For yesterday’s class we were split up into groups of four to hear the presentations of those that weren’t able to present last Thursday. We gave feedback and extracted two one-word prompts from each presenter. In my group, the first presenter spoke about gaining new awareness of very minute and discreet details in his living room, such as imperfections in the coats of paint on the walls, which ultimately influenced IRREGULARITY as a prompt. From this same observation, he noticed that the roof was significantly higher than he had ever noticed/presumed, leading to a strange reorientation in the space, from which we extracted SCALE as a prompt. His next observational practice was a sonic exploration of the neighbourhood sounds from his backyard, resulting in what he described as a “slice of suburbia” with no particular sounds seeming too detached from the suburban space that they were born from. From this, we decided upon SUBURBIA as a prompt.

The next presenter was particularly struck with how the quality of a light can dramatically influence how we feel. She connected this to how light is employed in cinema to immediately evoke feeling, which we briefly explored as an effect that feeds from reality into cinema and into reality again. From this observation, we decided that TEMPERATURE would be our last prompt to explore.

After this, we set out into the campus with our phone cameras to observe and document whatever we could in relation to these prompts. The first site that drew my attention was the design of a wall that stood next to one of the classrooms nearby. Made up of a series of wooden blocks of varying tones and uniform size acting upon each other to create a ripple effect, the imperfections in the wood and scuffled marks left on many felt to me connected to the IRREGULARITY prompt. In the photo, I decided to include the key card access sensor, which seems alien and disconnected from the effect and feeding even more into this idea. I’m drawn to the fact that there is a striking, almost animated effect to their grouping and a unity to their presence, and that it is actually the irregularity in the individual blocks that emphasises the effect, furthermore enhancing the unity.

The second I noticed the rainbow staircase I almost automatically photographed it with the TEMPERATURE prompt in mind. This seems like a fairly surface level interpretation of the prompt, and while I think in the moment it probably was, as I reflect on the photo I think that the stairs contribute a sort of transitory nature to the notion of temperature. We ascend and descend stairs as we progress towards a destination, just as temperature itself is in flux although we emphasise the definite experience of certain temperatures – “hot”, “warm”, “freezing”, etc. I feel that the colours represent those approximates we impose on the fluctuating experience of temperature, like snapshots of its effect on us.

For the SCALE prompt, I was drawn to a view I was able to get from an upper level looking down at people boarding an escalator. There are three people in the shot, one in the foreground at the highest point of the escalator, one just about to board deeper into the shot and someone exiting the building towards the outside light. Each perspective is in motion, on different trajectories, or different stages of the same trajectory. The person at the bottom of the escalator is preparing to ascend; the person already on the escalator is preparing to depart (or soon will be, potentially just drifting at this stage) whereas the person in the background is preparing to adjust to the outside world. In the moment of taking this photo, I decided to convey scale in a perspectival way, capturing three disconnected perspectives and forcing them into a single cohesive image. As it was pulled up in class, Robbie was immediately drawn to the beanbag and noted its allure, which I think does pull focus because of the frame and lighting it finds itself within. Comparatively, the beanbag is stationary and unmotivated, although its sagging presence suggests the its frequent use and introduces a ghostly presence into that room.

Lastly, I chose to photograph a small communal setting of a table and chairs set up by a collection of microwaves, vending machines and a sink to satisfy the SUBURBIA prompt. This was probably my most surface level photograph and to me signified a constructed sense of home, an arrangement made to contribute a homely sort of comfort to the students. My group was also attracted to the 70s throwback chairs and the humour in using these as an attempt to allude to the feeling of home.

This exercise was quite brief and I feel as though I could have been more active in the time allotted, however I enjoyed the experience of cooperatively establishing prompts to then individually explore. Robbie emphasised the importance of developing a method, which for me in this exercise was to snap a myriad of photos almost automatically as I happened upon various sites. It would be worth my while to experiment with other methods to see what results I get.