Please follow this link to find the assignment posted previously on my blog.

Prior to beginning this assignment, there were no sites that immediately came to mind as places I was particularly interested in unpacking in the same way I did with my home space for the Home In The World investigation. However, meeting with Georgia and Daniel (see this post) set me on a clear and confident trajectory as we grappled with the ideas of sacredness and placeness and to which sites they might apply. We decided that these concepts are dependant on community and identity, and that often a place is gradually imbued with an aura of sacredness as it facilitates and fosters a burgeoning community.

With this connection to community established, Georgia suggested that we investigate The Tote, with its history as a hub for underground musical experimentation and live music. It was a great idea, and when we recalled the Save Live Australian Music rally of 2010 that rescued the venue from imminent closure, we realised the significance and worship that the venue receives and realised that it was the perfect opportunity.

We decided to pursue the venue in a way that separated it from how it might usually be perceived or experienced – stripping it back, with the hopes of finding evidence of community presence. To aid us in this pursuit, we devised the following three prompts:

– Place as Connection to Scene and Identity
– Emptiness/Negative Space
– People/Place/Community

Heading into the documentation I was particularly interested in the emptiness and negative space within The Tote, seeing as I’ve only ever been there when it has been filled and buzzing. I decided to visit the venue on my own before we planned to head in to re-familiarise myself with its usual energy and presence. I found this to be a useful exercise, especially when I did eventually compare the experience to our access during the day a few days later, as I became acutely aware of the myriad cultural artefacts: the imprints and messages committed to the surfaces, the stains and fraying fabrics, the shrines of posters and band worship. Each of these pointed to active community participation and cultivation within these walls, a process that I’ve been a part of but never aware of because it’s been too enjoyable in the moment.

The empty Tote gave me the opportunity to experiment with the idea of emptiness where it isn’t usually accessible. I was drawn to finding the ways that The Tote was animated and could breathe, particularly through the movements of light throughout the space. I found the immersive experience to be quite glorious and has redefined the feeling of that venue for me. These are ideas that I would be interested in pursuing further: to what extent is a place ’empty’? What is stillness? Does a place rely upon a particular community to remain accessible and alive? Does the degree of emptiness in a place have an effect on its sacredness? Is a place able to contain emptiness or is it only experienced? Does the experience of emptiness alter one’s perception of place?

I was pleased with the editing phase of this project, especially because I found Georgia and Daniel to be inspiring and cooperative collaborators. It was during this process that I discovered how crucial it is to establish a solid foundation in the pre-production/planning stage, as I feel we had done, which meant heading into The Tote could be experienced joyfully and curiously, and that curating the results was fascinating and rewarding. I am pleased that I’ve had the opportunity to work with them and will be keen to feedback into their respective further investigations.

Today we spent class time sorting through the material we captured yesterday. I’m glad that we separated the production and post-production a day apart as it allowed me to approach the content with fresh and critical eyes. We gathered a great deal of material and it was difficult to narrow it down to the most effective few glimpses – we spent the entire three hours essentially condensing our findings to a suitable amount for submission. We arrived at each decision with a lot of discussion and eventually assessed the material based on how much it related to a sense of Place, Placeness or Placelessness.

I found working with Georgia and Daniel during this process to be really productive and enjoyable. I feel as though the assignment has thrived from each of our different perspectives and approaches to it, with each of us bringing slightly different aims and skillsets to the making of it. I’m thankful that our visions aligned at the beginning as it gave me the freedom to explore The Tote without worrying too much about whether or not it would co-mingle with Georgia or Daniel’s findings – I had faith that we shared a wavelength. I feel as though this process thusfar has been stress-free, which has opened my eyes to the fact that experimentation with solid foundations doesn’t need to be stressful and can in fact be exciting and playful. From looking at the material today it was confirmed for me that we were on the same wavelength, which has me excited to wrap this up and present next week.

Today we had access to The Tote at 2pm, with every room available for us to investigate. Within the first five minutes it was clear how differently the space presents itself when stripped of what I thought were its defining qualities – the people, the loud music, the chatter and buzz. The way the light poured in through the windows and illuminated the stained floors and scuffed walls gave it all a soft, almost heavenly aura, which hopefully in our documentation plays well to the idea of this place being a sacred, ritual site.

