Remembering the Neighbourhood

Remembering the Neighbourhood from callan rowe on Vimeo.

A motion graphics work for a university assignment with the theme Identity.

When researching Identity, I was taken with Bauman’s metaphor of a desert from From Pilgrim to Tourist. The idea that our identity is fractured and make up of reflections of other people, and the goal to find a landscape that was devoid of form in order to find your true identity. With this in mind I wanted to emulate the experience of a formless environment, I wanted to take away all stimulation so that I could see if my true identity was hiding underneath. 

So I booked myself in for a one-hour session in a sensory deprivation tank. A sensory deprivation tank is is a lightless, soundproof tank which you float in salt water at skin temperature. The idea is that with all sensory input removed you are forced into an introverted meditation. 

As I floated in the salt water trying to force an epiphany my eyes began to adjust and I realised that the tank was not as dark as the ad had made it out to be. On the roof of the tank I could see reflections of the water shimmering. While being quite relaxing the sensory deprivation tank did not provide me with the instant penetrating insight into the self that I was hoping for.

Later I realised that we can never exist in a vacuum, we exist only in relation to our environment, and as our environments change so do we. We adapt. With this in mind I looked back over my past, and saw the distinct creation of multiple identities, identities built on top of eachother. I have moved house a lot, I realised that it was in these changes of environment that triggered the changes of identity. Each one of these past houses serves as a kind of chapter marker in the narrative of my life.

The motion graphics piece that I created to represent this is called Remembering the Neighbourhood. When thinking of a way to articulate the different era’s of my life the image of an aerial shot resinated with my. As a child I was a frequent flyer and the image of looking out the window at all the houses seemed an apt representation of looking back over my life. I used the aesthetic of the reflections of the water on the roof of the sensory deprivation tank as a devise to show the different houses that I lived in. 

The houses appear in sequence chronologically and wash over each other. This represents my identities building on top of each other. Sounds from the neighbourhoods play over each other mimicking the visuals. By the time all of the six neighbourhoods are on screen it is difficult to tell where one ends and the others begins, similarly I cannot pinpoint the exact origins of my identity, they shift and flow. Remembering the Neighbourhood is an attempt to show the creation of a multilayered identity over time. It does not aim to show specific details, rather it is a dreamlike and poetic representation of the creation of self. 

While the piece can be viewed as a stand-alone video, I invision it more as an installation. The installation would be set in a white room, different versions of the video would be projected on each wall and the roof.  Speakers would be placed around the room so that the audio heard corresponds to the video that you are closest to. This would make the installation interactive as it changes depending on where you are in the room.