Zoe’s Media Bodies A1

For the first three weeks of the course ‘Media Bodies’, I have created three works that are all quite different but all have a focus around paying attention to physical and emotional environments.

For my first media work titled ‘Walking and Noticing’, I zoomed in on the attentiveness of the character on screen. He begins by leaving his house to take a break from his home office. The man is still on a business call and is just walking through free space. His phone call ends and then he begins to take notice of the birds chirping in the trees, the wind gently gliding across his skin and the sweet smells of the flowers nearby. From taking note and being aware of his surroundings, he can find that needed distraction and ease his mind, creating a calming mood.

 

 

My second work was an audio piece titled ‘Inner Talk Distractions’. I highlight in this recording that having awareness in a certain time and space can easily be changed by the simplest of things. We can purposely be aware and unintentionally aware of certain things. In this piece, we hear the character’s inner thoughts as well as the noises in the room she is in. A plane flies over the room and causes her to forget how hot the tea she is drinking is. Her perception of touch is interrupted by the distracting sound of the plane.

 

 

My final piece is a video work that features my dog Ben as the main character, the video is titled ‘Old Dog Balancing’. This piece visually has a good focus on the physical environment that Ben is in, but it shows more of the emotional environment that he experiences. Ben has little to no hearing since he is a 16 year old dog, however when he becomes aware that I am calling out to him and giving hiim extra attention, he has an embodied feeling of excitement that is reflected through his joyful prance and wagging tail. He is outdoors, there are lots of interesting smells, and he has company, all of his favourite things.

 

 

Reflection

I found that by working with two different mediums, video and audio work, in the last three weeks, I have been able to explore the body senses in a number of ways. Firstly, by creating video works I have highlighted the importance of the partnership between sound and sight. In order to create a quality visual piece, you must consider your audio as it heavily assists and guides what audiences see. This does not mean all video works must have audio, it just means that you need to consider what the purpose of absent audio is, what effect does it have on the audience? Creating an audio work allowed me to realise how important it is to be descriptive in order to highlight the bodily experience being portrayed in the work. It also taught me that being descriptive does not have to be through dialogue, it can also be through sound.

 

From watching a number of interesting media examples during class, I was able to recognise a few techniques used to highlight the bodily experiences being portrayed by certain characters. Week one’s media example of Peter Middleton and James Spinney feature film ‘Notes on Blindness’ approached many useful techniques that helped viewers notice the embodiment of the main character. One example is that in a few shots throughout the film, the lighting would be dimmed to the point that it is hard to make out what is visually happening in the scene. This technique was used as a point of view take of the main character. It wasn’t a point of view of what he could see, but more so what his vision quality is like. Another media example that stood out to me was Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein’s short animation ‘Balance’. Through using disturbing sound effects of loud echoed creaks and distant bangs, the directors were able to create a sense of fear in the audience. Viewers feel the fear of the characters in the animation, they do not want to lose balance, otherwise they fall to their death.

 

I have taken note of some things that have worked well and not so well in all of my works. Something that stood out to me as working well is my ability to understand the importance of audio layering. As I have mentioned, the partnership between what you can see and what you can hear is something to take care of in media work. I know that you have to really make sure that your audio and visual work well together, but they also have to work well apart. Something I struggled with was using the knowledge I have in this area and applying it to my work. Throughout the three weeks of work I have been fascinated and focused on the audio and visual partnership, but I feel as though my work does not reflect that. With more practice and experience I hope that I can further develop my skills and find ways to create more complex pieces of work.

Throughout all of my media works, a point of similarity is the use of an atmospheric soundtrack. Even though my media works have music and sound effects embedded in them, throughout the entirety of the pieces I have included live recorded sounds of the physical environment that the work is set in. However, just because they all use atmospheric soundtracks, does not make them work as a collective, especially since the soundtracks are used at different volumes and temperaments for each piece. After viewing my pieces again, one after another, it is difficult to group them as a collective. They all have totally different story lines, they involve very different characters, different moods and different paces.

An approach that I used in my works to notice the feeling of the lived bodily experiences was through the use of background music. I did question if it would be appropriate to add non-diegetic music when trying to showcase a bodily experience, but it became clear that with the right music, it can help evoke audience connection. If my pieces were to be viewed in a gallery, work one and three would share the link of overlaid music. Both have an absence of dialogue which means that the music can further display the characters’ bodily experiences.

 

The readings from weeks one to three have offered insight and ideas to what embodiment is and ways we can portray someone’s sense of physical and emotional environment as one through media. Laura Ellingson’s reading ‘Embodied knowledge’ (2012, p.2) shares the idea that by incorporating ‘thick descriptions of bodily experience in mainstream research reports’, we are able to creatively express bodily experiences. This stood out to me because I am always questioning whether someone would understand the work/s I am making and how the character/s within my work/s are experiencing the events that are happening. Week two’s reading, ‘Foggy Notion: sound and weather, and the intermingled senses’, quoted that ‘John M. Hull, in his diary on blindness, talks of sound as that which can illuminate a space.’ (Allan, 2019, p.64). This highlighted that by losing a sense, we are still able to find a way to depict what we have lost. In media works, we should reflect upon our own senses and how we would interact with a media work with the absence of a sense. An idea that I took note of purely because it interested me was from Betty Block and Judith Lee Kissell’s text ‘The Dance: Essence of Embodiment’. The idea that the authors presented was that ‘we often fail to value the decisions our body makes’(Block & Kissell, 2001, p.6). They are zooming in on the fact that people will typically react to certain things in a culturally and socially acceptable way, rather than how their body wants to react. It makes me question what a true embodied experience would feel like.

 

Ultimately, my ideas about embodiment in media work have developed over the past three weeks, however there is of course more to learn. The short length media works have been a great start in strengthening my understanding of how to reflect a sense of embodiment. The use of different camera angles, certain sounds and colour grading all play a part amongst many other things. I hope to continue to focus on these important areas of media making.

Links to Blog Posts:

Media Bodies Wk1 – Walking and Sight

Media Bodies Wk2 – Standing and Hearing

Media Bodies Wk3 – Balancing and Dancing

 

Reference List:

 

Allan, J. L. (2019). Foggy notion: Sound and weather, and the intermingled senses. SoundEffects – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience, 8(1), 51–67.

‘Balance’ (1989) Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein. Material-Verlag [Short film] Place of distribution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PADVHR-_wOs

Block, B. and Kissell, JL (2001) ‘The dance: Essence of embodiment’, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 22(1), pp. 5–15.

Ellingson, L. L. (2012). Embodied knowledge. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (p. 245).

‘Notes on Blindness’, (2016) Peter Middleton and James Spinney. [Feature film]. [42:00-44:50] Place of distribution: https://rmit.kanopy.com/video/notes-blindness-0

 

 

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