Starry skies

Creative Technologies

This is part of my final piece for my second choice rotation (creative technologies). I developed my theme of ‘nostalgia’ from drawing and painting and looked at other ways I could depict ‘a yearning for the past’ through photography. 

My first ideas began when making video and audio recordings along the Royal Mile. I wanted to revisit places I had been before when I was younger. I thought I could record myself retracing my footsteps. I initially wanted to show how if we were to have the chance to return to a memory it may not actually be the same as we remember. My first edited video included the audio recording of my friends laughing and skipping and video footage from a small garden just off the Royal Mile, a place I once visited as a child. I wanted to make it appear as if my friends laughter was far away, like a distant memory. Therefore, in post-production I put an echo effect on the audio which worked well with the visual. The video follows my footsteps as I walk through the garden. It eventually leads to a bench, which the camera focuses on, zooming into a close-up. I decided to focus on the bench to show it had some significance in relation to my past. I wanted to make the viewer question its importance. I also used a filter when editing to give the video a sepia/grainy effect to create a dream-like, nostalgic feel to the visual. The video is on my previous post.

This experimentation with digital technology made me question other ways in which I could create nostalgic-looking visuals. I looked at old photographs from the past and decided I would experiment with different methods of editing to create a similar vintage-style - imitating the graininess, texture and colour. I started experimenting with the aperture exposure of my images and moving them to see what kind of effect i would end up with. I liked the movement of the images which made me wonder how I could perhaps replicate this in real life. I thought about using these images and putting them on a spinning object to show them moving. I thought if I told the viewer to look at one particular place within the spinning object where the images were held, that it would perhaps create a moving image, almost like an optical illusion - similar to a flipbook effect. I thought about using a cake tin and attaching the photographs like tiles along the edges. From then, I had to decide how I would make it spin. I considered attaching it to coat hangers and manually making it spin. However, I would rather have had it automatically spinning. I didn’t have enough time to order a motor to make the tin turn around. I was struggling for ideas but a helpful person suggested I use a record player. This was a great idea as I felt it would show age which would re-enforce my theme and it would also allow me to vary the speed of the spinning object. My main issue was bringing the record player to college. Therefore, this piece became a manually spinning bowl with images on the inside - working in exactly the same way. I was actually rather pleased with how this turned out as I like how it makes the viewer interact with the piece, having to make it spin manually. I found that the images gave the effect of being on a playground roundabout/feeling dizzy as that is how the world appears when spinning at a fast pace. This comparison to a playground apparatus follows my theme of ‘nostalgia’ as it makes one return to a place from their past, a time when feeling dizzy was a common way of having fun.

This video is of the bowl as it should be seen - spinning.

forever being told to use tumblr. 

what’s the point if nobody notices you?