Dementia: It’s a bit of a bugger is an interactive project created by Annie Bungeroth on Korsakow. The piece features nine images in a square that, when hovered over, come to life and play as a short video. Each video is of Bungeroth’s father, who is suffering from dementia. When explaining her piece in Mediamatic, Bungeroth states that she never knows what she is going to find when visiting her father, how much he will remember or who he will even be. This was one of the main reasons Bungeroth decided to use a non-linear Korsakow project, as it clearly represents the randomness of the disease. Each video shows her father doing something basic whilst speaking, with very little context given with regards to the actual conversations they are having or what has led to this moment. The piece is a clear example of an interactive screen media piece that is both modular and variable. The audience is able to interact with every video and the project as a whole to gain the whole perspective and idea behind the video, however, they are also able to interact with the fragments individually in an order that they choose.
This is something we hope to also achieve in our own piece. We wish for the audience to have the opportunity to view the album cover recreation fragments that they enjoy, without necessarily having to interact with the project as a whole. Our project will not be linear, and we therefore also expect that the experience different people have with the piece will vary, and also allow audience members to immerse in the project with a different experience each time.
Prior to this class, I had not heard of Korsakow and it’s abilities, and was therefore interested in seeing its capabilities. I was also interested in seeing how the online projects I had immersed myself in so far, particularly the interactive pieces on Docubase, differed to the ones created on Korsakow.
One thing I noticed straight away when viewing Dementia: It’s a bit of a bugger on Korsakow was that the actual context of the piece and overall meaning was not clear instantly. On Korsakow, the piece was simply listed as ‘It’s a bit of a bugger’, and while it was clear to see that the subject was an older man with a lot of confusing thoughts in his head, it wasn’t until I actually Googled the piece that I began to understand the purpose behind it. It became apparent that this was not the only project with a potentially confusing initial meaning. In class, we discussed Talk with your hands like an Ellis Island Mutt by Steven Wingate and the complete randomness of the piece that, even after discussing it, makes little sense to me. I found this to be in complete opposition to the pieces I had immersed in on Docubase, as each seemed to have an introduction, or some sort of explanation of their point, and covered quite large issues such as environmental catastrophes and the influence of cults.
When speaking about Korsakow, Anna Weihl explains that ‘Korsakow documentaries are based on evolving modular storytelling and intimate, personal narratives; instead of featuring the big issues of our world such as climate change or the exploitation of natural resources’. She also notes that ‘Korsakow documentaries can be considered as effective tools for thought, as poetic miniatures zooming into the very small details of everyday life in a contemplative way’. Up until now, I have always been stuck on the idea that whatever online screen media piece I made needed to have a clear purpose, really needed to mean something and tell a story. However, from my exploration of Korsakow, I am beginning to realise that making a piece to simply ‘explore something’ or even ‘express a thought’ is completely okay. The pieces don’t need to make sense, sometimes they are simply made to allow the creator and the audience to explore.
This idea of exploring a thought has been a very important thing to think about when creating our own fragments. Having had a number of sessions dedicated to researching album covers and selecting ones that gave us really strong first impressions, we are now in the stage of shooting footage and creating soundscapes that accurately depict our first impressions of the artwork to the audience, while also beginning to think about what we hope our final Korsakow project will look like. To develop our project, we decided to break up the work, with each group member choosing three album covers they liked and capturing their first impressions of that piece. This has meant that some of the fragments have been literal video depictions of the artwork, while others have been completely out of the box and not even necessarily made sense to other members of the group at first. Up until now, I have been concerned about this, and the way that our pieces may not be completely consistent with each other. However, once reflecting on the idea that Korsakow can be used to simply explore ideas and thoughts, I have realised that the purpose of our piece is to capture our true first impressions and explore these ideas. We do not wish to create something that is fabricated or altered so that the fragments are the same, the small inconsistencies in our fragments will be a highlight of our finished product. The first impressions might make no sense to our audience, in fact, the whole purpose of looking at album covers alone may not make sense to our audience, but our purpose really is simple: we are exploring our thoughts.
Throughout this studio the question on the forefront of my mind has been ‘what makes something an online screen media piece?’ In answering this question I have focussed highly on genre and form, finding out that online games and interactive pieces can be considered to be online screen media. My work so far on assignment three and Korsakow has broadened the parameters even further for what can be considered online screen media. Pieces do not need to be made to satisfy a purpose, they can be made to explore and work through a thought or idea. Simple.