2

INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY AND PLACE: PORTRAIT OF A BEND OF ISLANDS

Ed Armstrong Advanced Diploma Screen Production, RMIT TAFE Bachelor of Creative Writing (Media and Communication), RMIT University

Submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours)

Dr. Adrian Miles School of Media and Communication, RMIT University October 2013

This work is licensed under the Creative Cover images: Placing the Bend, Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 screenshots Unported License. To view a copy of this First page and final page: aerial license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ photography, BOI circa 1962 and licenses/by-nc/3.0/deed.en_US. 1966, care of Frank Pierce ABSTRACT

Online interactive documentary is an emerging area of new media arts practice that I have used to explore the dense theoretical propositions related to the humanist geographical notion of placemaking.

In this exegesis, with reference to some of the key claims humanist geographers have made in terms of place as hybrid and densely networked, I shall discuss the advantages and disadvantages I have come across in making Placing the Bend to see how effective interactive documentary is as a medium.

Ed Armstrong RMIT University DECLARATION

I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the exegesis is the result of the work which has been carried out since the official research program; and any editorial work, paid or unpaid carried out by a third party is acknowledged.

Ed Armstrong Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the help I have received from my supervisor, Dr. Adrian Miles, who has provided the guidance and backbone for this research from day one.

Without the participation and encouragement of the Bend of Islands community this project would not have been possible. Key contributors include Ross and Christine Henry, Rudi Pauli, Mick Woiwod, Frank Pierce, Janet Mattiske, Tom Fisher, John and Megan McCallum, Tserin Wright, Rodrigo Castellanos and Liz and Pete Mildenhall. The invaluable support I received from James Armstrong, Tobey Henry, and Tarquin and Dan Moore also provided a bedrock for this project to be realised.

I would like to thank Shamus Hoare for his last minute design help, and Frances Ampt for her unfading generosity.

The 2013 RMIT Media and Communication Honours cohort have been an integral part of my experience of achieving this research project. Without the camaraderie of Steven Rhall, Simon Wood, Ben Calder, Ruby Mahoney, Jason Tseng and Josh Nettheim, I doubt I would have been able to get over the finish line. My sincere thanks to them all.

And finally, special thanks to my family and friends for understanding that my absence was due to my stubborn intent to acheive this mammoth task, none of which would have been of any importance without their being a part of my life. Figure 1: Placing the Bend, screenshot

NOTE TO READER

The following exegesis is framed by a series of lists and interview transcripts which may be read independently or as an accompaniment to the main body of text.

Additionally, images situated in-text will be referred to by figure number alone in order to avoid the repetition of images.

All three interactive documentaries of Placing the Bend are on the USB thumb drive attached to the front cover of this exegesis. To view each, please launch a web browser (Chrome, Safari, Explorer) and select the index files within each folder.

Ed Armstrong CONTENTS

8 INTRODUCTION

12 LAY OF THE LAND

17 PLACE

17 PHENOMENOLOGY &

HUMANIST GEOGRAPHY

24 LIST-MAKING

27 EXPERIENCE

33 BODY BALLET

36 SPACE

39 HYBRIDITY

45 ASSEMBLAGE

50 INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY

50 KORSAKOW

54 PARADIGM & SYNTAGM

59 PATTERNS

66 PROJECT

66 PLACING THE BEND

75 ROUND THE BEND

85 ASSEMBLING THE BEND

91 BECOMING THE BEND

98 CONCLUSION

105 BIBLIOGRAPHY

109 DOCUMENTARIES CITED

110 INTERVIEWEES 8 INTRODUCTION

The density and complexity of place is Plympton Park Forestville difficult to represent in a conventional, Frewville linear documentary film as the continual FulhamFulham flows we experience and assemble Granville Bank to form our understanding of place Woolshed are in a constant state of flux, being Newington influenced by our social and personal Junction Sutherland understandings and larger material and Wiley immaterial flows. Somerton North Gardenvale Park As we experience the material and Blacksoil Blackstone immaterial facets of a place, which Booval stem from our individual experiences Brassall of the actual things within a place Brookwater Bundamba and the conceptual framework that we Camira are exposed to through the societal Churchill understanding of place, the multiplicities Coalfalls Collingwood of Space are temporarily ‘paused’ (Tuan, Hills 198) to produce an assemblage of place. Bexley Bexley The intersection of these material Milperra Hill Broadmeadows and immaterial forces are only Brunswick temporary as everything we experience Brunswick Park fluctuates and changes with every Bardwell Park subsequent experience we have. Our Heights notion of place is not fixed, for place Mickleham Tennyson is constantly evolving depending on Why Duffys the connections it forms with these North Wyndham facets, becoming ‘fusions of human Wollert Park Brendale and natural order and the significant Bunya Burpengary

Ed Armstrong 9

Caboolture centers of our immediate experience of Caboolture Hills Ferny the world’ (Seamon 1979, 3). Stafford Island Dunwich Interactive Documentary and Place: Karragarra Portrait of a Bend of Islands is an Oaklands exegetical reflection on how the three Battery Park part documentary project Placing Heights the Bend explores the complexity of Cheltenham placemaking through online interactive Clarinda Clayton documentary. The problem I am Westlake investigating by making Placing the Hills Warrawee Bend is how to understand and represent Cabarita place as an assemblage through Bight interactive documentary. Bonbeach Braeside Three documentaries were created Brighton Lota to explore the Bend of Islands (BOI), Balgowlah a community 30 kilometres north- Beacon Darling east of Melbourne, Australia. The first Helena documentary is titled Round the Bend, Springvale the second Assembling the Bend, and the West West Point third I have called Becoming the Bend. Allawah Each iteration progressively fuses the Arncliffe residents of the BOI with the place itself. Audley Bangor The BOI is a unique place. It was Banksia Barden officially recognised as the worlds first Mount Environmental Living Zone (ELZ) in Adelaide South 1982 (Woiwod 2010, 153). It is made up Newtown Potts of a dedicated community of resident Hindmarsh conservationists who seek to promote an North Belconnen ongoing state of ‘retention, regeneration Everton

Placing the Bend 10

and revegation’ (Jolly & Osler, 82) to Pocket Mount Stepney preserve a largely undisturbed part Samson of the native Australian bush. Each Narre resident of the BOI has a strong sense The Reservoir of place by choosing to live there and Abbotsford interacting with the surrounding Rockdale environment in a variety of ways. From Sandgate Warranwood weeding to bird watching to planting, Sumner campaigning for local government Glorious Mount support, conducting surveys, and fine- Norman Upper tuning the zoning guidelines that the Abbotsford community abides by. Keswick Beach My research explores the theoretical Leawood East claims of humanist geographers Seamon, Zillmere Massey, Cresswell, and Tuan, seeking Downs parallels between placemaking and Sefton Richmond interactive documentary. I have adopted Vale humanist geography’s phenomenological Vale Mount approach to understanding place Bondi through the form of list-making, a Leichhardt key methodology employed in the Souci Iris documentaries in order to understand Hawthorn the BOI as a place consisting of a White multitude of events, occurrences, and Denistone Hawthorne experiences. By listing a sample of Point Wellington the material and immaterial facets South Auburn of the place as semi-separate parts, Parkside Newmarket connections have been made between Forest each in the interactive documentaries Ingleside Killarney to form an understanding of how Stretton Fremantle North

Ed Armstrong 11

Manly placemaking occurs for the residents of Hampton Adelaide Adelaide the BOI. Park Beverly Belfield I have chosen to use interactive Belmore documentary to generate an intersection Berala of these parts to allow poetic Birrong Camellia connections to be made, an audiovisual Campsie assemblage of information, experiences, Canterbury and commentary to describe the dense, Carlingford Chester hybrid nature of place. Huntingdale Coonawarra This exegesis will offer a short Darwin introduction to placemaking, followed by Heights Melbourne a discussion of interactive documentary, North Cranbourne before specifically reflecting upon how Point Placing the Bend can be seen to reflect Fairfield Unley placemaking using the BOI as a case Samford study. Various lists related to the BOI, as Ashfield Park Homebush well as images and interview transcripts Narwee from the documentaries, will be included North Epping to highlight the list-making approach I Essendon East Ringwood have taken in the documentary work. First, Hall some background information about the Gladesville place itself. Granville Greenacre Guildford Stafford South North Dandenong Pilli Loftus Lucas Crossing Silkstone Springfield

Placing the Bend 12

THE LAY OF THE LAND Kooyong Normanhurst In 1999, a small Australian community North Park along the northern bank of the Yarra Nudgee River was successful in officially Wooloowin obtaining the name Bend of Islands Waterford

from the Geographical Place Names Rudi: I can remember Committee (Woiwod 2010, 154). The coming down this road for the very first time and I can name was coined by the real estate remember thinking, “what agent who first subdivided it in the early have I come to here!” 20th century after observing the islands South Highgate that dot the Yarra River from lower Tree Glebe Lenah Catani Boulevard (Figures 2, 3 and 4). Crosby

Figure 2: Placing the Bend, Figure 3: Placing the Bend, screenshot screenshot

Ed Armstrong 13

Figure 4: Alonso, 1985

Zetland Situated 30km north-east of Melbourne, Tallegalla South the BOI consists of 680 hectares of BaySouth contiguous remnant bushland that Skye contains 713 vascular flora (497 of Creek Parramatta which are native), 220 species of Ryde vertebrate fauna (205 of which are Gully native), and 279 residents (Jolly and South Devon Beach Henley Osler) (Figures 5, 6 and 7). Rocklea Creek Springwood The Yarra geological fault-line extends Tanah south-westerly from Steels Creek to View Fernvale intersect with the Brushy Creek fault Glamorgan line heading south towards Bayswater Warner (Woiwod 2010, 17) (Figure 8). These faults Acacia Point have established a highly contrasted St land mass, with rounded ridges and deep Hobart valleys that together comprise what the

Placing the Bend 14

local indigenous people (the Wurendjeri) Tolmans Park called Nillumbik. Roughly translated, Fig “Nillum” means “bad” whilst “bik” Matraville Park means “earth.” Dinmore East Kensington The BOI is located within a “rain Walkerville Ovingham shadow” whereby average rainfall Mount Pleasant rarely exceeds 700mm per year (BICA). Brighton-Le-Sands Bundeena The surrounding mountain ranges of Burraneer Kinglake act as a barrier to rainfall, Caringbah reducing precipitation across the Carlton Carss Nillumbik Shire. Park Lakes ‘Standing some 200 metres above Yarra East Cannons Hill Glen on the nearby floodplain of the Yarra Capalaba Sydney River,’ (Woiwod 2010, 17) the Nillumbik Coomera Varsity region has very little top-soil or moisture East Berwick compared to it’s neighbouring regions. Black West Brisbane However, the BOI’s primary feature is its Darwin river, which was used by the Wurrundjeri Coconut for its rich bounty of fish, mammals, and Turramurra Hobart as a means of transport. Ryde Eastwood A range of government agencies Epping own sections of the land, including Ermington Georges Melbourne Water, Nillumbik Council, Murarrie Parks Victoria, and the Department of Roselands Sustainability and the Environment. Osmond Heights With the exception of Melbourne Water’s Notting Sugarloaf Reservoir and Winneke Ramsgate Treatment Plant, that lie to the north, all Scarborough Tarragindi crown land is accessible to the public. Oakleigh

Ed Armstrong 15

Figure 5: Alonso, 1985

Figure 6: Alonso, 1985

Placing the Bend 16

Figure 7: Jolly and Osler, 2013

Figure 8: Woiwod, 2013

Ed Armstrong 17 PLACE

PHENOMENOLOGY

Seamon and Tuan’s humanist shrike-thrush geographic conception of place relies on grey currawong phenomenological principles. Seamon pied magpie australian explains phenomenology as ‘the study currawong and description of human experience’ grey fantail (2010, 2166), and similarly Tuan explains grey raven that ‘[e]xperience is compounded of little wattlebird feeling and thought’, an ‘experiential red cuckoo shrike b’faced continuum’ of these two ways of human kookaburra knowing (10). According to Tuan, laughing pardalote striated feeling denotes our sensory input (sight, honeyeater hearing, taste, etc.) whilst thought white-eared thornbill characterises the conceptual unpacking striated rosella we engage when understanding things. crimson swallow welcome thornbill In a move away from ‘positivist science’ brown duck (Seamon 1993, 1), which employs pacific black quantitative methodologies to record fairywren cause-and-effect relationships, Seamon superb duck advocates for a ‘kindly seeing’ (1993, wood (maned) 2) to be carried out in order to allow t’creeper us to ‘see the world as it is’ (1993, 1). wh. throated blackbird By this, Seamon means to not merely butcher-bird perceive the world from our perspective grey spinebill eastern as individual or collective human beings, honeyeater but to step ‘inside’ things to view the white-naped cuckoo world from their perspective. In the fan-tailed honeyeater case of Placing the Bend, this involves yellow faced robin scarlet whistler

Placing the Bend 18

stepping inside the BOI in order to golden galah pardalote understand it from the inside out. spotted rosella

Feeling, thinking, and kindly seeing are eastern

interconnected in phenomenologically miner

understanding the world and how and bell whistler

where we fit in it. This is the rationale rufous

I employed when creating Placing the cockatoo

Bend to think about placemaking. By sulf

making Placing the Bend, I have found crested raven australian

my understanding of place has grown chough

(thinking) as the density and complexity white-winged magpie-lark

(feeling) of my case study ­— the BOI — robin

has been revealed to me by speaking eastern yellow bronzewing

with residents, audiovisually recording common

it, and constructing the three interactive scrub-wren

documentaries. wh. browed

Experience is a subjective phenomenon. miner noisy Regardless of what scientific instrument lorikeet rainbow or methodology we use to measure and corella understand the world around us, the long billed starling common process of interpreting the world into quail-thrush spotted oriole meaningful information is influenced by olive-backed corella our own biases and sensory limitations. little silvereye honeyeater yellow tufted thornbill

As Tuan notes: buff-rumped owlet-n’jar

australian kingfisher To experience is to learn; it sacred robin means acting on the given and rose bronze-cuckoo shining creating out of the given. The shelduck australian sitella given cannot be known in itself. varied teal What can be known is a reality

Ed Armstrong 19 grey firetail red-browed coot that is a construct of experience, a eurasian cuckoo pallid creation of feeling and thought (9). cormorant little black honeyeater We assemble and construct the raw new holland egret data of experience in order to make great wagtail willie falcon sense of the world around us and our peregrine shrike-tit position within it. This practice occurs crested kite automatically, our bodies negotiating black-shouldered turtle- the world around us without the need dove for constant instructions dictating our spotted swamphen every move. Seamon calls this automatic purple heron bodily behaviour our body-subject, white-faced cormorant explaining how our body functions ‘as a pied crake, spotless grebe special kind of subject which expresses australasian flycatcher itself in a pre-conscious way’ (1979, 41). satin heron When our bodily behavior is operated pacific black cockatoo ‘automatically’ by our body-subject y-tailed ibis we can pay more attention to our sacred honeyeater white- surroundings, which reinforces our plumed kingfisher azure emotional engagement to place, what moorhen dusky owl Seamon calls our feeling-subject. Both southern boobook mynah body-subject and feeling-subject work common parrot in a constant dialectic to build our king honeyeater relationship with place. Body-subject crescent swan is a ‘prereflective action grounded in black woodswallow dusky the body’ (Seamon 1979, 80), whereas bronzewing brush goshawk Seamon explains feeling-subject as brown cuckoo ‘a matrix of emotional intentionalities brush honeyeater brown- within the person which extend headed egret outwards in varying intensities to the centres, places and spaces of a person’s

Placing the Bend 20

everyday geographical world’ (1979, 76). Frank: You know, if you The habitual state of body-subject acts walk in the same area all the as a basis for feeling-subject, and our time you notice things that varying emotional experience of place are changing throughout fluctuates in intensity depending on our the year. And you learn to personal engagement with it. look for that change the next year and stuff like that... The body-subject engages us in a

recurring, automatic rhythm that Interviewer: The

allows connections to be made and relationships you start

strengthened through the feeling- to recognise in an

subject, which takes note of the environment like you were

meaningful facets of place (Seamon saying before... how the

1979, 71). By involving ourselves in the complexity is revealed to

place itself we are able to look upon you after observing long

it with kindly eyes, drawing upon our enough... Do you feel like

own personal connection with every you can ever really unpack

part we encounter; that? Or do you think the

To be inside a place is to belong entanglement of it and the to it and to identify with it, and complexity of it will never the more profoundly inside you kind of... will it forever be are, the stronger is the identity too complex to understand? with the place (Seamon citing Relph 1993, 3) Frank: You can understand the complexity as far as

For example, by routinely walking the you can see it. But there’s

same route, BOI resident Frank (Pierce) another thousand layers of

began to understand the regular rhythms complexity out there that

and nuances of the BOI to the point you just haven’t seen. where a small difference would capture

cattle mistletoe bird

Ed Armstrong 21 flycatcher his interest and add to his increasing restless darter knowledge of the place.

