Category: Reflection

Interface Key Considerations

Does the design of the interface force the users attention to follow certain lines of focus as opposed to others?
  • Yes
  • Dependant on how you define your interface
  • People who write in this media don’t make new media so they often write strange things
  • People who write on new media are talking generalisations and write some crazy things
  • Useful to think about the interface as muse-en-scene – a visual space – the visual weight – are all ways you indicate relation and hierarchy within your work.
  • When you build an interface you’re building things that medium allows you to do
  • The interface is not just a public face but looks inside to the database itself and its how you make visible what the database does
  • Why doesn’t the interface let you see a list of keywords – it’s drawing interface from the viewer – a very deliberate decision
  • It could show the lives, the number of videos, the length of time – but it doesn’t. these are decisions – what not to show – is just as important as what to show
  • Don’t treat your audience as dumb – it’s not google, it’s not a library database – it’s a world you want to invite people to explore on your behalf
  • Don’t tell them everything at the start – there would be nothing to explore
  • The design is about seduction, reward, an invitation to explore
What are the key considerations when constructing a multilinear work?
  • How do I want it to end
  • What platform or software best suits the direction i want to go in in terms of expressing the voice
  • Is it open or closed – can participants become involved
  • What are the different layers and threads – linear, multi linear – how can i from connections
  • Having an idea about what i want to create – how am i going to approach the work
  • Sketch process doesn’t stop…working out how to produce work
  • Think about the design of the screen in a spatial sense
  • How you use previews and the design of the viewing window
  • Relations between the parts – fundamental to Multi linear work
  • What material is being filmed/worked with and why?
  • The scale of the bits that go into the project – the smaller and more abstract the material – the easier it is to have more connections to other parts.
  • The shape of the work arrives through the making – you don’t draw the relations until you start building – we don’t know which parts are going to be the more important parts.
  • Architecture emerges through the making
  • You have to learn how to listen to the material
  • Risk – related to emergence – there is a moment of risk in making and the viewing because you don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen next – element of joy and danger that is exciting and interesting – work produces unexpected connection – not preset – realistic representation of the world – is about risk and non linear connections
Luers talks about databases in K-Films working on relational knowledge, and as such you can replicate narrative film techniques like flashback and montage. However is this disregarding the K-Film’s intention of exploring non-narrative?
  • K-films are not only interested in non narrative structures
  • It’s still possible to explore micro narratives in a simple SNU
  • It’s important to be clear that montage is not necessarily a narrative technique – it’s more a technique of generating and implying meaning between two images
  • Linear film it’s easy to do flashbacks because you have a timeline – Korsakow does not.
  • Visual examples – you can embed one image beside another – visually without
  • Korsakow – learn how to listen to the media that you’re using

Feedback: Major K-Film

This is what the class had to say about our initial proposal

Red: This idea sounds exciting but It is something I will need to see to full understand

Black: Confusing, no set movements

Yellow: Focused on structure which is a good thing, Reminds me of a mini musical

Green: Too complex and may be too difficult

Confessions…

I have a compulsion to write lists. It calms me. I never end up referring back to the lists but just simply the act of organising my thoughts or tasks helps me understand what I have to do.

 

Lecture Notes

What is the benefits of lists?

  • Lists keep things separate.
  • Adrian says the list can disrupt the narrative. The main interest, though, is how they are literary. What can we achieve with lists in a literary sense?

Why and to what end are we freed from the ‘tyranny of representation’?

  • To work with Korsakow, and other media that produce non-linear storytelling, is liberating. It is a bit more free than traditional forms of media.
  • Adrian asks, why is representation a tyranny? Representation can only say a little bit about what the world is. And in doing that, they claim to speak for the whole world. This is just wrong. Because it is a tyranny, we keep misreading the world.

Why has Google not picked up Korsakow?

  • Korsakow is not networked. There are other forms of online documentary tools that are available for users that Google prefer.
  • As an example of the Google business environment, Adrian says good designers do not stay at Google long because of their engineering culture. They are a little bit stale in their way of doing things.
  • Youtube is old media. It is esentially chunks of video the users have uploaded to a server. It is not a ‘new media’ tool for creation, such as Korsakow.
  • Adrian also does not see why the fact Korsakow has not been bought is an issue, or seen as a negative. He believes this is a very commercial way of looking at things, and we may be missing the point of the tool.

Will multi-linear videos become mainstream?

  • It was argued this is already happening. Comments, multi-platform websites etc. is presently common in story telling and information dissemination.
  • Adrian believes we are moving towards fragmented forms of media. Twitter, Vine, etc. We will take these fragments and do something with them – possibly create narrative with them more often.
  • Time-shifting has become important, and widespread in our everyday lives.

Reading: New Documentary Ecologies

Korsakow is one of many freely available tools on the internet that can be used for non-linear storytelling and to create interactive documentaries.

All claim to be easy-to-use and do not require any programming skills.

There is an interesting distinction between ‘Theatrical Documentary’ and ‘Web Documentary’.

Theatrical documentary tells a specific kind of story, which is usually a big event, often in one characters life, like an incredible cinematic journey.

The web offers an opportunity to examine and understand very small, everyday details of our lives. This is the kind of storytelling Korsakow founder Florian Thalhofer has been creating with his own work in Korsakow.

Lecture Notes

What is the point in redefining narrative as anything more than ‘cause and effect’?

  • So much more to outline – the in-between
  • Adrian disagrees – to infer the narrative you must look at the cause and effect
  • Narratives have causal relations

Ryan notes ‘we can never be sure that sender and receiver have the same story in mind.’ Korsakow films allow for greater freedom of interpretation. Do you see this as a positive or negative? How can the filmmaker control interpretations?

  • This is a positive thing – open structure. Not being told what to think
  • With K-Films there will be different experiences
  • Filmmakers can’t control what the audience thinks. Get over it!
  • Story is a dance

Ryan argues that sender and receiver will always have a different story in mind. Would this be a negative for us when trying to convey a story or meaning with Korsakow?

  • Perhaps Korsakow is not the right platform
  • Looking at the tool first rather than the story

Do you believe the meaning of narrative has been diluted through its descriptive use in society?

  • Loses meaning and gets used as an umbrella term

What is the difference between the components of story and discourse?

  • Discourse is the way its told
  • Story is the meaning

When considering non-linear narrative, how important is Ryan’s sixth criteria for identifying narrative; the notion of ‘closure’?

  • Closure is invested in the audience they decide when they can stop watching

Korsakow Tech

I have started to identify connections between my clips. Some things I will need to learn/practice this week before I submit my sketch K film

  • How to change the interface – am currently deciding if I should have multiple interfaces throughout the film or just one
  • How to add and change text
  • Ensure all videos die
  • Ensure all clips appear in single viewing
  • Ensure ‘index.html’ is renamed

After watching my initial draft for my sketch film I noticed there was quite a lag with my thumbnails. Rather than just using screenshots I will need to put in photoshop and re-size to ensure they are the same size as the clip and reduce quality to around 70.