Nadya did some excellent trouble shooting to get Korsakow happening on windows (we’ve also got details on the blog), and finished the first K-film. This task is all about learning how to use the software, manage your media assets, and the preparations involved. The real work is the second one…
Grace finds the reading tough (welcome the realm of narratology), but remains unsure if, as Ryan argues, the best definition of narrative requires the context of its receivers as that which trumps anything else. Interesting problem. Is that mountain there a ‘narrative’ in this sense? If I’m a geologist? No. I can explain its presence, but explaining isn’t a narrative or story. However, if I’m indigenous and there is a story about how and why that mountain got there, and is what it is, then yes, it’s a story. In Ryan’s sense. Imogen discusses the Ryan stuff on narrative and Bogost on lists.
Emily on thumbnail points from the questions. Sam discusses, positively, Thalhofer’s The and the Greeks example that was touched upon. Troy muses about what experimental films might offer, and I’d suggest more broadly being able to develop ways of ‘experimenting’ – however that might be – is a simple and valuable way to develop a creative practice (it is hard to be genuinely creative if a return on investment is the primary motivating factor to what you do). Tony has a well considered post about interpretation and the experimental, and nicely considers that in a Korsakow film is a way to build different things from the same footage.
Thank you Nadya. This is not story or narrative, but a particular sort of listing. It’s great.
James likes Born to Die, a student film from 2012. I haven’t invited you to look at previous work like this before, and I’m not sure if it will make any difference to anything, but in general I’m surprised by the generally positive response to previous work. Confusion is a recurring comment, but this, of itself, is neither a good or bad thing. Kate looks at Ennui and uses de Bono’s hats to do the work.
Yeah, let’s begin with a whinge. Tuesday, teaching and meetings from 10:30 to 5:15. Wednesday, only time to teach, today should be my research day (a day spent writing, editing, reading) but instead am catching up here, doing admin. Tomorrow, meetings and additional teaching from 11:00 to 4:30 when I have to head home. So I jump in to my RSS feed for integrated to find 435 unread blog posts. (wipes brow.)
So, some catch up.
Bec notes around taxonomies that rather than work from a definition, make what you want to make and let someone else worry about what it is – or isn’t. Documentary is also about having something to say, and saying it. Mardy has very good notes, and yes, define things by what they can do, not what they mean. Gina notes that taxonomies are useful, but perhaps don’t misjudge this for what things are (something I’d certainly agree with). Torika picks up the point that taxonomies make the world seem discrete but in reality there is always and for ever variation between things, so what comes to be in one box rather than another is both arbitrary, and therefore informed by (pick: politics, power, ideology, etc). Ali notes the role of power in classification, and uses this to also think about Habermas, YouTube, Sørenssen, the public sphere and taxonomies. Sam adroitly notes the point that taxonomies are about trying to define and classify a world that, in actuality, is not the same thing as how we define and taxonomise it. Brenton sees that taxonomies create boundaries, which can cause stereotypes, whereas we might want to begin from the premise that everything is different in itself, not similar. Not sure Brenton realises how radical a proposition that is, but it is at the heart of recent work in what we call the ‘post humanities’. Laura has some notes, worth checking, ditto Koston… Tiana seems to have picked up the point about entanglement, also provides a good thing of what was described as the ‘linguistic error’ or ‘semiotic error’ where we think language is all there is and exhausts all that can be or is. We are trained to jump straight past the thing in itself (experience, reaction, object, event) to what it means, to its description or analysis. But what things do, and what we can do, is not the same thing as what they mean, or might mean (what that mosquito means for me is quite different to what I ‘mean’ for it, let alone what it means for my blood).
Sam, writing about the Sørenssen essay, wonders about the democratisation of democracy, and the key question of whether all our access to making and distributing has realised Astruc’s vision. It’s a good question, and the idea that if you can use data to work out what people want then provide it, while one option, is also a risk to create sameness, homogeneity and repetition.
Zoe writes about the Sobchack essay and how QuickTime movies are likened to Cornell boxes. I also think this (Cornell boxes) is a very useful way to think about many Korsakow films, and as Zoe notes, perhaps your own computer is a sort of Cornell box too? Gina loves Astruc because it is about film making in itself. I agree. It isn’t about film making in the service of some master (action, narrative, audience, money) but trying to find a way to think it for itself. Respect, as Ali G would say.