Australian ibis straw- At times our conceptual biases necked cockatoo precipitate our disengagement with gang-gang mallard eagle the world around us, prompting habits wedge-tailed pea fowl based on patterns or unquestioned ground-thrush assumptions to be made. For Seamon, Australian robin phenomenology is a method that ‘bids pink frogmouth us to turn toward phenomena which tawny t’creeper had been blocked from sight by the red-browed lyrebird theoretical pattern[s] in front of them’ whistler (Seamon citing Spiegelberg 2007, 42), olive sparrow-hawk so as to form an intimate relationship collared kite through experiencing these phenomena whistling weebill lorikeet first hand by employing our body and musk flycatcher feeling-subjects. leaden hardhead bronze- swift, forktailed owl, Seamon explains that we tend to focus powerful reed-warbler on the world around us as ‘fractured Australian parts’ instead of allowing a more holistic cuckoo understanding of the ‘whole’ to unfold h’field’s button-quail (1993, 2). The whole does not refer to “the painted cormorant whole of existence,” instead, Seamon is great honeyeater referring to a “functioning whole” similar fuscous thornbill to a machine that can only operate yellow jacky winter fantail with numerous singular components. rufous kestrel These components are what Seamon australian lapwing masked calls the fractured parts that are the 9 166 lorikeet general subject of phenomenological little thornbill experience, due to the limited scope yellow rumped native-hen of our subjective experience. Seamon’s

Placing the Bend 22

intention is to “seek ways to allow being Frank: The best way to break forth and to heal the wholes to get into nature is in that have long since been fractured into your own little patch. Not parts” (italics added, 1993, 2). traveling around to every national park in Australia.

Frank’s (Pierce) walking routine Because all you do is gloss

developed into an interweaving of body- over everything, you’re

and feeling-subject that consequently not really getting into

allowed his consciousness to be free in it. Whereas if you get an

order to focus upon the specificparts of intimate knowledge of...

the place around him. He first noticed you know, almost like a

the seasonal shifts and effects on the spiritual relationship with

environment, then the finer details began the land, then, when you go

to emerge. In his own words, “the story somewhere else and stay

of the bush” revealed itself to him, thus there for a very short time,

strengthening his understanding and you can plug into that same

appreciation for the place as a whole. detail. To learn it you’ve got

Being exposed to any place for an to live in a place and...ah... extended period of time establishes a feel it, I reckon (laughs)... regularity that provides the basis for You know, you walk and any irregularities to stand out. ‘[B]oth you see choughs, and you body and feeling-subjects require time watch them for a while and to become familiar with and attached then you see a fox, so you to new environments’ (italics added, sort of think, “I wonder if I Seamon 1979, 77), it is only after recurrent can follow this fox.” So you exposure to a place that a strong sense of start following the fox. And its continuities become apparent. These the fox sits down, and then continuities provide the time for the the choughs come and fly irregular occurrences to stand out, thus and attack the fox and you providing highlighted experiences such think “what’s going on?!” as the time Frank experienced several Then you hear that John

Ed Armstrong 23

McCallums daughter was choughs attacking a fox (described in sitting on her verandah the soundtrack of Assembling the Bend three weeks ago and a fox and Becoming the Bend). By allowing took a chough (laughs). his body-subject to operate his Or you come across two movements, Frank was free to engage powerful owls sitting there with the various parts of the BOI to with two fluffy white babies strengthen his sense of place through next to them. That sort of his feeling-body. experience is, you know, it’s building a bond and what Adjusting our perspective from outside you’re learning to do is to to inside the BOI still utilises our see. So there’s sort of like experiential continuum as a tool for an intimacy about getting discovery, yet a different methodology there and feeling like you’re must be employed in order to separate in-sync with nature, that and distinguish our sense of place from you’re actually in it. And its sense of place. This methodology you’re intently listening all requires us to extend our conceptual of the time without even understanding of place by positioning concentrating. So, all of that ourselves as the place to understand the stuff is becoming intimate relationships it has with its constituents and connected with the as well as what is external to it. land.

blacktailed cormorant little pied sparrow house needletail, wh.-throated

Placing the Bend 24

LIST-MAKING bell bird trin-warreen

List-making offers a method to use black swan

latitudinal thinking as a practice to goonawar

explore and investigate the density and koonoowara

complexity of place and placemaking. As brolga

Bogost argues, ‘[l]ists of objects without gurrurk

explication can do the philosophical bronze wing mongebarra

work of drawing our attention toward butterfly (white)

them with greater attentiveness’ (45). By balam balam

listing the BOI as videographic parts, cockatoo (black)

connections can be made between nerrinen (Bunurong)

seemingly heterogenous elements to Hay

form networks of relation that the place yellow black

consists of. When multiple things are yungay

listed, patterns emerge amongst items in cockatoo (white)

the list, and these become connections ngaiyuk

that inform our understanding of place. ngaiook

Each item on a list becomes a part that gang gang is connected to the next by simply being from ‘gan gan’ = feather situated in the same way on the list. cookoo shrike The practice of list-making elucidates djilbi-djilbi (black-faced) the connections between things, crane what Bogost (using Harman) explains karwine (white faced as ‘vicarious causation’, that is the heron?) conceptual fusion or connection between crow things without there necessarily being waan an interaction between them. Bogost crow notes that this is a conceptual linkage worn that breaks the chasm between two duck (black) tolom things to form a new thing (11). lekoabel

Ed Armstrong 25 duck (wood) This ‘breaking of the chasm’ can be lekoabel thought of as the relationship between emu separate things that transforms baraimal burri-mul two things into a new thing. Being emu wren (totem?) situated next to one another in a list, or bunjil-boroin (meaning geographical position, or an interactive twilight) documentary interface, forms a bond finch between otherwise separate things that Fire-tailed allows us to perceive them as a collective korok-goru unit, an assemblage. fly kuromburra Using brief six second video clips to green parrot yukope document the BOI has acted as a form grey shrike thrush of list-making to help reveal networks buled-mum between things. Each clip focuses upon hawk one thing within the BOI in order to act wil gul as associative building blocks between hawk (sparrow) each interactive documentary. par-rite As each clip is separate within the kestral documentaries, more options are nankeen available to how they can become nirret-marro connected to form new assemblages of kookaburra the BOI. With every new clip a changing, grong grong networked sense of the place begins to kuring kuring emerge. gurrng gurrng kookaburra Detailing the parts of the BOI is tharowerag dependent on what level of detail is to gurrn be focused upon. As Placing the Bend kookaburra is an exploration of placemaking, I have tororo interviewed multiple residents of the

Placing the Bend 26

BOI. The patterns that have surfaced in magpie lark these interviews relate to its geological, did-did environmental, and sociological mopoke histories, as well as its contemporary kokurn state. This by no means is an exhaustive mosquito listing of what constitutes the BOI, yet kogok can offer an example of the enormity musk crow and complexity of place, and provides belin belin (currawong) material for outsiders to construct their native companion own sense of the place via interacting gook-rook with the Placing the Bend series. owl (boobook) mug-mug

In collecting parts and listing them owlet nightjar (totem)

together, Placing the Bend draws ngari-barm-goruk

attention to the connections established owlet nightjar

through the sequencing and listing ngarri-baam-gorrak

of separate things. Through this an parrakeet

understanding of place as an emerging needly-ooing

assemblage, situated together, occurs. parrot (blue mountain)

dantum rainbow lorikeet

Trycoglossus porphyrio-

cephalus

parrot

darnum

pelican

waajil

robin (rose-red)

tee-ung

superb warbler

wurn-goruk

Ed Armstrong 27 tawny frogmouth EXPERIENCE djinid-djinid wagtail (willy) Cresswell, Tuan and Seamon are djiri-djiri humanist geographers who seek to willy wagtail understand how experience constructs yerrijerrigand place. Places are not merely spatial coordinates and collections of material

Liz: Full of new surprises! things; they are spaces that have been

Even this morning when socialised and so embody meaning. we were walking, I’m going As Cresswell states: “oh my God the wax lip orchids!” Just never noticed While the spatial scientists how many of them there wanted to understand the world were before, and again, it’s and treated people as part of sort of a matter of, you’re the world (just like rocks, or not sure, maybe they were cars, or ice but with the magic always there but I think you ingredient of rationality added), have to live here for a while humanistic geographers focused before you really notice on the relationship ‘between’ things, or notice how much people and the world through the of things there are. I think realm of ‘experience’ (2004, 4). living here gives you the Experiencing the world around us opportunity, to um, if you includes not merely the material parts take the time, feel very at that populate it but the immaterial parts one with the environment. that are intangible to our bodily senses.

Luke: And the river was Our ‘sense of place’ (Cresswell 2009, the source of everything, 134) does not only rely upon collectively you know. For them (the constructed definitions, but is influenced Wurendjeri), they were by our personal interactions with the always crossing the river things that are in any particular place,

Placing the Bend 28

as well as larger, non-personal forces at night or day, it didn’t and flows. matter. They would just slip into the river and cross

Personal experiences can be more it anywhere and get out

intimate than social and nonsocial ones, again. I would’ve thought

involving firsthand interaction that “Geez, it’s so cold!” And

establishes relations between ourself ‘River of mists,’ I love what

and things that make a place. As Pred they called it. I think they

explains, our ‘individual socialization’ called it Birrarung, and that

(287) of a place is dialectically means ‘River of mists.’ And

intertwined with our societal I see beautiful mists out

understanding of it, each informing our here nearly every morning. I

overall understanding of it. get up at five o’clock so pre-

Personal connections with place are dawn in the winter but in achieved through a combination of the summer it’s just dawnin’ qualitative and quantitative experiences. out there. All of our views We might begin by experiencing a are to the east here, we’ve place habitually, which then allows got moon rises straight out the irregular experiences to become a there, sunrises straight highlight of our overall impression of it. over there. The other thing that really won me for this

As Tuan notes: block is that river in the

background. That constant While it takes time to form an river noise. The rapids down attachment to place, the quality there all year round. And and intensity of experience they never stop singing that matters more than simple song. You know, the song of duration (198). the river. Through understanding the regular flows of a sequence in the documentaries of Ross: They’ve all got their

magic. Whether just the flat

Ed Armstrong 29 sections or rapids or soft Placing the Bend, peaks of qualitative embankments or cliff-face clips begin to spark our interest. embankments. Treed or opened, yeah, they’ve all Similarly, Seamon’s notion that our got their interest. And you body-subject provides a habitual routine get really disturbed if you ‘grounded in patterns of the past’ (1979, see a can floating down it 57) offers a schema to understand how because you expect it to the quantitative exposure to a place be like that from where it’s forms a base of regular rhythms from come from and where it’s which qualitative experiences can going to. You know, you grow. The ‘[b]ody-subject learns through just have to think about it, repetition and therefore requires time to you drive to Yarra Glen and familiarise itself with the world in which you see where it’s come it finds itself’ (emphasis added, 1979, 48). from. You know, it’s sort Tuan’s qualitative experiences, that are of like a different kettle integral in the process of establishing of fish altogether. But we a meaningful bond with place, can just like to think of it (the therefore be understood as similar to the river) in terms of a timeless quantitative flows that we embody using little element, a part of the Seamon’s body-subject theory. bushscape. The changes you often see are the Assembling the Bend emphasises height of it and the colour the quantitative rhythm of place by of it. Because it changes repetitively using clips which last for colour with the rainfall. If six seconds. A temporal regularity is there’s big rainfall it goes established that encourages the user orange and it drops off and to look at the content to enrich their goes darker and darker experience of the documentary. Irregular and if there’s no rainfall it flows are therefore possible within becomes very dark. And low the content of each clip, where the in the more droughty times. peculiarity of the thing, apart from its

Placing the Bend 30

temporal rhythm, becomes noticeable So, that’s interesting. as a particular quality. For example, the And also the island down intricate details of a bearded orchid in there disappears when close up that follows a sequence of dead it’s surging. Which it, leaves and ‘barren’ woodland peaks our which it kind of looks like a interest as a qualitative experience. continuous thing. Whereas when it’s low you just get

Similarly, in the interviews with BOI this terraced effect of the

residents I found they often recollected river, coming down to the

one significant experience that defined next level and going to the

their understanding of the BOI, while next, whereas a fall is just

the continual exposure to the BOI a woof! strengthened their bond with the place

as a whole. Janet: I very clearly

For example, when Janet (Mattiske) first remember not long after moved to the BOI she was overwhelmed we’d been here, um, that, by the flowering wattle that are common the incredible colour of the throughout the BOI (Figure 9). This first wattles. They would’ve impression became a benchmark for been all the low acinacias subsequent experiences of that location that were flowering. It was for Janet. Hence, when winter turns to an incredible experience spring each year, Janet looks forward to sort of come here and to the blossoming trees that transform see this sea of yellow. Um, the brown and green landscape to I haven’t quite experienced yellow. She understands this occasion that since. Whether I’ve is connected with various other events become more used to that or around the BOI, for example, many of whether it hasn’t happened the sixty-three species of orchid that to that extent again, are native to the BOI also begin to go um, because of weather, into blossom at this time. Her sense of because of clearing, the place has thus been asserted by her because, oh, you know,

Ed Armstrong 31 whatever, because you first qualitative impression of it, which know, they’re not long-lived has proven to punctuate her annual plants. They do go through quantitative experience of the BOI. a cycle. Conversely, Janet’s partner Frank

Frank: Summer is the (Pierce) explains how walking around butterfly and the dragonfly the area beside the first block he owned

(time), when they’re starting in the BOI every day for several years to come out. Spring time established an intimate bond with you get all the wattles. the landscape. At first Frank started

Winter and spring, or walking with the particular aim to late winter, you get these exercise and observe his surroundings. fantastic flashes of yellow Before too long he began to notice the from the wattles. And then patterns and flows (Seamon 1979, 55) of for the rest of the rest of the the surrounding environment. This is year they’re just drab. You what Seamon refers to as a body ballet, know, it comes to May and whereby Frank’s habitual movement the ironbarks go into flower. through the space became ‘automatic’

Figure 9: Placing the Bend, screenshot

Placing the Bend 32

(1979, 41), as his body-subject was And there’s just this carpet engaged whenever he would traverse of yellow flowers underneath the area. the trees that the cockatoos have eaten. It’s not just

what you see, because it’s

continuously changing.

