Starting assignment 2 was always going to be the start of a real test – the first real time we take our knowledge and try to apply it to our surroundings. In the last assignment, I realized that in order to gain more out of observation than simple remarks about the environment was to change perspective; that is, to ask questions about why something exists in an environment and how it contributes overall. In one’s home environment it can be a lot different because of the context of home, and I found I had to work hard to find new perspectives to a place I already know too well.
In coming up with the initial words, I struggled to piece together how I’d approach fitting the sounds, photos and videos into each word category. I wanted to focus on the aspects of our home environment we become so accustomed to and yet ignore the beauty of. I formulated that I would need to omit a lot of the context of whatever I documented to isolate any bias I would have of the subject, and judge it precisely for how it appears in the media created.
This ultimately helped me in creating I feel, because I was able to really hone in on things around the place without the fear of it not being recognizable to others and to myself. It added new depth and layers to the media, and made sure that the content itself was more multifaceted. For example, in photographing the “remains” section, I came across a flower in my garden whilst annotating outside that was beautiful in conjunction with the other flowers and yet had had a lot of the pollen sucked out of it by bees. This made me rewired my thinking of what remains can consist of, and a point that was raised in class as feedback.
I really tried to make sure the work was high quality in terms of the definition of the photos and video, and a seamless display of transitioning textures and tones throughout the sonic element – which was received well by some of my classmates. I was relieved to hear that the omission of context translated well to some of the other students – particularly about the “remains” section, which one person said could be something very interesting to explore and one she would be interested in. This gave me confidence that I had achieved my goal in trying to document “the unnoticeable ever-present of our presence” (the tagline I chose to accompany the project).
Whilst in retrospect I wish I had had a more solid ground before talking to Robbie in class about the words I had chosen to document, I believe had my ideas been more defined earlier on in the process they’d have likely been more rigid, and I wouldn’t have been able to explore my household surroundings with as much freedom as I did. Ultimately the feedback I received in class gave me confidence that I am heading in an interesting direction, and reinforced that I need to back my ideas and myself a little more than I currently do.