Final Signal & Specific to Site Reflection

The final project brief for specific to site was exhibited at ‘Signal’. This creative arts studio aimed to provide a space for young artists of all mediums. With the assistance of classmates, our tutor, and the employees at Signal we were able to put on an exhibition for 3 nights in the heart of the city on the Yarra. Our team worked hard and cooperatively in particular groups to prepare, promote and run the show. The different groups included the tech team, the installation team, PR, project managers and the documentation team. I was a member of the public relations team, and through being appointed this job I had a variety of responsibilities to ensure the success of the promotion of the exhibition. One of my main tasks consisted of constructing and the distributing of visual promotions. These included assisting in the construction of the website, placing of posters, and cutting and dispersing of the flyers.

Our team had a group conversation via the social media platform, Facebook, to keep in contact to keep on top of activities and to brainstorm and collaborate ideas. It was here we voted on placing posters in spaces in which are often densely populated and thus would have a higher chance of being identified. This included the library, building 80, the student lounge, RMIT connect, and the media and communications building 9. (See blog post here). However, when I asked the librarian’s permission to put up the posters, they declined kindly and informed me that we are supposed to seek permission from RUSU on where to dispense posters. After speaking with RUSU, we had permission to place posters in RMIT connect, the pillars of building 8 and we had to seek permission from individual buildings for the other places, and therefore we also placed them in building 9. Another job of mine was working with Rose on developing the website, providing potential viewers the opportunity with a link to each individual student’s Media Factory blog, blurbs for their work and a portrait of themselves. (See website here).

Overall, this semester has been far greater than semester 1, the ‘Specific to Site’ studio has taught me a lot on methods of exhibiting, editing skills and collaboration. I enjoyed being able to work and produce all forms of mediums for media, such as photography, audio and film. As the semester progressed I have a made a lot of new friends, as well learnt a lot of valuable skills such as editing for film. We were provided workshops on particular programs such as Premiere Pro, and that plus the help of classmates and my tutor I was able to learn a completely new program and work with arranging multiple footage on one screen, cropping, sizing and edits of reversing and slow-motion. The signal exhibition, the backpack projection night and Project Brief 3 for Testing Grounds really extended my skills on collaboration and allowed myself to experience working in the media industry professionally, working with real artists, and real employees of the studio art world was very valuable and a great insight to the media environment. It also allowed myself to immerse in the struggles with communication, and hardships of putting an exhibition together, especially if there is not a mutual understanding on collaboration and effort.

Furthermore, through this studio my conceptual process of creating films has expanded immensely. Robbie has expressed to me a new understanding of place, and the relevance of set, scene, and studio galleries. I was able to challenge the idea of place and non-place and match it amongst the art world. From this, I believe that any sort of space could be made into a place, depends on one’s interpretation, project brief 2 really helped me to explore this. (See blog post here). I had such a small understanding of curatoring and studios, however after being exposed to Testing Grounds and the Signal studio, I have developed a deeper understanding for galleries and exhibitions.

Moving away from conventional exhibition spaces whether it is a gallery or exhibition space, we have focused to explore more alternative spaces that would compliment our work. Although traditional exhibition spaces may offer “perfect” lighting or an ideal colour scheme, alternative spaces such as outdoors or projections from a building offer a sense of ambience or atmosphere that other spaces could simply not offer. While observing works in the outdoors, each viewer has a unique experience, while being offered the opportunity to be influenced from external factors. Making art seem fun to the public, rather than mysterious, incomprehensible and solitary, has led a growing list of artists and municipalities around the country to create open studio events (Grant, 2010). Therefore, with the influence of readings, Robbie and the Project Briefs, I have deferred from the idea of traditional projects of artwork and been exposed to more non-traditional places, redefining the “place” of artwork, and becoming more specific to the environments of production of artwork as well as the display of art.

 

References:

  1. Grant, D 2010, Selling Art Without Galleries: Towards Making a Living from Your Art, Allworth Press, United States.

Media Studio | Thurs Wk. 5

Today was our second lot of presentations for Project Brief 3 and today mine was displayed. I gave an introduction of how my video aimed to present the idea of a carpark being a “nonplace”, and I received great feedback. My classmates and Robbie were very supportive, giving my advice on things to fix as well as stating things that they liked about my work.

Second half of our class was dedicated to the arrangement of our BBQ backpack night at the Testing Grounds, everyone was getting amongst their groups, and we arranged food, times, equipment and allocated jobs to certain to students. This was to ensure the night ran smoothly and was to be enjoyable for all. We also were given our artist that we were to interview for our Project Brief 3, I am in a group with Elle and Nicolette and our artist is named Ari, I’m excited to start working on it.