There was plenty of evidence of people, materialised in sticky footsteps by the bar, marks left on tables from pints and messages inscribed on almost every surface. Feeding further into the aura of the place was the gentle hum of fridges and generators in almost every room, providing a gentle bed to our tranquil, somewhat meditative time spent there.

I found the experience to be really engaging and exciting and feel as though we’ve captured some interesting content. I’m looking forward to getting together to experiment with these fragments and finding their overlaps.

Last night I made my way to The Tote quite late in the evening armed with a H4N Zoom Recorder to collect sounds of the venue as it is familiar to me: packed with patrons and music booming. I had originally intended to visit during a gig that seemed to me like a classic gig one would find at The Tote (independent day festival comprised of obscure, experimental genre-bending bands) but unfortunately I didn’t make it in time.

I arrived at around 10:00pm and the venue was still relatively lively with the post-gig loiterers. I was aiming to capture nondescript conversation and did at certain points, although more often the Zoom was very receptive to specific conversations. The recordings I did get have personality and are quite lively and humorous. I’m glad I made the trip out to the Tote last night and am now looking forward to having access during the day on Wednesday to compare the experience.

Yesterday I met with Daniel and Georgia for the first time to discuss our ideas heading into the next assignment. Unpacking the concepts of Place, Placeness and Placelessness, we agreed that The Tote in Collingwood is representative of each of these ideas and worth investigating.

We discussed how The Tote is a place of ritual for many, whether it be as a place to gather and drink or to discover new music and support the underground rock and experimental music scene. Doing a little research reminded me of its fairly recent closure in 2010, which prompted a massive uproar in the form of the Save Live Music rallies – a response that saved the venue and has kept it up and running to this day. Clearly this venue is cherished and has a story within its walls.

I have been to The Tote many times, even performing there on numerous occasions, so I am quite familiar of its energy within the live music context. For this assignment we are hoping to gain access to the venue during the day to document its bare presence, stripped of occupants, buzz and music. I am hopeful that we will have this opportunity and fascinated even at the thought of how different the feeling of being at The Tote at this time would be.

Heading into this assignment I was confident in the choice of prompts and decided to challenge myself to using a DSLR and Zoom recorder rather than my phone as I have experimented with my phone in the past. I am glad I made this decision as I was pleased with the quality of the material as it was eventually presented and feel that it forced me to concentrate on the creation process in a way that I might not have had I just used my phone.

As I set about collecting material for these prompts I struggled with PERFORMANCE, especially because I felt that the other three prompts dovetailed into each other quite well. I decided to focus on PRESENCE instead as a counterpoint to TRANSCENDENCE, which also made a clear connection to ROUTINE and ATTENTION and it was at this point that the process really began for me.

The process of collecting the rushes was the most difficult as I scoured the home space artefacts that would give a different interpretation of each prompt. PRESENCE was immediately inspiring as I was curious to see how I could find presence in a space without or with very little human presence. Here I found myself drawn to the trace of human presence, generally there was a sense of someone having been there prior to the shot being taken. The main exception I found was the footage of the leaf turning in the wind which to me had a ghostly elegance to it. In future pursuits of the idea of presence I’ll challenge myself to finding various types of presence in usually inanimate objects or structures, thinking beyond the ways that humans can leave an imprint.

For ATTENTION, ROUTINE and TRANSCENDENCE, I wanted to find ways of framing everyday activities that detached them from our usual understanding in some way so that they could stand alone as events. I was pleased with the way that the footage of the TV turned out as filming at that distance from the TV gave the fast-cutting content a dreamlike feel, and shooting the garage door mechanism from underneath made me realise how much more familiar I am with the sound it makes than the visual mechanics.

My favourite part of the process was editing as I was able to quite randomly throw a lot of the sounds into the sequence and have really compelling results. Before I began the assignment I was more drawn to the idea of very deliberately composing a soundscape, but the freedom of having a random order gave new life to both the clips and the sounds as they coalesced and emphasised certain aspects of each other. I found that changing the PERFORMANCE prompt to PRESENCE in the beginning of the process meant that all of the prompts felt connected enough that I was confident in being able to throw these sounds at the video content and find all of the pieces interacting in dynamic ways.

See below hyperlink to progress post:

Prompt Reflections / Contemplations