The focus of my project is well, focus – looking at how we perceive things visually, whether in reality or memory. Looking at focus and understanding how defocusing images makes us think about what we know is there in reality.  Let our brain put the pieces together, or be confused and lost. I know my project is going to follow the rough outlines of a installation, visual sculptural-type installation that stands day and night, changing the atmosphere and visual field of Fort Lane. I am going to articulate this through drawing and initial draft designs with photography. I am thinking about the social energy in the site, not just historical contexts but the present context of the site, as a hub for night-life, social gathering – but also as a place of transition – threshold space, liminal space that isn’t  focused on – I’m interested in the idea that people may spend a good amount of time in the space but may not have the memory or capacity to recall the site in visual detail.

​

SITE DEVICE

The public, non-publics of the area, people who spend time in Fort Lane but may not take notice of its details and facades. My device took images of the site, acting as a lens, distorting and blurring the site, changing its details – focusing on vague shapes and highlighting lighting and creating large light flares. Analysing the images my device made, I began to create connections to visual memory and how the device reflected a kind of view you have intoxicated, inebriated or just with lack of memory. It created a scene of unknown space, uneasiness. Hinting at a possible reality but not letting us see the whole truth.

​

MAKING

I have realised that I am dancing around the same ideas and contexts within all the material testing, focus and distortion. These processes are leading me to consider very particular material conditions and visual reactions in detail.

​

STORYBOARD

The entrances to Fort Lane from Fort Street and Customs St, looking down the lane towards the usually detailed facades of the Imperial Lane building and Roxy’s façade. From afar you can see something is different, wrong, and as you come closer you start to question what you are seeing, you remember the building but right now they seem to be covered in a film, not loading, hasn’t rendered properly. Confused. These key transitions relate and reflect cinematic scene transitions that play with focus, when we, the audience are in the eyes of the character that cannot make out or see the focus of the shot – whether it be through visual difficulty or lack of memory or intoxication, we are given that same moment of unknown or confusion. This design would activate the space as a spectacle, confusing and interesting installation that makes people consider the pleasures and confusions of lacking memory or full brain focus. How do surface conditions act as puzzle pieces, building memory in spaces. Are they considered or ignored? In defocusing these surface facades, I am putting them in focus.

​

MOVING FORWARD 

Moving my design forward I am developing the idea of making this sculptural installation a durational event – creation on site from start to finish – making the interiors of Imperial Lane a working workshop where taking moulds of the building is ten translated into glass slumping on site, creating a event where the public can take notice of the full scope and cycle of a work. This then going onto installing the facade, gives an insight – a behind-the-scenes– director's cut – moment for the ‘audience’. The project is then left up for a duration before dissembling and distributing the pieces of the facade.