Edward uses Sørenssen to think about the relation of technology to cinema, speculating about possible futures. Imogen like others notes the three main points of changes to making and access, more egalitarianism in media, and possible new forms. And his example of this is the elderly man on YouTube (which is a very interesting case study from the point of view of what video now is becoming). Laura also summarises the essay well, picking a very good quote: “there will be several cinemas”, that’s a nice way to think of this subject, it’s one variety of these several cinemas that we’re trying to invent. Koston has a nice overview of the rise of the digital camera and its impact on making, in terms of access but also that we can now see it (how easily we have forgotten what once was).
Bec has excellent dot point summary of the Sørenssen, wondering if the rise of amateur making is such a good thing. Mia recognises that the essay is from 2008 so was written before the smart phone + mobile internet + (Instagram video, Vine, etc) exploded, and so thinks about using a mobile phone to make documentaries. Astruc I would have expected to have been all over this, as this is surely (along with GoPro’s and their ilk) a camera stylo? Kylie discusses Astruc and Sørenssen in terms of the changes wrought by technological shifts. Miguel looks at Sørenssen and concludes that ‘true filmmakers’ posses ‘true power’, perhaps, but what work is ‘true’ doing here? (It is key to the argument but not actually defined.)
Nadya, taking some advice, wants to know if democratisation of media making also means the loss of film form, of I think she means informed, crafted, reflexive, self aware media making. It’s a great question.
Just so you all realise, it is a small world. Bjørn Sørenssen has left a comment on Lauren’s blog. The same Bjørn who wrote the essay you read. As was discussed last year, the internet is small, public, and others will find, read, and judge on what you do here.
Mia picks up the three things that have changed as a result of digital technology and the differences these are making (this was also discussed a lot last year, and will appear again this year, it is the decline of scarcity that we argued around in network media which applies to education/university, know what versus know how, and media practice). So we seem to be in a position to realise Astruc’s vision, though the aesthetic side of this I think is lacking. Sharona notes Astruc’s prescience, and picks up the quote about a new aesthetics, I’d like to think we’re helping build that this year. Natalie has a great over view of the Astruc reading (well done!), particularly noting how the ideas was that we’d use video/film to tell things that weren’t just fictional stories. Hell yeah. Vine is perhaps the most significant intervention in that space since, well, the turn of last century (seriously). Brenton offers a thumbnail over view of the Sørenssen, and I like that for Astruc it’s an epiphany, that gives it more force than just an idea. Daniel uses the Astruc ideas and Sørenssen’s working of them to think about Malick, philosophy and expression, be cautious of generalisations, but a good example of the sort of other cinema that Astruc alludes to. Zoe has a long post picking up ideas about what it might mean to treat the camera as a pen, or more usefully as functional/useful as a pen. Habermas gets a look in too, which might get touched on in Monday’s symposium.
Mardy has a quick and good response to i-docs (I agree, sounds like an Apple product), and what is good and problematic about some of the proposed modes. Tom at the end of a sweeping post has a couple of brief points about the Aston Gaudenzi reading too. Ali picks up a point and elaborates that documentary is much more than story and/or entertainment, and yes, film documentary is a very creative complex area, in some ways it engages with form and content in much more experimental ways than fiction cinema has. Jackie joins up documentary studies with integrated media to think about whether a six second Vine clip is documentary. Nice point about whether documentary is about an explicit point of view versus more interpretive works. One way to think about this is the sorts of documentaries being considered are ambiguous, closer to poems than tracts. If you recall the reading from network media about essays, then we’re interested in documentaries that are essayist rather than explicative. Lauren has notes from Aston and Gaudenzi, and is interested in Nielson’s 90-9-1 principle (which is a version of the same rule we saw in network media in terms of the 80-20 rule). Brenton has some notes, noticing that information flows are not multi directional rather than one way.
Zoe has a detailed write up of the essay, with summaries and explication. An outline of the modes they define, and yes, the most interesting work is when the boundaries are blurred (as if they aren’t or weren’t to begin with, the boundaries came from the academics corralling the work into boxes that were not there to begin with for goodness sake). If you skipped the readings (why??), then check this. Koston has notes, linking some of the ideas back to remediation (it’s always good to find connections between or across ideas), while outlining the modes of i-docs they describe.
