In yesterday’s class, we worked in smaller groups and had time to have meetings/conversations about our progress with this upcoming assignment. Robbie asked for any concerns or questions to be fired away at him, which was reassuring for me, because despite having initial ideas for the framework to structure, I haven’t yet paired down the four words/phrasings to create the various media Robbie wants us to create.
When in conversation with Robbie, I reflected on the presentation posters I created with my visual and auditory observations from assignment 1, bringing up the ideas of the sacredness of silence as well as the weight of history and how it can affect our emotions and/or how we perceive the objects we associate with it. I brought up how throughout my father’s study; how I felt the weight of history and circumstance – through the collective knowledgebase and years of expertise most evident in the hundreds of books. T
his idea of history being handmade also goes hand in hand with the handmade antiquity of the other pieces of furniture in the room, leading me to discuss the word “handcraft” as an umbrella term in encompassing the relationship one has with the items he has made. It would also be a more ambiguous word and therefore open to interpretation and reinterpretation as part of the assignment.
On a similar wavelength, I discussed the idea of “texture”– more specifically how it can create a familiarity and connectivity with specific objects. In an audio capacity, it can give a sound some depth and can help a person identify with the sound in that it can involve other senses in interpretation. For example, when Robbie had asked us to load a loop we had recorded in our time away from class, I cued a loop I had recorded in my driveway of me walking on the gravel pathway. The rhythm of the footsteps gave away the fact that I was walking, but without the clunking and scraping of the rocks in the gravel rubbing together, there would have been no way of being sure what surface it was that I was walking on.
The final phrase I discussed was the idea of “stillness in silence” which I have touched on briefly in other blog posts. This was, in summary, the idea that silence is largely a still, empty commodity, which because of societal values and social cues, is often interpreted and reinterpreted depending on the context for which it exists. For example, in a private space it is, depending on the person, more tolerable than in social situations, where it is largely seen as a mark of awkwardness. I wanted to try and refine the phrase to a single word, with the words “quietus” and “quietude” being words at the forefront of my mind.
However Robbie disagreed, suggesting that I focus on the idea of “stillness” and how it is interpretable by means of media. I found this suggestion to be quite refreshing, as both “quietus” and “quietude” are themselves quite leading in that one already has an idea of what emotions are embedded in them. The word “stillness” however, can be framed in a similar way, yet is also malleable through the lens of actual still images of things, or in thinking about the way that images are captured within stills.
Robbie’s feedback yet again has been immensely helpful and eye opening, and is definitely something to think about going forward in this assignment.