 

Media Studio 2 | Wk. 5 Wed

Today in class we presented our Project Brief 2 in class this week, we didn’t get to go through mine but i got to see majority of the classes work. It was really interesting to see how other people interpreted the assignment and the work they produced. Majority of the videos consisted of old infrastructure that was in use anymore, demonstrating the place’s lost of purpose, questioning it’s purpose as a place at all. It was interesting for people to capture places that may have come across asa “non-place” nonetheless they were still active. For example, Dusty’s film was set in a empty warehouse that seemed to no longer have it’s original use, nonetheless, the second day she went there was a knife stabbed into a cushion which wasn’t there the day before. Showing that the public, still had use of a place for this, especially the homeless, who had found a new “home”.

One of my favourite’s was Rose’s, I love how she questioned the meaning of specific places, she contrasted the action of one place on the set of polar place. Usually bathrooms are thought about to be unhygienic and private, and Rose had a young woman eating all sorts of food around the entire public bathroom, she was eating noodles on the toilet seat, lollies on the floor, and I was really grossed out by it. However, it did get me thinking about how a place can have it’s own specific meaning and certain things apply to certain places, I have always been told to not take my food into the bathroom, and to always make sure I’m very clean before I go to a restaurant, especially before I eat, and contrasting the specifics between the two sites was very interesting to observe.

Project Brief 2 | From Here to There

In a city that is over-populated with shops, restaurants, offices, and schools for society to socialise, eat and live within, there are limited parks for these destinations. Car parks are essentially a “place” to leave your car to go to your real “place”, and therefore sparks the question is a car park considered a place or non-place? “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” Marc Auge (1995). Although a car park may contain history with customers, it doesn’t form a significant historical reference or a sense of identity and thus lies the question is a car park considered a place?

The reason we chose to photograph and film this inner city car park was due to the lack of maintenance. Places usually attain some form of respect and require hygiene and preservation. The car park was painted in dust and dirt, the graffiti and tagging from strangers is the main source of colour, as well as there were broken pipes, wires, glass, windows, and rat position on the floor. There is no value for this space, this four wall concreted public space, with faded paint and broken windows are employed as a seven levelled garage.

I aimed to construct my film with a sense of repetition as well as an exploration of non-place. I utilised three different audio clips of cars driving, electricity sparking and a car locking and played them on a loop. The structure of my film was set by displaying a few photographs followed by a short piece of footage to match the photographs of different areas of the car park. This was done to mimic the cycle of the public’s abuse of the car park, collect ticket, drive in, park, drive out, dispense ticket.

Another focus on my film was to question the meaning of the text on most of the walls, as across all levels of the spacious parking lot were plastic signs. The Government’s signage possessed titles such as “no parking”, “no standing”, “exit”, “no exit”, “no entry” and “entry” all over the walls. From a non-place perspective, the car park is never considered a place that you would stay. It is a pathway to where your real destination is, the arrows lead you in, and lead you straight back out again.

Marc Auge states in his Non Places – Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), “the distinction between places and non-places derives from the opposition between place and space.” I strongly agree with this statement as it explores the importance of place and the insignificance of space. My definition of a place is somewhere that attains value, that’s respected and is of liveable conditions, a space is empty, only utilised when it is necessary, no one would choose to go to the car park unless they were to utilise it for it’s purpose, to park your car, or take it home, no one just wants to “hang out” at their local parking lot.

References:

  1. Auge, M 1995 “Non-Places – Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity”, Verso, London and New York.

Media Studio 2 | Thurs Wk. 4

This class was a very relaxed class in which we could have time to edit some of Project Brief 2 assignment, I used this to catch up on blog posts and begin to make a plan about how I would structure my film. It was very difficult, I was struggling a lot to connect the pieces, I’m used to making some form of narrative with my work, however, this place did not have much meaning, and there was literally no story. All I had was footage of a place, and the goal was to employ these materials into a film that presented this car-park into a non-place. I did notice I had much more photographs than footage so I decided to make more of a montage of a place in a specific sequence, to highlight the continuous cycle of abuse people do with a carpark using the iMovie program on my Mac.

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Media Studio 2 | Wed Wk. 4

Today Siobhan and I skipped class to go film our “non-place”. We decided on a car park off Elizabeth St. in the city. I mainly took photographs of the place, trying to find abstract viewpoints, and capture the multitude of signage around the building. It was seven levels high, and it was relatively quiet, therefore you were able to hear the sounds of the carpark very easily, such as the electricity moving through the circuits, the inner city traffic, the lights flickering. The entire space had an eerie aesthetic, although many people come in and out of this place, no one stayed, society utilises this place as a stepping stone to their actual destination, their real “place”.

I’m not quite sure how I am going to put the footage together to be honest, I have quite a lot of photographs, and a few sound recordings and video footage but I don’t know how to structure the piece together in a sense that conveys the message I wish to portray.