During a boredom-on-train inspired brainstorming sesh today, I came up with this tentative title for my pp2 project, along with some further ideas. I was thinking about how I would present this project in it’s final form, and the idea of a map came up. Damien’s group are potentially deciding upon whether or not they are going to use a map to highlight where the t-shirt has been for their pp1 project, so that you click on a location and it plays the video/photos that were shot there with the shirt. For mine, I was thinking of doing something like this. The important thing I have to focus on is making every aspect of this project link in with the overall theme. So this could mean that I would scan a hand-drawn map onto the computer, a map drawn by one of the last people surviving in Melbourne. It would feature familiar Melbourne landmarks, and show specific routes that the survivor uses to avoid danger. For instance, it could have a drain network highlighted on the map, and you could click on that and it would take you to a video piece I’ve filmed down the in the drains, where people from this new world now reside.
I then could form a history to these places I focus on, maybe explaining the role they used to have and how that’s changed as humanity slowly dies. For the drains one, here’s a quick snippet, a rough sketch, of a voiceover that could accompany the drains part:
“After the fallout, survivors used the drain network to navigate the city. They had hubs at many of the intersections where they would hoard supplies gathered from above.”
This drains idea is one that I’ve been familiar with for a long time. As a kid, me and a few friends would go and explore the drains around our houses. It’s a strange and eerie feeling when you’re down there. It really seems that the world has gone out of existence, and all that remains is this musky, stale smell, the darkness and isolation of the underworld. It’s also really funny how fellow drain travellers depict their adventures through graffiti on the wall, and this creates a sort of local history for specific drains, understood only by the few who venture there. One day me and a friend read on a drain wall that there was something called ‘The Great Staircase’ at the end of one of the drains. It took us a while to get up the courage to check it out, but one day we grabbed our bags and torches and headed off. It was quite a long trek, and at certain sections the walls would close in, and we’d have to crawl to move forward before the drain opened back up. When it eventually did, we were encountered by a massive set of steps. Two thin rivultes of water streamed down either side, and the steps continued up into darkness. We were really in awe of how cool this was, this slice of local history at our feet. When we got to the top there was just another drain leading onwards, but it didn’t matter, we found what we were looking for.
In my last post I discussed the idea of linking Melbourne’s past to it’s future, and one thing I recently thought of was using footage from the g20 riots to show the beginning of the end. To reappropriate this piece of history and turn it into a climatic event that represented the decline of humanity and the end of life in Melbourne.
Finally, another example of a piece for my project has almost been fully formed in my head. It will be a photo of a broken TV or radio, lying in the middle of the street, with no-one around. When the photo is up online, people will be able to click it and a video or audio piece will play, which will be a news report of when things went sour for Melbourne, and I guess, the world at large.
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