Written component 4

1.

My position definitely changed as I kept working on the project.

I started from the idea of dissecting some principles from nature and re-contextualising them in a tool for sound visualisation. And that was pretty much it. There was no aim or goal, so I found it hard to put my position into words at first but eventually admitted that my driver was pure curiosity and the will to learn a new tool.

Technically, all the visuals are some form of representation of movement paths drawn by a group of points chasing another point. It would be an understatement to say that I had little control over them. At first I could barely get any reaction to sounds that would be visible or would make sense. I felt like a leader of disobedient, capricious herd. It awoke in me unintentional animism, and gave them some sense of aliveness in my eyes.

In that way, exactly from those limitations and my view on the conflict of control and helplessness of a creator, arose the idea of bringing some creatures into life, and therefore building a small, simple, artificial reality for them to live in. The idea gradually emerged from overlap of different texts about design, processing, philosophy, spirituality and creativity. Writing definitely helped me bring together those ideas floating separately in my mind.

As I kept writing, my position slowly drew away from my personal opinion and became a stylistic choice, a play with ‘what ifs’, an add on of layers of complexities on a simple, repetitive act.

2. 

I think the project is not self-explanatory without reading the written components, especially the third one. Or rather, I’m afraid that my ideas in the text became so unrealistic that they might not come through when read out loud in the movie. It’s quite understandable that my words at the same time shape the lines and inform on them, but I’m afraid that what I read in the background gradually draws too far away from them.

This project developed in leaps. Once I found a momentum and came up with something that made sense to me and naturally drew me forward, at some point I was stuck again, questioning my way of thinking, and worried that I went too far.

Even though reading the text out loud to interact with the software helped in iterations – because of a more apparent contrast between sound and silence – the content of the written components did not really transform the way I worked. True, the written components emerged from the studio work, but then grew in their own direction, without a big influence on the project itself.

I am also quite stuck with the video essay itself. Since I discovered an interesting tension between Iterate and Position by combining the two in the video essay, the iterations are not anymore a free flow of trials and errors. Now I see them as parts of the video essay, meant to create a build-up, and I might be too focused on the final product instead of exploration.

I guess in the future I will have to remind myself regularly to keep an eye on the full picture instead of nerding separate aspects and then trying to make them work together.