The studio ‘Tour Guide’ provides a fresh lens into the First Nations stories and histories of the places we hold close to our hearts. It allows for a reimagined navigation into our understanding of ‘Melbourne’ with Kulin and its significance to the present day, and how we, as designers, can reiterate this to future generations. This particular assignment allowed me to break from my constructed norm, ensuring careful consideration is applied, through applications, mediums and aesthetics. We as designers are the tour guides with an omniscient respect of all audiences.
This assignment asked for students to reflect on a place or location that held weighted significance to them. My childhood was moulded by books. I find comfort in immersing myself in new worlds and stories. For this piece, I found I had a strong connection and story to tell with the Fairfield (Jika Jika) Library in the Darebin Council. The City Council was named after the Aboriginal word meaning Swallow (bird). The Wurundjeri-Willam clan own the lands on which Darebin Council stands, their name derived from the Aboriginal word, translating to ‘white gum tree’. They lived across the Yarra river up to the ‘Merri Merri’ Merri Creek, meaning ‘very rocky’. The Wurundjeri Willam clan moiety totem is Waa (raven).
The strong presence of birds in this history of the land inspired me to address them as driving motifs of my story. This is evident in the scene of me being caught by flying books, justifying being figuratively (and literally) raised by books and stories, similar to that of the children of the Wurundjeri-Willum clan, who were told Dreamtime stories by their Elders. The incorporation of birds also demonstrates my emotional awareness progression from a child to the present day. Where the library once was a place of imagination for me, I now look through a new lens, which establishes the library as a new world of knowledge, wokeness and congregation.
I created the animation as a stop motion video to communicate the blurriness of my memory at the library as a child. I decided to solely use a greylead pencil to create the entire piece, in order to highlight my oblivion and illustration styles as a child, while allowing room for a sense of playfulness, a reflection on the unpredictability and intelligence that Waa embodies. To replicate the purpose of bookends, the beginning and end of the animation are mirrored. In the final scene, I leave the library and take in my surroundings with a new perspective, after learning of the story of Waa. This is clear in the scene of the sun and the three crows flying in the sky. The use of sound adds life and the smile on the sun’s face promotes positivity and optimism.
