As we shifted to exploring the internal virtual world of our desktop, it became clear to me that my personal computer space is one of the best forms of communication between myself and others. Communication and quality time, whether in person or over a digital screen, is how we form relationships and as we near the end of our study abroad semester in Singapore, relationships have been on my mind often. Relationships with people back home that have been stunted by distance and relationships that have formed here with people I will be leaving in a few short weeks — even relationships that will grow with transitions that are beginning to happen as I move back to the States but to a new state across the country. All of this is explored through layered video calls and conversations in my Interior Landscape project.
My video-soundscape (a digital landscape of composed video and audio footage) is a realistic narration of my life through chats with friends and family, in particular, my best friends from high school and college and my mother and sister. Selected video snippets are chosen for their audio counterparts and the messages they relayed as well as how they connected and overlapped with conversation content. Repetition of sonic elements such as digital notifications, my distorted voice, and background typing noises create additional texture to the heavily layered video. The most prominent sounds are human voices which I chose not to distort because of the importance of the words. Throughout our study of found sounds this semester and how they can be musical, I think our focus on the human voice in the second half of the semester was most intriguing to me.
The symmetry of the beginning and ending of the video in terms of desktop imagery and sound elements create stability and emphasise how digital communication and relationships cannot exist on a computer without human interaction. My Spotify background music relates to my daily life and the correlation between mood of music and the mood of my day. Ultimately, the video is a composed digital landscape highlighting the humanity that can be found through digital technology as well as my personal sentiments during this time of the semester.
Congratulations on getting the video completed! It felt like the work is a kind of communications scrapbook of memories, conversations, and other desktop elements that document your time abroad. I thought the way in which you layered the various materials was very well done, with conversations that included sounds accompanied by other images of friends, family, cats, etc. The kinds of memories that make up our lives and become part of our everyday desktop experience. Except in this case, it is from thousands of miles way.
I wonder if there might have been a way to create more of a specific narrative, perhaps standout moments that define the experience. The work feels more like we are temporarily inserted into your everyday life of communications as it is ongoing, and perhaps that is the intent. I like particularly the way you used specific music, layered with conversation to give a certain emotional quality to the piece. I think that really is the narrative you were seeking, the flow of people and words and images from far, far away: just the contact we need to say connected.
Yes, I agree the video has the same feeling a scrapbook has through the visual layering and personal theme of relationships. My original intent was storyboarded out to begin with these kind of home-communication videos and then layer in my desktop life pertaining to relationships I have gained here in Singapore. I recorded footage from conversations on WhatsApp, FB Messenger, and in person while working on three different group projects in the last couple weeks of school. My plan was to have three parts to the narrative with part 1 being relationships/conversations back home, part 2 about projects and people I’ve met in SG, and part 3 about the anticipation and transition back to the US and to California. However, with video time constraints and project timing I was only able to chose one of these parts to pursue.
With this decision to focus on relationships far away, I believe my narrative did move towards the theme of distance and simply contact with others. The sounds, music and video effects also were deliberate in how they added to the sentimentality that inherently comes during conversations with these specific people and with people who are far away. Overall, it was a very personal project which I appreciated having the opportunity to pursue during my academic studies.