And everything’s got it’s

own little place and you

know, something else relies

upon that all of the time, so

you get this appreciation

for the complexity of it all.

And then, after a few years,

you see how it changes

differently each year for the

season. If it’s a dry season

or a hot season you see “oh,

the orchids aren’t very good

this year” and then the next

year they’re on steroids. The

complexity is never ending

and it’s a bottomless pit.

The more you know, the

more there is to learn.

Ed Armstrong 33

Luke: You hear the river BODY BALLETS every day. And you know, I mightn’t go down the river According to Seamon, body ballet refers for a month, ya know, and to the habitual behaviour brought about then you finally get down by engaging in a particular activity or there and you’re like say “oh task. On the other hand, time-space my God!” ya know? (Laughs) routines are routine behaviours regularly

“I live here! Look at this undertaken. When several time-space beautiful river!” routines weave in and out of each other at a particular location a place ballet

Anaconda ([Snake Dance]) is established (Cresswell 2004, 34).

African animal dance Seamon believes places are made in this

Ardha (Arab tribal war manner, using the analogy of dancing to dance) convey the dense choreography involved

Argentine Tango between the things flowing in and out of

Arkan (Ukrainian, Hutsul) a particular location:

Aerial Body ballets are task-orientated and Attan (Pashtun) are triggered by what is necessary to Azonto (Ghanaian dance) achieve any task. This task is not bound Baba Karam (Persian, Folk) by time, instead, it can be performed at Bachata (Latin Club, Folk) any given moment. Time-space routines, Bagurumba (Folk dance of on the other hand, are initiated at a Assam, North-east India) particular time in the day or week or Balboa (Swing) month or even year. If we always turn the Ballet, category, also known radio on at seven in the morning then as classical dance this becomes a time-space routine. Ballos (Burçak tarlası oyunu)(Greece), (Turkey) Body ballets then can form the building

Barn dance, category blocks of time-space routines when

Bergamask (Be dance, from engaged with regularly. Everything that

Bergamo, Italy moves systematically within the course

Placing the Bend 34

of a period of time plays out a time-space Bhangra (Folk Dance of routine, from the smallest of insects to Northern India) the climactic shifts of a region. Bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance)

As Seamon suggests: Big Apple (Line dance)

Time-space routines, together Bihu dance (Folk dance of with body ballets, manage the Assam, India) habitual, repetitive aspects of Black Bottom (see Lindy life. They free our conscious Hop) attention for other more eventual Blues (Club dance, Swing) endeavours (1979, 56). Bolero (American Ballroom, Cuban, European)

All three iterations of Placing the Bend Bollywood (Danced in

provide an interface or space where Indian Movies)

each video clip’s unique body ballet Bomba (African, Caribbean)

intersects to create a simulation of place Bon Odori (Japanese)

assemblage. Each clip flows through Boogaloo

the Korsakow system on its own accord Boogie-woogie (Swing)

to emerge at specific instances to form Bop, see Bop music, also

our understanding of the BOI. The ABA at List of dance

clips within Placing the Bend do not organizations

exactly fulfil the requirements of either Bossa nova (Brazilian, see

a time-space routine, as with every Bossa nova music)

new viewing of each documentary a Borrowdale (Zimbabweean,

new assemblage of clips emerges, and see Museve music)

thus each clip does not abide by the Boston

same time constraints. The clips are Bourrée (historical)

then better understood as body ballets Bump and grind

where each engages with the interface Bugg

as part of its overall role within the Bunny Hop

system. Every clip behaves in a certain Butoh (Japanese)

Ed Armstrong 35

Butterfly (Urban, USA/ way to fulfil its role, appearing in the Caribbean) interface in direct response to the clips Buyo (Japanese) it is linked to. Therefore, every clip Cat Daddy within the documentaries of Placing Cajun dance, (Louisiana, the Bend are task-orientated, creating USA Regional, Cajun) contained, unique assemblages by Cajun Jig or Cajun One Step performing their role within the greater Cajun Jitterbug and Two documentaries assemblage. Step

Cajun Waltz The clips that feature in all three of

Ceroc (Modern Jive, Club) the Placing the Bend documentaries

Chacarera (Argentina) intersect with one another by performing

Chaconne a body ballet of sorts, thus creating a

Collegiate shag sequence of micro assemblages to inform

Compas (Haiti) our understanding of place.

Conga

Hip Hop

Contact improvisation

Contemporary dance

Contra dance

Cordax Greek / Roman erotic dance

Cossack dance

Cotillion

Country/western dance

Country dance

Country/Western Two-step

Country Swing or Western

Swing

Cupid Shuffle

Placing the Bend 36

SPACE Hut willam

According to Massey, Space is seen as a Boomerang

site of potential material and immaterial wangim

intersections, where new relationships Fighting club

are established, dissolved, rearranged molka

or extended. This might feed our sense Canoe

of wonder and interest in the world, and koorong

allow us to discover and create new Basket

places of social and personal meaning: binak

Space is the dimension of Spear multiplicity. If time is the djirra dimension of sequence, things Party coming after each other, then gayip space is the dimension of Ball contemporaneous existence... mangurt the dimension of radical Fire simultaneity (Massey). wiin Smoke

According to Cresswell, ‘[s]pace burt

becomes a place when it is used Water

and lived’ (2009, 2), and so place baarn

is meaningful because social and Blood

personal experiences become fused to gurrk

material spaces. Creek

yaluk When we embark on ‘placing ourselves’ Sun in a space to experience its parts we ngawan cannot predict what these parts are Moon and what they will entail. We know mirnian that there are many uncertainties Star involved in space, and that living those

Ed Armstrong 37 durt uncertainties transforms them into Thunder actualities; experiences created by an ngurndabil amalgamation of many flows of material Lightening and immaterial things. djirringu

Camp For example, the Wurendjeri can trace willam their ancestral roots and creation stories ground by recognising key places within what biik they call their estate; ‘country clearly

Mistletoe defined and acknowledged as home balee country by both their neighbours and

Red gum themselves’ (Woiwod 2012, 236). Each bial stone and tree has significance for

Stringybark them, containing their ‘song lines’ as an wayut extension of their own cultural identity.

Ironbark There is no distinction between the land yirrip and themselves.

Silver wattle Stanner explains how ‘the Aboriginal muyan would speak of “earth” and use the Black wattle word in a richly symbolic way to garrong mean his “shoulder” or his “side” Ti-tree (40). The landscape around them is burgan an extension of themselves, and from Scrubby it they draw their sustenance and yering ongoing cultural connections. Good burndap As Seamon, quoting Relph, states:

Bad People are their place and a nillum place is its people, and however Angry readily they may be separated in narringyan conceptual terms, in experience

Placing the Bend 38

they are not easily differentiated Happy (1979, 138). barrbunin Sad

In the contemporary BOI, particular marden

locales become embedded and created Dance

as place by the personal experiences ngarrga

each resident has. For example, every Today

time BOI resident Tserin (Wright) kayaks yaalingbu

through a particular rapid in the river Tomorrow

he is reminded of the time he sat in that yirramboi

rapid with his brother and made the Summer

decision to move to the BOI. His memory pur-ripe of this is now fused to that place.

Tserin: And the clencher is,

I still remember, when my

brother came out, we sort of

explored up the rapids more,

because we grew up on a

river quite similar up north.

You know, rapids, and... it

was a lot cleaner, but... I

remember seeing the Yarra

and going “oh God,” this is

up in, um, Diamond Valley...

Thinking, oh, (laughs) “this

muddy creek!” After the

Bellinger river, which is just,

pfft, pretty nice. I guess,

just having my brother there

as well, ya know, like, that’s

where we grew up and... Me

Ed Armstrong 39 and Jess had talked a little HYBRIDITY bit about whether we are beach people or whatever... A place is not merely us and ‘the place,’

And I think that was the but a coming together of many different clencher, I mean, well, we’re parts that causes the ‘event’ of place. more river people- I mean, We are one of a multitude of things that love going to the beach, combine to form the unique identity of but for a holiday... And you place. The tree that has been situated know, I remember we were there for the last fifty years; the wallaby sitting up there [my brother passing through; the sun that warms our and I], and I went “oh, I can back, are all flows that enter a particular bring kids up here.” And instant of time to make a place a unique yeah, so we moved out here, experience of ‘hybridity.’ and have been here since. Understanding that we are merely another flow of a place’shybridity allows us to readjust our focus to appreciate the Japanese traditional dance variety of other flows that make the place (Japanese) what it is. Jarabe tapatío

Java (French dance Each part, whether a bird, a snapped developed in France in branch that Frank (Pierce) sees on his the early part of the 20th walk, or an aeroplane that flies overhead, century) can be seen as a flow that weaves into

Jazz dance his place ballet. For every part that

Jazz Funk Placing the Bend presents and puts into

Jenkka (see Music of relation to other parts, an idea of place as

Finland) flow and hybridity develops.

Jerkin’ As Lippard explains: Jig Ireland

Jig (Scottish country) Each time we enter a new Jitterbug (Swing) place, we become one of the

Placing the Bend 40

ingredients of an existing Cajun Jitterbug hybridity, which is really what Jitterbug Stroll (Line dance, all ‘local places’ consist of Swing) (1997, 5-6). Jive (Ballroom, International Latin)

This hybridity is similar to Seamon’s Joged (Indonesian)

place ballet where places come into John Wall dance

being through a hybridity of various Jota (Spanish dance)

flows in and out of a space (Lippard, 5-6; Jove Malaj Mome (Bulgarian

Cresswell 2004, 13). folk dance)

Massey uses the analogy of flows to refer Jumpstyle (Techno based to the coming together of semi-separate dance) parts that creates the ‘event’ we know as place (Cresswell 2004, 39). These flows are ‘routes [that move through the jump landscape] rather than roots’ (Cresswell run 2004, 13) fixed to it. They are transitory, skip pausing briefly to produce the event that hop is place. walk crawl

As Tuan notes: bend

sway If we think of space as that which swing allows movement, then place is shake pause; each pause in movement twist makes it possible for location to be gallop transformed into place (6). leap

Tuan is careful not to use the words roll “still,” “static” or “immobilised” in his twirl description of place, for good reason. If kick we think of place as Massey describes it tip-toe

Ed Armstrong 41 stamp — as an event — we can see that it only grab occurs in and through time, as what it punch consists of is many transitory things and pull movements, what might also be thought push of as an assemblage. wiggle catch Placing the Bend lists memorable throw experiences interviewees have had of dig the BOI and these are used to influence wave the visual content, as if evoking climb ‘memory traces’ through the content wink of the video clips (Jones). It makes the clap implicit experiences of the respondents yawn explicit by linking their commentary blink (the soundtrack) with place (video clips). shuffle Each experience can be seen as a facet creep of the BOI, assembled together to form march our overall understanding of place as turn Seamon’s whole. Bringing soundtrack ride and video clips together helps present swim the hybridity of the BOI and the various dive flows that make it a place. skate Placing the Bend presents the BOI as dance a visual and audio hybrid experience. jog The longer we interact with each of stomp the documentaries the more we learn about the BOI, as each subsequent part, presented as video, forms new connections with other parts, and a more sophisticated flux of place emerges

Placing the Bend 42

as a hybrid place of connected and Balee mistletoe disconnected parts. Banyule high hill Coranderrk native mint

For example, a thumbnail of a stone Darebin swallows (bird)

wall may sit alongside a thumbnail of Maroondah native pine

the Nillumbik sign and the Yarra River tree

(Figure 10), perhaps implying that the Mernda country

Nilumbik community resides in stone Merri Merri many stones

housing near a river. Monda rain

Selecting the stone wall thumbnail Mooroolbark red earth generates three new associations in Narre Warren = Round the Bend, which might include foothills scattered hail, the remains of a man-made Ngayuk white cockatoo fire, and a mixture of understorey grasses Nillumbik bad land

Figure 10: Round the Bend, screenshot Ed Armstrong 43

Tangenong high mountain (Figure 11). This combination of images may Tarrawarra slow waters evoke particular associations between each Toolangi stringy-bark of these new parts: Perhaps the stone wall tree and use of fire provides shelter for the BOI Toolebewong community from the hail and encroaching rib of mountain flora. Or the juxtaposition between moist Warringal dingo and dry things may prompt thoughts around Woori Yallock bush fire prevention. running creek

Yan Yean young man With each new connection a new facet

Wyenondabul of the stone wall emerges in an ever- fiery hill changing rhythm of a flow.

Collectively, the BOI community offer a greater understanding of place than I could muster alone. Given their time to

Figure 11: Round the Bend, screenshot

Placing the Bend 44

establish a place ballet they are able to use Seamon’s kindly seeing and share this through our interviews.

When situated within place we have an effective vantage point to initiate the practice of list-making, looking upon it with kindly eyes. This perspective strengthens over time as we begin to experience more and more of the facets of that place that differ over time in relation to our engagement with each part of the place.

Tom: It’s a significant

point, as most junctions

are, I think. And they’re

often associated with birth.

I guess because you’ve

got two forces coming

together. And there’s

some speculation at least,

or stories at least, about

William Barak being born

in that area. So that (Brushy

Creek) is very much a

women’s site. And there’s

now some moves afoot to

Ed Armstrong 45

ASSEMBLAGES begin to reclaim that. It’s Assemblage theory heralds the been very badly degraded notion that everything is in constant flux, whereby worlds and things are Mick: So I remember continuously forming and reforming. The swimming across the multifaceted nature of an assemblage river, to the other side, and in concert with our experience is a walking down to Brushy ‘process’ of continual change (Cresswell Creek. You couldn’t get 2004, 37). If place is an assemblage then across the Creek for there each new experience of its parts creates was no bridge over it a new impression, and shows us new but there was a log that dimensions of what the assemblage is someone had fallen down over time. These things become more to actually get across. I and more multifaceted as we recognise remember walking out on the many different facets they have. that and sitting there and

I sat there for a couple of The term assemblage I find a hours. And I kept thinking more practical term to hybridity there was something about as it provides a way to explain the this place that gets me. Ah, constant shifting relationships there, there was something that form a network between the that happened here, you immaterial and material facets of know? And I went home that space and place. Hybridity seems afternoon and that was the to conjure a fixed state of elements, first time I put pen to paper as opposed to assemblage that to write a story (laughs). emphasises ‘emergence, multiplicity

Because it worried me, you and indeterminacy’ (Anderson & know? I, you know, I don’t McFarlane, 124). get this (feeling). So I wrote a little piece there and I sort of played around with it over

Placing the Bend 46

As Anderson and McFarlane claim; the years. And I find out

later on that the dreamtime ‘[a]ssemblages are not organic story that’s attached to that wholes, where the differences place. Ah, I don’t believe in of the parts are subsumed the spiritual and stuff like into a higher unity,’ (125) but a that but I don’t think when composition of ‘heterogenous things happen that’s the elements that may be human end of the day. That things and non-human, organic and are more a part of the story inorganic, technical and natural’ and the land somehow. So, (124) that are ‘provisional a very particular dreamtime contingent wholes’ (Anderson & story about that very McFarlane citing Braun, 125). particular little place where ‘Facets’ are exposed to us through that log came over. There’s engaging with the parts of an a small gorge there. And the assemblage. This engagement may be dreamtime story’s about material or immaterial, and so place can Bunjil, the Eagle, looking be thought of as an assemblage of these down one night and seeing facets. For instance, over time a resident his people misbehaving and of the BOI would come to know many he reaches out and grasps a facets of the place by experiencing it in small star and hurls it down different contexts, and by having place and destroys them. That’s present itself through many facets. what made the gorge.

