Tagged: ideas

MANOVICH-ING

Lev Manovich’s words on the Database As Symbolic Form.

This is quite a fascinating subject, I really haven’t come across this idea before. Manovich begins with the proposition that after the novel, cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression (of the modern age). Today, a ‘computer age’ introduces the database; new media objects that do not tell stories nor contain beginnings or ends but exist as collections of individual items. Database as form. He asks:

What is the relationship between database and another form that has traditionally dominated human culture – narrative?

Manovich is talking about new media’s affordances which appear as computerised collections of items on which users can view, navigate and search; popular multimedia encyclopedias, CD-ROMS as storage devices that have become cultural products and DVDs. The term database, originating out of the computer sciences, is dryly defined as a structured collection of data… Data is stored for fast search and retrieval by a computer, so a database ultimately becomes far more complex than a simple collection of items. Different of types databases (hierarchical, object-oriented etc.) use different models to oirganise data.

Anyways, the important point is that users of new media experience database-like engagement at a basic level. I’m thinking about how I love my Mac’s nifty top-right magnifying glass that so easily let’s me search my entire computer for random files: using only the keyword ‘McLuhan’ I can find in seconds an essay I wrote five years ago on Marshall McLuhan that doesn’t even mention the word in the title of the document. Also, that document is buried so far down in the deep depths of my unorganised Documents folder, there’s no way I’m finding that baby going the long way.

Other than my actual computer, Manovich focuses on newer media. CD-ROMS (digital storage media) – still kinda computery. Wikipedia (popular multimedia encyclopaedias) – also kinda computery. A non-computer-but-new-media example of database he mentions is the DVD. Maybe because they contain menus with subtitle / commentary options? Chapter selection? Well yeah, it is pretty freaking basic, and the only difference is that it can be read on a special computer called a DVD player.

I don’t get what’s special about databses if they are still requiring the use of computer. Doesn’t that mean databases are the same ole’ computer science gadget as always? Maybe they’re being made more broadly engage-able and less IT Guy In The Basement through the employment by new media, like the Museum Tour CD-ROM Manovich goes on about.

Where does narrative come into all of this? Yep, I’l keep reading.

The Atlantic is a wicked resource that I like very much. While snooping, I came across a highly relevant article on the digital reference book, particularly the definitive history of surfing titled The Encyclopaedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw (2003).

“The difference between the book and the website is sort of like when Dorothy first gets to Oz,” Warshaw explained to me with obvious glee. “Her black and white world is all of the sudden in bright technicolor.”

The article’s author, Mark Lukach describes the practical extinction of ye ole paper encyclopedia:

Reference books, if not fully extinct, are certainly on their last, choked gasps of breath. After a 244 year run, Encyclopedia Britannica stopped printing in 2010, and now focuses solely on its digital encyclopedia, in an effort to compete with Wikipedia.

RMIT CREATIVE INDUSTRIES PANEL

That Building 100, Photo: By author

Last week I attended the RMIT Creative Industries Panel. I got an e-mail, and RSVP’d. I don’t study design, nor have I ever considered myself a designer (until taking this course). So I popped over to that Building 100 to see what I may glean.

A number of interesting people broadly associated with the design industry gave short talks on their practice, and pathways after graduation – many were ex-RMIT. I was probably the youngest person in the room, definitely not many Undergrads there. The lady running the show made some interesting comments in her introduction that somewhat echo what our teachers have been banging on about:

Design will drive Australia into the 22nd century…design is a driver – we have a different view.

This is certainly a reference to the ‘designer toolkit’ that employers are so keen to harness. Yes, design is definitely forward-thinking; I can see that this shift in approach to practice, problems and work will be essential for media industry practitioners. It is so easy at university to submit the assignment and get your HD, which is a worryingly entrenched approach to study (of media and otherwise). I’ve definitely been one of those students who loves to marinate in research, and then basque in the satisfaction of placing one cogent sentence after another. This subject is a 180 for me, and I like the challenge.

Interestingly almost all of the speakers, who ranged from Creative Recruitment Agency chick, Design/Advertising ‘Facilitator’ to Designer of King Kong (the giant beast in that spectacular musical), agreed that being honest about your skills but being keen to learn is valued highly. Googling a ‘how to’ for five minutes is totally acceptable, nobody has to know. This also goes back to one of our early lessons. Anyone can learn what (write a screenplay, Final Cut effect, do x on my computer), our job is to know how to be something, a media practitioner; and that is to be ignited by ideas. Preferably in a ludic fashion; playful, experimental, throwing ideas forward. T-shaped.

