kelliehighet

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Photos and My Stories.

Here are the photos and all of my responses to them (matched by numbers.)

Whilst engaging in the writing process for this task I found that for the most part there is no a direct visual relationship between the image and what I wrote about it. I looked at the photo and something in it would trigger a memory or feeling, that would sometimes then trigger another memory or feeling, and then I would take this and further explore the fictional possibilities of it. Some of the responses are are completely auto biographical, some are partly based off events that happened in my life, and others are completely fictional. However, none of them appear as ‘obvious’ responses to the imagery, which I think is due to that process.

1. Things never felt that heavy when we were younger. It was traditional for us to raid her step Mums’ wardrobe. The aim was to take the black satin dresses, throw on the ugly fur coats, slip into the slutty red heals, and then stumble around waving our hands in a way that demanded presence. We! Are! So! Important! Then we’d tear the room apart to find her credit card and use it to order Thai food. But we hated tofu. So we’d walk to the local shops and buy hot chips with chicken salt. Talking about our weird science teacher and her brother’s new fascination with reptiles.

­­2. Yesterday I caught mum all teary eyed because some snails had destroyed her basil plant.  She’d hosted a dinner party the night before, so she plucked them from the garden and placed them into plastic water bottles filled with leftover champagne. I’m not sure if the light looks sort of enchanting because that’s how summer works, or if I’m just drowning in the bubbles.

3. I had just finished my usual three-hour shift at the bakery after school. Instead of throwing out the left over pastries I’d asked mum to drive me to the hospital so I could give them to you. Some nurse was trying to poison the mash potato. You were uncharacteristically grumpy and ranting about something that was wrong with the TV. I checked my phone excessively, time was going so slow, you were really agitating me, old people are annoying, I was tired, wanted to get home; it’s not my fault, how was I meant to know, according the odds you should’ve already died six months ago.

7. It was a Saturday. We were fourteen years old and desperately wishing to be older. So I stole whisky from my parent’s basement and mixed it with pink lemonade. We had matching purple pajama pants that were covered in little cartoon cows. I bought three-dollar glitter eyeliner; we drew love hearts on our cheeks and it stained my skin blue. I was glad it was a Sunday because I wouldn’t be seen in public like that. Mum spent twenty minutes brushing my hair after I threw up in the toilet. It was bright pink. We’d poured a lot of raspberries into the blender making cocktails.

8. Tomorrow I’ll wake up all disorientated in the backset of my car. And I’ll think, shit, my neck is going to hurt for weeks. Hopefully it’ll be early enough to make it home before anyone wakes up. I can get changed, clean my teeth, and straighten my hair. Mum will tell me I look pretty. Then I’ll arrive early to my lecture, and I’ll sit with that girl, and we’ll chat about that cute guy. For lunch I’ll have rice cakes because my stomach will still feel queasy. Life will continue, no matter how I change it.

12. Life is beautiful. That’s what you’d always tell people. “It’s my 21st birthday.” You were verging on eighty, but wanting to make the pretty waitress laugh. Mum was so sad that you hadn’t told anyone sooner. Like what the fuck. You thought roast duck in Prague would make up for this? Paying for the whole family to frolic around Europe was a pretty sick cover up. I suppose dancing with a champagne glass in your hand meant forever young. But at your funeral I cried talking about the seaweed in your garden that you’d stolen from the beach. We don’t go on holidays in summer anymore.  ­­

13. Mums’ new boyfriend was always around. Like a little yapping dog that seemed sweet until it nipped at your finger. Whenever they broke up he’d buy my sister and I things to make her feel guilty. One time it was a rice cooker. I ate a lot of brown rice those days because someone had told me it was healthier than pasta.

15. After my best friend and I turned nineteen she met some guy in a coffee shop. He was a barista with stylish black hair who’d chased her all the way to the car park holding a Lush bag she’d accidentally left at her table.  They went on a date to the zoo and then he got to know her better than I did. A few days ago we went to see a movie together.  Afterwards we talked about the unseasonal wind, how good dark chocolate tastes with peanut butter, what courses we were taking at university, and then I drove her home. She messaged me a week later; it was a picture of her dog rolling around in the sun. I suppose it’s nice having someone around who cares so much.

16. My chin was red and painful by the time I got home. He’d taken me to the lake so we could hang out; his stubble had given me a pimple. I wondered how long it would take to pick all of the twigs out of my scarf, and I needed to wash those jeans before my sister noticed they were missing. Hopefully nobody had heard the sound of his car in our driveway. My skin felt foreign. I wanted his mark to make me happy, but instead I changed into an old Power Puff Girl shirt and curled up in a little ball on my bed. I didn’t cry. He waited four days to text me. By then it had gone.

17. It’s okay, because sometimes, in certain moments, everything seems so wonderful.  I’m laughing, I have friends, boys will kiss my neck, and we’re all so cool. The other day I spilt tea on the kitchen bench. My heart was beating sort of fast, it was 6:00pm, my stomach had been churning all day, it’s March; I just hate the change in light. Then I sat on the couch in my dressing gown and spent four hours staring out the window. I couldn’t say what was there because I don’t remember looking. To be honest I never think of you at all.

