Week Seven “Describing Suburbia”
Title: Describing Suburbia
‘Ingredients’
- a camera (phone, film, DSLR – whatever works for you)
- a timer
‘Method’
- Walk around your local suburb for half an hour. For every five minutes of that half, an hour set an alarm.
- When that alarm goes off – take a photo of your situation – and focus on the details of your surroundings.
- Document and analyse the six photos.
PHOTOS
Reflection
Not only is travel something that most individuals do in their everyday life, the environment that they are in the most, or live in is something they become attuned to. Often individuals do not notice the smaller details that come with living in a familiar place, they are just natural to your surroundings. Through this exercise, I not only noticed more details around Carlton (where I live) but also how much I actually miss out on through an unfocused mind. Not only was walking around and photographing something that caught me off guard, I paid more attention to finding certain details in a photo of where I was at the time that I would usually. Attentive noticing is something that does not come easily to me as I often find myself ‘multitasking’ most activities nowadays. However, through this exercise, I not only allowed myself to find the time to focus and capture details in the Carlton environment but I also expressed the need for attentive noticing in everyday life. This act of mindfulness and perception is also subjective because individuals will see things based on their own interpretation of the environment – thus, those viewing the photos will only see the details that I have chosen to focus on, making it impressionistic.
Furthermore, taking photos with specific timings not only provides continuity but also allows the individual not ‘focus’ on taking the perfect shot or the perfect angle – taking photos this way allows the person who is photographing to pay attention to the details of the ‘aesthetics’ of the photograph, but more capturing the details about the subject/area/hobby that they are trying to portray. I found this method effective in media making as it allowed me to release some of my perfectonistic traits (ie: perfect lighting, setting up the perfect angle, capturing certain details) and just take a quick photo about my day.
In some regards, all forms of media are subjective to some degree – every individual will interpret things differently depending on their background and what they ‘see’ in the artwork. A perfect example of this was the Patrick Pound exhibition at the NGV. Pound is a Melbourne-based photographer who focused on seemingly inanimate and ‘meaningless’ objects but presents them in a way for the “viewer to unravel or identify” (NGV Australia). This re-grouping of these objects presents a view that individuals can figure out their own meaning for the art, similarly something I wanted to express in my media making: a non-subjective and non-narrative unexplained piece that allows the viewer to be in control. One of the pieces that I find particularly prominent is included below. This connectivity between the lines of string could be from anywhere in the world or in any place, however, you could fit them into your own circumstance, which is something that I wanted to achieve when designing this experiment and the outcome.
Tangled 2012–15
Collection of the artist (Patrick Pound)
Courtesy of Station, Melbourne, Stills Gallery, Sydney, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington and Melanie Roger Gallery, Auckland
© Patrick Pound