Group Media Collection – As Grief Holds Us

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/2021-collecting-embodiment/2021/06/02/as-grief-holds-us/?fbclid=IwAR1KoqzbJV93fDI4d0JDJj1z4JsvZ0paOlq2JvCkp8YbOcbVO5Cnfao4k_8

Links to Weekly Blog Posts

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/andrew-eaton/2021/06/07/week-9-the-pitch/

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/andrew-eaton/2021/06/07/week-10-texture/

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/andrew-eaton/2021/06/07/week-11-perspective/

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/andrew-eaton/2021/06/07/week-12-finishing-off/

Individual Reflection

My idea of the term embodiment has changed drastically over this semester, as I have come to learn it can incorporate every feeling and experience within and outside of our bodies. Through the weekly readings, we focussed on specific aspects of embodiment, and I feel as if working on the final assignment has brought all this knowledge together in a very clear way. I am definitely a hands on learner, so applying it to my own work in this way has been engaging and rewarding.

Moving on from assignment 3, it was clear to me that I wanted to produce a final work that was quite personal to me in some ways. It was quite a moment of clarity for me when during peer feedback it was pointed out that the work I was producing in assignment 3 was really quite personal, even though I had portrayed myself as a character to allow for some space between myself and the subject matter. I was somewhat aware that I was doing this, but it really hit home when the pieces were together as a collection. For two of these three pieces, I used point of view shots to place the viewer into the situation I was taking them into; non-gendered subtitles also helped with this. I used a POV shot in my final work because of this, as I was told that it was quite effective in peer feedback. A question that has arisen for me because of this relates to the ethics involved with deeply immersive experiences such as virtual reality headsets, as it is easy to imagine that soon it will be entirely possible to put a headset on and be transported into a deeply impactful, potentially traumatic experience. Is this the future of the horror movie experience? Why do we like exposing ourselves to these very deep and painful feelings? However, this also goes the other way. I believe virtual reality cuts to the chase when we talk about how media can be used to convey the feeling of embodiment; it utilises point of view, sound, and motion sensitive technology to transport us into a different setting, or into a virtual body. I have been interested in this sort of technology for some time now and I am looking forward to seeing many positive applications of it in the future. It is already being utilised in medical training and simulation type scenarios for other high stress occupations, creating a more comfortable transition.

When we first started thinking about the exhibition, I instantly began to think about how interesting it would be to apply virtual reality technology in this setting. However, this was out of our scope. Instead, I thought about other ways in which we could help to fully immerse the audience within a media-based experience such as this. Not long before we began to think about assignment 5, I went to the Melbourne Museum with a friend. In the ‘Human Body’ section of the museum there is an exhibition about medical advancements through history. In this section there are a couple of small, completely black booths with a TV screen in them, with a black curtain you can shut behind you. When you do this, the screen turns on, and you are confronted with videos of people talking about their experience with different mental health problems. This sort of setting means there are no external distractions, and it made the content incredibly impactful; it had a profound effect on me. We originally tossed around the idea of using portable screens to be able to screen off the rest of the classroom, which would have helped to minimise some distractions. We found some helpful ideas in an article titled ‘Grief inspired Design’, in which a software developer writes about how processing grief and developing functional software can share similarities; ‘When suffering from grief our thoughts are jumbled like the worst spaghetti code you’ve ever seen’. How could we show this in the exhibition? Another idea we came up with was to utilise sound cancelling headphones. I would really like to be able to create work that is displayed in an exhibition like setting in the future, as I believe the extra dimensions that this sort of space affords us can really help to communicate the core concept of the work. One of the main considerations we had to keep in mind when thinking about how we could exhibit our works was how to convey the non-linear nature of grief, within the works themselves and within the exhibition space. Initially we thought of using the portable screens to create a maze, leading the audience to three different screens in three different places. Some helpful feedback we received from the guest lecturers after our pitch in week 9 was to consider the use of placards to describe the work and to warn of its potentially triggering content. Unfortunately, the exhibition was unable to go ahead because of lockdown 4.0, but this seemed to fit with our final production well, as I am sure a lot of people were thrown directly back into certain feelings that they thought may have been left in the past.

