Category Archives: Week 5

Week 5 Notes

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Adrain was away today and left us with a bunch of instructions to follow in the studio, we were to have a self-guided class.

‘What I would like to have happen in the studio is:
General discussion (can be in groups, or as a class) that is an explaining to yourselves what you understand ontography, ‘materialism’ and the various ideas in the readings (Bogost, Frankham, Latour) to be, questions you have (any and all questions, this is an open gathering of all questions) about what it is, their purpose, point, what to do with them. The emphasis here is on discussing and defining amongst yourselves to find all the gaps (which become questions). 
These questions are to be documented (just write them out as a list in a GoogleDoc that you share with me or on a blog post). This should take at most an hour.
Then everyone is to take one of these questions (they can be different questions, it does not matter if several people want to use the same question) and use that as an interview question (what we call a prompt) and interview everybody else in the room to get their answer. Do not include the question/prompt in the interview. The interview will be video or audio. This should be done quickly (pair up, I interview you, then you interview me, then next person, repeat).
This is quick sketch media making. Edit all the material together into a single audio or video piece. Upload to vimeo.com or soundclound. Embed in your blog.  This is an exercise in a) knowledge mapping, b) problem discovery, c) vernacular media practice, d) sketching, e) listing, f) using what we call a pattern language, g) how to make a microdoc.’

 

  • There were a total of nine students in the studio: nice and intimate
  • Sitting in the circle as a class, we discussed the task set upon us.
  • Each person were asked whether or not they have any questions about what an ontograph,
  • Monique noted that ‘the things only exist because we see it that way’.
  • Using the Alien Phenomenology reading task as a reference point to complete our tasks, we went around and spoked about the three quotes that: what we enjoy, what troubled us and what intrigued us.
  • Brainstorming the concepts and the questions that will be use as a prompt for the final product of the studio to upload to a website video or audio service provided such as SoundCloud or Vimeo, various ideas were explored.
  • We went around in a circle using an iPhone to capture each person’s answer’s to the question. The question that we all chose to answer was “How do all things ‘equally exist’ but yet, ‘do not exist equally’, which was based on the quote, ‘All things exist equally, but some things exists equally.’
  • My answer for the question was,
    • In George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, one of the seven commandments that the pigs come up with is that ‘all animals are equal’, but what they actually meant was that ‘all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
  •  An audio recording lasting around 7 minutes was recorded on Andrea’s phone, she will be uploading the audio file to the studio’s Facebook group.

Studio #5 – Notetaking Role

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In the studio today, all students were required to be present and present their ontograph that was due in week 4. Each poster were randomly hung onto the wall and each student took turns to present depending on the order of how the poster was hung.

Everyone had a maximum of 5 minutes to discuss their ontograph, there were five questions that were could use as guide to address the ontograph, those questions were:

  1. What is it about?
  2. What is it doing?
  3. What do you think it shows?
  4. What has your thing now become?
  5. Is it different to what it was before? How?

After each presentation from the student, Adrian gave a clear and brief feedback in regards to the ontograph and the presentation, providing his own perspective of the ontograph.

Unfortunately due to either time constraints or forgetfulness, Ren did not present his ontograph to the class, he may possibly present his ontograph in week 6.

Adrian noted that he will be unavailable in the Friday studio in week 5, he will be away at a symposium in Canberra. During the studio on Friday, the class will be producing a media product of an interview and must post it online to Vimeo.

Week 5 Flip Lecture

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Social Media Producer flip lecture notes:

Jonathon Hutchison is a social media producer, he’s studied at Bachelor of Applied Communication at RMIT University in the past and have made a career for himself using his degree as a social media producer. The process of being a social media manager may be challenging, for example, the process of a new project titled The Stage Fight that explores performers stage fright before a performance, this is similar to the process of making a film, factors that must be considered are the pre-production, production and post-production stage of the project as well as the distribution period. During the early stages of working on a new project the producer needs to emphasise the core of his pitch so may the best pitch win some funding – Hutchison crowd sourced his funds to make his project happen.

Love Is…

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Korsakow is an interactive software program that was built in Java and was invented by Florian Thalhofer, a German media artist. The program involves the audience to be active participants in order to view multilinear documentary Korsakow films that can be experimental in nature, to view a Korsakow film, the viewer selects an individual scene that relates to each of the other scenes through forms such as pattern, for example, shapes, lighting or an idea. The viewer may view each of the scenes more than once if they desire to obtain an indication of what the film is about, that depends on the author of the film who sets the limitation for the amount of times the viewer is able to watch the scene again.

 The Korsakow film ‘Love’ made in 2013 was created by Ka Mun Chen, Inocensius Valentino, Nikki Liu, and Rachel Moreira in Melbourne, Australia, the pattern that the film Love explored is list. A list is a series of things that is either grouped or categorised together to make sense, for example, a list of cassettes and a list of VIP guests in a function. Ian Bogost, a media scholar, proposes an ontographical method about lists, he argues that ‘language generally puts the signs that signify objects or things into certain associations with one another’ (Bogost, pp. 39), that is so we are able to clarify certain things and characterise them also.