And who there, Emily’s made a prezi about i-docs, OK, I’m intimidated.
Today’s discussion about taxonomy and classification and analysis. And that weird botany example. Let’s rewind and do it all again. In botany we have species. Species are different types of plants, so for example we have over 700 species of gum tree in Australia. What defines a gum tree as belonging to one species or another generally consists of differences amongst bark, leaves, and most importantly flowers and gum nuts – the reproductive parts. Historically someone comes along, reckons that plant there is new, grabs a specimen, writes a very detailed description of it, and that becomes the benchmark for that species. Once another one is sufficiently different, it is a new species. What counts as ‘sufficiently different’ is, though, a point of debate. What the debate is doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is debated because there is not this simple ‘flick’ or ‘difference’ between species, but that there will always be examples where an individual will have some of the qualities of one, and some of the qualities of others. It is a graduated scale, analogue, not discrete and digital. Now, what matters is not whether this is a new species or not, what matters is to recognise that gum trees all vary and so what matters is the extent of the variation, not the fact of variation.
All classification schemes have to do this. They have to invent a boundary or rule that says ‘these qualities or attributes mean you are a part of this group’, and so by definition if you don’t have these then you’re either out, or in another group. Where that boundary sits is always an argument informed by power (whether this be politics, authority, evidence), so it isn’t neutral (which means it isn’t only about the things we are classifying). But this system also creates for us an understanding of the world where things live in particular categories, whether gum trees, dogs, gender, bodies, or interactive documentaries.
The risk and danger then with a taxonomy is that when you build your system what you take to be the ‘specimen’ becomes a centre, and distance from this centre comes to define difference, but why is that specimen (that particular documentary) the centre rather than another one? Similarly, what comes to matter is how that documentary is like what the taxonomy identifies, which risks not seeing, or noticing all the ways in which that particular documentary has other qualities, attributes and abilities too. It creates a world of boxes, when the world isn’t actually boxes. Of course everyone who uses these classifications will tell you that this isn’t the case, that of course the world is complicated and messy, but, well, this is useful as a method and what else can we do? It might be useful as a method, but a method, not the method. As I said today a more interesting approach, certainly right now, is to look at individual works and systems and software platforms and services individually and specifically in relation to what they are. ‘What they are’ is code for what they can do and what they do do. Not what they mean, that comes after, but what they do.
Why? Well as I outlined in the symposium, if I look at a person I can use large scale things (taxonomies) to make some crude assumptions, but that’s not a good way to understand who that person is. To understand the person I need to pay attention to them, to what they do, and then I can worry about or try and work out what that might mean (for you me). If I don’t then I fall into large categories that at best become stereotypes. The difference is significant and lets me build things (arguments, ideas, even taxonomies) from the bottom up. What things do is right now more interesting than what things mean, if only because when we go straight to what they mean we risk missing, not being able to see, what the things are – which surely is the point of classifying them in the first place. So the method I’m proposing is to begin from the understanding that everything varies, and to make that a first principle, rather than identifying what things have in common and making that our first principle. It’s about recognising a world of difference, change, movement, and variation as given and that taxonomies are (false) moments of imagined stillness.
Ali discusses some Twitter based RPL come RLG in relation the first readings. Sam riffs of this further, wondering about i-doc stuff and interactive entertainment. Interesting connections, and there are connections between gaming, interactive documentary (including the horrible sounding docugames)and interactive entertainment. The risk in there is that what makes doco doco gets lost. Like that Arthur joins the reading to Nichol’s modes of documentary. Mark picks up the observation that doco already had close affinity to new technologies, but with digital stuff this even more so, and potentially a bigger change to the form than new lighter cameras. Edward discusses similar things. Tiana takes the preliminary definition that an i-doc is anything that wants to document the real using interactive technology. Natalie has a pretty thorough summary of the definitions of the different types of i-docs that Aston and Gaudenzi reckon are out there. Mia also does a good outline of the key modes of i-docs and how they allow multiple ways to present points of view. Daniel has dot points, useful as a summary and outline. Laura has brief highlights.
Chris likes the idea of being able to compose in multiple ways. Gina realises that some things don’t fit a linear scheme, and perhaps the poetry of some of these things is enough. Bec has some good and bad comments to make about a student film, and can see some narrative and non narrative ways to think about making an interactive work. Edward watches another student work and likes its, what, softness and simplicity?