By listing place as facets through clips There’s a whole lot of things

and then the soundtrack of Placing that come together right on

the Bend we are able to develop that spot. an understanding that the BOI is multifaceted and so an assemblage. If things exhibit different facets of

Ed Armstrong 47

Calwell themselves then each new assemblage Westering presents new facets. Mt Graham

Skyline For instance, Brushy Creek, like many

Rob Roy places, is meaningful as a result of

Gills the geological allowances and effects

Osheas of the location. The Yarra fault lines

Osborne intersect on Brushy Creek, causing

Reeves the surrounding landscape to form the

McKinnon hills synonymous with the region. This

Happy Valley region of Nillumbik is called Christmas

Everard Hills, that grow in altitude as they

Knobs Junction stretch northward into Kinglake. The

Caledonia mountains within the Kinglake region

Smiths Gully shelter the BOI within a “rain shadow”

Buttermans (BICA website), enabling Brushy

Wild Dog Creek Creek to provide an ideal place for the

Yow Yow Creek Wurendjeri to establish a women’s

Melba sacred site to give birth to their young.

Sugarloaf The intersection between Brushy Creek

Five Mile Creek and the Yarra was also an influence in

Rifle Range drawing the Wurendjeri to the location.

Wurendjeri ‘[I]t wasn’t all that unusual Spanish Gully for confluences to be seen as Dinsdale women’s birthing places due to Reedy Creek the belief that the mist that is Watsons Creek sometimes seen to hover over Big Hill the mixing of waters of different Bills Track temperatures is the spirits of Alma unborn children awaiting birth’ (Woiwod, 2013).

Placing the Bend 48

Brushy Creek therefore can be seen Tom: The change of seasons as an assemblage with the BOI. It is really noticeable. Most performs different roles depending on the mornings the first thing I do connections that occur, which may have is take a walk or meditate. taken place in the past or perhaps in the So I notice a change in light future. These facets therefore include and temperature. Those (among other things) its geological, are markers, I think. And cultural, ecological, and political histories. the temperature varies so much. How uncomfortable

It is the connections and relations it is both in the winter and

between the parts of an assemblage that in the summer because

provide context to how we see them as this (wood fire) is our only

facets. Things in an assemblage perform heating when the solar

with other things within the assemblage, power is less and less. their role changes depending on how it is

related or connected to other parts, and Ross: I must admit I do

so escapes specific definition. not identify with most of

The more we focus upon a particular the seasons. Now we’ve place the more facets are revealed moved into the next, I find to us of it, further enabling its it quite varied and go with assemblage of parts as becoming. the flow. But certainly it Becoming sees everything as a feels differently at different constant ‘process’ (Massey 2004, seasons. Especially on the 69), and similarly ‘[p]laces are never river, you get more varieties “finished but always “becoming” in relation to the river (Cresswell citing Pred 2004, 35). because you get these fogs in the morning and the odd

For example, the seasons shift the frost and things like that to.

assemblage of the BOI, and thus alters And it’s quieter here (near

how the place operates. When it is the Neil Douglas Reserve).

summer, with a strong northerly wind The winds aren’t as strong,

Ed Armstrong 49 so the spring winds, they bellowing through the gullies and go over the top of you. You over the ridges of the BOI, the place know, they don’t actually is dangerous to people. There is a buckle your windows and palpable sense of fear in the air due to things like that. the increased likelihood of bush fires occurring. When it is winter, and a bone- Rodrigo: And then this chilling southerly thrashes the trees back amazing mist appears. and forth, showering the place with rain And when you drive out of and hail, the place presents completely the Bend (of Islands), you different facets of itself, thus altering its know your up in the hills overall assemblage. As Seamon, citing in Henley (Rd), you can see Fisher, argues: this amazing white serpent going around from the hills Always a relatively full analysis and you know that there’s of any phenomenon must include a river. That’s the river that its relation to neighbouring just goes and goes and phenomena (1979, 17). goes. And the mist just This is the role of list-making in all three follows that. The mist is an of the documentaries of Placing the incredible sight in this area. Bend. Lists are generated, compared and contrasted with one another to form an Tom: The northerly wind assemblage of place. is something that sets me on edge. Assemblages always ‘claim’ a territory as heterogeneous parts are

Meg: I don’t like it very gathered together, this can only ever much in the summer. be a provisional process: relations

(Laughs) When it’s dry and may change, new elements may hot and windy and um, enter, alliances may be broken, new scary. But I mean that’s conjunctions may be fostered (Anderson just the bush. Everyone’s & McFarlane, 126).

Placing the Bend 50 INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARIES

KORSAKOW

I have chosen to explore and represent getting more conscious of

placemaking using an online interactive the fact that it’s, you know,

documentary platform called Korsakow. it could be hazardous.

Korsakow is an open-source non-linear Clouds Over Cuba digital platform that lets video makers Hollow create connections between imported Mumbai Madness video files. The author of a Korsakow film Unknown Spring (K-film) attaches keywords to each clip or Journey to the End of Coal sequence in the final film. Out My Window

Adding keywords to clips means that Green Unplugged relations can be established between clips Barcode because a keyword first places the video Welcome to Pine Point clip into a category, and secondly embeds Big Stories, Small Towns a search action for the system to find other Becoming Human clips that match the specified keywords. Gift of a Lifetime This is done programmatically by the Water’s Journey: Everglades Korsakow system when the film is ‘played.’ Hometown Baghdad

The Iron Curtain Diaries Usually within a K-film interface there is One World Journeys a window which plays a video clip and a Expeditions number of preview thumbnails to allow Canto do Brazil other clips to be selected. With every Inside Beijing selection made the interface loads the New York Minute clip chosen and searches for matches In Situ based on its keywords. Any matches are Waterlife displayed as thumbnails. Where is Gary

My Tribe is My Life

Ed Armstrong 51

16 Tons By using keywords the video clips Prison Valley become grouped into particular The Big Issue categories within a Korsakow project, Dayton Express and while hidden from the users when Planet Galata the K-film is viewed, they are what 18 Days in Egypt determines its multilinear structure. Standard Operating

Procedure Many K-films are designed to emphasise

The Invisibles the intrinsic rhythmic quality of the

Ceci N’est Pas Embres material used. For example, Matt

The Block Soar composed his K-filmC’est n’est

Asylum: Exit Australia pas Embres (2012) in a way that counterpoints an upbeat emotional clip

Webdoc with a downbeat one, thus creating idoc an emotional rhythm within the film.

Narrative database Similarly, Planet Galata (2010) presents interactive documentary preview clips that emerge fleetingly,

Web documentary as a brief opportunity of choice, before

Digital nonlinear archive vanishing to leave the current clip

Nonlinear digital playing. This choreographed effect storytelling creates a harmony between clips and

Webisode previews that counterpoints or highlights

Multimedia key information within the documentary.

Transmedia In my interactive documentary series Crossmedia Placing the Bend, thumbnails are Multiplatform presented as black and white images to distinguish them from the video Input Audio & Video clips and to reward the user’s selection Formats by loading a full colour video of the 3GP/3GP2 thumbnail, motivating a continuing state ASF (Windows Media) of interactivity that propels the K-film on.

Placing the Bend 52

Clips presented alongside thumbnails Audio Interchange File in an interface form a hybrid visual Format (AIFF) space where the various categories of AVI clips either counterpoint or compliment DNxHD (SMPTE VC-3) one another. DV video Flash Video

Korsakow as a system differs from many Matroska

other online documentary platforms in MOV (Quicktime)

the way that it offers a more ‘poetic’ MP4 Audio-only

structure for narrative construction, MP4 Video/Audio

relying on patterns to emerge from the MPEG-2 TS

keywords it relies upon. As Nichols MPEG-2 PS

declares in relation to documentaries: MPEG-1

The poetic mode is particularly MPEG audio layer 3 adept at opening up the Ogg possibility of alternative forms of PCM knowledge to the straightforward RealMedia transfer of information, the VOB (Video Object) prosecution of a particular WAV argument or point of view, or WebM the presentation of reasoned Many more... propositions about problems in Unsupported Video Codecs need of solution (103). Apple Intermediate ProRes 4444 (ProRes 422

For example, understanding that both Supported)

the vertical and horizontal themed HDV 720p60

clips in Round the Bend connect with Go2Meeting3 (G2M3)

depictions of rounded plants, or close Go2Meeting4 (G2M4)

ups, allows ‘round’ to act as a bridge ER AAC LD (Error Resiliant,

between the vertical and horizontal shots. Low-Delay variant of AAC)

REDCODE

Ed Armstrong 53

Compatible Video Codecs This lets the shots within each category 3ivx work like lists. Through this list- 4X Movie making the connections the things in Alaris VideoGramPiX each shot has with its environment Alparysoft lossless codec become visualised. K-films function in a American Laser Games selective, hyperlinked manner to produce MM Video different assemblages of video clips. AMV Video Each selection the user makes activates Apple QuickDraw a video clip and produces a new list of ASUS V1 thumbnails that represent options to ASUS V2 select new, related, video clips. ATI VCR-2

ATI VCR1

Auravision AURA

Auravision Aura 2

Autodesk Animator Flic video

Autodesk RLE

Avid Meridien

Uncompressed

AVImszh

AVIzlib

AVS (Audio Video Standard) video

Beam Software VB

Bethesda VID video

Bink video

Blackmagic 10-bit

Broadway MPEG Capture

Brooktree 411 codec

Brute Force & Ignorance

Placing the Bend 54

PARADIGM AND SYNTAGM Braille Continuous

In The Language of New Media, Tactile

Manovich appropriates Saussure’s Print

semiological terms paradigm and Paged

syntagm in order to describe the shift Visual

from media that was designed to be Projection

sequential, to new media that allows Morse

simultaneous presentation of media. Screen

Manovich describes a syntagmatic Continuous

system as a sequence of elements Visual

strung together temporally, whereas Audio

a paradigmatic system chooses each Speech

new element from an established set of Continuous

related elements. In this way, Manovich Speech

summarises the syntagm as explicit Television

whilst the paradigm as implicit; ‘one is Visual

real and the other is imagined’ (203) in Audio linear media.

Put another way, paradigms can be seen Print as lists whereas syntagms can be seen Web as timelines, with our understanding Letter dependent on what position they take Memo when grouped. By filming a variety of Email things within the BOI, and collating each Map clip with keywords within the Korsakow Chart system, I was able to utilise Korsakow’s Cartoon capacity for paradigmatic ordering and Comic Strip thus establish an array of lists that Graphic Novel informed what I would next capture. Advertisement By engaging with Korsakow early on in Musical Score

Ed Armstrong 55

Libretto the project I was able to adapt my video Manuscript coverage to cater for the emerging lists Typescript that the program generates and their PDF particular qualities. Word doc

JPEG Many interactive documentaries offer an

MP3 opportunity to explore the information

MP4 presented paradigmatically (spatially)

XML File rather than syntagmatically (temporally).

Radio The latter style of interactive

Television documentary appropriates it’s structure

Microform from conventional documentary: a

Audio Cassette linear narrative that allows ‘exit points’

Video Cassette to various other multimedia that

Audiotape contextualises the information we have

LP been exposed to in the main linear

Vinyl narrative. This peripheral information

Film can deepen the users understanding of

Sound filmstrip the topic whilst also allowing them the

Laser disc opportunity to interact and assemble

Slide program their own unique narrative pathway.

CD-ROM Paradigmatic work, on the other hand,

DVD-ROM draw upon the functionality afforded

Oil on canvas by the computer to allow the user to

Lithograph on paper navigate freely through information

Graphite on paper presented to us simultaneously.

Bronze For example, Prison Valley (Dufresne Photogravure & Brault, 2009) is a 90 minute linear Aqutant documentary about Canyon City in Photograph Colorado where a town of 36,000 citizen’s Performance depend upon 13 prisons to survive. It’s

Placing the Bend 56

structure is syntagmatic as the user Theatre has the opportunity to exit the linear Opera documentary to navigate their way Ballet through a three-dimensional motel room Dance (Figure 12), looking at pictures strewn Circus across the bed or turning the television Reading on to watch the local news stations. At Address any point the user can enter this motel Lecture room to investigate Canyon City by Tutorial themselves, or continue on where they Keynote speech left off with the linear documentary. Interview Legal source On the other hand, Water Life (McMahon, 2009) is a paradigmatic work where the interface allows the user to navigate through the fragmented

information in a variety of ways. Each CamStudio

fragment is represented by a thumbnail Camtasia Screen Codec

Figure 12: Prison Valley, screenshot

Ed Armstrong 57

Canopus HQ Codec image that assembles itself with the Canopus Lossless Codec other thumbnails to form a larger image CD Graphics video (Figure 13), representing a particular Chinese AVS video theme or topic that is associated with (AVS1-P2, JiZhun profile) water (e.g. fishing, hydropower). The user Cinepak can select a thumbnail to experience Cirrus Logic AccuPak a particular fragment, select a theme Creative Labs Video Blaster along the right side of the interface that Webcam automates a sequence of fragments Creative YUV (CYUV) based upon that theme, or hover their Delphine Software cursor along the horizontal axis at the International CIN video bottom of the interface that highlights Deluxe Paint Animation what theme each thumbnail represents. DivX ;-) (MPEG-4)

DNxHD (VC3) Paradigmatic interactive documentaries

DV (Digital Video) make the implicit explicit by presenting

Feeble Files/ScummVM them contemporaneously, which

DXA assumes that events share ‘multiple

Figure 13: Waterlife, screenshot

Placing the Bend 58

causes and must be analysed as a web of FFmpeg video codec #1 interconnecting influences or patterns’ Flash Screen Video (Nash citing Nichols, 205). Korsakow Flash Video (FLV) / allows us to make this link by giving us Sorenson Spark / Sorenson the opportunity to navigate through a H.263 collection of information simultaneously Forward Uncompressed to construct our own narratives amongst Video Codec the parts provided. fox motion video FRAPS: Realtime Video

Capture

GeoVision Advanced

MPEG-4

GoToMeeting codec (v1

and v2)

H.261

H.263, H.263+

H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC

/ MPEG-4 part 10

HuffYUV

I263

Ed Armstrong 59

PATTERNS

Fractals The documentaries of Placing the Bend Spirals are not narratives in a literal sense. Meanders When viewing Round the Bend the user Waves may encounter a clip of several burnt Foams tree trunks, before proceeding to select a Tilings thumbnail of an insect in close-up, that Cracks in turn reveals three thumbnails of the Stripes river. This ‘sequence’ does not evoke a Symmetry clear causal narrative, instead, it invites Asymmetry the user to interpret the sequence as a Echinoderms list and to infer connection. If you have Cubic experienced bushfire you may be shaken Octahedral by traumatic memories associated with a Spiral charred landscape, a conservationist, on Turbulent flows the other hand, might marvel at fire and Ripples its impact on the ecology of woodlands, Curves while a meteorologist may experience Spots the sequence as about climate change. Colour

Tessellation Sequences created in an assemblage Columns like this are what we impose meaning Pediments on. The sequence is still construed Lintels as a type of narrative by our desire to understand and affix meaning to Abstract everything that we experience.

