Category: Design

Participation Week 10

Progress report on ongoing coursework

Having been placed in groups with Brenton and Amanda, we have collectively come to plan together the initial semblances of our K Film. Originally mind mapping our themes on paper, we had all collectively come together in utilizing the theme of spaces for our K-Film.

Space

Functioning as the key premise for our filming, Spaces and locations related to everyday life will be utilized as our unifying theme. As such we have subdivided our filming into 3 sets of 20 clips. With each of us handling a type or category of location settings, we each will be required to film 20 clips of different locations related to that category. However, we are still in discussion of the specificities of our category and as such may have our filming procedure subject to change.

Subjective and Objective

Operating as a subtheme, or seccondary intention with  the composition and design of our Korsakow clips is to lace the theme of Subjectivity and Objectivity into our work. While maintaining a level of abstraction in terms of the literal requirements of implementing the sub theme, we have decided on a key rubric, which is the perspective of filming which dictates polarization of a clip between the sub-categories of Subjectivity and Objectivity.

As of now, we are still in the midst of planning our production and design of our Korsakow Film and interface and as such is still subject to change.

Personal Assessment Matrix

WEEK Analysis Execution Reflection Learning Total
10 4 4 3 4 15

Provide a link to a form of Multimedia

Given this week’s focus on our Korsakow project, I was much inspired to include a link to the Korsakow webpage that is currently featuring 27 New Korsakow Productions. It amazes me as these continued contributions to this unique sphere of this production technique is indicative of the increasing number of people approaching this medium with a serious and actualized artistic intent. The detail of the interface designs and plotting structures of some of these films are fascinating to say the least and definitely work as inspirations for the upcoming Korsakow Submissions. All the best.

http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/media/2010/kfilms/nostalgia/

The concept of Design Fiction, explained by Bruce Sterling (Week 2.1 Reading)

As described by Bruce Sterling, Design Fiction is the use of ‘diegetic’ prototypes to suspend disbelief about change. Essentially it means using ideas that project very closely towards objects and services that people can relate to in a manner that has them speculating about the potentiality of its existence.

Diegetic- A type of storytelling that presents the detail of a story’s interior world. As such design fiction would fall as something diegetic as it attempts to tell a story to individuals through the design of narrative, more likely physical, artifacts within the world of a story.

From an interview with Bruce Sterling, one of the biggest proponents of design fiction, we come to understand more about this new conceptual genre of
fiction that has been gracefully propelling itself in more intricate ways.
In his conversation with editor Tori Bosch, he explains how the ideal, effective use of design fiction is by showing people the interaction of services and objects with seemingly normal activity.

So no avatar-like heroes, as Bruce describes, but rather something along the lines of this:

From here, Bruce further goes onto explaining the essential quality of design fiction is the fact that it relates more to technological advancements hence working effectively as a neutral interest that anybody could hold fascination to regardless of their standpoints and opinions.

He makes the distinction between Hollywood’s purpose and design fiction as something that CAN correlate, but not necessarily to replace one another, primarily to the fact that elements of designed fiction can be used in support of purporting a potential technological story world rather than replacing the qualities it has.

Using space odyssey as a example, Bruce demonstrates how the object such as the Ipad like idea which was used in the film shows the success of a diegetic artifact that was, and has become acutualized, as a relatable protoype, being the Ipad.

 The Bad

Further into the interview, the points Bruce Sterling makes towards bad design fiction builds a clearer picture of the rubric he sees the genre through. As he describes, a concept with a lack of aspiration towards inspiring others to imitate. With the example hes given of a guy thinking of ‘flapping’ his arms to get to the moon, he shows that it is imagination that lacks a compelling factor.

As such, it can be understood from Bruce Sterling that successful design fiction would have to attain a compelling quality, or rather, an ability suspend disbelief about change with its success as a piece of design fiction determined by the extent to which it can do so effectively.

(Im sure Bruce Sterling wouldn’t be too approving of something like this, [picture credits to www.organizationalphysics.com])

Bruce wraps up by commenting on design fiction’s presence as a new set of tools society has at hand to engage the world with. Despite uncertainty to whether it is something  that will lead the economy (as implied jokingly by Bruce), it certainly raises interesting ideas and implications, or perhaps thoughts toward a practice that will more intricately be able to fortell the potential future.

With creative thinking and visualization becoming a common meme of society, especially with more user-based outlets of expression, it is interesting to see how far contributions to design fiction will go and how much people are able to stretch the perceived boundaries of this new ideation.

However, Matthew Ward continues where Bruce stops and looks further into the possible implications of this concept and how it be stretched beyond the aspect of literature.