One guy, Greg More from the RMIT Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, appeared to premise his whole practice on a Design Fiction method.  His work in data visualisation uses cameras to capture time and motion, and organise data in virtual environments or ‘digital space’. The result are these wacky, interactive, virtual representations of what would be very dry data. For example, an evolving visualisation of ten years’ worth of Melbourne’s water data as a real-time installation. The point is, when Greg spoke of his practice, he said he couldn’t possibly know what form these visualisations may take until the process begins – data visualisations are a kind of design future that he’s making up as he goes. I loved it when he showed us how he designs video game environments as a way to think about architecture. He also provided my take away idea for the evening, from John Maeda:

Making something simpler isn’t as important as making something clearer.

AN IDEA: DESIGN FICTION

Design fiction has been usefully defined as:

…an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.

There’s that word again! Speculate. The concept and practice of design fiction lives in the space of conventions where artists and scientists get together. One of design fiction’s original mutations is the science-fiction genre novel. In an interview with sci-fi author Bruce Sterling, the whole concept of suspending belief in order to imagine change (in terms of potential objects and services) is interrogated.

What I can glean, is that design fiction is a literal presentation of The Future of Objects. I can see how artists and scientists alike are engaging. Sterling explains that the main way this is done is through video presentations containing a series of vignettes of people interacting with objects and services, as opposed to straight out science-fiction feature films. The emphasis is on participating in the creation of future gadgets, literally designing for the future, rather than telling futuristic stories with ‘Avatar-style heroics’:

It’s not a kind of ficiton. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories.

Clearly, there’s never been a shortage of science-fiction cinema. I just watched Blade Runner (1982) for the first time last night – I hope that’s not what 2019 will look like. Matthew Ward’s article on design fiction in design education roots these ideas in a more relevant context. His reading is a direct follow on from Adrian’s ideas on speculation, of looking forward. Literally, how has design fiction been left out of educational practice and, how has the activity of speculation been left out of education?

It makes a lot of sense it terms of design:

Whether a week, month, year or decade away, designers produce propositions for a world that is yet to exist.

How does this relate to me? Well, in some ways I guess I am a designer too. Strip that title of its general connotations to graphic, interior, fashion, app, architect, industrial: in my Professional Communications trajectory, I am a designer of words, media, communications strategies and ideas into meaningful wholes. Wow – liberating in the Dziga Vertov kinda way! The term designer in this sense lends itself to connotations in the ruminative fields of re-arranger, bricklayer, or projectionist. I like how this course is encouraging me to come to terms with my eventual, yet impending graduation and what happens then. Yes, my thoughts are legitimate contributions but only if I use them in the right way.

I sense I have detected a mindset of Model I behaviour, the very act of discovery lending itself to Model II behaviour.

Photo: By author

AN IDEAS WOMAN

Photo: SMH

The word ‘idea‘ is defining the overall theme of my first week this semester. In virtually all my subjects I am being asked for ideas immediately.

In Advcanced Print Journalism, I’m supposed to pitch the idea for my Walkley-Award-winning, thousand word, investigative piece of cut throat journalism (that is sure to employ me immediately), yesterday. How, teacher???

In Film-TV2 I gotta get me some rad access to a documentary subject that will fascinate / cause people to emote deeply / remember, and blog it for all my peers to see (and judge). Just ‘have’ an idea.

In Networked Media, aside from designing my own learning and yeaaaahhhh doing a bit more work, I’ve got to make associations and imaginatively create responses to reading stimuli – constantly.

I like the ‘idea’ of having frequent, constant, creative ideas for sure. Soooooo where they at??? On Sunday (July 28th) a well-timed article landed in my lap. Writer Phillip Adams in his regular column for The Australian Magazine, wrote a piece on generating column ideas. Brilliant man! After admitting he found inspiration in his mothers kitchen draw for an article once, he said:

Where do you get the ideas for columns? … You can get a column out of anything, or everything. From a Lan-Choo coupon to Lenin.

What I like about Adams’ article is that he discounts the aimless and impersonal act of Googling to give your own brain a go: fire up your synapses by imagining those thunks a pinball machine might make as it rebounds a metal ball (read ideas) across the field.

Not only ready to help the columnist but capable of remembering just about everything anyone has ever seen, thought or done. All you need is the right stimulus.

This is definitely comforting. Adams goes on to say that everything is for writing about, just as in painting. Rembrandt thumbed his nose at his posh patrons and did a portrait of a carcass of beef:

It’s not the subject, he was saying. It’s how I paint.

Beginning with a mundane object may just be a starting point, so with silly self-consciousness out of the way:

Spoon? Nah. Ladle > soup > pumpkin > farm > gleaner > Agnes Varda…