Task 4 Reflection
At the beginning of this studio, the task of ‘noticing’ felt like it would be simple, as noticing things is in our nature- something we do every day. I initially wasn’t sure where this topic would lead my final project to, as it felt too broad to really zone in on something specifically. However, during task one, the idea of forcing yourself to notice something you wouldn’t usually, was a lot more difficult than it seemed. Simply saying to yourself “Today I’m going to take notice of all the street signs I pass” sounds like it could work, in theory, but when put into practice, I found that as a starting point it was more difficult than I had anticipated. When something is as routine as getting to and from a familiar place, we tend to look over the simple things, such as the names of streets, roads, etc. For me, especially, I tend to generally look over such things and that was why I made it my mission, in a sense, to take note. As a beginning point, this forced me to pay attention to the things I actually pay attention to, and question, ‘Why do I notice this, rather than that?’
I think it was task two; travelling to a new place, out of my usual routine, that made really gave me the idea for task four. Because, when put into a new environment, I could not blame my noticing on any predispositions I had of the location. There was no biased for the environment that I was in. Instead, the things I noticed would say more about what I am susceptible to noticing rather than what is outwardly there.
Because of my younger sisters’ involvement in my task three, and the way that turned out, I wanted to do some research on the way that children perceive things- how this may be different to adults because they have had less time to adopt preconceived beliefs and bias opinions. Some of the research made task three a lot more understandable. I noticed through task 4 that at locations, distractions were a big issue in experiencing their environment. For example; when my sisters saw the Spirit of Tasmania ship it was difficult for them to notice much else, as they had experienced this before. However, I started to see that this wasn’t a distraction, it was just their different way of noticing, similarly to how I may be ‘distracted‘ by the sunset, etc.
I don’t think my final project reflects everything I have learnt in this studio-
I was not happy with the way I tried manipulating photos to show different perspectives. I was also unhappy with how I could not stick to my desired schedule that I had made up in class. Minor complications kept arising and I ended up putting the project off until it all became too much of a rush. However, I do think task four is an approach, nonetheless, at attempting to explore the notion of noticing and all that comes with it. I found that my most difficult task was figuring out which medium would best fit the idea I was looking at. What I explained in my proposal was how I was very interested in the readings idea of ‘nature as a backdrop for human consciousness.’ I think this tied in really well with the idea of one location and multiple perspectives. As much as an environment has its own noticeable features and things that stand out, we will all experience it differently from one another- no matter how similar we are. That was the idea I wished to explore through my work in task four.
I decided to present task four as a single blog with three separate sections to represent the three different perspectives. I found this way effective for me because the blog as a whole acts as the location whilst the three links (subjects) act as the three separate perspectives, of the same place. Evidently, my younger sisters experiences were different to the one I had at the zoo, but the changes are really subtle until looked on over and over. I think this is because the zoo does tend to draw your attention to one thing at a time, (usually animals). However, I chose images that really did demonstrate what my sisters also focused on.