As we explored different topics and a variety of media examples each, my understanding of embodiment and embodied knowledge expanded every week. Now at the end of semester, I have realised how most forms of media and communication attempt to tap into the idea of embodiment in a variety of ways, convincing us that our daily, in-body experience can be improved through buying or trying new things. A concept that really captured my attention was synaesthesia, where one sense can be influenced by inputs received by other senses. The podcast that we listened to in week 3, ‘Sonic Seasoning’ featuring Dave Parsons, introduced me to how our susceptibility to synaesthesia can be taken advantage of in subtle ways; to increase sales in a restaurant setting  with waiters walking through with sizzling hot plates of fajitas, to tap into our hunger as we watch ads on TV via the use of exaggerated crunching and other sounds, and how our perception of the taste of the same chocolate can be persuaded by different soundwaves. The widespread use of marketing tactics such as these made me think about how they could be implemented in more insidious ways, manipulating us to make a certain decision without any conscious thought. How can I become more aware of the interplay between our senses? How can I actively practice being in touch with every sense? These are questions I will continue to ask myself as I experience life through the body I have. I have found that practicing yoga regularly has enabled me to centre myself, and to connect to my body through breathing. The balancing exercises that we took part in during week six solidified this realisation for me, as I inadvertently slowed down my breathing during the exercises to maintain composure and balance. I can now apply certain breathing techniques when I am feeling anxious or stressed to almost instantly provide some relief, a strategy I wish I were aware of many years ago.  The relationships that exist between our minds, body and breathing continue to interest me highly, as I believe they can be harnessed to bring clarity and stillness into our lives, which can often feel like they have control over every physical move. I have learnt so much in this course that I will take with me into the future, continually exploring and recognising the importance of sensory inputs into my living experience.

References
Seremetakis, CN (1994), ‘The Memory of the Senses, Part I: Marks of the Transitory’, The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity Routledge, London: 1-18

Samadbeik M, Yaaghobi D, Bastani P, Abhari S, Rezaee R, Garavand A (2018), ‘The applications of virtual reality technology in medical groups teaching’,
J Adv Med Educ Prof, Google Scholar. P 123-129

Sonic Seasoning, Dave Parsons, Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast ep 23, Sep 6 2017

Kennedy, M (2019), ‘Grief Inspired Design’, UX Collective https://uxdesign.cc/grief-inspired-design-b9710b04eda8

We were still deciding between displaying our works on a website, embedded in a rotating fashion, so that a viewer could choose to watch in whatever order they like, and having three individual screens with headsets so that three people could engage with the works at once. Once again, our grand plans were scrambled by the announcement of another lockdown. We thought that the rotating motion would add to the fact that grief can be experienced in cycles; sometimes, it can take many years for people to fully come to terms with and accept traumatic events. By using headsets, the viewer would be fully immersed in the work, and there would be no distracting background noise. When we showed other members of the class some rough footage and edits in Thursdays class, the feedback we received affirmed that there was clear cohesion between the pieces, and that the atmospheres we were building up in each piece were distinct and impactful. Some feedback that I will be considering for my own work is to make sure that the white balance is correct for some of the shots, as one of my practice shots included a bright computer screen which completely washed out the shot.

As a group we really enjoyed this week’s exercise. Having established the background context for our videos, we thought it would be a nice idea to try and capture some footage of a common action in this context; using the vending machine. We captured the sounds that this machine made after making a selection, as well as the sounds of a small bottle of sanitizer being popped open and applied. We filmed the scenario from a distance, but recorded the sounds from close up, to observe the effect that the amplified sound would have when imposed over the footage. Unfortunately we ran out of time this week but I think this technique could be helpful when thinking about how we will convey the feelings of each of our characters in our final work- we have discussed using the cooking of eggs as a motif to convey emotion, and the amplified beating of an egg could really display frustration or anger, as well as creating an uncomfortable irritation for the viewer. We were thinking of using headsets for the exhibition, eliminating any distracting noises in the room. Going forward, we hope to have all of our footage filmed by the weekend so we have ample time to edit everything together and maintain cohesion between our works.

