This week’s focus is on ‘Dynamic’. The idea of a dynamic landscape is a landscape or climate which constantly evolves over season. Gibson says, “’changescape’, this idea I have that there are long-established aesthetic systems that are built purposefully to intensify our experience and to enhance our understanding of the complex dynamics that are at play”(Gibson, 2015). This quote from Gibson’s introduction into ‘Changescape’ triggered a quite intriguing perspective when returning to my landscape to focus on its dynamics. When coming back to my landscape, I attuned to the landscape’s aesthetics, meaning visually concentrating on the landscape being presented to me. I began explicitly to look at how the trees & grass liveliness has evolved over the course of the weather changing over the past month. I noticed that the climate change had triggered my landscape to become greener, as the rain was influencing the environment to shift visually. Leaves were not left dry and plants, and the grass was beginning to grow in muddy areas, representing a new life cycle.

In this week’s sketch, I captured the new life cycle and the visual scenery of colder, wetter, & overcasting weather. My landscape changed due to these contributing factors, which visually made this week’s sketch quite interesting. After recording and viewing my sketch, I began to think more about how our dynamic beings tend to live and how our daily lives’ contributing factors truly affect the weather, ultimately influencing the climate that shapes our natural environments.

In this week’s sketch, I continued exploring colour correction to visually enhance the idea of a dynamic landscape that is aesthetically evolving. I added a voice-over to commentate on the aesthetics that have evolved and added background music that compliments the idea of nature, with added SFX on the music to add atmosphere to the sketch.

 

Reference:

Gibson, R. 2015. Changescapes – An Introduction, in Changescapes: Complexity, Mutability, Aesthetics. Crawley, WA: UWA Publishing, pp. 1–20.

Week five’s focus was on ‘Damaged’. In the context of landscape, I perceive ‘damage’, ‘damaged’ as the process of something being hurt or ruined while along its path of living. The process of a landscape being damaged results from its liveliness decaying at the expense of human-caused pollution. One of the key quotes that stuck out to me this week was Anna Tsing saying, “We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and ecological ruination. Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think about collaborative survival.” (Tsing, 2015)

 

This quote struck out the idea of progression. It seems that we have made progression such a humanized experience with the focus on science, democracy, capitalism & economics. It occurred to me that the idea of environmental progression is a rare concept that I think about or even talk about. This week I focused on the trees in my landscape and how it appears that these trees are on a reverse trajectory from progression. Ever since starting this studio this year, I have attuned to trees a lot differently. I often think about how the trees in my landscape would have looked 50 years ago, with less pollution and population. In my sketch for this week, I captured trees that appeared damaged. These trees’ decaying liveliness stood out to me as trees are such an essential factor in human life and humans’ progression. With such damaged trees, I begin to think about the lack of collaborative effort we put into the survival of the environment around us.

 

Upon my reflection on past blog posts, I wanted to focus on more specific shots. I captured closer up shots; I shot on different angles to capture the trees’ lifeless looks in my landscape. I edited the video differently, incorporating video effects such as slow-motion to focus on the subject in the video and colour filters that tied in with the idea of the trees being lifeless and damaged, along with a slow & ‘cold’ soundtrack to accompany the visuals.

 

References:

Tsing, A.L., 2015. ‘Arts of Noticing’, in: The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 17–25.

 

Week 4’s focus was on the idea of ‘entangled’. My understanding of ‘entangled’ in relation to the reading and hearings of class discussions is that it is the intertwines of life living & growing amongst the same path of each other, as in the sharing of life. In this week’s reading, Ingold says, “In the animic ontology, beings do not simply occupy the world, they inhabit it, and in so doing – in threading their own paths through the meshwork – they contribute to its ever-evolving weave.” (Ingold, 2011). In approach to my landscape this week, Ingolds’ saying in the reading made me think about all the surrounding life that grew intertwined with other life. I noticed branches that grew amongst each other, grass that grew around & through objects, and a tree that once was full of life, had taken its course to lie amongst other plants & trees. In my sketch for this week, you can see the life that I captured, all living amongst and on top of other life within the landscape. While recording the video, I thought about how much more focused I felt regarding my landscape. I feel more attuned to the landscape, and this week, I was able to view the meshwork of life in my landscape living amongst each other within their own paths. Which also helps me reflect on how all life is very intertwined with each other, but seemingly living within our own paths.

In approaching the sketch differently, I could focus more on how I record the sketch. In reflection, I have been thinking of the different or more diverse shots that I could get to show entangled life within my landscape truly. Some areas of my landscape seemed very intriguing in showing off entangled life but would have required me to go in and get precise shots to film.

References

Ingold, T., 2011. Being Alive : Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis Group, pp.69-75.