Train Travel

Prajin Shee 42662818 and Brian Woods 41697863

As a theme to represent the everyday and ordinary we selected travel, as it is an action that everyone performs one way or another to get about their day. While travel is very ordinary it is a vague subject with many forms and interpretations, to remedy this we focused our efforts on trains, or more specifically travel aboard trains. This is the major form of transportation of many in Sydney (Prajin and I included), thus we felt it represented a very ignored and neglected aspect of our everyday lives. The method and organisation of our photos could appear as a daily diary of the everyday (Murray 2008) travel. We begin with the "Mind the Gap" painted on the asphalt, an important to message for train travellers, but is mostly ignored or disregarded. It then follows a sequence of boarding, an exploration of the interior, and disembarking. The theme was less 'strict' than the groups and collections that Murray (2008) observed on Flickr. The gathered photos were later made into a story pattern to fit a video format, as it is a more relatable mode of sharing a theme like travel, which does have a beginning, middle, and end. The interior of the train was of particular interest as it was actually quite attractive to the eye when actually observed, instead of regarding it merely as another surrounding, blurred from our attention from either fatigue or other interests. We felt that too many transitions removed the photos from the timeline created by their familiar journey and caused a jarring effect when viewed. The transitions broke up the natural flow of the images, thus becoming less relatable to the audience. The music was selected for its rhythmic beat and easy to place pace, it easily fit the pacing of the images; the rythem also resembled the sound of a moving train. Travel is a journey, and journeys are often the the main theme of film and video, e.g. Lord of the Rings, and we felt this made the images flow together and really bring out the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Bibliography:
Murray, Susan, (2008) "Digital Images, Photo-Sharing and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics." Journal of visual culture 2008 7: 147-163