Going into the final assignment for the semester, I am looking forward to producing media alongside my group members, Rishi and Sofia. The collaborative contract that we filled out last week will be helpful for us to refer to, as we focussed on being open and honest with each other about how much work we are able to take on. Because we have also chosen to produce a work based around rather heavy subject matter (the non-linear nature of the five stages of grief), we will have to also make sure to check in with each other on a weekly basis without being intruding. We received some particularly helpful feedback in the pitch session, and the guest lecturers/tutors seemed excited to see what we will produce. Some of the feedback affirmed our willingness to portray the different levels that grief exists on; we can experience these painful emotions from seemingly small losses. Working as a group will allow us to properly explore this scope. As we mostly focussed on conveying the concept, whilst floating some ideas about the execution, I believe it would be helpful for us to have a solid idea of the work we will be producing by next week. That way, we can start figuring out ways to make it all flow together as a collection and have plenty of time to film and edit.

I found that focussing on the textures Rishi and I filmed in Bowen street had me imagining the emotions that the different shapes and lines were making me feel, if I viewed them as metaphorical. This could be put to great use in our works, as we are exploring some very personal subject matter that differs for everyone; maybe if we were able to utilise texture to convey emotion through metaphor, our audience would feel more able to connect with the work as opposed to us presenting personal stories through dialogue and the like. We received great feedback for the footage that we shot, and although we did not really connect it back to the overall work in this group session, it was apparent from classmates’ reactions that the different textures shown had a similar effect on everyone. After a bumpy start, our next step forward will be to reconcile and pull together as a team. We have started to flesh out our ideas that we explored last week a lot more and have begun to think about the narratives we will use to provide context to the feelings we are experiencing. I find myself coming back to the Greek translation of nostalgia, nostalghia, in the Seremetakis reading from week three; it translates to grieving for the loss of the past, a place which you cannot return. Maybe we could explore the idea of coming back to grieve the past beyond the acceptance stage, as grief never truly ends in some cases.

Producing these works over the first three weeks of this Studio has opened me up to different ways of producing media, as each unique sense we focused on required a certain approach, guided by class discussion, readings, and course framework.

In the first week, I created a narrative that leaves some room for interpretation around an exaggerated personal connection to a zippo lighter, which is re-activated by physical touch. My own connection to the lighter is not far from the perspective of the character in the work, and I really enjoyed attempting to create a sense of closeness and emotional sensitivity in the work through point of view filming and an intimate voiceover.

The second work is quite close to the subject matter of the first, portraying the same sense of emotional connection to memory, activated through smelling the different scents of garden flowers being prepared as a gift of affection. In this piece, these scents end up leading the character to a bitter place in their mind, leading to the abandonment of the bouquet-to-be in the closest compost bin, representative of the decay of love which hangs around the former lover referred to in the title screens.

The third and final work is a complete deviation from the first two, primarily through the omission of video, but also in the general mood that surrounds it. Potentially a subconscious pushback from the serious nature of the first two works, I had fun creating a short song which outlines my love for Sushi on a Sunday. Through metaphor, rhyme, and alliteration, as well as soundbites found on zapsplat.com, I managed to create a sonic representation of one of my personal weekly rituals and the taste involved.

When watching Jan Švankmajer’s work ‘Descendo Até o Porão’ (1983) (Down to the Cellar) in week one, I noted that the dim lighting and heavy shadows that are present in the cellar accentuate the unknown, placing the audience in the young girls position, almost ‘feeling’ a way through the darkness. The first person point of view shots that are also utilized accentuate this feeling, and they instill an uncomfortable tension in the piece. I used my notes on Down to the Cellar to guide my approach to the first work, with the beginning of the singular POV shot focusing on my hand opening a doorway in darkness, immediately connecting the work to the idea of touch. Moving through the doorway, it is hard to make out any clear objects in the darkness, which feels disorientating, as if you want to grab out and reach something to steady yourself.

