Category Archives: Readings

The best Korsakow reading so far, week 7

This was the best reading so far, it inspired many ideas and my desired approach to the group Korsakow assignment. I am now thinking that rather than create some kind of story or some kind of meaning, I want to create a poetic experience. The aim is “evocation and experiential knowing” not a hard and firm meaning, which is what my rational mind fought for when it came to the abstract and ambiguous Korsakow medium.

This reading finally made me understand how it isn’t about information or story; it’s about the experience. In my discussion of the last reading here I argued that even linear films are experiential, but now I realize that it is in an entirely different way. It is aesthetically experiential and guided by plot, information and meaning. Korsakow films are entirely about the feelings that they evoke, the emotional experience. A logical and informative interpretation is not necessary and in most instances not even desired.

Week 6 Reading Media 1

An interesting point to this reading was the fact that digital interactive documentaries are limited as much as they are innovated by technological advances. In this way works become outdated and not accessible anymore as online languages change.

Another point is that Korsakow stories are “contemplative, interpretive and explorative” rather than “propulsive.”

I would argue that Adrian Miles and the writer are wrong, and that even linear narratives are experience based, not only information based. I also think they’re rather interpretive works.

“Works that challenge easy consumption of ideas…” Does this statement infer that all works that are difficult to understand are challenging the easy consumption of ideas. And what is wrong with this easy consumption of ideas, what is wrong with clarity and transparency? Even metaphor and symbolism are easier ideas to consume (for example in literature) than many ideas represented in Korsakow works. The ideas are ambiguous. Difficult and potentially not even there, and therefor audience-constructed.

Integrated Media Reading 4

I really agree with Bogost’s discussion about the way lists use, or don’t use, the language of literature. I think it is a refreshing break from the extensive and self-indulgent use of language in literature. Succinct and masterful use of language is necessary to form an eloquent and beautiful narrative though, to tell a story and to create the identification that was discussed in the reading. Lists are not better than traditional literature, though I’m sure they’re older and are perhaps used more commonly, but not for literary purposes.

I didn’t really understand where the Ryan reading fell into this though, as it merely explained what narrative and therefore gave us a clear idea of narrative is not. From this I am still not able to tell if lists would be classed as a narrative or not, because it contains some of those elements which Ryan proposed narratives must have, and it didn’t contain many more.

What I can take from these readings is how to write about the Korsakow readings. If I look at each clip in a project as a list, I can see how the lack of literature, or connecting language, makes these a representation and how they work together and what they do.

Reading 3 Notes Integrated Media 1

Causality, the relationship between cause and effect.

Narrative is spacial, temporal and causative. It moves between spaces, through time and has cause and effect.

Databases are not narrative, but can be formed into narrative.

The story constitutes of the lines and what’s between the lines.

The plot is only the lines. What is visibly and audibly presented to us. Including nondiegetic material.

Cause and effect take place in time.

Temporal order is easy to follow and commonplace.

Temporal duration refers to the time span that the film covers. It could be one night (Prom Night) or a lifetime (Benjamin Button).

Screen duration is the length of the film. This influences how much can be shown, how much cause and effect can occur etc.

Temporal frequency is the amount of times that we see something in a film. This can be used to show the double meaning of a scene that at the time seemed trivial.

Space does not always need to be shown, it can be imagined. Like the scene in Pulp Fiction where Christopher Walkin recounts the story of the watch to the dead soldier’s son.

Over time the ending is different to the beginning. If you look at only the beginning state of the world examined and the end state of the world examined you can see what differences arise. The narrative of the film tells us how these changes happened. This could be an interesting way to study narratives and it would be interesting to apply this to other mediums, not just film.

Patterns of development are similarities in cause and effect within narrative. For example change in knowledge, or goal plot.

Experiential film challenges conventional ideas what the movie can do and how it can do it. Perhaps to present difficult ideas or to explore the possibilities of the medium itself. This cinema may follow really unusual narrative paths.

Abstract form, experimental film-

This concentrates more on the aesthetics rather than the story. Uses music as a recurring and changing motif.

“In a film, these abstract qualities [of ordinary objects] become interesting for their own sake.”

Rhythm of editing is as important as the rhythm of individual shots.

It’s all in the editing, how the data is arranged. User interface, narrative combined.

Associational form, experimental film-

A poetic series of transitions. Drawing connections that might not be logical or obvious. Aesthetic connections or conceptual and emotional connections?

