To start off, in introducing the new assessment for the Thinking In Fragments studio, Hannah explained that this third assessment will be focusing more in-depth on a basis of two online screen media production characteristic introduced by Manovich (2001) that is modularity and variability.

In this context, as I understood from Manovich (2001) reading before, modularity can be described as a collection of various different individual pieces of media that can be modified or taken apart without losing its independence. While variability explores the relation of these media components to each other. From this definition of modularity and variability, in this assessment being in groups, we are given a task to design a project that possesses these two characteristics into one digital interactive storytelling project based on a simple prompt or theme.

One of the examples that were presented in-class to get us into thinking about our respective project theme was the Are You Happy? project by Mandy Rose. This particular project I think I empathise with most because of the way it depicts modularity and variability that made me grasp the concept much more clearly than ever before.

The project had a prompt that essentially, centralises on interviewing different people or bystanders globally by asking them the question: Are you happy?. Through these interviews, the collation of it altogether is then formed into a collaborative film documentary. It was inspired by another project created in the 1960s called, Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, which took place in France to depict the society at the time after various historical events that occurred then.

Furthermore, after analysing the Are You Happy? project and brainstorming multiple times with my group members, Sem, Samantha and Meita, we asked various questions necessary to move forward with our project. Questions like: in what aspect does this project respond to its prompt? How is this project modular and variable? Does all the clip relate to one another? If one individual clip is played, will it make sense on its own?.

As a group, we figured that this project was self-explanatory, being that it presented its prompt directly with the same question they ask various people. Therefore, just by viewing it, we understood the theme it was trying to put forward. The project is a collection different clips or media collated altogether, thus, has different fragments. At the same time, each fragment is an individual piece that if watched multiple times, still made sense, which is the modular and variable aspect that we understood.

Through this analysation of Are You Happy? project within my group, we began to think about the suitable content that we would like to produce in response to a particular theme. When viewing this project, along with the Chronicle of a Summer as an example we found that the different reactions or expressions given by the different people were an aspect that was most engaging. This made us sympathise with the theme ’emotion’ in a film. Other than that, we also thought that portraying emotion through the traditional method of a film inspired predominantly from Chronicle of a Summer, will also be a new approach that we have decided to be captivating to execute and also explore on further.

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES:
Manovich, L 2001, The Language of New Media, The MIT Press, Massachusetts.