18. It was completely expected. That’s what stung. “I think you should just find somebody else.” I knew there was so much wrong with us, but it felt unfair that something so desirable was capable of disappearing that fast. So at brunch I told Mum’s friends that he was smart, played soccer, drove a red car, and had nice arms.  Then I drank four cups of tea and stabbed my scone incessantly with a fork. I threw up afterwards because the diary in the cream had made me queasy. He didn’t break my heart. I did. Using everything unsaid he’d left behind.

19. I was sitting on her bed trying to blend out the dry patches of foundation that clung to my skin. We had to look good that night. She needed to: Get. It. Over. With. A few weeks back this gorgeous boy had driven her to his family house all the way in Adelaide, then he’d ignored her after discovering she was a virgin who didn’t want to rush things. She’d only talked about guys to me since. My eye shadow was navy blue and sparkly. We mixed vodka with Red Bull and twirled around the living room listening to songs on spotify. I stood staring at the lights when she left me in the club. He’d told me I was beautiful yesterday so it didn’t matter that I was alone.

[kelliehighet]

Assessment 3 concept thoughts

For the 12 page publication we were interested in exploring the idea of perception and context. If a group of people were placed in the exact same room, all sitting in the same position, or looking at the same view, each individuals experience of that moment may share similarities, however would be also be completely different. This is because how we live is determined by internal as well as external factors. Perception is influenced by the experiences of individuals, no two versions of the now are the same. To explore this idea, my group an I have decided to select twelve photographs and all write short stories in response to them. This will (hopefully lol) showcases how the same image can be interpreted in such different ways.

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Final Work- Deja-vu film.

Please listen using earphones :)

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Concept Statement

For assessment two I continued with using the concept of Déjà vu as a form for exploring the creative possibilities of a glitch. However, instead of producing a literal, visual representation of the phenomenon, I decided to employ it’s translation, “I’ve seen this all before”, as a metaphor for global culture and everyday life within the 21st century.  Inspired by concepts such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Culture Industry, and ideas pertaining to global networked society (Volker, 2013), I sought to produce a video and sound based work that critiqued society in relation to; how we function as routine creatures, the state of ecology’s and culture within a capitalist regime, and the affect of social and behavioral norms.

This commentary is primarily driven by the soundtrack; an amalgamation of voices seen in the form of personal monologues, musical performances, YouTube clips, and news reports. These sounds are layered upon one another to generate a ‘sound picture’ of 21st century society, and to illustrate the ways in which humans ‘glitch’ within it. There are three audio recordings that play out of both earphones for the entire duration of the film; these are music clips of two buskers, one singing and playing guitar, the other playing the saxophone, and the voice of a girl describing her experience with anxiety. Together, the three clips function to mirror the noise of rhythms of everyday life, creating a base that gives a sense of chaos and energy to underline the piece. The sounds playing on top of that foundation can be split into three categories; routine, culture, and glitch.

The track begins with three voices. Through one earphone people give mundane accounts of their morning routines, in the other, a girl recalls an experience of dejavu, in which the flow and comfort of daily life is disrupted. Through juxtaposing a placid state with a simple yet anomalous experience, I aimed to emphasize how although life is predominately routine focused, people constantly break free of (or glitch within) this system, proving we are not bound to a monotonous existence.

The second part of the soundtrack showcases the ways in which the Western world has become networked and dominated by a universal culture and ecology.  For example, international brands, the architecture and interior of shopping centers, airports, and cultural traditions, are now often uniformed across the globalized world.  To express this idea in my film, the soundtrack includes multiple things. Firstly, a collage of audio from various different YouTube videos talking about Rihanna’s new Fenti Beauty line.  These snippets are used to depict mass consumerism and fad culture, as Rihanna is an icon of Western popular culture, and YouTube an icon of socially mediated society. Following from this, there are snippets from news reports. The first is clip of an American reporter talking about mass disruptions caused by flight delays in Britain, which I used to emphasize that societies are codependent and function within a global network. The next clip talks about the increasing presence of Halloween in Australia, and the legacy of the Big Mac. I used these to highlight the dominance and influential power of American culture that has risen in coherence with the capitalism and globalization.

The closing section of the soundtrack is an audio clip of my friend recounting an experience of being on a morning bus with a drunk, homeless man. This story demonstrates how people fail to operate within in the boundaries of social and behavioral norms (therefore being seen as a ‘glitch’ with society), along with commenting on how people react to such occurrence. 

In regards to visuals, my aim was to use imagery as a way to accompany and enhance the experience of the soundtrack. I shot clips in various environments that were related to concepts explored thematically in the track, such as the home, nature, suburbia, the city, shopping centers, and public transport. I used overlays, harsh lighting, vibrant colours, and fast transitions in order to produce a dream like and vivid sensory type quality, to fit with the intensive experience of the soundtrack, as it is very multidimensional and layered. 