“First, the filmmaker typically groups images together in larger sets, each of which creates a distinct, unified part of the film. Each group of images can then contrast with other groups of images… Second, as in other types of form, the film uses repeated motifs to reinforce associational connections. Third, associational form strongly invites interpretation, the assigning of general meanings to the film…. The filmmaker will not necessarily give us obvious cues to the appropriate expressive qualities or con­ cepts. He or she may simply create a series of unusual and striking combinations and leave it up to us to tease out their relations.”

Principles of variation and repetition are present.

“…the power of an associational formal system: its ability to guide our emotions and to arouse our thinking simply by juxtaposing different images and sounds.”

Animation

Each frame is carefully constructed and shot individually. Kind of like the longer shots in an abstract or associational film.

Documentaries

“Many, perhaps most, documentaries are organized as narratives”

Alternative forms are categorical form and rhetorical form.

Categorical form organizes knowledge to make sense of the world. Sometimes scientific, most commonly and in daily life ideological associations.

Patterns of development are generally simple and this risks boring the spectator.

It can’t depend too much on repetition, the challenge is for the filmmaker to introduce variations and adjust expectations. Also can add aesthetic variation to add interest.

Rhetorical form the filmmaker presents a persuasive and explicit argument. It addresses the viewer directly and asks them to believe or to act. The subject of the film may not be scientific truth but a matter of opinion. The viewer might accept is as true because the filmmaker makes a strong case for it. The filmmaker may appeal to our emotions if fact isn’t enough. Often the film tries to get the viewer to change an act in their daily life.

Arguments from source are fact based claims from reliable sources. Subject centered arguments are based on subject.

The new avant-garde in documentary realized?

The third reading was about how technological advances in media change the ways that media is used and functions within the public sphere.

I would like to go into my own thoughts on this. As much as technology creates possibilities, it always has limitations. As discussed in this weeks class, photographs are constrained by their lack of time. In a less clear way film is limited because it is difficult to negate a point of view. It is easy to show what is, but not what is not.

There’s also the fact that the limitations that create opportunity or enhance creativity. By asking, What can it do? you can really utilise the creativity and possibilities of a media form. Particularly with digital where the answers to ‘what can it do?’ are become more and more vast.

The invention and development of digital technologies in particular has expended the possibilities within media phenomenally in the past decade. It has also made the technology to create and produce content available and easily accessible to the masses. The public sphere connects in social online networks and create and share content. For example the platform Instagram allows users to share their photography withe the world and is used by millions of people.

However this also has its drawbacks when lines are blurred between what is valuable and what isn’t. What is art and what isn’t. Time magazine used Instagram to document Hurricane Sandy and Jeanette Hagglund uses Instagram to create stunning architectural photos, but 90% of the population are using Instagram to take photos of food or their cats, like me.

 

Studies in documentary film

i-docs: hate this name, it makes it sound like an Apple product. I much prefer just Interactive Documentaries. I like the broad nature of the definition. It should be broad. The word documentary is ambiguous and the word interactive is ambiguous.

Conversation: this is a weird way to think about it as it implies two subjects, the media and the person interacting with it. Both subjects are highly complex and conversation relies on language and signs, and we know that this can often be temperamental.

Participative documentaries: this is an interesting idea and I’d love to see how it can be utilised on a small and realistic scale when making a documentary.

LOVE the Experiential mode: This is such an interesting idea, loved the idea of people recording a message at a particular place and other participators who visited the space then listened to the message. This is a strange kind of documentary, documenting human experiences, which might be considered insignificant in comparison to documentation of history. But the idea is very obviously interactive.

Excerpt

 

Narratives

Some notes on narratives from the Banston and Stafford reading:

Joesph Campbell studied the myths of different cultures and proposed that certain ambiguous archetypes were central to myth across all cultures and societies.

Vladmir Propp created eight character archetypes which he believed all characters from heroic folktales would fit into (hero, villain, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher, false hero), thirty-one events which move the plot. His was a very old fashioned and basic methodology, quite sexist too. Although it was the literature he studied that was sexist, not exactly the work.

Tzvetan Todorov had the idea that all stories began with an equilibrium, a peace, and then this was upset by something before returning to a different equilibrium.

Barthes‘ ideas were more complicated, he pointed out the “enigma code”, where little puzzles are set up throughout the story to prolong the ending in a pleasurable way. This isn’t always pleasurable though, and sometimes I feel like people do this unnecessarily in films just to stretch it out, or that it moves to blatantly from one puzzle to the next like a deliberate chain that almost insults the audience with its simplicity.