Art Deco In the documentaries of Placing the Bend Argyle we assemble information in a different Arabesque manner to a linear film. Meaning arrives Art Nouveau from the connections between the video Batik

Placing the Bend 60

clips rather than the actions played Bead out within the video clip. Here these Blotch connections function in a similar way to Organic the connections and associations that Artificial create place. In the films patterns emerge Diamond amongst the categories and clips, and Crystal these reflect the ingredients (facets) that Floral Lippard describes as making up a place Geometric as hybrid (assemblage). Holes Lattice

Unlike a conventional, linear Moire

narrative that bases it’s progression Mosaic

on psychological cause and effect, a Patchwork

nonlinear narrative such as Placing the Pencil stripe

Bend works in a way that promotes a Collage

poetic investigation to discover the Plaid

relations between the clips. Roman stripes

By weaving together the categories Serpentine of clips of the BOI’s parts, the films Striae begin to produce patterns of sequences Stylised amongst the clips used. For the user, Tapestry the interest becomes about why or how Tartan these different clips are connected, Textural rather than what the things within each Unbalanced clip are doing. The actions of the things in each clip has less consequence to the overall narrative of these K-films then Circular their relations as there is no direct cause Square and effect enacted by the objects within Horizontal each clip of footage. Vertical Triangle

Ed Armstrong 61

Sphere As Placing the Bend is about the Rectangle relations between each clip opposed to Octagon what occurs within them, this allowed Dodecahedron me to simplify the documentation of the parts of the BOI by letting me capture Template matching each thing in a single, brief shot. This Prototype matching has provided an efficient method to Top down quickly list many video ‘items.’ Bottom down

Repetition Nonlinear, poetic assemblages

Motif evoke meaning through the patterns

Recursive they generate. For example, these

Probabalistic patterns may include the presentation of different tree trunks together,

John: Redbox, long leaf box, within any of the Placing the Bend red stringy bark. Down the documentaries, that may be interpreted gully: long leaf, peppermint, as how every tree is constructed in a candle bark, yellow box. similar fashion yet with different skin.

And on the other side, The visual texture may excite our narrow leaf, peppermint, tactile senses, evoking our experiences and a bit of manna gum. of touching these rough surfaces.

More stringy bark. Bit of I have utilised the varying surfaces of messmate… the BOI as a way to create evocative patterns when they are situated within Ross: So hand-built homes, the interface, a tactile response elicited you know, you end up with from calling to mind our previous a strong relationship with experiences of each part. The rusted that home that you built. metal panel aligned with thumbnails Much more than just buying of a stone wall, the Nillumbik sign, it off the back of a truck. It and the river (Figure 10) may evoke our does involve a lot of physical experience of these things in how they

Placing the Bend 62

are cold and rough in varying ways. This effort and stamina and may bring to mind how water corrodes persistence to build, you smooth surfaces into rough surfaces. Or know, to make three or four the differing characteristics of building thousand mud bricks on materials that make a man-made your own block of land. And construction of natural materials more then you sort of think, “well, durable than processed materials. I’ve achieved something.” And yeah, it’s the walls you

In Becoming the Bend thumbnails look at all the time from

presenting the varying qualities of the outside and inside. There’s

residents skin juxtaposed with a video of not a lot of hand building

the river (Figure 14) places an emphasis on going on. People don’t do it.

the different tactile qualities of each thing; Not as interested to do it or

skin is soft and warm whilst water is soft not as driven. and cold. Similarities can also be drawn

from the inflections and creases in skin, Janet: It’s hard to get a

the intricate detail of how each pore ages sense of ownership unless

with how the rivers ripples and eddies you’ve actually had a

come and go depending upon the external purpose or a reason for

and internal connections with it. owning it.

The syntagmatic patterning of Placing the Bend also evokes associations, Cric: We don’t have any for instance, the repetitive image of fences, so, I don’t really water in Assembling the Bend brings regard any of this as ours, to mind metaphors of flow, movement, it’s all just the bush, all life and time. The repetition of these around you. Um…So… images refers to the omnipresence of We’re not just protecting water for the BOI, the fluidity of how our own little block we’ve we endlessly construct and reconstruct got to protect the whole assemblages throughout our experience area. And I think it’s great of placemaking. the way everyone’s sort

Ed Armstrong 63

Figure 14: Becoming the Bend, screenshot

of…You know, the more The relationships we interpret between people understand that each clip produces poetic interpretations through Landcare, and, you of them. The more basic the connections know, the Conservation are, the more room we have to fill in the Association, um, I think gaps and pour in our own reading of the better. That’s the only the material. As Bachelard writes, “the way we’re going to do it. poetic image is essentially variational, And imparting each other’s and not, as in the case of the concept, knowledge about how to go constitutive” (xix). This means that about it and… depending on the connections we make between images, either paradigmatically Frank: You do get a or syntagmatically, our reading of the different appreciation for assemblage alters. the whole area the more you

Placing the Bend 64

The connections that each documentary know. But there’s also, the creates through its keywords forms a driver is, to record what’s pattern that Bernstein describes as a here, to actually document ‘contour’ (22). These contours in the films it so that it makes this place become a strong thematic point in the more special if you’ve got overall work, revealing how they could these things. You know, if be read. you say here’s our butterfly list, there’s thirty-six

This has similarities to understanding species, people say “wow,

place as consisting of flows that ‘need yeah…” and here’s our

to be understood through the paths orchid list of sixty orchids,

that lead in and out’ (Cresswell 2004, oh, and by the way we have

43) of them. lyrebirds coming through

Within the K-films of Placing the Bend we here and they’ve only been may not comprehend these patterns until coming here since 2000 and we have viewed the work several times. before that they hadn’t been For example, the relations between a recorded before the ’62 bush tree trunk, moss, and a river may only fires… So, there’s all sort become apparent on the third or fourth of ways you can use that time of engaging with the documentary. information that promotes One reading of these connections may the area. It’s consolidating be exploring the unity between flora the area again, building on and the river within the BOI, another what’s been there before. I may relate to the juxtaposition between see all of these, you know, slow and fast rates of change within the the lyrebird, the butterfly BOI, and yet another may be about the list, all of that, building formal visual patterns of vertical lines, there, so that if someone circles, and horizontal lines. It is through wants to put a freeway the connections between each clip and through here we can say what is heard on the soundtrack that the bugger off and this is why you have to bugger off.

Ed Armstrong 65

contours that come to represent the BOI as place emerge.

Monotremes

Platypus

Spiny Anteater

Marsupials

Dunnart (at least one species)

Brown Antechinus

Brush-tailed Phascogale

Sugar Glider

Brush Tailed Possum

Ring Tailed Possum

Koala

Common Wombat

Swamp Wallaby

Eastern Grey Kangaroo

Placental Mammals

Eastern Water Rat

Grey-headed Fruit Bat

Placing the Bend 66 THE PROJECT

PLACING THE BEND John:One of the concepts

that you teach in senior Placing the Bend is the collective title biology is this notion of I have given to the series of three animals having certain interactive documentaries I have requirements of their made to explore the idea of place environment. Animals using the BOI as content. The first is have requirements of their titled Round the Bend in reference to environment in order for the use of ‘round’ things linking clips them to survive. So, I would within the documentary; the second is use examples of animals Assembling the Bend, a work that uses that I know out here like the four specific characteristics of the BOI sugar glider or the wallaby to provide thematic structure with an to help the kids understand accompanying interview soundtrack that these animals have featuring twelve residents, and finally special requirements Becoming the Bend, that builds upon so the environment has the first two iterations and adds visual got to provide those content of the residents in order to requirements, and if you realise a poetic understanding of place bugger up the environment as socialised space. the animals will not have

The differences between each those requirements and documentary marks the development of will not be able to survive. my own practice in understanding how So, for example, if you take interactive documentaries might function, the crimson rosellas. You and my developing knowledge of how know, really nice birds dense and multifaceted place can be. that you see around here.

They depend on having Coming from a conventional filmmaking hollows in reasonably tall background I was unaware of the eucalypts to make their flexibility and interactivity of new media nests. Because they won’t as a mode for documentary, nor was I

Ed Armstrong 67

aware of the theoretical quandaries of breed unless they can make humanist geography. 2013 has provided a nest in the right place. a steep learning curve technically and Now, the environment gets intellectually as I have undergone a messed around by having thorough project-lead research exploration say, common miners that into the notion of placemaking. are sometimes called indian miners, introduced into it. Placemaking is a difficult concept They will out compete the to express through documentary rosellas for those nesting filmmaking, especially the linear style I am spots and one of the accustomed to from previous study and absolute requirements for practice. I sought to create a documentary rosellas to maintain their experience that applied Massey’s presence in a population notion of flow and Seamon’s place ballet is to breed every year. If to communicate the complexity and they can’t breed, they go. changeable nature of place. So, taking steps to ensure that introduced birds don’t Approaching the BOI as a place through become established is documentary has involved video and very important. And one audio recordings of the many parts and of the things that attracts facets that form it as an assemblage. I those sorts of birds, like began by walking through the landscape blackbirds and miners and and shooting the things I noticed and sparrows and things is the details that intrigued me. I found having appropriate food. So that shots of six second duration allowed they’ll pinch the stock food. time to convey each part of the place,

If you have a chook pen that and the flexibility to list each in an is not properly looked after efficient manner. and you’ve got food and By then importing these shots into a stuff that they want to eat Korsakow project I began to see what or other things that attract keywords and associations emerged them to such an enterprise

Placing the Bend 68

to inform further shooting. I began to acacia build upon the stronger categories and berry yung associations I discovered in order to Straight-leaved Acacia strengthen my research and consequently acacia each documentary’s effectiveness. burn nar look Blackwood (A. melanoxylon)

I endeavoured to carry the practice of acacia garrong Black Wattle

focusing upon one part with one shot (A. mearnsii)

through all three of my documentaries Coranderrk

but found this to be contrary to the acacia garrong; A.

variable nature of placemaking. In mollissimo

Assembling the Bend I experimented acacia

with the constant rhythm of six second mo yang

clips but found more of a harmonious Blackwood (A. melanoxylon)

dynamic — that was in line with acacia

humanist geography’s view of place as a moeyong

changeable construct — was achieved Blackwood (Bun)

in Round the Bend and Becoming the burn-na-look (Yarra)

Bend, where I used clips and sequences acacia

of varying length and content, to adjust mooejong

the pace of each experience. Acacia

Sound recording played an important melanoxylon for clubs role in documenting the BOI, providing acacia an experiential overlay for the interactive moiyan component of each documentary. Silver Wattle acacia

Sound recording was broken into two muyan

parts, the first was recording and acacia

composing a soundscape that consisted jurk — gum from for fixing

of the BOI as a natural environment, and stone to spears secondly I built a soundtrack that was

Ed Armstrong 69 appleberry made up of the interviews I conducted kar a wang with twelve of the BOI’s residents. Solid Appleberry (Billardiera scandens) While traversing the BOI to gather my appleberry visual content, I ensured I had an audio karrawang recording device to capture the natural

Yellow soundscape of each part and facet.

Apple-Berry These location recordings became the appleberry underlying soundscape for all three garawin documentaries, conveying a progression garrawang from the dry ridge environment to the aster (twiggy) riverside, through wind and rain. boe boe (Olearia ramolosa) The interview soundtrack was composed austral mulberry from the recordings I initiated as part djelwuck (Yarra) of my research in trying to see the BOI banksia through kindly eyes. I interviewed a total wa rul (Banksia marginata) of twelve residents who had lived for banksia varying periods in the BOI. weerete banksia (silver) Common themes emerged relating woorike to their growing awareness of the bidgee widgee multifaceted nature of the environment murre yuke from living there for an extended period bidgee widgee of time. This awareness became an moriyoke important theme through the works of billy buttons Placing the Bend, with the change of pin pat experiencing the environment from a

Big Billy Buttons (Craspedia detached vantage point to becoming richea) aware of its finer details and intricacies.

I was conscious of talking with new and old residents to explore the various

Placing the Bend 70

degrees of connection each person bulbine lily has with the BOI. The recent arrivals pike Common Yellow Lily offer new connections with place, their (Bulbine bulbosa) understanding of it’s rhythms and bulbine lily nuances still quite fresh, whereas the pike (Coranderrk) residents who have lived there most burgan of their lives provide a rich history of burgan (Kunzia its regular rhythms and multifaceted peduncularis) nature. Their comments are a mixture burgan of intimate and practical recollections of burgan the place, allowing us to hear it through bursaria the kindly eyes of each resident. kur wan

Sweet Bursaria (Bursaria The location based soundscape and spinosa) interview soundtrack are fixed in time karwan in each documentary. The soundtrack bursaria (Sweet) sometimes appears to relate to what is kurwan being viewed, whilst other times it is tupy (prob. not Victorian) seemingly unrelated. This undulating bush pea consistency of personal impressions and kan berr Prickly Bush Pea video clips adds to the poetic quality of (Pultenaea juniperina) the films, perhaps providing a deeper caesia understanding of place as a multifaceted mudrurt assemblage that we are able to glean cherry tree (exo) from the video sequences alone. polite Round the Bend is the only documentary clematis that does not include the interview min namber ruk (Clematis soundtrack, but employs an additional aristata) footstep track to transition the clematis soundscape from region to region whilst minamberang (Clematis aristata)

Ed Armstrong 71

Interviewer: So the also conveying my firsthand experience motivation behind bringing of the place. it into the classroom, is that because you were exposed Instead of the continuous ambient to the fragility of it (the soundtrack which Round the Bend environment) with your features, Assembling the Bend and mother showing you- Becoming the Bend use a soundtrack of residents discussing their experiences

Janet: mm. And, until you of living in the BOI and what it means start to see things and to them as a place. This creates a observe them you take it qualitative change in how we are able to for granted. I mean, it was experience the place, as this human part interesting this study with is added in order to see it through kindly the bird. I mean, these eyes and thus offers us a more emotional parents would say to me, engagement to how we construct our you know, “I didn’t know understanding of the films and place. what a white-faced heron Each resident can be seen as offering was and now we’re seeing another facet of place, influencing them everywhere we go.” our overall impression of the BOI by You know, it was that sort producing more ways to experience of awareness development... place as a growing assemblage. With the You know, it’s a matter of addition of each part to the assemblage, becoming familiar with the documentary and place grow in what you see, taking notice density as new flows become evident. of it, and then you’ll see something different. The following discussion revolves around how each documentary has changed in appearance, functionality and content to better investigate how place is initiated, and develops as we experience it over time. There are six key

Placing the Bend 72

elements that I believe are significant clematis to these films, including their interface, wet o mel len soundscape, interview soundtrack, Greater Clematis (Clematis content and duration of each clip, and aristata) the keywords used for each iteration. common heath gin in ee moon (Epacris

The interface is the first thing we are impressa)

introduced to in each documentary. convolvulus

The composition of each has developed nur-nur.

according to what has helped make erubescens?

associations between video and Australian Bindwood

thumbnail images more apparent, and coprosma

therefore the navigation through the morr

documentary the most effective. Prickly Coprosma

The soundscape composed from the (Coprosma billardiera) natural environment of the BOI features coprosma in all three documentaries as an aural morr (Coprosma quadrfidai): overlay to the visual interactivity morr (Coranderrk) between video and thumbnails, the cumbungi interview soundtrack offers a thematic cumbungi journey of the anecdotal and practical dock (swamp) experiences twelve of the BOI residents kad se kad sek Swamp have had of the place. Dock Swamp Dock Rumex brownii

The video clips alter in content and dogwood

duration through the development of grunel

Placing the Bend in order to express eucalypt

the variable rhythm of experiencing beal Red Gum (E. rubida)

place and as a way to emphasise the beal Red Gum

quantitative and qualitative bonds that be-al develop between resident and location.