I tried to create a sense of tension in this piece by including the hammer in the frame as the lighter is located, potentially creating an expectation that it will be used to destroy the lighter in an act of violence, as well as the reflection of the methylated spirits shining off the top of the casing. Due to the shed setting, I don’t think either of these objects are out of place enough to create the tension I intended, and I could have included some sort of backing track or increasingly frantic flipping of the lighter lid to enhance this. It could have been more effective to use closed captions instead of a voiceover, which identifies the gender of the character. The unsettling sounds created by interacting with the lighter (scraping the sawdust and filings off the casing/ flipping the lid) would have stood out more as well if I had done this instead, as there is some sort of interfering feedback in the voiceover audio.

For my second work, I used close up shots with a slow zoom in/out camera movement to mimic the action of leaning in to smell a flower. Combined with the audio track of a deep inhale and exhale, the work is concerned with the smell of the flowers in focus, and the different memories which the character is triggered to relive through these smells. I chose to use a black background with white text for these titles screens instead of acting out the associated memories or signifying them in another way because it helps to depersonalise the experience, allowing the audience to create some connection with the memories referenced in the work in their own mind. I could have used some editing skills to my advantage here, building up the pace of the cuts as the character gets closer and closer to a breakdown. This would have been an effective way to introduce tension.

One of my ideas to convey the stench of the compost bin was to use an intense backing track of flies buzzing/ insects crawling when this final shot comes onto screen, which may have had a similar effect as the audio which accompanies the opening scene of ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’. Instead, I found that the heavy breathing worked better as a contrast to the slow, almost meditative breaths of the previous shots, helping to convey the pain that the bitter memories had bought back to the character.

Bitter memories aside, I focused on creating a positive feeling in my work relating to taste, using soundbites to convey texture and feeling. In hindsight I wish I had dug deeper to find more sounds to create layers of sonic representation, maybe even creating a beat composed of singular sounds which I most closely relate to the individual ingredients of a perfect sushi roll. I am really happy with how the sound of uplifting chimes and visceral chewing combine towards the end of the piece; to me, this is the closest sonic representation of eating sushi. If the chimes were ethereal or haunting however, I am sure Charles Spence would vouch for the fact that the imagined sushi roll would not be nice at all.

It is only upon reflection that I have realised how personal the works I have produced are to me and my own experience of being in my body, despite being conscious of trying to make them as accessible and openly relatable as possible. As a collection, they reveal insight into my own experiences, and some into the experience of being within a body. I think this is a reflection of my developing understanding that we all experience this reality in completely different ways, based on different sensory sensitivities and perspectives. The first few weeks of this studio have made me excited for the future, thinking about the possibilities that different forms of media could bring to the experience of embodiment; it may be the case that we are able to experience the exact opposite through virtual reality and complete disembodiment, or experience the feeling of being within another body which is alien to us. I particularly enjoyed shooting the first two works in POV and thinking about how other people would react to being in this position.

The main concept that runs through these works as a collection is how we are connected to our sense of self and memory by triggering certain sensory inputs, and I have managed to tie together some of my own personal sensory triggers and their associated memories. The collection would work well presented together as an insight into my life and my experience being in my body, but without that context, the third piece is too jarringly different when put next to the first two works, primarily based on the mood that it emits.

Key Ideas and Concepts from the Readings
1. The Greek translation of nostalgia, nostalghia; meaning the ‘desire or longing with burning pain to journey’ (Nadia Seremetakis, 1993) back to ones previous sensory experiences. I find it interesting that we can be triggered by repetitive sensory experiences, and pained by the unique, never to occur again sensory experiences of our past.

2. The concept of ‘Hapticality’ (Elizabeth Straughan, 2012), from the Greek ‘haptikos’, meaning to be able to sense or touch. Hapticality refers to our ability to sense the world through each other, as we share common senses below our developed individualities.

3. The idea that senses mediate social interaction, as put forward by Anthony Synnott in ‘A Sociology of Smell’. This idea can be juxtaposed nicely with that of hapticality, as we are able to sense that we share the same base consciousness, whilst creating boundaries through other senses.

