Photography - memories, The Hippocampus

The Hippocampus is important in the formation of new memories about experienced events (autobiographical memory) & novel events (memories that can be explicitly verbalised, these include memory for facts in addition to episodic memory)

If the Hippocampus was taken out of your brain right now, you would be stuck in time and memories of new experiences which would rapidly fade away. The hippocampus functions to create a seamless story of self.

'A photo is information about past light that we can perceive in present light'

Photography- Memories

REFERENCE BACK by Philip Larkin

That was a pretty one, I heard you call
From the unsatisfactory hall
To the unsatisfactory room where I
Played record after record, idly,
Wasting my time at home, that you
Looked so much forward to.

Oliver’s Riverside Blues, it was. And now
I shall, I suppose, always remember how
The flock of notes those antique negroes blew
Out of Chicago air into
A huge remembering pre-electric horn
The year after I was born
Three decades later made this sudden bridge
From your unsatisfactory age
To my unsatisfactory prime.

Truly, though our element is time,
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently, we could have kept it so.

The last paragraph is particularly poignant and can be linked to photography, and how many people would view photographs sadly, particularly family photos where many of the people may be dead. 

'They link us to our losses; worse , They show us what we have as it once was.' 

Photographs are essentially a still memory, but more than that; they evoke emotions of a time lost never to truly be relived except in the mostly unsatisfactory tomes of our memory.

I take a rather macabre view on memories, preferring instead to live in the present. Although memories can be a reminder of what shaped us and made us who we are today, they can also be shackles, fettering us to the past.

Despite this view, having no photographs of your life at all would be worse than the emotion one can feel looking at the past.

Humans tend to alter our own memories, we like the smudge the past, diminishing the bad so they become less painful and somehow the good times take on a golden light. We focus so heavily on those times sometimes that they become immaculate and somewhat better than they actually were. While this can still happen with photographs, as a photo is a reminder, a starting point from which we fill in the gaps with our memory; if your memory is skewed, so might the photo take on a different meaning.

However a photo can act as an anchoring point, a reminder of how things actually were , and sometimes rid us of the illusions of our own altered memories.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/reality-check/2013/dec/10/does-taking-photographs-ruin-your-memory

Photography - reasearch

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/05/08/that-tree-a-photo-a-day-by-mark-hirsch/6021/

A year in the life of a tree.

touches on my seasonal photo idea. one photo taken every day over the course of the year, each photo is a different composition, some photos aren't as good as others but the ones that are good are really nice.

http://eirikso.com/2011/01/04/one-year-in-one-image/

A DSLR set up in a forest in oslo, taking a photo every half hour , then using a script source from the internet, the photographer then choose 4880 images from during the day, the photographer took a slice of each image in progression (in chronological order from january to december) and fused them into one montage.

Sound- Initial thoughts

Words that spring to mind:

Box, Cold, Void, Maze, Stacks, Avalanche, Pile, Snow, Sand, Particles, Lost, Sugar, Growth

Box- Obviously there's boxes but the people also look 'boxed in' as they walk around.

Cold- lack of colour leads to a cold feel, this combines with the high vantage point to compound a feeling of cold detachment.

Void- much as above it's void of colour and for me void of any overt emotion.

Maze- a warren of pathways, penned in by high walls/ hedges of boxes.

Stack- Dual meaning, boxes are stacked, but also the connotations of library stacks, library archives etc. get the feeling of a library for some reason but fused with the new and clean.

Avalanche- Looks like a neat avalanche of snow, the snow/colour is synonymous and much like a pile of snow its made up of many individual pieces/flakes.

Patrticles/ sand/ snow/ sugar - Lots of individual pieces making up the whole


Desertscape/ Snowscape- these atmos soundscapes are quite similar - Cicada sound (desert only), Wailing winds, birds of prey calls (hawk/or vulture in the desert,eagles etc in the snow scape), blizzard sounds, crunching snow/sand.

Snowscape mixed with library/exhibition sound ? - ambient room tone,

Character Bios

Character Bios

          

Name: Death

Age: God knows, no literally only God would know

Physical Description: Typically seen as a skeleton in a giant robe, also seen as being in a suit. Wears something pale to show horseman. 

Quirks: Monotone voice

Personality strengths/weaknesses: Prudence, pride, humble, powerful, calm

Skills: Immense power, deadly touch

Goals: To end the lives of people who are destined to die then and there

Name: Famine

Age: Too old for you love

Physical Description: Well fed, healthy person who doesn't appear to age. Wears casual clothing to blend and something black to show horsemen. 

Quirks: The joy of killing people by spreading famine across the land

Personality strengths/weaknesses: Resilience, some sort of fairness, smug bastard, greed, brutality, twisted

Skills: Being able to affect prices and crops meaning people starve

Goals: To cause starvation to those who may or may not deserve it

Name: War

Age: Way too old and should die already

Physical Description: Built up body to show strength, looks like someone who could take charge. Wears something red to represent horseman. 