Ed Armstrong 73 eucalypt The sixth topic of discussion is how bin kul luk the keywords used in Korsakow have Stringy Bark evolved to encourage poetic connections eucalypt between video and thumbnails to katatak establish the patterns that inform our Red Stringy-bark (E. sense of place. What determines the flow macrorhyncha) of images in all three documentaries Galeena Beek Trail is the design of the keywords. The eucalypt keywords I have used have changed in binnap consideration of the poetic connections I Manna Gum (Yarra) felt were appropriate for how place comes (note: the Kangaroo Ground into being. Manna Gum is Eucalyptus viminalis cygnetensis Each film uses different keywords to alter eucalypt its particular assemblage of the BOI, bundy influencing how different parts intersect

Long-leaf Box (E. with one another to form understandings goniocalyx) of place. The location, residents, and eucalypt their common and different histories, ter touit bin (Narrow-leaf together form the assemblage that is

Peppermint) place. The films ofPlacing the Bend eucalypt create these assemblages from the tir ba twe bin various parts and facets of the BOI to

Narrow-leaf peppermint (E. explore and reflect upon how place forms. amygdalina) A major development that has occurred eucalypt over the three interactive documentaries wangnara Messmate- is how the variation of clip length and stringybark (E. obliqua) content alters the rhythm of each K-film. Wurundjeri Experiencing place does not occur in an eucalypt orderly, regular fashion, but through an wangnarra Stringybark

Placing the Bend 74

emerging rhythm of flows that establish eucalypt our understanding of it. wangnarra or wooeyork (E. obliqua (string)

I shall now elaborate in more detail eucalypt

as to how each iteration of Placing wayut

the Bend has evolved in expressing Stringybark

the emerging, changeable, and eucalypt

multifaceted nature of place. wiyal

Peppermint (Bunurong)

eucalypt

woorun

Mountain Ash (E. regnans)

eucalypt

wurrun

White Gum Tree (Manna

Gum)

eucalypt

binnap (E. viminalis)

eucalypt

dharung

Yellow Box

eucalypt

dhagurn

Yellow box

eucalypt

dargoyne (mesmate)

eucalypt

yanut

Mountain Ash

Ed Armstrong 75

ROUND THE BEND eucalypt ? The first interactive documentary eur-look (peppermint tree) in the series, Round the Bend, is Could be other species? an attempt to understand place by Eucalypt exploring the formal qualities of the Earip E. leucoxylon things seen within it. The film begins (spurious Ironbark-tree) with an image of the BOI welcome everlastings sign, and hovering a cursor over the pooi booy image shows that it can be selected. Shrubby Everlasting Once selected, a new interface opens (Helichrysum ferrugineum) which includes a large square frame everlasting spp playing a short video clip, with three neringnerit smaller black and white thumbnails aligned to the right (Figure 15).

Figure 15: Round the Bend, screenshot Placing the Bend 76

Each thumbnail offers a particular view Antarctic Beech of part of the BOI, and the larger window Australian Almond always contains a looping short video Australian Indigo clip of single shots and shot sequences. Australian Teak Banana Bush

The black and white thumbnails provide Beach Bird’s-Eye

links to their respective video clips. The Beach Casuarina

aesthetic choice of black and white does Bird Lime Tree

not only distinguish the thumbnails Black Apple

from the video content, but provides a Black Bean

reward for the user as every thumbnail Black Booyong

they select transforms into colour and Black Plum

motion. This transformation refers to Black Walnut

how by being an active participant in Black Wattle

trying to understand place each part of it Blackbutt Tree

becomes heightened as our awareness of Blackwood

it increases. Bleeding Heart

Once a thumbnail is selected the project Blueberry Ash loads the video, simultaneously selecting Blue Gum three new, related, black and white Blue Grevillea thumbnails from which to choose. Blue Quandong Bolly Gum Green

Over time thematic connections emerge Bolly Gum White

between the clips being played and Bolwarra

the thumbnails beside it, as similarly Brittlewood

themed thumbnails are generated with Broad-leaf Star Hair

each new selection. For example, a video Brown Beech

of a vertical or horizontal thing seems Brown Gardenia

to always be coupled with thumbnails Brown Tamarind

of round or close up things. And vice Brown Tuckeroo

versa, when round or close up things are Brush Apple

Ed Armstrong 77

Brush Box playing, thumbnails of either vertical or Brush Caper Berry horizontal things show up beside them. Brush Ironbark

Brush Cherry This formal pattern of horizontal,

Brush Kurrajong vertical, and round emerged because

Brush Pepperbush when I began to video the BOI I was not

Brush Teak entirely sure what footage I would shoot

Brush Wedding Bush to make an interactive documentary.

Bull Kauri Pine Viewing the first batch of footage I found Bunya Pine general visual patterns appearing in Bushy Tamarind the things I documented. I found strong Byfield Spider Flower patterns that emerged from the listing Cadaghi the different types of bark each tree Cassia trunk has. I also found that the intricate Cassowary Plum detail of things provided much more Celery Wood interesting comparative visual material Chain Fruit than the long shots of the landscape, as Cheese Tree the characteristics of the BOI woodland Coachwood are best appreciated up close. A web Coastal Banksia browser also generally presents visual Coastal Tea Tree material on a small screen and in a Common Acronychia lower quality resolution to enable Coogera effecient access depending on internet Corkwood bandwidth. Crabapple

Creek Sandpaper Fig Patterns emerged from Korsakow where

Cuderie the tree trunks I had documented

Curtain Fig presented a vertical axis whilst the

Cuttsia landscape shots provided an example

Davidson’s Plum NSW of horizontal lines. These became the

Davidson’s Plum QLD

Placing the Bend 78

impetus for further documentation by Denhamia finding more of these shapes. Devil’s Needle

Dorrigo Maple Round the Bend uses shots of vertical Doughwood and horizontal things, connected Dwarf Kurrajong by round things, to draw attention Elderberry Panax to the simple formal visual patterns Feather Wattle that configure places as an abstract Featherwood assemblage. It may not become Fibrous Satinash apparent to the user of Round the Bend Fine-leaved Tuckeroo that the keywords are based upon the Firewheel Tree formal qualities of each clip, yet they Five-leaved Bonewood nonetheless discover patterns from their Flame Tree own reading of the clips that alters the Flax-leaved Paperbark assemblage of the entire film. Flooded Gum For instance, a bright orange rounded Foambark Tree fungus set beside roughly textured Forest Maple brown tree trunks that display a variety Forest Oak of bark growth streaming upwards urges Furry Nightshade us to interpret how and why these things Giant Stinging Tree are associated with one another. We Golden Guinea Tree may interpret the associations based Golden Pea upon the juxtaposition of their textual Grease Nut Tree qualities, their colour, or the ecological Green Banksia manner in which they grow. Green Wattle Green-leaved Rose Walnut

The form each thing takes within the Grey Ironbark

clips becomes the initiating points Grey Gum Small-fruited

for poetic speculation that results in Grey Myrtle

the pattern-making associated with Grey Possumwood

identifying assemblages. Guilfoylia

Ed Armstrong 79

Guioa The formal pattern of horizontal, vertical, Gunn’s Phyllanthus and circular associations that the Hairy Bird’s-eye keywords of Round the Bend are based Hairy Fig upon, invites poetic speculation where a Hairy Lollybush sense of place is constructed abstractly Hairy Psychotria in the work by finding patterns in the Hairy Rosewood work itself, separately from what the Hairy Walnut shots specifically show. Hickory Wattle

Honeysuckle A major structural design for all of the

Hoop Pine Placing the Bend documentaries has

Hovea been the use of a ‘connector’ clip or

Ivory Basswood keyword (Miles). This connector works

Ivory Curl Flower as the bridge between all other clips

Jackwood within the system, and therefore appears

Johnstone River Satinash more often, so can be thought of as a

Kamala Red motif of sorts. The connectors in Round

Kangaroo Apple the Bend are clips that fall into the

Koda category of ‘round’ things. Round as a

Lacebark Tree keyword caters for a variety of things

Lemon Myrtle within the BOI, including flora that

Lemon-scented Gum grows in a circular fashion, or close ups

Lilly Pilly of the various parts of the BOI that are

Long-leaved Bitter Bark so abstracted to not present a vertical or

Long-leaved Native Olive horizontal axis. Allocating round things

Long-leaved Paperbark as the connector in Round the Bend was

Macadamia Nut a poetic design choice to draw attention

Macaranga to how whole, circular things juxtapose

Macleay Laurel with vertical and horizontal things. An

Maidens Blush intuitive approach to pattern-finding

Maiden’s Wattle that sees how things conveying a line — vertical and horizontal — can be seen

Placing the Bend 80

as ‘open’ whereas circular things can be Magenta Lilly Pilly seen as closed, complete wholes. Malletwood

Marbled Baloghia From the beginning of Round the Bend Messmate an ambient soundscape of the BOI’s Milk Bush natural environment plays automatically Moreton Bay Fig (birds singing, wind blowing, river in Narrow-leaved Orangebark the background) before footsteps can Native Frangipani be heard on gravel. This soundscape Native Gardenia continues throughout the documentary, Native Guava providing a progression from the dry Native Hydrangea ridges of the BOI to the riversides to Native Olive underwrite the discontinuous video Native Tamarind sequences used. We are able to hear Native Rosella the footsteps walk along the riverbank Newry Golden Wattle past rapids, up into the higher country Northern Acradenia to hear birds sing and wind rustling Northern White Lilly Pilly leaves, before the wind picks up and Odour Bush rain begins to fall, prompting the frogs Oliver’s Sassafras to call, and finally ending on the distant Paperbark bird calls that signal the day is over. Pine Mountain Corkwood These are all facets that contribute to Pink Bloodwood the overall experience of the BOI that are Pink Cherry characteristic of it as a place. Pink Euodia Round the Bend is the most subjective Pink Hibiscus investigation of the three documentaries, Pink Laceflower privileging my own experience of Pink Walnut the BOI. The soundscape offers my Plum Myrtle experience of the place sonically, and Poison Peach the videos emphasise my view of place Port Jackson Cypress Pine visually, where the form of each shot Powderpuff Lilly Pilly

Ed Armstrong 81

Purple Cherry takes precedence over any possible Prickly Ash experiences or relations associated Python Tree with them. Quandong

Red Apple Round the Bend deliberately establishes

Red Ash up and downbeats that relate to the

Red-barked Sassafras content of each clip, as well as its

Red Bloodwood duration, adding to the changeable

Red Boppel Nut nature of its assemblage. The accented

Red Carabeen notes distributed at varying stages of the

Red Cedar sequence are clips that present irregular

Red Mahogany things within the entire sequence

Red Olive Berry that peak our interest and therefore encourages a qualitative engagement with it. For example, an orchid may capture our interest as an irregular thing

Mosquito, small within the assemblage of the BOI as it is

Spider, clubbed delicate and vivid in colour, as opposed

Spider, red-lipped to the majority of things within the BOI

Spider, small that are harsh and have a robust quality,

Mantis, eastern appearing generally as a range of muted

Tall-Greenhood, brown-lip browns and greens. This rise and fall of

Tall-Greenhood, emerald-lip aesthetic interest can be likened to the

Duck, large quantitative and qualitative experiential

Beard, naked rhythm of Seamon’s place ballet.

Beard, red The clips that are sequences rather than Beard, purplish single shots encourage the user to take Beard, late notice as they provide a denser flow of Autumn bird information. Similar to the interview Midge, sharp description of the choughs attacking a Helmet, veined fox that can be heard in the soundtrack

Placing the Bend 82

of Assembling, and Becoming the Helmet, fringed Bend, the clip that presents a montage Helmet, slaty sequence of scattered feathers upon Fingers, blue the forest floor reveals a far denser Gnat, common flow of place than the standard six Greenhood, dark-tip second clips are able to achieve (Figure Autumn-Greenhood, large 16). This sequence encapsulates a Hyacinth, rosy particular facet of the place as one Golden moths of violence and presumed death, Donkey portraying the aftermath of a situation Leopard we may recognise as a bird having been Tiger consumed by a predator. Broad-Tip Diuris Parson’s Bands

Figure 16: Round the Bend, screenshots

Ed Armstrong 83

Potato This qualitative experience becomes Wax-Lip dense due to the time spent on the Hare event and the various shots within Greenhood, dwarf the montage, standing out from the Onion, slender quantitative, standard clips that depict Onion, common the regular facets of the forest floor. Mayfly

Ruddyhood The duration of each clip in Round the

Fingers, pink Bend is an important aspect to how the

Fingers, white work is experienced and understood.

Fingers, tiny Contrary to my usual practice in this

Fingers, summer project of one clip equals one shot,

Blue Fairies the longer internal sequences act as a

Leek, short-lip medley that focuses on how several parts

Greenhood, mountainair of the BOI work together to form smaller

Greenhood, blunt assemblages. When this medley appears

Greenhood, slender next to thumbnails of different things a

Greenhood, nodding denser network is created, and what is

Maroonhood normally one becomes many, much like

Bird the intersection of place where material

Tiny-Greenhood, small- and immaterial things conjoin. green In Round the Bend, selecting a Tiny-Greenhood, brown thumbnail of a cliff face shows a Caps, musky montage of various rock walls and cliff Caps, early faces. The quick cutting accelerates Caps, green the tempo, using a list of similar or Greenhood, trim contrasting things within the one clip. Sun, forest This internal sequence of things within Sun, peppertop the clip evokes comparisons to be made Sun, twisted between the clip and the thumbnails of Sun, dotted things situated around it. As this clip

Placing the Bend 84

has a different tempo to the majority of Sun, tall clips, which are six seconds in length, it Sun, slender draws attention to the variability of flows Sun, trim within an assemblage. The clip presents Sun, salmon information in a way that breaks away from the film’s standard length clips and Andesite therefore encourages a different way of Anorthosite reading and understanding how it might Aplite be associated to the other video clips. Basalt This becomes an irregularity that sparks Basanite our interest in a qualitative sense. Boninite Carbonatite

The varying lengths of the clips in Round Charnockite

the Bend adds to the rhythmic quality of Dacite

the assemblage, drawing attention to the Diabase

varying scales of the parts of the BOI, Diorite

as well as how each part can be placed Dunite

within an assemblage. Essexite

Foidolite

Gabbro

Granite

Granodiorite

Granophyre

Harzburgite

Hornblendite

Hyaloclastite

Icelandite

Ignimbrite

Ljolite

Kimberlite

Komatiite

Ed Armstrong 85

Lamproite ASSEMBLING THE BEND Lamprophyre

Latite Assembling the Bend is the second

Lherzolite documentary made and presents a

Monzogranite significant departure in design to

Monzonite Round the Bend in how it approaches

Nepheline syenite the notion of placemaking. Each clip

Nephelinite within Assembling the Bend is the same

Norite length (six seconds) and aims to present

Obsidian each part of the BOI equally to the user.