Bibliography

Durkham, M & Kellner D, 2009,  Media and Cultural Studies, Blackwell Publishing, United Kingdom

Volker, I 2003, ‘The Global Network Society and the Global Public Sphere, Development, Volume 46, Issue 1, pp 9-16

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A few screenshots of stills from my unedited footage, I shot in Bondi Junction, Surry Hills, Sydney CBD, Newtown, UNSW Kensington Campus, and Canberra

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Progress Update- After experimenting with mixing different things together to make the soundtrack, I realised that it was lacking a more personal dimension and a sort of narrative, so I sent out this message to a few of my friends in order to source out ways to fix this issue.

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Experiment- For the soundtrack I played with layering all of the different recordings I had taken, in doing this I found that I had to make certain tracks only play out of one earphone, otherwise the sound was too overwhelming and cluttered. Originally I had planned on distorting the voices a lot to create an eerie effect, however I found that too became a little overbearing, so I settled on more subtle distortions such as the use of echo’s and occasional reverb

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Progress Update- To begin work on the soundtrack for my video piece I used the voice memo application on my phone to record a collection of sounds including buskers, people ordering coffee, my housemate singing, TV news reports, and YouTube videos. I want to gather variety of voices in order to create a soundtrack that emulates the "noises of everyday life"

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-conceptualisation brainstorm- 

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EXPERIMENT- Took a few photos on my phone through a glass of water as a way of exploring perspective in relation to the glitch, to emphasize is fluidity and subjectivity

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EXPERIMENT- I took some photos using my phone of reflections, I’m interested in using similar imagery in my final work as a symbolic representation for deja vu aka “I’ve seen this all before”

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I’m extremely fascinated with the photographer Alex Webb’s work for his dynamic use of light and shadows, interesting composition and vivid colouring. These images posses so much energy and showcase the street life of Mexico in such a striking manner. I am interested in exploring concepts of society, routine and everyday life in my work for assessment two, in particular the notion of mundanity commonly associated with it, and I think these images offer any interesting perspective on that topic.

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Looking into artist Aima Sinai for aesthetic and form based inspiration for assessment two

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Final Poster- Assessment One.

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POSTER- CONCEPT STATEMENT

For this poster I have created a photographic representation of déjà-vu, as it is the theme I plan on exploring more deeply in video and sound from for the final project. Déjà-vu is a French term that loosely translates in English to “I’ve seen this all before.” It’s a phenomenon that is experienced by many erratically during the activities of everyday life, yet it is something that remains profoundly ambiguous within scientific literature. What I find particularly interesting about déjà-vu is that it is comprised of juxtaposed feelings; a sense of complete familiarity experienced alongside perplexing confusion and often subsequent unease. Such starkly different emotions occurring at once manifests as powerful sensory experience that is rather remarkable. Déjà-vu is most commonly explained as a anomaly of memory, a ‘glitch’ of the human brain. It is something dominantly interpreted negatively as an unwanted sensation. I want to subvert this idea and explore deja-vu as concept to be celebrated. Irregularities are what make life interesting as they disrupt the mundane and stimulate emotion, and I believe the capacity we have to feel such a complex and diverse range of emotions is what makes the human experience so valuable.

 To emulate these ideas my poster I have considered the composition in regards to setting, colours and texture. The image is taken at a cafe, a location that is common, familiar and the home of the everyday life. To visually instill a sense of both eeriness and familiarity  I used a combination of cool tones- blues, purples and greys- with the edge, along with warm tones- yellows, browns, and organs- for the comfort. The photograph is comprised of multiple images layered upon one another to create a textured dynamic, making it more intriguing to the eye in order to generate a feeling of liveliness.

 For assessment two I want continue by celebrating human emotion and challenging the dominant negative perception of the term glitch, through creating a visual/sound instillation with imagery that physically stimulates interest and strong feelings similar to those produced déjà-vu.

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POSTER- RESEARCH.

For assessment one I have decided to explore the creative possibilities of glitch through engaging with the concept of Déjà Vu. I was initially drawn towards this topic as it is a phenomenon that I experience personally on a regular basis,  and upon further research I became fascinated with the experience due to the immense scientific ambiguity. To grasp a deeper understanding of the topic I read The Déjà vu Experience by Alan S. Brown.

Here are some exerts that I found to be particularly interesting-

For creative inspiration I looked at photographer Ralph Gibsons’ work on Déjà vu and Hungarian media artist David Sazuder’s work on failed memories.

RALPH GIBSON- Deja vu, 1906, New York, Lustrum Press, 1973

I love the use of shadows and common place settings, human faces and angles that create an sense of both eeriness and intrigue.

DAVID SZAUDER- Failed Memories.

I find this imagery extremely evocative and engaging.

To be seen on - http://www.featherofme.com/david-szauder-failed-memories/

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Week Two-

This week’s focus was on collaborative practice and I teamed up with Keeley, Alice and Lulu to create this poster. When drafting ideas we came across a magazine full of recipes and photographs of food and were inspired to create something focusing on issue of waste. We choose a bin in a central area of the campus as the site for the artwork because it creates an interactive element and forces the public to actively engage with the piece as they through away their rubbish. The words “I should tell you...” feature at the top as a way of provoking people to think about the image below without providing an overt conclusion, this was done in order to stimulate more personal interpretations of the piece.