Hope For Audience

My hope for our sculpture—Mix-tape—is that it highlights the obscured meaning or meanings of otherwise inconsequential objects such as a cassette tape. This retro media is today considered rather unnecessary in everyday life much like CDs, VHS tapes, and ever more, DVDs. That is why I had a particular fascination with crafting some sort of interpersonally meaningful sculpture. The construction of Mix-tape emphasises the need to create meaning; it provokes the viewer to ask what is being displayed and why. As Christian Ulrik Andersen, Søren Bro Pold & Morten Suder Riis (2014) discuss, it could be perceived as about memories or the way in which so-called ‘Jurassic technologies’ (158) can be transformed into something beyond itself. Furthermore, as Margaret Iverson (2014) describes, the mere act of looking at found objects of the past can import some meaning onto that object with little artist interaction.

Studio Relevance

I think the latter of those perceptions (i.e. the idea that meaning can be created through a material or the act of seeing), exemplifies a key concern of the studio: “[to] create new media works that have well-rounded and historically grounded origins”. The idea of using an obsolete media/medium (cassette tapes) to create a new, interpretable media work, much like the work of Christian Marclay (Feliz 2013). Moreover, I think Mix-tape illustrates the legacy of cassette tapes within media.

Successful Aspects

I think the single most successful element of the sculpture was how it was exhibited. The way in which we adapted to the space itself ultimately made the exhibited product far better than it otherwise would have been. I think it exemplified the tactile nature of the tapes in a way that was interesting and though-provoking. I also particularly liked how the tape pooled at the floor and interacted with itself, and perfectly hid the static-playing speaker and extra cassette tapes.

Problematic Aspects

The most problematic aspect of the project for me, was the depth at which we looked at certain unnecessary elements. Early on we would continue to discuss the concept and ways in which we could include components. We knew we wanted to encourage interaction, and we wanted to include something about Clive Garner, the original owner of the tapes in order to acquire another layer of legacy. These ideas were very hard to accomplish, however. Clive Garner was either too much or too little within the sculpture and so we scraped it—the only reminisce is on the tapes themselves. The interactivity was there, it just wasn’t really advertised and would have been difficult to actually achieve without breaking some viewer perception.

On Further Development

If we were to work on it further or expand it in some way, it would be interesting to make it bigger. Although the cassette cubes to cassette tape ratio was good and demonstrates the concept and meaning(s), I think if it was even larger these aspects would be clearer or even evolve. Then again, I think at a certain scale it would be too big and become redundant, which could be interesting.

Studio Takeaways

I have a few takeaways from my studio experience. My first takeaway from Memory Screen is my perception of “media art”. At the start of the semester, I didn’t really have an idea of what would be discussed or produced but by the end, I’ve come to better understand art forms that I likely would’ve neglected otherwise. My second takeaway is the importance to actually reflect on your work. I guess I had more time to reflect on my work this semester than the previous as I think I actually got something out of it: something to work on for the next time. My third takeaway is the need to just get on with it. I found that throughout the semester from the earlier assignments and even this final project, I would get caught on something and would spend way too much time working on it. This ties back to the problematic aspect of the sculpture in that we spent a lot of time thinking about ways we could incorporate Clive Garner and interactivity, which were ultimately a waste of time and made me realise that sometimes we need to just move on instead of dwelling on an idea.

On Working Collaboratively

I think there were two layers of collaboration during the latter half of the semester. Within groups, especially small groups like our own (with just the two of us), it is crucial we’re both working and both communicating. Every session, we would update each other on ideas we’ve had over a couple days and would contact each other if there was anything needed or if we weren’t able to make it to class or if there was any other problem. It was also crucial to work together to fix any problems that occurred. These were other successful aspects of the sculpture—being on the same page, understanding, and actively contributing. More broadly, exhibition-wise, I found it interesting to see how everyone adapted to the space and was actively engaged with each other’s work. For our group, it was the idea to hang the cassette cubes from the horizontal beams of the media portal while also making sure our sculpture didn’t affect anyone else’s. Ultimately, everyone needed to work together, not only to make sure their work was done but also to interact and not interfere with other works around the exhibition space.

References

Andersen, C.U., Pold, S.B. and Riis, M.S. (2014) ‘A dialogue on cassette tapes and their memories’, A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, 3(1), pp. 156–167. doi:10.7146/aprja.v3i1.116095.

