#05 The Changing Dynamics Through my Lens

This week I read a very interesting article suggested by Alex called ‘Visual Research Methods In An Expanded Field: What Next For Visual Research Methods?’ by Gillian Rose. In this article Rose talks about the importance of visual research methods; a qualitative research methodology that relies on the use of artistic mediums to produce and represent knowledge or information what has the ability of capturing reality. These artistic mediums include photography, collage, drawings, mapping, film, diagrams, paintings, and sculptures. As a Visual Artist, I believe I have almost always used such mediums to represent information to either inform my design process or during the research phase to understand the idea or concept better – makes me think about the concept/idea from many different perspectives. I have made collages using found images, my own photographs and hand drawn sketches and illustrations to inform my work throughout this journey.

The phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ resonates with me on a deeper level. I was that child who wouldn’t speak in class out of fear of making a mistake. That lack or confidence forced to stay in a shell and made it even harder for me to talk or even make friends for that matter. As a result I made art materials and paper my best friend which allowed me to use art as an avenue for self-expression. I do believe that at times a picture may convey an idea more quickly and effectively than written words and so I’ve always used different mediums in my work to narrate or explain my work. A photograph or artwork may depict emotion, enabling the viewer to perceive the essence of the story without a word being written or spoken and the that’s beauty of using various kinds of visual research methods.

Here's a collage that I made with multiple found images using Photoshop. It signifies how covid has changed the social dynamics of the society. It also represents a mental image of how enjoying little things in life like spending quality time with family without having to worry about anything is a thing of the past. The current situation is such that it makes you feel you feel trapped.  

But with the explosion in the use of social media in the recent years, taking mindless photographs and showing your audience your daily life has become an important part of people’s life now – they feel like there is a need to document everything, everyday. It’s clear to see that daily interactions with social media platforms have become the new norm and at the end of the day the only things that matters is, the amount of likes and shares they’ve received. This makes me think about the future of photographs/imagery and what would that be like considering photographs in these days are not entirely used to tell a story or a narrative.

During the early stage of the project we decided to have a chat with Alex to get a better understanding of the project brief and clear any misunderstands we had as a team. The most important thing that I learnt after having that conversation with him it made us realise that we weren’t really thinking about what we wanted the city to be like and we were still busy thinking about solving current issues. He reminded us that the smart city is a projection of what the world could or should look like in the future. Here are some questions I asked myself after the meeting:

• You already knew this isn't about solving current city life problems then what happened?
• How do you really imagine the city to be?
• What kind of society do you want to create?
• Is this an image of the city that you would want to live in?
• What kind of values would you want to amplify through your society?
• Why does this matter to you?
• How does it make you feel?

After the meeting we realised that we were diverting from the project brief. So we decided to take a different approach and started to look into the different areas or realms, which we were interested in and what mattered to us the most. During the multiple meetings and discussions I had with my group, we touched upon topics like environment, covid, mental health, social interaction and transportation. We critiqued each other's ideas throughout and reminded ourselves, on several occasions, that we weren't focused on solving a problem.

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