I tried to breakdown the essay question and it made me reflect- What will catch my attention? Here’s a list that I thought of randomly. This project is all about the list isn’t it? 🙂

1. a wild koala in the city
2. when my phone rings at 4am
3. when there is a huge crowd
4. when there is a long queue in a shop
5. when my favourite coffee shop is closed during lunch time
6. when the tram didn’t arrive in time
7. when the fire alarm goes off
8. strange smell
9. people giving out free stuff
10. loud noises

The list above are things that may be abnormal and the things that I am not familiar of.

What is normal? Who made up normal?

-US! human beings! human structure! human culture!

When we take remove the social relativism from things, we will be to be more attentive to things around us.

Social Relativism- structures within the temple of human cultural production

P.S is this when OOO comes in?

Watched Collateral Beauty today and I love it!  It reminds me of our upcoming soundscape recording. Narrowing down our list and try a different approach to understand the object. In Collateral Beauty, Will Smith or rather, Howard wrote 3 letters separate letters to time, love and death, through his letters, he reflects his relation between each element and it is so much denser than its definition. It makes me wonder, If we are asked to write a letter to an object/location- what will we write about? and how much more can we explore or notice about the object/location

A letter to a tree:

Dear Tree,

My name is Michelle and I am writing this letter to thank you for all the things that you have done and to apologise for what we have done.I was taught that you are very important in our lives ,You take in carbon dioxide and potential harmful gases to release oxygen.You  shelters the birds and animals in the wild. You grow fruits and nuts . Your cousin Blue Gum, provide eucalyptus oil. ( and the list goes on)

You are so important to us and  yet we hire our kind to take your life. We used you to create paper, furnitures and many more. On behalf of human beings, I am sorry.

Warm Regards,

Michelle

Okay, I could have elaborate more in the letter but I need to work on my essays. With this simple exercise, it allows me to reflect and understand what a tree does instead of defining the tress. I end up doing some research about trees! Think about it! Trees are everywhere! They are in our bedrooms, kitchen, classrooms…..

Okay, I am doing this the opposite way but here is a list of a tree-

Oxygen, Shelter, Oil, Paper, Furnitures, Wood, Silvichemical, Fruits, Nuts, Flowers, Carbon Dioxide etc.