 The subject of love is a constant theme in the film. The makers of the film used vox populi to interview people in different areas in the Melbourne CBD on the topic of love. There are relatively equal participants of both genders female and male with varying age groups from young people, middle age-people and to the elderly from diverse cultural backgrounds that are subjects in this film. The questions that the makers of the film asked to the general public may be, ‘what is love?’, ‘what is the meaning of love?’, ‘what does love mean to you?’ and/or ‘What are the five things you love?’.

 There is a clear correlation between the framing of the shots and the list of the subject’s answers on the topic of love. The framing of the scenes are shot tightly and the sound recorded is slightly muffed due background noise in the environment that subjects were in. There are three distinct shots that stand out including a close-up shot of the subject’s eyes, nose and forehead (upper half of the face), a close-up shot of the subject’s nose, mouth and chin (lower half of the face) and a mid close-up shot of the subjects chest – no neck and no waist – (upper body), other shots includes mid-shots and two shots. There is a scene of a heavily pregnant woman shot with a mid close-up of her belly indicating that love making concluded with conceiving her baby, there is also scene of an elderly couple with years of experience defining what love is.

 The interface guides the viewer to watch a variety of subjects being asked different questions about love. The larger scene is systematically related to each of the other scenes with a smaller aspect ratio in the interface and the subject’s responses are interlinked with one another. Bogost considers lists as ‘perfect tools to free us from the prison of representation’ (Bogost, pp. 40), that is, people may not fully recognise the underlining idea that may be meant to be explored further, what something means in a media text may essentially mean something else. The interface is easy to grasp and simple to navigate, this makes it straightforward for the viewer to understand what links the keywords to the scenes, the viewer gets a sense of the pattern of list as the they continue to click on more clips as they go along and watch the film.

 The Korsakow interface in the film consists of four individual displays that the viewer can click on, there is one larger clip with a greater aspect ratio on the left hand side and three smaller clips with a smaller aspect ratio on the right hand side of the larger clip. A Korsakow interface are arrangements that the ‘viewer sees when the film plays in the web browser’ (Korsakow). At the start of Love, a fast sequence of shots with female subjects defining one word that is associated with love can be viewed once. After the sequence stops, there is ‘Click To Start’ text button situated underneath the large clip that the viewer clicks on which leads to the text ‘Take Your Pick’, the viewer then chooses one of three clips to watch by clicking the clip. Each clip is balanced out by the keywords that are associated with that clip such as the keywords may include different shot sizes and a list of things that the subject loves.

 There are various perceptions of what people in the Melbourne CBD thoughts are on the idea of love. The film touches upon the notion of the Biblical passage ‘love is patient, love is kind’ (New International Version, pp. 1754) as there are a couple scenes that have similar explanations of what love is. Some subjects in some scenes lists the things of what they think love is, such as what they want from love, the comparison of love to something, for example, giving someone a glass of water when they are thirsty is an act of love, different people have different meanings about what love is but as a whole, the film interprets that love is positive and hopeful.

Bibliography:

Bogost, I. ‘Ontography’, Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, pp. 39-40.

Bordwell, D, Thompson, K, 2013, ‘Framing’, Film Art: An Introduction, 10th Edn, McGraw-Hill, New York, USA, pp. 190.

Chen, KM, Valentino, I, Liu, N, & Moreira, R, 2013, ‘Love’, Vogmae, Korsakow, viewed 26 March 2014,

<http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/2013/Love.html>

Korsakow, ‘About’, Korsakow, 25 March 2014,

<http://korsakow.org/about/>

Korsakow, ‘Manual’, Korsakow, 25 March 2014,

<http://korsakow.org/learn/manual/>

Reflecting God Study Bible: New International Version (NIV), Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 2000, pp. 1754.

My Room

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My bedroom: this is a place where I daydream.

From the couple of Miracle of Love postcards I panned to the left to reveal my painting (of seeing oneself in the mirror and seeing a different person) and tilted the camera up to reveal the streamers that I have hanging in my room using knitting needles to support it.

The simplistic “Miracle of Love” postcards tacked to my wall next to my bed is symbolic of what I went through in the past. It has taken me years to accept myself and love myself for who I am. 

I love to paint in my spare time – I tend paint with an abstract style – I find it rather healing and relaxing as I find that painting can have a positive calming effect on me. I used to paint abstract shapes and use bright colours to form a subject, for example a tree, this painting, even though it’s not up to the standard of being art gallery worthy, I do love looking at my artwork each day. 

The words underneath the artworks says:

“I beg of you… To have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far away in the future, you will gradually without noticing it live your way to the answer…” – Unknown.

&

“We always see our worst selves. Our most valuable selves. We need someone else to get close enough to tell us we’re wrong, someone we trust.” – Unknown.

This clip is  a part of a place that defines me.

Who Am I?

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Believe it not this video says so much about me. This video is about acceptance, I have learnt to accept myself for who I am and it’s taking a long time to get to where I am now. It’s amazing what a couple of years will do to you when you learn to accept yourself.

Fighting my inner demons was tough. I struggled with acceptance as a teenager. 

This video is about showing things that have that define me.