Syntagmatic relations– the structural order that a narrative follows

Syntagm– an element that follows another in a particular sequence

Paradigm– a class of ideas or objects

Levi-Strauss pointed out that narratives are binary, there are two conflicting sides. And I thought he only made jeans.

The stuff covering narrative was quite basic, covering sensical revelations, first/third person voice etc. I did like the point about how in short narratives, like ads, narrative can be established by certain signs, appearance of characters, setting, etc. The product will often be Propp’s ‘hero’ in this case.

Photography can use narrative in the way that the power in the photograph lies in what the viewer is lead to believe may have just happened or may be about to happen. In this way it has a story.

Cinema is time based, more being told and shown than anything.

Radio is also time based, but is quite dynamic and limited at the same time.

Institutional and industrial demands are kind of like the protocols of the internet. They are developed by the creators and users of the media, and are limited by technological advancements and also the format of the media being used.

Closed narrative ends, like a film or a novel with no sequel. Characters have a hierarchy, there are fewer characters, time and events are particular to and in the story, time is compressed, the same audience is assumed to watch from beginning to end, music and visual image is elaborate.

Open narrative continues, like television shows. Are more casual, as if it could go on forever, no end drawing nearer and no conclusions to expect or be drawn to, more characters naturalistically represented, characters are not hierarchical but come in and out of prominence as needed by the plot, characters can shift narrative role, time often is like real world time, the time makes broad references and is not particular to one period, each episode has to try and address both new and old watchers, more simple and less music, often has many storylines.

Some movies also follow an almost non-linear narrative path that echoes the non-linear narrative paths of computer use. This can be to advertise other products that the viewer could turn to in order to extend and manipulate the narrative but also in movies such as Sliding Doors where it is a tool to develop a complex story.

Reflective writing practice

After a brief but badly needed two weeks off from uni after finishing summer school, I’m now back to normal classes.

One of my first readings is on self reflection, something that has been pushed in several of my classes at RMIT. I understand the purpose of it and how it can help me in future, my only issue with the technique is that it is time consuming. When I’m done with something I generally have so much else on that I’d prefer to finish it, sigh with relief and then move onto the next thing rather than spending precious moments evaluating. I do suppose that assessing my work and thought process is valuable in itself though and if I become better at the practice it might become effective and worthwhile for the time that I put in.

Considering this blog is where I base most of my academic reflection, the reading was very relevant to this blog and how I can better use my time and words to the fullest advantage. In the reading it was called “cognitive housekeeping” and I like that term. Basically it can be thought of as sorting out my thoughts on any particular topic, ideally organising and extending the thought process.

I did note a few techniques that would be particularly useful for learning based on everyday thoughts and events, and also in study when I need direction:

  • Acknowledge the assumptions that I have made about people or events
  • Challenge familiar situations and ideologies
  • Tell someone about a situation and then let them ask basic questions about it, and see if there is anything simple that you overlooked
  • Listen to the views of others and remember that people don’t always share the same views as you
  • View things from a longer term context

 

Institutionalised Education, Actor-Network Theory and Elliot.

This is something that I don’t think I’m supposed to say on an academic blog, particularly one made for and by the people at RMIT; I am not hoping nor aiming for anything above a pass in this course or in many of my courses. And I don’t think that that should reflect badly on me.

My intelligence (what ever of it there is) is more insightful and creative than academic. I’m forgetful. I will remember the names of theorists and their theories but not together. I can describe the painting and make an educated guessplanation of what the painter was thinking when he painted it but I won’t be able to name the painter; I’ll give you a deep analysis on the themes behind a poem, but I won’t be able to cite a single line.

More importantly though, I’ll remember the idea. I will apply that to my work and to my own ideas. The things I’m learning are constantly influencing my opinions, my philosophies and the work that I do. I make connections and I apply them, and I think that that is more important than being able to name-drop Baudrillard and Nietzshe over dinner.

I wholly believe that studying topics which bore you is of very little purpose at all, because if it won’t aid in your personal happiness, even in the very long term, what good is it to you at all? And so of course I study; but the study I do out of class is very infrequently on class content. I study the things that I am passionate about: advertising campaigns, innovative ideas, contemporary ethical social ideas, new philosophical realms. And then I write and I design and I conceptualize, outside of class. The work I do that interests me seems to always happen out of class.