Quirks: Interested in war, has quite a demanding voice, believes all humans are 'filth'

Personality strengths/weaknesses: Assertiveness, anger, arrogance, bias, deceitfulness, mercilessness

Skills: Being able to turn people against each other and start wars with just a snap of his fingers

Goal: To make all 'filthy' people turn against each other and cause death throughout

Name: Pestilence

Age: Older than life itself

Physical Description: Appearance of illness and death. Plagued with diseases. Wearing something white to show horseman

Quirks: Has every disease wrapped up in the palm of their hand

Personality strengths/weaknesses: Self-awareness, perceptiveness, knowledge, manipulative, rashness, twisted 

Skills: The ability to infect anyone with anything at anytime

Goals: To kill with the use of diseases

Reflections Production Pack (sort of)

Synopsis

The four horsemen have been unleashed on the Earth to be the harbingers of the Apocalypse, but at first they are too weak to inhabit their true forms. Thus meaning possess the bodies of a mortal to feed off the souls of humans, only until they are strong enough to truly be free. This short film shows how each horseman would act in the same scenario, possessing the body of one of two friends and turning on said friend to strengthen their corrupted souls. Each scene will run for 1-3 minutes of improvised dialogue and action, telling the tale in reverse chronological order with differing approaches to the same outcome.

Treatment

Scene 1 – Famine

•          The body of the un-possessed friend lies in a pool of regurgitated food.
•          The eyes of the friend bulge as they vomit up their stomach content until there’s nothing left and they die (effectively of starvation).
•          The friend backs away from Famine as it approaches, hand out stretched to use his/her power of the friend.
•          The friend looks on as Famine explains his/her true nature
•          The friend questions Famine on his odd behavior
•          The friend and Famine are walking through the Wood/Park area
•          Famine meets up with the friend
•          The Host touches a occult symbol on a tree and becomes possessed by Famine

Scene 2 – Pestilence

•          The body of the friend lies dead already surrounded by flies, a maggot crawls on their face
•          The friend scratches at their skin and can be heard describing how they’re rotting away/feel ill/diseased
•          The friend backs away from Pestilence as it approaches him hand outstretched to curse them
•          The friend listens as Pestilence explains who he is
•          The friend questions pestilence’s behavior
•          The friend and pestilence walk through the wood/park area
•         Pestilence meets up with the friend
•          The Host touches a occult symbol on a tree and becomes possessed by Pestilence

Scene 3 – War

•           Parts of the friends body is on the floor covered in blood
•          The friend can be heard screaming as blood/gore sprays across the grass
•          The friend runs from War
•          The friend listens as war explains who he is and his intention to kill the friend
•          The friend apprehensively questions War’s violent behavior/attitude
•          The walk through the park area
•          They meet in the park
•          The Host touches a occult symbol on a tree and becomes possessed by War

Scene 4 – Death

•          The body of the friend lays dead, eyes staring vacantly with the body already extremely pale
•          Death touches the friend who instantly goes limp and drops death
•          Death approaches the friend one finger extended as the friend backs away
•          The friend listens as Death coldly imparts who he is
•          The friend questions Death’s demeanor/behavior
•          The friend and Death walk through the park/wood
•          They meet in the park
•          The Host touches a occult symbol on a tree and becomes possessed by Death

         Camera Style

      Shot types – will be primarily MS + CU/ECU, the shot plan is impossible to produce as the camera movements will be improvised/semi blocked on the day in the style of irreversible. This is basically unsteady/hectic at first to be synonymous with the action of the shots and to impart feelings of unease and desperation to the viewer. And with a smoother but creepier style which will hopefully impress a sense of dread/apprehension to the viewer towards the end (chronological beginning) of the scenes.

       Props

•         Canned vegetable soup/vomit
•          Fake blood
•          Pale foundation makeup
•          Fake prosthetics  

      The scene will run looped on a split-screen, with only one scenes audio playing at a time. Which scene is playing will become obvious as the action matches the sound and should draw the viewer’s attention. The split-screen allows the viewer to see the convergence/divergence of the scenes and to easily recognize the similarities and differences in the way each character/actor improvises and reacts in the scenario.

   

      Lighting

      Natural light will be used in the park, with colour correction afterwards to achieve the desired look.

Time Art Treatment

I shall be using a star particle device (CC Particle world) to recreate a cyclic model of the universe over time. I will be aiming to show the balance of this model in a visual style, demonstrating how all energy is finite and how based off this fact it can't be linear (in my view).

The screens on the left and right will be vertically tapered by black bars to represent to relatively small size and confined nature of our still expanding (in the right side ,retracting) universe. These two screens will effectively show the same thing but inverted, as the model for an expanding universe and one for one undergoing the big crunch are almost identical. The two side screens will show a thin stream of small stars that snake down the page, getting larger and more numerous as they flow to/and from the centre screen.

The middle screen will show the stars oscillating in size around a small centre point (call it a singularity) as they begin to move/behave more chaotically (this is synonymous with the behaviour of physics as time as we know it begins to teeter). As the stars move further along their path , they will begin to move more turbulently , the movement of the stars will match the test pics/videos that i took of turbulent flow as many points along the river flowing through farnham and also the manner in which ink diffuses into water (in the ink bath test i did). The turbulent flow will represent how space and time (and spacetime) break down as the universe reaches its turning point, when expansion is no longer possible and the universe begins to reverse and contract.


(insert diagrams here)

The middle screen will flow around the centre point in a similar, if more chaotic, fashion to the Chinese symbol for Ying and Yang (which denotes the balance in all nature, in this case the balance of all energy and the expansion/contraction of this model of the universe) as will the two other screens denote the balance.