Feliz, M. C. (2013). Resonant Space, Sonorous Time: The Varieties of Acoustic Phenomena in the Art of Christian Marclay (Order No. 3644741). Available from ProQuest One Academic. (1629828743).

Iversen, M. (2014) ‘Readymade, Found Object, Photograph’, Art Journal, 63(2), pp. 44–57. doi: 10.1080/00043249.2004.10791125.

Media Sculpture

For this sketch, I focused primarily on concept and sacrificed compositional proficiency. I found this task among the most difficult, not just due to doing it solo, but also due to my access to multiple media forms/formats (and its potential to become a copyright-trap). I knew that I wanted to do something about consumerism; I initially thought about crafting a “post-apocalyptic” vibe—the apocalypse being without a phone or device over a (short) period of time, the protagonist growing in frustration without their precious device. Upon developing the concept, however, I realised that it wasn’t necessarily fitting with the task. This meant I lost quite a bit of potential production time exacerbated by development in my desktop performance. Despite this (and lack of production quality) I think the final product is at least within the bounds of the task and is interesting. Perhaps the initial plans could be utilised within the major project.

The technical side of this task was simple. I searched for ad compilations on YouTube on a few devices. After finding one I liked (referenced below) I set up my devices in a way that would produce a forced perspective feel and therefore an overwhelming sense of consumption. At first, I was going to film a video of a video of someone (me) flipping through magazine pages, though it didn’t produce a desired effect. Though I did try to implement some of this by adding an end “credit” scene written on an alcohol ad from an Aldi catalogue—a metaphor for addiction—but the marker used wasn’t showing up well on camera. Other than that, I simply put it into a vertical sequence as if it were a TikTok or Instagram reel, to emphasise the consumerism concept.

I think that considering I had a limited amount of time and materials with which to create this “sculpture” it turned out fine. I think if I had of had group the composition would’ve been far more professional-looking. I feel the concept had legs to stand on, despite a lack of execution. That in mind, I believe there’s potential to explore and expand on the concept more with the major project if that is the direction I (or rather the group I’m in) goes.

References

Arwuns (2 February 2020) ‘One Hour of 1980s TV Commercials – 80s Commercial Compilation #1’, Arwuns, YouTube website, accessed 27 August 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgoUa2wWvAQ

Desktop Performance

Similar to my media sculpture, I focused predominantly on concept/theme and audio as opposed to actual composition. Initially, I constructed a chaotic and unhinged performance, which would focus on the distractions of everyday life. This was far more in the vein of Xanthe Dobbie’s work, namely, Club Blue (2020), which implemented the colour blue, the word “blue” and other blue elements in an unhinged array of window-layering, sound design, and Mac OS competency. I wasn’t able to gain such competency in such a short time and decided to a bit smaller. Descent (2017) by Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, and Forma was of particular intrigued in my smaller thinking; the work retold the story of the Black Death through the desktop, with rats multiplying, environments changing, and 8-bit overlays. This basis is what I worked off of. I saw a post on Instagram about the Wizard of Oz (1939), and I began thinking of telling the story of Oz through the desktop. Upon recording several elements, I realised that this particular story was too difficult to tell within 60 seconds. So, I thought about some scenes that could be better told in the timeframe and decided on the poppy field scene, wherein Elphaba sabotages Dorothy and Co.’s journey. It’s a rather infamous scene since they used asbestos to produce a “snowy” effect.

On the technical side, I recorded my screen with OBS. I found two gifs in order to establish the scene, a flashing rainbow circle and a smoke effect. I played these on the same window and changed my Chrome theme to green to show some resemblance of Elphaba’s lurking, to unknown success. I then closed out of the tabs to show a “poppy field”, using images of poppies, like Descent did with rats, I put images of the main cohort within the field, and left a folder titled “Home” and “Elphaba”. The wallpaper was also changed to a minimalist green field and yellow brick road. I opened the “Elphaba” folder which had a danger sign icon utilising Windows’ built-in folder-icon customiser, which produced a glitching screen and noise (sourced from freesound.org) as if the folder had been purposely obscured. In my first recording, I attempted to create folders for each character which would’ve allowed me to explore each character (i.e. enter the “Tin Man” folder and see his heart alongside other objects). This failed however as the icons wouldn’t stay in their custom state, so I opted for images instead. Using a snow overlay, I was able to mimic the film’s asbestos effect. I then moved my mouse jank-ily towards the start menu to click sleep as to reenact the scene. In Premiere Pro, I added some sound effects (see references below), to enhance the effect.