Links to mediafactory blogs

Week 3- Taste

Week 2 – Smell

Week 1 – Touch

References

Dave Parsons, Twenty Thousand Hertz #23, Sonic Seasoning, Available at https://www.20k.org/episodes/sonicseasoning

Nadia Seremetakis, C., 1993. The Memory of the Senses: Historical Perception, Commensal Exchange and Modernity. Visual Anthropology Review, 9(2), pp.2-18.

Straughan, E. R. (2012). Touched by water: The body in scuba diving. Emotion, Space and Society, 5(1), 19–26

Dennis D. Waskul, Phillip Vannini & Janelle Wilson (2009) The Aroma of
Recollection: Olfaction, Nostalgia, and the Shaping of the Sensuous Self, The Senses and Society,
4:1, 5-22, DOI: 10.2752/174589309X388546

Down the Cellar, 1983, (online), Jan Švankmajer, Czechoslovakia, viewed 10/3/21

Perfume; the Story of a Murderer, 2006, (online), Tom Tykwer, Germany, viewed 14/3/21

For my third media artefact of the studio, I have produced a short song which aims to describe my relationship with Sushi; the process of wanting and getting sushi, particularly on a Sunday, and the tastes and textures that accompany my preferred hangover curing delicacy.

I started off by writing some lyrics which rely heavily on narrative and metaphor to convey my love, as follows;

Feeling quite seedy on a Sunday
Rice and seaweed walk through my mind like a runway
Now all I can think about is some sushi
That salmon rich and shiny like the leather on your Gucci
Capsicum bringing just the right amount of crunchy
Wasabi up the nose like the heat just punched me
All these thoughts have me feeling quite hungry
Needing some munchies just to get me through to Monday
I hop in my car, already salivating
Pedal to the floor because I can’t keep waiting
De ja vu hitting me like I’ve been here before
I get it every weekend when I walk into the store
Brain feeling cooked so I’m craving that raw
One roll, two rolls, three rolls four
Plastic container with the signature crinkle
Ginger in a baggie making taste buds tingle
Sublimely slimy chewing all up in my mouth
It’s a shame that in an hour ill be spewing it out

Through these lyrics I have tried to describe the sense of taste experienced when eating sushi by using metaphors and alliteration in particular, such as ‘Wasabi up the nose like the heat just punched me’, and ‘sublimely slimy’. I hope the vivid imagery I utilise makes listeners hungry, up until the last part of the song. Then I can consider it a success. Wasabi is a crucial part of the sushi experience; there is nothing quite like the rush of heat through your sinuses, usually unintended to be so intense. It catches you by surprise if you happen to chew the piece of sushi with the wasabi towards the palate. The low production value of the song is intended to mimic my mind-state on a cloudy Sunday morning, the time of week I have dedicated to this particular ritual. Something I failed to mention in the lyrics is that I used to get sushi with my family about once a week, so I have very tender memories of it. Maybe this is why I resort to it as a comfort food, as it subconsciously reminds me of more wholesome times with family. After our class discussion last week, I have been paying close attention to how multi-modal the sensation of eating food truly is- there isn’t a sense left out of the experience. It makes me a bit sad thinking back to how seemingly mindlessly the people we observed at the Melbourne Central food court were eating their food, hurriedly working their way through a plate or bowl loaded up with delicious looking food whilst scrolling on their phone. It seemed like a lot of people, especially those eating alone, were eating mainly for nutrition to get them through the day, as if eating had become some sort of replenishment chore.

I found the soundbites I used intermittently on Zapsplat.com, which I think helps to further exaggerate some of the imagery. One part in particular I am happy with is the chimes and the intense chewing sounds that accompany the ‘Ginger in a baggie making taste buds tingle, sublimely slimy chewing all up in my mouth’ lyrics towards the end of the song, as to me, these two sounds together are the closest sonic representation of what it feels like to eat sushi. I think these sounds worked well, and in hindsight I wish I had dug deeper to find more sounds to create layers of sonic representation, maybe even creating a beat composed of singular sounds which I most closely relate to the individual ingredients of a perfect sushi roll. That is a concept I am looking forward to trying out in the future, and this would have allowed me to avoid explicit lyrical reference to the experience of eating sushi.

