In what ways do you hope your screenings/exhibited/screened work (whether individual or group produced) engaged its audience and communicated a key concern of the studio?

 

I would really like for ‘Victouria’ to actually engage the audience in a way that could bring together some fairly popular hobbies. I know that I have a deep interest in our cultural history, and the flora and fauna varietals native to our country. Especially coming from my chef background, where native flowers are foraged as garnish and flavour enhancers. I do find that although I have an interest in these things, I go to museums and am overwhelmed with information, or read books on native ingredients but nothing beats the practicality of putting on your boots and exploring.

So I’d really hope that our game would manifest playfulness into an educational task, especially by learning whilst taking your daily walk, or a weekend hike.

 

Imagine you are going to keep working on that media piece (e.g. to screen it somewhere else like a festival, or develop it into a different kind of work, and so on) – what would be the core things you would want to improve and extend and why?

 

As it stands ‘Victouria’ focuses a lot more on the actual nature trails, plants and some brief information of indigenous history. But I would really like to further develop the cultural information of the app. Utilising indigenous artists and storytellers, to not only tell the history of indigenous Australians but also raise the voices of indigenous artists themselves.

I really want to see the inbuilt checkpoint system of a nature trail to unlock parts of a story as you go, so by the time you finish a trail you’ve learned something about the local land, or even a fun Dreamtime story. I think it could be a lot more engaging as well if you work for the information and are rewards – maybe the artists could use their paintings/art to pair up with a story.

 

From your studio, reflect on an aspect of two other students/group’s media work on the website in terms of specific insights they produced about a key idea addressed by the studio?

 

 

 

4> For the other studio website you engaged with,  describe a key idea that you think the finished media/studio work communicated with reference to a specific example (i.e. a particular individual/group work)

 

My studio was ‘Future Machina’. The studio focuses on intertwining future cultural and social predictions into the way stories are told, and in doing so are commenting on our current political/social/cultural/environmental standings in current times.

The video I liked most was called “Level 13“. It focused on how VR and AI technology could become so intertwined with our own life, that eventually through the technology we’re able to be guided through past traumas in a way of mental healing (or psychology for short).

It had a very serious aura about it, that really highlighted a truth about our world – being mental health. A constant in this scenario. Whilst our environment may deteriorate, or one day we might fix it all. Mental health will probably always be a problem in some way or another. So the use of AI psychology, and using VR to show the person being guided their past trauma was quite interesting.

In a way, Level 13, managed to hold a Black Mirror-esque uncertainty about the future development of technology proposed in the short movie. But the outcome was entirely positive. It managed to be both wary of futurology, whilst also giving a gentle nudge to the audience in saying “hey, is technology really all that bad?”.