I think this sketch was ultimately limited by my own incompetencies. There are certainly some elements that could be worked on. For instance, the iris zoom at the end (to imply sleep) was cut-short when I cut off the recording, while other elements of composition were simply very jank.

References

Florianreichelt (2019) ‘Soft Wind’ [sound], Freesound website, accessed 27 August 2024. https://freesound.org/people/florianreichelt/sounds/459977/

GIPHY (n.d.) ‘Rainbow Color Gradient Ball GIF‘, Gifdb website, accessed 27 August 2024. https://gifdb.com/gif/rainbow-color-gradient-ball-acpoz3vq9ji0i3ev.html

GIPHY (n.d.) ‘smoke GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY’ [Pinterest post], Pinterest, accessed 27 August 2024. https://au.pinterest.com/pin/773211829745819673/

Jace (2006) ‘boiling bubbles 4 washing.wav’ [sound], Freesound website, accessed 27 August 2024. https://freesound.org/people/Jace/sounds/19844/

TiesWijnen (2021) ‘Glitch 2’ [sound], Freesound website, accessed 27 August 2024. https://freesound.org/people/TiesWijnen/sounds/592337/

Essay Film

The concept of this Essay Film is the relationship between the cost-of-living crisis and the record-breaking profits of big banks and mining conglomerates. Silas and I searched through the newspaper, stumbling across the ASX 200. The idea expanded as we made the link between this table of companies, their numbers, and ultimately the housing and cost-of-living crisis.

Technically, the sketch consists of one newspaper scan, some pictures of houses, and an audio track. The latter was played over a black screen, melancholic (if not accusatorily) in tone, it reads profit statistics over the last year or two, acting to expose the profits of several leading banks and mining corporations. The first half utilises only the initial newspaper scan, zoomed in to obscure the table’s structure and encourages the viewer to inspect the image for more information. The mid-point-change begins with a short pause before the speech continues to read out statistics, this time, about house and rental prices, homelessness rates, and wage increases; this was spliced in between images of several houses (which were placed according to the speech). The editing allows viewers to make certain deductions about what is being said. From a newspaper slapping sound, to a small highlighter effect, the images between the black screen create a sense of urgency and transforms the sketch into an exposé of sorts, exposing the disparities between corporate profits and salary rises. I do think that the final sketch is slightly more complex than a “proof of concept” but isn’t massively hindered by this fact.

Socially, the sketch went well. Silas and I collaborated to develop the concept. I edited the sketch while Silas did the voiceover on a better microphone for production quality. I did struggle slightly with the editing as I wasn’t too confident in making a decision without prior communication. Typically, with group work, there’s several frontiers to get through in order to make a decision though, despite this lack, I think it will better enable viewers to create certain connections.

Live Action

The theme of my live action media sketch was regimentation, routine, and schedule. Initially, I intended to use visual performance to complement the audio elements. However, this approach didn’t fully meet the task’s requirements and was too time-consuming to execute. I instead decided to think beyond my idea of “performance art” and explore a more abstract representation of “regimentation.”

I started by contemplating different ways to convey routine, patterns, and memory, which eventually led me to the concept of a puzzle—a metaphor for how we, as humans, fit into predetermined spaces. To build this puzzle, I repurposed an old film theory reading about writing on film, specifically about the process of evaluation (much like what I’m doing here). I flipped the paper over and drew rough lines to cut into puzzle pieces. After cutting them out, I set up a small tripod for my phone to record the assembly. Despite not being parallel with my surface, the setup captured the entire process. I recorded myself completing the puzzle, which took about two minutes. As I reviewed the footage, I considered when to cut the start and finish. The original clip fit with the theme of regimentation, but I wanted to introduce a more cynical tone. To achieve this, I spliced in an image of a “the power of positive affirmations” printout throughout the video, creating an overbearing presence that reflects how external forces impose regimes on us. The final sketch, titled One Mighty Puzzle, became a metaphor for the task itself, challenging the conventional definitions of “performance”.

Although there were minimal social engagements beyond in-class discussions, the sketch did make a broader social statement. It suggested that, whether through societal norms or psychological conditioning, we are often forced into specific “boxes” that create pressure. These boxes could represent the rigid boundaries of what is considered performance art or broader societal expectations. Ultimately, the concept highlighted how our minds are regimented, and how society evaluates and categorizes everything—often in ways that may not always align with the true nature of human experience.