The Future of Korsakow

At the beginning of this subject, I was hesitant to form an opinion on Korsakow. I didn’t quite understand it, and I was skeptical as to what type of media it fitted into. At times I found it clunky and frustrating to use, it didn’t seem as user-friendly as some of the software I am used to working with. I didn’t understand exactly the way in which it expressed narrative, or stories, or…anything to a point.

However, over the course of the semester, I began to really enjoy working with Korsakow (shock, horror). I realised that I had been trying to construct it’s use and it’s form in my mind, by only drawing on previous conceptions. I wasn’t trying to grasp it as a new form of media, as something entirely different, coming from a place of it’s own.

The catalyst of change for me, was looking at past students work. It was easy for me to see in these works, what worked and what didn’t. I felt the pieces that were strong, were the pieces that weren’t trying to tell a narratively driven story. They were merely views, or lists even, of a subject, that gave the user a comprehensive understanding of what it was they were to address. They were snapshots, often unbiased, of a place, a happening, an object, a thing.

When I had my first Korsakow project review with Adrien, it was very interesting and enlightening to listen to him talk about it’s purpose. I feel I won’t give justice to what he said – but basically he explained that it was a program in which focus was purely given to the way in which the story is outlined, explained, told and shown, not the story itself. It is not the story that makes a great film, we are working within a visual field, it is the visuals and the use of these instead.

It made sense that the past student’s pieces I liked were those that weren’t even trying to tell a story. Yet they somehow did. Instead, focus was purely on the visual, on slowing down and looking at each individual moment that passes in front of a camera lens.

Korsawkow is a great program for this. It causes you to think about what themes are present in your work, what these are saying and how they can all link to tell the user something. Or make the user feel something. Or even just enable the user to enjoy your piece. Narrative is broken down in Korsakow, and through this we have to actually examine what it is that can make it more than just a story line, a recount, but what can help us create media that makes us think and is worth remembering.