WAT UP WORLD

Week 6. Lecture discussed story, narrative, cause and effect, language, meaning, closure.

Adrian stressed the promiscuity of language. Language and meaning do not have a one-to-one relationship. They are not monogamous. There is always a mismatch in meaning. Someone says something; the receiver makes it into something else. There is multiplicity in meaning. Meaning is pluralistic. Language is not devoted to one final meaning. This is what Korsakow is about. Acknowledging this inevitability of multiple meanings head-on and exploring the relationships between things instead. Not assuming a finality.

Jasmine talked about how narrative seems to have become an umbrella term, which has diluted its meaning but at the same time has strengthened it as a term.

Adrian again compared life with narrative in terms of cause and effect. He argued that cause and effect alone is not a narrative. When cause and effect happens in our life, it is not a story that we are narrating. It is just an experience.

Adrian also discussed closure. He contended that closure is a “mechanical ending” – i.e. the last page of a book, last shot of movie, etc. It is a break to the story. Or work. This is because an audience can accept and interpret any kind of closure. It doesn’t mean that they’ll like every type of closure, but they’ll accept it as closure. However, Korsakow gives the control of closure to the audience. The users get to decide when it is over. For whatever reason they wish.

My thoughts:

I agree with Adrian completely about the multiplicity in meaning of language. The mismatch. I recently wrote a script for my Film-TV1 group, and some bits were interpreted quite unexpectedly. It was really interesting to get this insight into other people’s readings of the story.

I agree with Jasmine about narrative becoming an umbrella term. Although I’m not sure it’s that much of a limitation/dilution. I think it’s more just expansion of understanding of theories / details of what narrative and storytelling involves.

Adrian’s pet-peeve about life and narrative again. I think the line between life and story is interpretation. I think life is turned into a story/narrative when someone puts their mark on the event by either thinking about it as a story or telling it as a story. The interpretation really is key. As is the ‘telling’, actually.

Thoughts on this week’s reading:

• Long. A bit difficult to read. Kept getting distracted while reading it. Got frustrated because my pathetic trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro expired. Should be free. Stupid Adobe.
• Adrian got mentioned! Many times! Cool!
• There ARE other software things like Korsakow. Yeah! I wonder how they are different form Korsakow though.
• Kat Cizek: “I think what the web offers is an opportunity to examine and understand very small, everyday details of our lives.” – I think this is partly the point of Korsakow. To examine. Not to transform into an argument. But simply to examine. To collect pieces and find different pathways through them. Explore how each pathway is distinct from the next. Understand what every pathway has in common. Give the user agency to examine for themselves.
• The digital future is fragile. Radically unstable. Moving. Changing. Shifting. Even “dark”.
• Korsakow is BUILT FOR FILMMAKERS.
• Korsakow film involves at least three kinds of editing: footage is selected and cut together to make the raw material for each SNU; algorithmic editing / ‘SNUifying’ (adding metadata to each short film including key-words, probability, lives, etc., and then refining this assemblage); editing involving the viewer, who chooses the next SNU to advance the film, thus creating a non-definitive version of the film in that specific encounter.
• Korsakow is a philosophical intervention into the politics of ‘story’ as well as a media software application for making database narratives, mainly documentaries.
• Role of Korsakow filmmaker as facilitating and reflecting a set of urgent issues and ideas, rather than providing answers .

Korsakow encourages the aforementioned idea of meaning promiscuity. It does not support one fixed meaning. Its entire interface is designed around the idea of mobile meaning. Meaning that changes. In each viewing. For each user. Perhaps that is what makes Korsakow distinct from all other mediums.