A concept I found interesting in this weeks reading is that the word nostalgia in the English language ‘implies trivializing romantic sentimentality’, but the Greek translation ‘nostalghia’ means the ‘desire or longing with burning pain to journey’, and is linked to the ‘personal consequences of historicizing sensory experience’. The fact that we keep fond sensory experiences on a pedestal in our mind and further embellish them with time, only to be hurt by the subsequent fact that we cannot experience the exact combination of sensory inputs again, is really intriguing to me.

Reference
Seremetakis, CN (1994) ‘The Memory of the Senses, Part I: Marks
of the Transitory’, The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as
Material Culture in Modernity Routledge, London: 1-18

Smell from Andrew Eaton on Vimeo.

An unidentifiable character begins to pick flowers for someone they love, with the scent of each flower bringing back memories from the relationship. Through this process they realise that over time, like flowers, the love shared between the two has decomposed, and the flowers end up in the compost bin rather than a vase.

I expanded upon one of Mia’s groups contributions to the smell narrative discussion board to guide my approach for the video; ‘Flowers – finding flowers to express your love towards someone’. I have always thought that flowers are quite interesting as an expression of love, because despite their beauty, once cut from the main plant, they will only remain beautiful for a short period of time before dying and rotting. Maybe there is a metaphoric truth about love that we can see and relate to by observing this process, because love can be bittersweet and short-lived as tensions begin to build in a relationship. The title screens I used to build the narrative in my video are as follows;

(Flower one)- Close up shot with inhale, exhale audio. Snip sound brings in black screen, white text describing a memory. Repeat for remaining flowers.

(Title Screen 1)- Kind of like your perfume. What was it called again?

(Title Screen 2)- Our picnics in the gardens. The heady scent takes me there.

(Title Screen 3)- Almost as sweet as you. Painfully sweet.

(Title Screen 4)- Not sweet enough to hide bitter memories.

(Compost) – Forget about it. Your love stinks.

With the video component of the exercise, I used close up shots with a slow zoom in/out camera movement to mimic the leaning in to smell a flower. Combined with the audio track of a deep inhale/ exhale, the video is quite obviously focused on the smell of the flowers, and the text component links the different smells to different memories- I chose to use a black background with white text for these titles screens instead of acting out the associated memories or signifying them in another way because it further depersonalises the experience, hopefully allowing the audience to create some connection with the memories referenced in the work in their own mind. Perfume is a very personal thing; we can sometimes identify when someone is/ has been around if we can smell their perfume. The question ‘what was it called again?’ indicates time between this memory and the picking of the flowers, the first hint that there is something amiss in the relationship in question.

One of my ideas to convey the stench of the compost bin was to use an intense backing track of flies buzzing/ insects crawling when this shot comes onto screen, which may have had a similar effect as the audio which accompanies the opening scene of ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’. Instead, I found that the heavy breathing worked better as a contrast to the slow, almost meditative breaths of the previous shots, helping to convey the pain that the bitter memories had bought back to the character. I hope that it also has a jarring effect on an audience, because the previous shots may have worked to stimulate an imagination of the smells pictured. Some of the feedback I received in class was that maybe some of the shots dragged on a bit, or felt too long. I wonder if this would feel different if I started to build the pace of the video up through quicker cuts, leading to the throwing of the flowers into the compost bin.

I would like to further explore words and phrases which relate to the sense of smell, as I found reading the text version of ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ in class was particularly powerful in it’s ability to convey certain smells, particularly through phrases such as ‘pungently sweet’ when referring to the smell of stale urine in a lavatory. The connection between the senses, and how certain words can instantly trigger our minds to imagine certain smells, is fascinating to me. Especially when many of the words used are not part of our everyday vocabulary, but we can still vividly imagine the associated smell.

Touch from Andrew Eaton on Vimeo.