Pegmatite This was a methodological practice I

Peridotite carried through from how I approached

Phonolite the shooting of material within the

Picrite BOI in each film. Six seconds became

Porphyry an adequate length to record one part

Pumice within the landscape and allowed

Pyroxenite me to list the various parts of the BOI

Quartz diorite effectively, building up a catalogue of

Quartz monzonite clips to import into Korsakow.

Rhyodacite I had experimented in Round the Rhyolite Bend with clips of varying lengths Scoria and combinations of things which Sovite created a rhythm similar to the ‘organic Syenite narrativity’ (Tarasti, 296) found in Tachylyte musical narratives. The variation of Tephrite duration and content in each clip Tonalite provided another way to express the Trachyandesite quantitative and qualitative ways in Trachyte which place is experienced. Troctolite

Trondhjemite

Placing the Bend 86

The six second clips used in Assembling Tuff the Bend established a regular rhythm Websterite of exposure to the facets of place, Wehrlite moving more towards the idea of list- making, whereas the varying length Argillite clips of Round the Bend pronounced Arkose particular things of note, and through Banded iron formation shot and sequence length offered Breccia an understanding of various smaller Chalk assemblages within place. Chert Claystone

The interface design in Assembling the Coal

Bend now has thumbnails and video Conglomerate

that are aligned horizontally to suggest Coquina

the way we scan a landscape to identify Diatomite

its characteristics. By scanning the Dolomite

combination of video and thumbnails we Evaporite

quickly find associations between each, Flint

informing our next selection. With each Graywacke

thumbnail selection the video window Gritstone

switches from one side of the interface to Itacolumite

the other, encouraging us to engage with Jaspillite

this scanning reflex and to understand Laterite

that the swapping of the video’s position Limestone

is related to the swapping of keywords Marl

used within the K-film. This change of Mudstone

interface matches a change of keyword Oil shale

or category, with the videos on the left of Oolite

the interface signifying water, and the Rock gypsum

clips to the right a rotation of categories; Sandstone

man-made things, close things, and Shale things from a distance.

Ed Armstrong 87

Siltstone This changing interface helps illuminate Travertine the relations between video categories, Turbidite and as a result Assembling the Bend Wackestone can be seen as substantially more complex than the previous work in how Anthracite it generates patterns. This is not only Amphibolite due to the addition of another keyword, Blueschist as Assembling the Bend functions with Cataclasite the keywords near, far, water and human, Eclogite but the increased complexity comes from Gneiss how we are able to read the videos. Gossan

Granulite Unlike the simple poetic elegance of

Greenschist the visual patterns that shape the

Hornfels assemblages within Round the Bend, I

Marble used keywords in Assembling the Bend

Migmatite in a more literal sense, with shot scale

Mylonite and content informing which keywords

Metapelite to use. Categories are derived as the

Phyllite explicit point of each shot. For example,

Metapsammite a generator pump, door handle, and

Pseudotachylte chain all relate to the ‘human’ keyword

Quartzite in the documentary, and these are

Schist connected to clips representing water

Serpentite which encourages the consideration of a

Skarn connection between these things. Shot

Slate scale, which was dependent upon my

Suevite position as camera operator, established

Talc carbonate the dialectic of near and far.

Whiteschist Water then becomes prolific in Assembling the Bend as it is used as the

Placing the Bend 88

connector between all other categories of Adamellite videos. This was intended to show how Appinite the river is a defining attribute of the Aphanite BOI, whilst also referring to how water Borolonite is an agent of change in the constant Blue granite becoming of this place. Water moulds as Epidosite well as erodes in an effortless, constant Felsite flow of movement. Flint Ganister

Water becomes the most malleable Ljolite

keyword within Assembling the Bend Jadeitite

as it can be seen to relate to all things Jasperoid

within the place, even the man-made, Kenyte

artificial things. Water is a material Vogesite

thing and a medium which influences Larvikite

the becoming of all other things in Litchfieldite

the BOI. Luxullianite

The keywords near and far, on the other Mangerite hand, act as counterpoints to each other, Minette initiating an intriguing poetic dialectic Novaculite in relation to the growing awareness Pyrolite each resident describes on the interview Rapakavie granite soundtrack. This experience is the Rhomb porphyry interweaving of the body and feeling- Shonkinite subjects, that in turn encourages an Taconite increasing attachment to place. The Teschenite body-subject can be seen as the far clips, Theralite the shot scale establishing a disengaged Variolite objective stance for the user. This is the basis which allows for the growing awareness of the many flows of close

Ed Armstrong 89

up shots that function as the intense, qualitative experience of place that Tuan speaks of. It is these qualitative experiences that resonate with our feeling-subject, speaking in “a language foreign to cognition and logical thinking” (Seamon 1979, 77) to spark our interest and encourage us to become emotionally attached to the material. The associative structure of Assembling the Bend tries to mirror this interplay between quantitative and qualitative experiences of place.

The voice soundtrack and clips then form an amalgamatation to become a

Grave flow of experiences within Assembling

Very Slow the Bend, strengthening the concept

Largo, Lento of place as a social, collective and

Slow personal experience.

Larghetto This distinction of near and far only A little faster than Largo became apparent when I imported the Adagio footage into Korsakow and understood Moderately Slow that a pattern had established itself Andante from my shot coverage. I further “Walking” Tempo developed this notion of two categories Andantino to emphasise the qualitative shift in A little faster than Andante perspective each resident described Allegretto experiencing when growing more A little slower than Allegro attached to the BOI. By designing Allegro the keywords to transition from a

Placing the Bend 90

far, detached perspective, to a near Fast and intimate one, a rhythm of flows Vivace conveying the idea of wholes becoming Lively parts and vice versa can be seen. Presto Very Fast

One of the aims of Assembling the Prestissimo

Bend was to explore this change Very Very Fast

of perspective, using water to link Moderato

far and near. This revealed a strong Moderate(ly)

pattern that highlighted how both Molto

perspectives are interconnected in a Very fluid choreographed sequence between body and feeling-subjects to allow each

resident the opportunity to learn more Meuse

about the place they live in. Each new Yangtze

far clip links to water before focusing Kanawha

in on a near clip to examine a part Susquehanna

of the environment in detail. Water Nile

becomes the symbolic agent of change Rhine

to represent this transformation of Amazon

perspective. In hindsight, I feel the Amur

keyword human muddies the elegance Macleay

of this interchanging cycle of near Murrumbidgee

to far in Assembling the Bend as Colorado

water provides the link for all three Thames

other categories, thus breaking the Indus momentum between the near and far

clips. This proved to be a design fault I Murray River

rectified in Becoming the Bend. Murrumbidgee River

Darling River

Lachlan River

Ed Armstrong 91

Cooper Creek BECOMING THE BEND Flinders River

Diamantina River Becoming the Bend is the last iteration of the documentary series Placing the Bend, and builds upon the first and second films by maintaining the

Agnes simplicity of a three keyword structure,

Aire the variable clip duration and content

Albert as seen in Round the Bend, and the

Anglesea soundtrack compilation and thumbnail

Avoca size of Assembling the Bend.

Avon A significant addition to Becoming the Barham Bend is the use of close up shots of the Barwon interviewees to bridge the gap between Bass location and resident. As Lippard Bemm suggests, we are but another ingredient Benedore in the hybridity of place, and so the Betka residents of the BOI have been included Big in Becoming the Bend sonically as well Brodribb as visually to create an assemblage of Broken place as an explicitly socialised concept. Buckland

Bundara Finding that stronger patterns emerged

Bunyip in Round the Bend and Assembling the

Calder Bend due to the size of thumbnails in

Campaspe the interface from the near shots I took of

Cann the environment, I decided to continue

Cobungra with this aesthetic when documenting

Coliban the interviewees. Each shot of the

Cumberland interviewees then becomes merely

Darby

Placing the Bend 92

another part of the BOI, detailing close Dargo up parts of their bodies. Delatite Delegate

The interface in Becoming the Bend is Elliott

a quadrant, creating a visual merger Eumeralla

between the parts of the place, as Fitzroy

thumbnails and videos lie equally Ford

against one another. With each new Franklin

thumbnail chosen a new pattern Geary

emerges between the thumbnails of its Gellibrand

category and the video. The category of Genoa

near things is perhaps more receptive Glenelg

to this merging as each shot is detailed Goulburn

to the extent of abstraction, the thing Grey

collapsing its borders to easily accept Hartland

other shots as part of its assemblage. For Hopkins

example, when close ups of each resident Howqua

align together as thumbnails it becomes Jamieson

an assemblage of ‘face,’ similarly, close Johanna

ups of tree trunks offer a visual texture Jordan

that collectively creates poetic patterns Kennett

that may be read as an assemblage of Kiewa

bark, tree and place. King

The sizing of each window in the Lang Lang interface has remained the same as Latrobe Assembling the Bend, as I recognised Lerderderg that the clarity of thumbnails was Little (multiple rivers) an important factor in identifying Little Yarra the paradigmatic patterns between Little Murray thumbnails and clips. Loddon Macalister

Ed Armstrong 93

Maribyrnong The use of the black and white has Merri remained to provide a reward for Mitchell selecting a clip, and to signify the Mitta Mitta experiential change that is realised by Moorabool moving between levels of awareness by Mount Emu Creek engaging our body and feeling-subjects Morwell when experiencing place. Moyne

Mueller Becoming the Bend simplifies the

Murray categories used in Assembling the

Nicholson Bend, returning to the three keyword

Ovens structure of Round the Bend to allow

O’Shannassy more evocative connections to be made

Patterson between disparate categories. When

Parker Korsakow urges connections to be made

Perry between each clip and thumbnail, the

Plenty more disparate the categories the longer

Powlett the poetic leap becomes for the user.

Red The less keywords used establishes a

Rubicon space for more poetic connections to

St George be made between each clip, allowing a

Shaw flexible assemblage to emerge through

Snowy the process of interacting with the

Suggan Buggan documentary.

Surrey In Becoming the Bend I began by Tambo designating the category of things Tarra from a distance, what I called ‘far’ in Tarwin Assembling the Bend, as the connector Thurra between the close ups of the BOI Tidal environment and the close ups of its Timbarra residents, suggesting that place is the

Placing the Bend 94

assemblage of ‘the natural order’ Thomson (Seamon citing Relph 1979, 64) and Wallagaraugh residents. By selecting far clips we Wannon are transferred to a detail of the BOI, Watts whether native flora and fauna or Wentworth the residents, as all represent the Werribee parts of the place that constitute its Wimmera assemblage. Similar to the coverage Wingan used within a linear documentary, Woady Yaloak where an establishment shot provides Wye context before focusing in on medium Yarra and close up shots of the subject, Yarrowee this iteration of Becoming the Bend Yea allowed the user to view the BOI Yeerung landscape before focusing upon a detail of it. The far clips established Rodrigo: You can design a base regularity of experiencing the environmental features the place before accentuating our of an eco village. You experience with the detailed facets know, where the houses of each part, further developing this are located, everybody notion of the growing awareness each has the same access to resident describes occurring. water. Everybody has similar orientations in

However, I found that designating the their blocks. And you

human keyword as connector drew more can put the community

upon my phenomenological approach centre in the middle but

of investigation. Although I enjoyed the you cannot force people

exploratory nature found when jumping to come. You know, at the

from far clips to near clips to examine a end of the day community

detail of the place, this involved allowing is not something- …you

all far clips to be played a limitless can provide elements time as I had fewer of them. Instead,

Ed Armstrong 95 to facilitate community allowing them to “die off” leaves us with a but you cannot force simple dialogue between the parts of the community. environment and the parts of the residents.

Janet: Anyway, that’s what The progression from viewing the happens. There is change place from a distance to becoming in the Bend of Islands. It fully immersed in its parts conveys a doesn’t stay the same and growing bond between the landscape that’s fine. It’s the people and residents of that place. Similar to that make the zone and so the paradigmatic merging found in the

I think we can cope with quadrant interface, this syntagmatic new people coming in and progression from viewing the place at keeping the community an objective, detached standpoint, to going and the place going viewing it in detail, unifies bothnear but it is adjoining lands, the categories into a multifaceted sequence impact of adjoining areas of place. that can pose enormous As the far clips are six seconds in threats to us. length while both near categories offer a varied duration, this further builds a Rodrigo: The more people progression from the regularity of far put into the community and clips to the qualitative experiences is present in the community we may come across in the near the more the community clips. Similar to Round the Bend, will be willing to hear Becoming the Bend utilises montage and help on issues that clips of varying lengths to create up people may have. It’s never and downbeats of quantitative and obviously one direction, qualitative experiences to mirror the and unfortunately that’s a diverse flows that form place. lot of what people expect.

I never do anything for the The keywords near, far and human allow common good, but when I room for poetic connections to be made

Placing the Bend 96

between the detail of things (human expect that when I have my or non-human) and the landscape as a issues the common good whole. Similarities can be seen between will respect them. And that the human and non-human parts of the view is what makes us have BOI, the wrinkles and creases in the skin problems in societies… similar to the cracks and patterns within the bark of trees and veins of leaves. Janet: Things like our This suggests a merger between both experience of the echidnas to form an assemblage of place, as each here, has made me so aware are set beside the other to become one of where I see echidnas thing; the BOI. these days. I mean, (laughs) every time you drive one

The soundtrack in Becoming the Bend way or the other or drive

has remained the same as Assembling across the country across

the Bend, an amalgamation of the natural the States, I always see

soundscape of the BOI with a mosaic echidnas quite quickly. I’ll

of interviews conducted with some notice them. of the BOI’s residents. The anecdotal

accounts of place provides a perspective Frank: One year I recorded

from within it, seeing it with kindly fourteen different echidnas

eyes in order to form an attachment to coming to have a drink

it. The soundscape alone, as heard in at our pond one summer.

Round the Bend, offers a sonic overlay And we had a mother raise

of experiencing the clips but does not two babies out of the same

engage with the human side of the BOI, burrow just outside the

which is a considerable factor of what back door here. First time

constitutes a place. it has ever been recorded

The final iteration of Placing the Bend in science. I wrote a paper I have named Becoming the Bend to for the Victorian Naturalist conclude the research with the idea with Peter Monk Horst - you of unifying resident with place. The know, the guy who’s done

Ed Armstrong 97 the Australian Mammals inclusion of clips representing parts book. If you’ve got a dog of each resident, juxtaposed with the running around your house, clips of the BOI itself, forms an intricate that’s not going to happen. assemblage where both merge as Seamon’s Place Ballet. Each part flows Luke: We’ve got wombats into the assemblages that are made in and greys (kangaroos) out Becoming the Bend to represent the here every night. Wallabies. simultaneous merger of body ballets A big old buck-roo about as place. The residents progressively six foot or eight foot when become a part of the BOI as the he stands up. When he sits documentary switches back and forth on his back haunches, you from near parts of residents to near parts know. When you run into of place. him in the dark (laughs)…

I’m often walking out to my ute or something then I hear a (thump), and he bounds off. And you know who it is. That’s one of the great things about not having domestic animals out here.

