WEEK 9

From Sarah & Lizzie –

WEDNESDAY CLASS

In Wednesday’s Class, we went through the creative possibilities for Task Four – showcasing our work in different mediums from previous ideas.

We looked at different media forms including sound, video art and mobile media works and how this can contribute to our own personal reflective task. For example, once examining the different media forms, I have decided to settle on a more artistic video reflection for my piece – particularly centered around mosaics and videography for the main theme.

From this, we discussed the states of natural and unnatural and how our own works can create sensory experiences, rather than just singular meaning. Thus, expressing your work in different formats can change the experience for the viewer – for example, using instagram as a medium to express your photos or tumblr to showcase your videography.

We also discussed creative possibilities and making media from non-linear and non traditional methods which was interesting to discuss and to hear people’s view on different things. We watched a couple of multimedia projects including: Interstitial Moment by Robert Croma, The Aesthetics of New Media Art by Johnathan Harris and Greg Hochmuch and The Enclave by Richard Mosse.

Thus, this further expanded our knowledge on the different showcasing of media and will be something we will consider going into task four.

THURSDAY CLASS

In Thursday’s class, we went through several tasks that would enable us to narrow our approach to task four. It was important that the idea we had for task four was open to flexibility but also had enough direction for us to work towards. Our first activity was to look at the small, big and biggest things that we wanted done in task four. The biggest things were basically the prompt or questions that we wanted explored or answered in task four- it was what we wanted to find out. The big things was more of a focus on what we had to do in order to answer the prompts we set ourselves. These things were fairly broad, whereas the small things were the very specific tasks that we reminded ourselves we needed to do for our task four. By separating our tasks into these columns, we could establish what individual tasks would lead us to achieve our goals.

Our next task was creating a timeline to plan out the next couple of weeks before task four is due. The previous chart made it a lot easier to devise a timeline, with an outline of the smaller things we had to accomplish in order to achieve the big.

Lastly, we listed the important words that related to our individual projects, in order to maintain the correct direction in our task four and not go off topic. These words can be drawn upon throughout our timeline to ensure we are exploring what we set out to.

WEEK 3

 

Wednesday class:

 

In Week 3 of the Seeing the Unseen studio, we had a temporary tutor, Sophie, who exposed us to the the concept of sound and its correlation between noticing and introspection. Starting off the lesson, the class grouped themselves according to the piece of reading they chose;

 

  1. Gallagher, Michael. “Listening, Meaning and Power.” On Listening. Edited by Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane, Uniformbooks, 2013
  2. Cusack, Peter. “Field Recordings as Sonic Journalism.” On Listening. Edited by Angus Carlyle & Cathy Lane, Uniformbooks, 2013

 

Discussion around the first reading involved the meaning and impact of sound – how humans always add meaning to sound and the two parties that are involved with sound, that is, the listener and the ‘other party’ creating the sound. To further expand, there are two assumptions that come with sound. The first one being is that “listening is primarily about the transmission of accuracy” – the listener is actively engaged in the act of comprehending what the other party is attempting to express. The second assumption is when listening is done ‘genuinely’ and not ‘tokenistically’, it enables both parties to be on equal footing. If sound validates power, then so must listening.

 

When it came to the second reading, Cusack highlighted the use of sound in a professional setting and of course, the implications that came with it. Radio news, current affairs, sound documentary are almost all unquestioned due to its reliance – this is rooting from the idea that sound, including non-speech gives the audience information about events and places. For example, listening on location can reveal hidden ideas and story, just based on listening. As Sophie mentioned, there is an affective quality of sound; a certain quality of it that is indescribable. Therefore, sound itself can produce so many different traits and attributes, igniting our senses and giving us opportunities to notice sound.

 

With the reading, came the listening exercises – this was done so in order for us to truly understand the meaning behind the readings;

 

  • the first audio was bombs being dropped in Beirut – it was a totally different sound from what I expected
  • Second audio: the sound of a motor boat with the recording device underwater – it had a sound similar to a heartbeat and was rhythmic
  • the final audio was another underwater audio, however it was different from the second one – it did not have any rhythmic qualities and it was more of a random pattern rather than the second audio

 

The lesson ended with Sophie assigning us the task of recording two pieces of audio – one needs to be in a quiet space and the second one needs to be recorded somewhere in our daily lives. What I got out from this lesson is that sound is a very powerful form of medium and should get more recognition that it is not already getting. Sound itself is noticing.

 

Thursday class:

The power of sound, without any background information or view we can easily paint the picture as sound gives the field of imagination to the audience.

 

Audio played in class – Poetry, Texas by Danish poet and radio producer Pejk Malinovski. (It is radio feature about the town in Texas called Poetry, as well as poetry as a form of writing)

https://soundcloud.com/fallingtreeproductions/poetry-texas?in=fallingtreeproductions/sets/place-based

For our second workshop we continued to have Sophie, we did different exercises aiming to be able to describe sound and to hear sound in a different way/ angle. Firstly, we shared and listened to each other’s recording from yesterday, we discovered that since this is our daily life so we might miss out a lot of small things when we passed everyday,  but when we change the mode of noticing to hear and to listen what are the surroundings in our daily life we all discovered that there were much more going on than we thought and noticed.  

Then, the second exercise was to list our what we can hear inside/outside the classroom and describe them in words (e.g. metaphor) to let the rest of the group guess what the sound you heard.  While discussion, most of us agreed that we will always notice the big things first no matter is through viewing or listening; we also agreed that we will notice human things first then an object. Maybe that’s why we can always find different things in the recording because there are so many layers of sound that we only have our attention on the obvious things (louder sound).

Acoustique – The last class exercise was to record 1 -2 minute, the recording needs to tell information about the space, looking at the change of space; the size of space etc. This exercise highlighted once more when people became used to something, it can a voice/ sound/ object they might not pay attention to it when we have already seen or heard it hundreds of time unless we make ourselves pay full attention to listening. For example, the tram, people who live in Melbourne will hear so many times of tram passed by around you, but how many times did we actually noticed the sound it stopped and moved again; what’s the difference between hearing the tram indoor and outdoor? Another example, when a space is crowded and huge, how far can we hear and how many layers of sound can we receive at the same time?