distance, and how does that relate to the the digital sphere we exist within. This idea also helped me come up with the title of my work being ‘Whose Sphere’ 

Birdle says ‘But this God’s eye view is illusory, as it also serves to block out and erase other private and state activities… For everything that is shown, something is hidden” (Bridle, New Dark Age, 36) 

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As I was making my sculpture ‘Whose Sphere’ I cut my finger trying to detach a component of the polly pocket shell, I took a photo and then looking back it was quite fitting with the newspaper weather report beneath and the minature trees sprawled across, it reminded me of the depth perception of the mans hand in ‘Powers Of Ten’. I wanted to include this in my reflection as the making of my work drew a lot of parallels between other work.

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The ideas surrounding the coastline paradox were suggested to me. It’s like how the  further out we are the smoother it becomes and the closer you are the more granular things become. I want my work to be grainy and also quite saturated in colour.

In an informal sense the coastline paradox makes me think of the feeling you get when you’re on a coastline and can’t see beyond the point of the cliff, and the coastline stretches for miles, and then realise that on the map, this boundless space would be a tiny, tiny bump.

I want to incorporate the ocean into my video. It has always evoked a feeling in me where I really sense my place in the world, I also have always found it to be very peaceful and almost reassuring. Boundless seas are overwhelmingly big, looking out to the horizon is the furthest you can get a hold of the world, similar to the feeling you get with the internet and digital world- it’s scale is unfathomable at times.

Mcnamara, A., Gerard, V., Da Silva and Research Online, G. (n.d.). The Coastline Paradox: A New Perspective Journal Title Journal of Coastal Research Rights statement.

I want my work to focus on the power and scale of the digital. I want it shown in a way that can be visually comprehensible. There will definitely be an emphasis on scale and perspective, something with an aerial shot, like in “The Powers Of Ten’ I want to play with the idea of ‘The Uncanny Sublime’ too, particularly in relation to the sensation of the scale of being human and exposing our temporality and size. 

My previous experiments have been quite collagey, so I’d like to keep that going into my final project with a bit more refinement. I want my project to focus on the idea of immeasurability and scale when it comes to technology as well as the time before us and beyond us that makes us feel nostalgia. I was recommended to look into Canadian filmaker and artist ‘Jon Rafman’ by the panel and I am so glad I did! his work is so fascinating and is very similar to the ‘aesthetic’ and feel I am leaning toward for my final work. I love the liminality he explores in his work. It is very ‘uncanny sublime-esque’.

I took a liking to ‘YOU, THE WORLD AND I (2010) by Jon Rafman’ in particular. It represents a visual I want to emulate in my own work, the abundance of zooming into pixilated landscapes, buildings, coastlines of the Adriatic all the while a unique anecdote unfolds.

Polly Pocket comes to mind when I think about ‘the sublime’ for example. The small, cosy nature of a little world inside a plastic ‘clam’ like heart shaped container always fascinated me as a young person- it makes your own ‘world’ seem huge and completely removed in a way. Similar to how one may feel from being on a plane, looking at the boundless ocean below and noticing the little white ripples that would be km’s long but to appear miniscule. Then juxtaposed with the feeling of being ‘on ground’ and out of that aerial view and perceptive, this idea also makes me intrigued by liminal spaces.

‘Whose Sphere’ is the name of my sculpture. I like cadence of the word ‘atmosphere’ in a sentence and feel that ‘Whose Sphere’ is a nice title for my work. These sketches below I drew when figuring out how I wanted my sculpture and ‘mini’ world to be brought to fruition.

These are the materials I bought to build the sculpture that will feature in the video and be on display at the exhibition alongside the video playing on TV 2. I managed to find the exact polly pocket clam I imagined on a rampant facebook marketplace search that came about one evening once I decided I wanted the toy to feature as the ‘little’ world on a small scale, sort of like the picnic goers in the Eame’s brothers ‘Powers of Ten’.

Dorsen, Annie. “The Sublime and the Digital Landscape.” Theater (New Haven, Conn.), vol. 48, no. 1, 2018, pp. 55–67, https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-4250956Links to an external site..

Freer, Scott. “MAGRITTE: THE UNCANNY SUBLIME.” Literature & Theology, vol. 27, no. 3, 2013, pp. 330–44, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frs056Links to an external site..

This studio has been so engaging and has posed so many thoughts. I initially found it hard to narrow it all down to one thing- this then made me think of immeasurability- it’s hard to hone in on one ‘feeling’ we’ve touched on in this class because they seem infinite.

In order to get the ball rolling on our individual final project ideas, we did a really cool activity where we ‘speed dated’ our classmates in a round robin style and had to give each person an idea of what we were thinking for our final project. As they talked about it we had to write down three key takings from their short ‘pitch’, then we collected all the sticky notes people had written for our own explanations at the end. It was really lovely seeing what my other class mates had in mind for their final project and what themes and ideas they chose to hone in in from the course. It also informed my own decision making on what to create.

I spoke to a handful of my classmates about my ideas, and because I had to repeat my ‘pitch’ multiple times it gave me the chance to figure out what was being received well and what wasn’t. Especially when I got to see the sticky notes with peoples perceptions of my idea. I used this to find a common response, or feeling my short pitch evoked in my classmates. For the next couple of days I stuck the associating words to my wall in my room and looked at it before sleeping and when I would wake up. It was useful having physical reminder of my project in my room.

The most common ‘feeling’ my classmates noted down were ‘physical’ and ‘nostalgia’ I was happy with this as it gave me room to develop my idea and not be locked into a rigid theme or idea. This also made me really want to focus on the idea of ‘abstract’ art and ‘abject’ art. I don’t think my final piece will be linear or explain one particular feeling. I think because this studio has instilled a multitude feelings and thoughts, I want my final work to reflect that.

‘Powers of Ten’ is a 1970’s film by Charles and Raye Eames. It was suggested to me in feedback by Steph on my last experiment and after watching it, I want my work to be an ode to the Eames brothers on how well it encapsulates the struggle to grasp and understand our size in the world, and how that can be adaptable and related to the digital world. 

For my final project I want it to include the following:

Something tangible (a sculpture of some sort) paired with an abstract video piece that features the sculpture.

I want to connect with ‘Powers Of Ten’ and take inspiration from any other artists in a similar realm that may be recommended to me by my classmates/steph or the panel in week 10.

I want to include a song that I have worked on with my brother, from the band I play in (HighSchool) – a demo or master of something. I want to there to be a slight overlapping of the work I also do outside of “Weird Feelings” but for it to be implicit.

I am interested in how the ‘digital’ can be like water or sand. I have referred to the ocean and what makes up all matter (atoms) in my previous experiments so would like to showcase that in my work. Water and the ocean has always intrigued me, mainly for it’s scale and size.

Freer, Scott. “MAGRITTE: THE UNCANNY SUBLIME.” Literature & Theology, vol. 27, no. 3, 2013, pp. 330–44, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frs056Links to an external site..

Hughes, J. (2012). Powers of Ten: How the Eames’ Experimental Film Changed the Way We Look at Chicago—and the Universe. [online] Slate Magazine.