The wildlife don’t have those dog and cat smells around to deter them, ya know? One of my favourite things is watching the birds in the bird bath. We have a constant stream of small birds in the bird bath every day. From blue wrens to fantails, to all the other

Placing the Bend 98 CONCLUSION little bushbirds like the

Creating Placing the Bend allowed pardalotes… me the opportunity to explore place

through crafting three very distinct Tom: Occasionally a

documentaries about the BOI, and in wombat will drink from that

the process extending my knowledge small ornamental pool. One

of interactive documentary design and night I came out and saw

humanist geography. Through Korsakow this dark shape which, it

the practice of list-making enabled by didn’t particularly surprise

my use of keywords to designate the me but you don’t see very

various facets I recorded of the BOI, often. And I walked toward

allowed assemblages to be formed it. And it squared off of me

from the associations between each and started hissing, which

video clip. Coupled with the interview is something I’ve never seen

soundtrack in Assembling and Becoming before. And then I noticed

the Bend, a ‘fusion’ between the clips two little baby shapes

representing these facets of the BOI and behind it (laughs)… the personal facets seen through the kindly eyes of the residents provided a ‘centre’ (Seamon citing Relph 1979, 64) to experience place.

The Korsakow interface can be seen as a paradigmatic site where a variety of multimedia and user’s intersect to establish a virtual assemblage of place. This is similar to Massey’s connection of place as flow. Videos alongside thumbnails, coupled with a natural soundscape and interview soundtrack all become flows that intersect within the

Ed Armstrong 99 flower interface, ‘pausing’ (Tuan, 6) briefly to gurn (gurrk) form an assemblage that simulates place. fly trap errie nellam (Drosera The subsequent experiences that auriculata) spring from this centre, that informs our geranium understanding of place, are grounded terr at Cut Leafed Geranium in the rhythmic interplay of Seamon’s

(Geranium dissectum) body and feeling-subjects as regular geranium quantitative experiences form a basis for

(Crane’s Bill) terrat, intense, qualitative experiences.

(Coranderrk) It became apparent in making glycine clandestina Assembling the Bend that placemaking nanggert does not consist of equal durations of goodia experience, rather a dynamic variation tre tal (Goodia latifolia) that involves smaller assemblages of Golden Tip facets, at fluctuating durations. The grass tree standardised length of clips used tool i merin (Xanthorroea throughout Assembling the Bend minor); dulemerrin neglected how variable our experiences ground-berry of place are, and therefore does not ber kul ber kul Green represent the temporal flow and rhythm Groundberry (Acrotriche that can be seen in Round the Bend and serrulata) Becoming the Bend. honey pots burgil burgil Korsakow provides an infrastructure hypochaeris glabre to explore these rhythmic flows that nareengnan occur through our body and feeling- kangaroo apple subject, simulating our quantitative and mookitch, mayakitch qualitative experience of place.

This temporality incites our interest in trying to understand why certain

Placing the Bend 100

rhythms are evident (i.e. slow, fast, lomaria? repetitive, etc.) whilst the spatial gaggawar Lomaria capensis presentation of each clip and thumbnail (possibly Lomandra?) across the interface prompts us to seek lomaria? aesthetic and thematic patterns within waibu gaggawar Lomaria each part in order to create a whole. discolor marsh flower

Korsakow offers consistent visual and tab rup Yellow Marsh Flower

temporal patterns which allow us to (Villarsia reniformis)

experience the assemblage of place mat-rush

quantitatively and qualitatively. Each karawun Spring-head

clip can be seen as similar to a musical (Lomandra longifolia)

note whereby the duration or aesthetic (Wurundjeri)

quality of content displayed can matrush

either captivate the user or provide a karawun Xertoles longifolia

downbeat to relax their interest within (for baskets

the overall sequence. melaleuca lanceolata

The montage clips offer a variation from Moonah the standard six second clips to peak mint our interest from the uniform rhythm, panaryle Mentha australis where a close up of an orchid contrasted mint with a medium shot of a branch is parn kul River Mint (Mentha an example of the aesthetic balance australis) between contracting our interest with mint bush a qualitative experience, or relaxing it co ran derrk (Prostranthera with a quantitative one. lasianthos)

I have used Korsakow to generate

lists to specifically promote poetic John: One of the concepts

connections between disparate things, that you teach in senior

so that ‘visual associations, tonal biology is this notion of

Ed Armstrong 101 animals having certain or rhythmic qualities, descriptive requirements of their passages, and formal organisation’ environment. Animals (Nichols, 33) become emphasised. have requirements of their environment in order for Nichols’ poetic mode of documentary them to survive. So, I would can be used to understand Korsakow’s use examples of animals functionality, and offers a theoretical that I know out here like the framework to understand how we sugar glider or the wallaby can assemble films about place by to help the kids understand using the various flows that form our that these animals have understanding of it. These lists that special requirements Placing the Bend generates encourages so the environment has us to think about how these clips and got to provide those flows are connected and what this may requirements, and if you tell us about place. bugger up the environment Seamon explains that ‘[w]ords like “flow” the animals will not have and “rhythm” indicate that body ballet those requirements and is organic and integrated rather than will not be able to survive. step-wise and fragmentary’ (emphasis So, for example, if you take added, 1979, 55). Much like the becoming the crimson rosellas. You of the Yarra River is for the BOI, Round know, really nice birds the Bend and Becoming the Bend that you see around here. offer an assemblage where relations They depend on having are changeable, as new parts enter hollows in reasonably tall past parts exit in a constant rhythm of eucalypts to make their varying qualities and quantities. nests. Because they won’t breed unless they can make Gaudenzi describes interactive a nest in the right place. documentaries as ‘living systems’ (6),

Now, the environment gets and as seen through the construction of messed around by having Placing the Bend, each assemblage is a

Placing the Bend 102

becoming of sorts, with every new clip say, common miners that altering the user’s impression of the work are sometimes called indian as a whole. miners, introduced into it. They will out compete the

Through these interactive documentaries rosellas for those nesting

a sense of place as an assemblage in spots and one of the

flux emerges, drawing attention to how absolute requirements for

through a symbiosis of quantitative rosellas to maintain their

and qualitative experience of the parts presence in a population

of place an understanding of it’s whole is to breed every year. If

can be glimpsed. Placing the Bend, like they can’t breed, they go.

the process of placemaking, is a living So, taking steps to ensure

system that is continually made and that introduced birds don’t

remade with every new intersection of become established is

flows within the interface. very important. And one

It is this changeable nature of place that of the things that attracts would prove difficult to convey in a linear those sorts of birds, like documentary. Korsakow’s system of blackbirds and miners and nonlinear, poetic connections represents sparrows and things is the fluidity and interconnectivity of place having appropriate food. So in a far more holistic way than a strictly they’ll pinch the stock food. linear documentary is capable of doing. If you have a chook pen that The changeable nature of how each is not properly looked after paradigmatic assemblage reconstitutes and you’ve got food and itself from the selection of the user stuff that they want to eat offers an appropriate fit to placemaking, or other things that attract whereas a conventional linear them to such an enterprise documentary is sequentially fixed and they’ll be more likely to be therefore cannot fulfil the requirements here. So that’s why if you of place as an explicit becoming. Linear have chooks it’s desirable documentaries are able to achieve both a for you to make sure they

Ed Armstrong 103 are contained. Totally. And syntagmatic and paradigmatic system of everything that comes out expression, yet are unable to reform their of that chook pen gets dealt parts into new sequences and associations with before it goes into the to alter the assemblage of place. bush. At best, the interactive documentaries of

Rudi: This month so far I’ve Placing the Bend can offer a rudimentary heard the pollard cuckoo, simulation of what is involved in the the shining bronze cuckoo, process of placemaking. The complexity and the fantail cuckoo. of place does not only rely upon the

They’re all back. I think social construction of it, but our personal the fantail came back experience of its many facets and thus last month, but they’re all is impossible to replicate in full. Place is around at the moment and becoming, in a state of constant renewal they’re all beautiful sounds that cannot be fixed to one definition to listen to. or mode of expression. The becoming of place is impossible to create even native bread through new media modalities as it the underground fungus involves allowing for the ‘multiplicity’

Polyporus mylittae of space. Populating each K-film with orchid numerous clips cannot fulfil the endless kul in possibilities that space can offer,

Common Spider nor can any modality of media. Place orchid mer wan feeds off the radical simultaneity and

Snake Orchid (Diuris multiplicity of space to carry out its pedunculata) becoming. Experience is what grounds orchid these multiplicities and therefore place naring garrik can be seen as “primary because it is

Tall Orchid (Diuris the experiential fact of our existence” longifolia) (Cresswell 2004, 31). By this rationale,

Korsakow, and indeed many new media modalities, prove to be an effective

Placing the Bend 104

medium to investigate phenomenological orchid inquiry. The poetic connections ngarring established through the simple practice Diuris pedunculata (cowslip of list-making allowed me to explore orchid?) how through the multiple flows of space orchid intersecting in the Korsakow interface merwan an understanding of place can be Diuris pedunculata communicated. Applying the practice of orchid list-making to any experiential inquiry, ngaring no matter what modality used, can Snake Orchid (Diuris further our understanding of the subject pedunculata) matter and thus bring us closer to orchid viewing the world as whole. gulin Caladenia pulcherrima (also

‘man’)

panax (tall)

koon a de ang

Tall Panax (Panax

dendroides)

panax

gunadiang P. sambucifolius

(spp ginseng in China)

pea (bitter, spp)

kinginquonggerin

poa australis

bowat (for net-bags) billang-

Cowat)

pomaderris

kal ert I wan

Hazel Pomaderris

(Pomaderris apetala)

Ed Armstrong 105

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Ben, & McFarlane, Colin. “Assemblage and Geography”, Area, 43:2, p.124(4), 2011.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The classic look at how we experience intimate places. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Print.

Bernstein, M.”Patterns of Hypertext”, Proceedings of the Ninth ACM Hypertext Conference, Pittsburgh: ACM, 1998.

BICA - Bend of Islands Conservation Association. Accessed at http://home.vicnet.net.au/~bica/whatiselz.html on 21/07/13. Web.

Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2012. Print.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. Print.

Cresswell, Tim. “Place.” eds. Nigel Thrift, Rob Kitchen. Oxford: Elsevier, pp.169-177, 2009.

Gaudenzi, Sandra. “Chapter 1: Setting the Field”, Interactive Documentary, web, n.d. Accessed at http://www. interactivedocumentary.net/wp-content/2009/07/sg_panel- yr3_2009_ch1.pdf on 14.04.2013. Web.

Harman, Graham. “On Vicarious Causation”, Collapse, volume II: Speculative Realism, pp. 187-221. Falmouth:Harman- Willust, 2007.

Placing the Bend 106

Jolly, Karen, & Osler, Dylan. The Bend of Islands Land Management Plan, prepared for the Bend of Islands Conservation Association, 4th April, 2013.

Lippard, Lucy. The Lure of the Local, New York:New Press, 1998. Print.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Print.

Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place,” Place: An Introduction, ed. Tim Cresswell, Oxford:Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. Print.

Massey, Doreen. Spatial Justice Introduction, University of Westminster. Accessed at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kFIpcfl4pEA on 19/09/13. Youtube.

Miles, Adrian. “Korsakow’s Palette (clouds, connectors and corridors)”, Vlog 4.0, posted on May 16, 2013. Accessed at http://vogmae.net.au/vlog/2013/05/korsakows-palette-clouds- connectors-and-corridors/ on 16.6.2013. Web.

Nash, Kate. “Modes of interactivity: analysing the webdoc” Media, Culture & Society, 34:2, pp.195-210, 2012.

Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition. Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2010. E-Book.

Pred, Allan. “Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of Becoming Places”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74:2. pp.279-297, 1984.

Ed Armstrong 107

Seamon, David. A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter. London:Palgrave Macmillan, 1979. Print

Seamon, David. “Seeing With New Eyes: Phenomenology, healing, and the new millenium”, Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow, ed. Georg Feuerstein and Trisha Lamb Feurstein. Quest, Wheaton: Illinois, 1993. Accessed at http://www.arch. ksu.edu/seamon/New_eyes.htm on 23.8.2013. Web.

Seamon, David. “Phenomenology, Geography and Geographical Education,” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 3:2, p.40-50. Department of Geography, University of Lund, Solvegarten, Sweden, 2007.

Seamon, David. “Phenomenology,” Encyclopedia of Geography. Ed. Barney Warf. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2010. SAGE knowledge. E-Book.

Stanner, W.E.H. After the Dreaming, 1968, quoted in As a Matter of Fact: Answering the Myths and Misconceptions about Indigenous Australia, second edition, produced by the Office of Public Affairs, ATSIC, Canberra, 1998. Accessed at http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/tourism/uluru/downloads/ matterfact.pdf on 19.09.2013. Web.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1977. Print.

Woiwod, Mick. The Christmas Hills Story: Once around the Sugarloaf II. Andrew Ross Museum, 2010. Print.

Woiwod, Mick, ed. Birrarung Database, Tarcoola Press, 2012. Print.

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Woiwod, Mick. “Speculation or evidenced?”, personal correspondence to author, 20.10.2013. E-mail.

Ed Armstrong 109

DOCUMENTARIES CITED

Dufresne, David; Brault, Philippe. Brachet A. Prison Valley, ARTE-TV, United States of America, 2009. Available at: http:// prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en. Interactive Documentary.

Jones, Rosie, dir. Obsessed With Walking, Australian Broadcast Commission, Screen Australia & Flaming Star Films, 2013. Broadcast documentary.

McMahon K. Waterlife, National Film Board of Canada, Canada, 2009. Accessible at: http://waterlife.nfb.ca/. Interactive Documentary.

Soar, Matt. Ceci N’est Pas Embres, Canada, 2012. Accessible here: http://www.embres.ca/. Korsakow film.

Thalhofer, Florian; Bas, Berke. Planet Galata, Produced by Kloos & Co. Medien, Crossmedia Project for ARTE event “Istanbul.” Accessible here: http://www.planetgalata.com/ K-film and broadcast documentary.

Placing the Bend 110

PLACING THE BEND INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS

All interviews conducted at the private place of residence of each participant in the Bend of Islands, 3097, Victoria, Australia.

Castellanos, Rodrigo. Personal interview. 17.09.13

Fisher, Thomas S. Personal interview. 24.09.13

Henry, Christine. Personal interview. 27.09.13

Henry, Ross. Personal interview. 27.09.13

Mattiske, Janet. Personal interview. 27.09.13

McCallum, John. Personal interview. 22.09.13

McCallum, Megan. Personal interview. 22.09.13

Mildenhall, Peter. Personal interview. 21.09.13

Mildenhall, Liz. Personal interview. 21.09.13

Pauli, Rudi. Personal interview. 16.09.13

Pierce, Frank. Personal interview. 24.09.13

Woiwod, Mick. Personal interview. 16.09.13

Wright, Tserin. Personal interview. 18.09.13

Ed Armstrong