I unfortunately was not able to come to Mondays class, however the readings for week 4 gave me a solid insight as to what the focus of week 4 was, such as the idea of there being a blind spot in a photo or video, in which there is so much more to notice visually then what is seen straight away. The reading ‘ghostly forms and forest histories’ includes an extreme in depth description of the Author Andrew Matthews walking through a forest of trees with his botanist assistant, writing down and making note of every little detail that he notices, that not even a photo or video could give justice to. There is a photo attached to the book, of a tree stump, yet it is because of the description, the words, that coincide with the photo, that one can look outside of the blind spot, to notice so much more than whats seen in the photo.

The other reading for the week, ‘Blind Spot’ very much highlights the real science behind a humans blind spot in terms of perception, as it makes a point of asking the question, do we us as humans see the world directly, or a an “internally generated representation of the world.” For example in Wednesdays class, when we looked at Tian’s photo of a building in a city lane, along with listening to her description of what she saw, initially all I noticed was a building in a lane way. Yet when I began listening to her description of what she could notice, I noticed more in the photo, such as a red pole, black chairs and curved window frames.

During Wednesday’s class, we also were able to look at a project from a student from last year called ‘Mia’s The House’. This video had the exact same idea of including a visual of different rooms in her house, yet her own description of each room enabled me to notice more about the footage itself, as her words such as when she talks about her fridge taking up a lot space in the Kitchen, my attention did drift from just focusing on what was in the frame, to outside of the frame also. The idea of the ‘blind spot’ is very interesting and is something to think about for assessment 2, that audio has the ability to draw peoples attention away from solely what is being shown visually.