Exercise: Conversation recall

Brief

• Record a real conversation with a friend. (It’s up to you whether you ask permission or not!)
• Before listening to the recording, write your account of both sides of the conversation.
• Then listen to the recording and make note of the discrepancies. Perhaps there are unfinished sentences, stammers, pauses, miscommunications etc.
• Reflect upon the believability of re-enacted narratives and how this can be applied to constructed photography.
• What do you learn from the conversation recording process and how can you transfer what you learned into making pictures?

Setup

I recorded a conversation with my sister and started with a discussion about life before I was born.  She is nine years older than me and remembers a lot of our family history so I thought it would be a challenge to remember the details of the conversation.  She didn’t know I was recording at the time.

The Recall

Although I recalled a lot of information about the conversation I was was surprised at the extent to which I had misinterpreted what was actually said.   I’ve always prided myself on being a listener and I have the patience to do so but I have made assumptions about where the conversation was going and dismissed the rest of key sentences.  I didn’t realise I did this and I wonder if it’s frustrating to my sister or even if she notices?

My sister tends to interrupt my conversational flow quite often and then apologies for it however, I then divert my thoughts to what she interrupted with.  This results in lots of unfinished sentences.

Applying to photography

On reflection this exercise reminded me of ‘recreating a childhood memory’.  This is something I have carried out recently with my sister.  My account of the memory was an incident we had whilst cycling a four person cart around a camp site.  I remembered it as a red cart, just the two of us cycling and crashing into bins.  I would have been very young at the time maybe around five years old.  My sister being fourteen at the time has a much more reliable memory.  She said it was a green cart and we were cycling with our two brothers.  Also it wasn’t bins we crashed into, it was an ice cream van!

Conclusion

Re-enacted narratives are only as accurate as the memory will allow.  Be carrying out this exercise I have learnt that the mind is not the most reliable source when trying to recall details from years past.

If I was to create a re-enacted narrative in the future I would research the memory to a greater extent by obtaining the recollections of those present and also to draw out more details.  In my childhood memory, the incident is isolated and I can’t recall any other people in the scene but we were at a holiday camp and it must have been full of people.  What were their reactions?  These are the important details that add to the narrative that I need to find out.