-A man finds an old zippo lighter he has been looking for, and upon holding it once more, feels a  strong connection to a long lost relationship.

For the first weekly exercise, I built a narrative around an exaggerated personal connection to a zippo lighter, with the character portrayed existing somewhere between my personal reality and fiction. I associate many memories and emotions with the lighter, which is an object I interact with and feel a connection to the past through touch, so I found it quite easy to get into the headspace of creating a story behind the object that still remains open to interpretation and hopefully transferrable to an audience.

When watching Jan Švankmajer’s work ‘Descendo Até o Porão’ (1983) (Down to the Cellar), I noted that the dim lighting and heavy shadows that are present in the cellar accentuate the unknown, placing the audience in the young girls position, almost ‘feeling’ a way through the darkness. The first person point of view shots that are also utilized accentuate this feeling, and they instill an uncomfortable tension in the piece. I used my notes on Down to the Cellar to guide my approach to the video, with the beginning of the singular POV shot focusing on my hand opening a doorway in darkness, immediately connecting the work to the idea of touch. Moving through the doorway, it is hard to make out any clear objects in the darkness, which feels disorientating, as if you want to grab out and reach something to steady yourself.

I tried to create a sense of tension by including the hammer in the frame as the lighter is located, potentially creating an expectation that it will be used to destroy the lighter in an act of violence, as well as the reflection of the methylated spirits shining off the top of the casing. Due to the shed setting, I don’t think either of these objects are out of place enough to create the tension I intended, and I could have included some sort of backing track or increasingly frantic flipping of the lighter lid to enhance this. It could have been more effective to use closed captions instead of a voiceover, which identifies the gender of the character. The unsettling sounds created by interacting with the lighter (scraping the sawdust and filings off the casing/ flipping the lid) would have stood out more as well if I had done this instead, as there is some sort of interfering feedback in the voiceover audio.

There are some glitches in the video, which I tried to resolved through googling, to no avail. A suggestion I found was to convert the iPhone footage from HEVC into H.264 with a High Bitrate Match Source, although this had no effect upon exporting the final video.

I didn’t use a conventional storyboard as such, but I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with this exercise and wrote down what I wanted to include in the shot before I got started;

Opening door to garage- close up of hand establishing the cool metal touch
Overhead view of assortment of objects scattered on desk- lighter gleaming underneath sawdust- distracted by it from prior task
Sawdust wiped off- a reconnection of touch to the memories stored.
Lid flipped open- the act performed many times before, a sound and feeling that transports.
Name not engraved- the smoothness brings pain
The flame ignites, close up- and the lights go off, focus on the flame. The painful clarity the touch of the object brings.

I found this short film, ‘The Distraction’ by Matty Brown on Youtube,  and thought that it employed some techniques that were able to accurately convey some of the physical feelings associated with anxiety and depression quite well, through frantic, macabre montage, vivid imagery and an intense soundscape. It was quite hard to watch towards the end due to my personal connection to these feelings. I thought that the motif of the monster returning at a moments notice was effective in communicating the unpredictability of these thoughts and feelings that most people are likely to experience at least once in their lifetime.

I was introduced to the word ‘hapticality’, through this weeks reading ‘The Body in Scuba Diving’, which immediately grabbed my attention.
The following is from my ‘Week 1 reading discussion’ post;

The reading mentions ‘touch as part of a hapticality’, a concept which is entirely new to me. I discovered that the word comes from the Greek haptikos, which means ‘pertaining to the sense of touch’, and further developed by authors Fred Moten and Stefano Harney in their book Undercommons. My limited understanding of the term is that it refers to being in touch with the senses that we all use to navigate this reality, and understanding that we share these senses at a core level, despite all the differences we may put between us as we establish our sense of selves and individuality. This article from the New Yorker articulates how Moten’s ‘way of thinking and speaking feels like an intuitive way of seeing the world’. I am looking forward to reading some of his essays from Undercommons and potentially using them to position myself when approaching pieces of work down the track.

References
Straughan, E. R. S., (2010), ‘Touched by water: The body in scuba diving’, Emotion, Space, and Society, (5), P19-26