Nov 6, 2007 1
plain vanilla
‘Pedestrian’ started out as a vlog response to the banal, the everyday. The sub-heading at one point read plain vanilla, banal, humdrum, boring, run-of-the-mill, dull, ordinary…The everyday nature of blogs as a practice influenced this focus. There was also as a sub-text the reference to the pedestrian point-of-view as the person on foot, at street level. Working with these themes in mind the video excerpts where culled from recordings that Keith had captured as part of his interstate travels and excursions around Melbourne.
Categories: Looking through these recordings I detected varying preoccupations in terms of the point-of-view taken in the recordings, like above, underneath, passing, stationary and obstructions. Also, I was searching for some abstract themes that would allow for a very open process of categorising. The objective was to create some distinctive categories in advance. These varying categories also in the triptych format needed to allow for some difference and similarity across this format.
Clips: With the triptych format in mind I aimed for short duration moments that would have a reasonably quick download speed, as part of a concurrent cluster of three clips. I was also thinking about blog posts as generally being short and fragmentary. Each moment as a slice-in-time was chosen on the basis of what could be conveyed to the viewer in a short space of time.
Titles: Titles for each clip followed an instinctive response, which I worked out later where being influenced by the category themes. For example, the clip tilted ‘stranded’ is in the obstructions category and the clip titled ‘millpond is in the underneath category. These titles ended up being very literal as in ‘boat ramp’ or slightly more obscure as in ‘stranded’. Sometimes these titles also responded to the audio like specific dialogue, for example the “good morning” announcement on the train intercom. Over the time as the work progressed the titles where made visible in the player when a clip was chosen. The other influence on the titles where the tag names for each clip. In most cases I was aiming to find titles that did not replicate these tag names. On reflection, the clip titles tend to be more specific than the tag names.
Tags: The tag names in contrast to the categories tended to be very literal responses details in each clip. A number of themes began to emerge as a result of the tagging process. These where things like time of day; the location; specific elements in the shots like sea, water, trees; the mode of transport the shot was recorded from like train and car; the weather; the focus of the shot as in architecture or landscape; sounds like if the shot was particularly noisy or had background music for example; aesthetic notes like minimal and subtle etc.
Defunct player: In this version the posting of clips to the vlog where taking place as the player was being configured and built to meet the art + blog deadline. The player category page (which acts like a splash page into the player itself) was changed to the front page as the first point of contact with the work. Choosing a category takes the user to the triptych viewing page. The clips assigned to the chosen category are lined up in the centre window of the triptych viewer as a cluster of small thumbnails. When the user selects one of these clips it plays in the centre window and displays identical related tag lists in the corresponding windows either side. Choosing a tag in the left and right viewer sections brings up a group of thumbnails relating to that specific tag. Selecting one of these thumbnails plays the clip in the chosen left or right viewing window completing the triptych view of three clips running simultaneously. The user can then proceed to curate varying selections of the clips under that chosen category by clicking on the chosen tag name to return to the tag list.
The clips chosen by category in the centre remain assigned to that category. But, the clips chosen under tags can go across any of the other categories. The tags create cross-references across all the categories. This may be fault with the way the player works as this makes the viewing very random and in the end possibly leaves little separation between the categories.
Vlog: The clips can be viewed individually as separate posts like on a conventional vlog on the vlog page. Here each clips is displayed with a title, assigned category and a tag list. Selecting the assigned category or a tag on each of the individual clips provides access to the clips in archived groups from this page.
