Telling stories

Inspired by a task undertaken during last years Digital Media course, I decided to go out and document a boring event in detail or document time passing through drawings, textures and words. The idea of telling an unexpected story has always interested me, and with the freedom of my journey for my project this notion is very prevalent. I set myself the task of sitting in the library during a cold, wet afternoon and decided to spend a 15minute period focusing on the unusual details that surrounded me that I would usually subconsciously notice but fail to register into my thoughts. Below our my findings:

During the time period, it felt I had lost control of my mind and body. It seemed as if I was unconsciously noticing things and noting them down, without even registering their existence. I was amazed with how quick I became lost in the library and was shocked in how quick the 15 minutes went, considering I expected it to be massively boring and drag on as time usually does whilst in the library. Reviewing my documentations, there was one drawing that caught my eye the most. I had referred to the ceiling lights of the library as spaceships. I looked up at the lights again and couldn't really see it, had I hallucinated the idea of spaceships? Did my mind make up this new identity for the lights as a form of entertainment? Or in reference to Bradshaw, was this my inner child coming to the fore and creating this idea of a living/moving toy within the library. This idea reminded me of one of my favourite films 'Toy Story' which I feel perfectly captures the notion of the inner child, in that everyone at some point of their lives has believed or wanted to believe that their toys are real living objects. 

The success of this task led me to think of how interesting every simple day to day task could be if we opened our eyes and allowed our creative, observational minds run free. As previously stated, I feel my sense of observation is strong, however, after this task, I recognised that I could reach new realms if I allowed my mind to truly be free and get lost in the environment. This would be hard to do during my journey, as with the numerous distractions and noise of outdoor, public space it would be hard to allow my mind to completely shut off, however, this was something I was going to have to experiment with to try and achieve. Possibly the use of headphones to shut me off from the world around me would allow my mind to solely focus of the visual distraction of the public space, so this is what i would do on my next journey.