This course in particular hasn’t interested me all that much. And so I have allowed myself to give it low priority. There is obviously something in the content that our tutor, Elliot, is passionate about and that makes me want to be passionate about it as well. I’m caught between wanting to understand what he sees in the content and my own boredom. There’s nothing quite like seeing a person in their element, someone who has an interest in something that most people overlook, and is dedicated to it and knowledgeable on it and good at it. I don’t think that networked media is exactly that thing for Elliot, maybe this all has something to do with games or film and the ideas underlying them or what ever it is that he is passionate about, but I can’t see it. I did make my own connections though, and I am happy about that. Actor-network theory and design fiction have made some sort of impression.

Actor-network theory is one of the first things that I have found of interest and practical use in this course, personally. I wish I’d had the guts to stand up for it in the class symposium, but I didn’t.

Actor-network theory makes it possible to trace broad relationships between people and things, and things (actors) could be anything, to understand perfectly what effect different actors have on each other and how they act in connection to one another. It’s an exciting proposition. It would be difficult to map out, considering the amount of actors in any given scenario, but when done efficiently it would be an effective way of understanding and explaining relationships. You could understand the functionality of every actor within a network, eliminate the defunct ones, reinforce and strengthen the effective connections.

This might be practically applied to advertising, one area that I am passionate about, and it might also be used in conjunction with design fiction, another topic that I found practical and interesting. Design fiction and actor-network theory are both related to strategizing, and I think they’d compliment each other extra-ordinarily well.

Imagine understanding relationships and the actors within a network so well that when adding another actor to this network, a speculative one, a design, you could anticipate the reactions of the other actors.

Actor-network theory could be a method of realizing the attitude and complexity of the relationships of individuals, within a particular society, most applicably in our case to online communities and people who share interests online. Target groups, if you will. It’s an open prospect, and one that could be used to better understand people for more effective manipulation of individuals within societies, which of course is the role advertising plays in supply and demand, isn’t it?

I have found something that I could be passionate about within a stream of content that I didn’t think could offer me anything, but something which Elliot made to seem like a golden pool of opportunity.

I am paying terrifying amounts of money to study this course at RMIT, and it is a very highly esteemed course that I was surprised and proud to be accepted into; and I look forward to working in media and to work in media a “Bachelor of Communications (Media)” ought to come in handy. And I didn’t only sign up for the piece of paper, I wouldn’t let myself put in so much time and effort just for a qualification, I do want the knowledge, and knowledge such as actor-network theory and design fiction is exactly what I want.

What I’m trying to say with this post is that I may have purposely only scraped the surface of this subject, and perhaps I should feel irresponsible, perhaps, to quote Adrian Miles himself, I should wonder “what the fuck am I doing wasting my time here?” as I did ask myself when I read this post, but I don’t. Instead I am glad because even if this isn’t my thing like it is or relates to Elliot’s thing, I found some things from it that are my thing.

It’s nearly 2am now. I think we’ll put this tired and irrational writer to rest for the night. This may be my last post on networked media, but it won’t be my last academic blog post, because the use of this blog is another thing from this course that I hope will become my thing, and I’ll be glad if this post is my last, because it’s my favourite.

Actor-Network Theory

ANT has been developped by students of science and technology and their claim is that it is utterly impossible to understand what holds the society together without reinjecting in its fabric the facts manufactured by natural and social sciences and the artefacts designed by engineers. As a second approximation, ANT is thus the claim that the only way to achieve this reinjection of the things into our understanding of the social fabrics is through a network-like ontology and social theory.

Quote from the reading here

Actor-network theory has been mentioned a few times in class, generally with the association that it was a complex oncoming topic that would be difficult to understand, but one which would usefully be related to the topics which we have already covered.

The definition above, from the reading, was the best that i could grasp but the concept is still one that I’m having trouble understanding.

I do agree with certain aspects of ANT according to the reading.

I agree that objects and theories should be included in networks.

I do believe there should be nothing in the connections but the connections themselves.

I do not see how understanding these networks helps to understand the world better or to make life easier at all.

Yes it eliminates the concept of distance as connections cannot be measured by length, but what does this accomplish?

And as for eliminating scale, I disagree. All networks seem to me to be bigger or smaller depending on the amount of nodes in the network. How do networks in ANT differ?

These are things which I will have to explore in the workshop tomorrow morning.