Category: Experiments in what lists do

experiment 6 – infinite list

lydiacartledgeExperiments in what lists do

Through making this weeks experiment, my understanding of an infinite list is that it is never ending-  it can be added to continuously and has no structure, nor does it need to have narrative. This week we used online platforms as our way of creating an infinite list. Manovich (2002) argues that lists within databases do not tell stories of have organised elements but are rather collections of items where every listed item hold the same significance. I found this interesting to consider that a list that has the potential to go on forever, may never have a hierarchy of items.

Maddy and I decided to create our infinite list on Twitter.  We chose to list the things that reminded people of love and we reached out to friends via text and Instagram stories to find out peoples responses. We were pretty impressed with how quickly we were able to receive responses and get the list started. By using Twitter, we were able to tag a much of different tags that relates to the picture we had posted which would further distribute our list and prompt others to add to it, making it infinite. Interestingly, we started getting retweets quickly which proved that using an online platform with thousands of users have the potential to make the list everlasting. The one annoying thing about using Twitter as our platform however, was that you can’t edit the caption once the photo has been posted. You have to delete and re-post with a new caption. This could disrupt the flow of a list and limit the amount of people with access to it who could potentially add to it. If we were to have created our list on Instagram for example, we would have had the ability to edit the caption but add additional tags but the photo would remain in place within the list.

References:

Manovich L, 2002, ‘The Database’ in The language of new media, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 218-243.

 

experiment 5 – explosive list

lydiacartledgeExperiments in what lists do

The concept of a explosive list was the most challenging for me to understand so far. I didn’t come into this weeks lesson having any real preconception of what to expect from an explosive list other than a list that can break down everything that makes up an object, however, in the class discussion, explosive lists were examined more conceptually and this idea that everything has agency in and within itself was frequently brought up. I liked a quote from Miles et al. (2018) that spoke of, “the recognition of agency in relationality between living and non-living things…that underwrites the human and nonhuman and constitutes what we take the world to be” by in which he is referring again to this idea of everything having agency even without human intervention. We also analysed in class the different poetic techniques that would be most suitable for an exploding list. A mosaic technique would be the most suitable in an exploding list as it can be used to create “multiple simultaneous relations” (Miles et al, 2018, pp. 312) by providing glimpses into an expanding whole which could produce infinite and more abstract meanings.

However, I feel as though my experiment falls into the categorical category. My list that I wrote for the class experiment didn’t feel doable considering the time frame so after some discussion with my peers I decided to keep is simple. I firstly considered all the parts that make up chocolate chip cookies and then the method that goes into preparing it but then I was reflecting on all the societal reasonings behind why many people wouldn’t eat a chocolate cookie and decided to add that in as a way to reveal both the physical and metaphorical density of a cookie. I added lots of audio layering to create more of chaotic emotion behind the concept.

References:

Miles A, Weidle F, Brasier H, Lessard B, 2018, ‘From Critical Distance to Critical Intimacy: Interactive Documentary and Relational Media’, in G Cammaer, B Fitzpatrick, B Lessard (eds.), Critical Distance in Documentary Media. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 301–319.

experiment 4 – gathering list

lydiacartledgeExperiments in what lists do

My original conception of a gathering list was that it would be a list that could gather and reveal information but after the discussion in class, I realised that the idea of the gathering and revealing of information is somewhat correct but it is done in a less obvious manner. The reading for this week introduced the term ‘ontography’ which is described as a way to catalogue or reveal relating objects without clarification but still drawing attention to how they’re related (Bogost 2012). By this, my understanding of gathering lists is that they can appear to be quite random but require the reader to infer what the relationships between the listed items are. For our activity for the week we did a “latour litany” exercise which required us to list all the things we were noticing in that moment, which could also include emotions, and then film them in a way that would provide an appropriate mood to the item. I was grateful for this exercise because I was struggling to find relationships between my items however one of my peers mentioned that it felt like organised chaos, which provided me with the inspiration for my experiment.

I decided to film collections of items around my house but used my organised chaos prompt to film my collections vs. my mothers collections. My mother is a very organised lady and also hates mess whereas my collections can be a little chaotic. I used a clock sound effect because a ticking clock reminds me of structure that never falters whereas the sound of a cuckoo clock remind me of someone  who’s gone a bit loopy. In this experiment, I added the cuckoo clock to collections that were both my own and my mothers as I think that organised collections could be evidence of loopiness just as much as chaotic collections. This list is still a gathering of information on the people who live in this house and I think they correlations between items isn’t obvious but I think this list could be used as a personal list as well as this list has potential to have some author bias attached to it.

References:

Bogost, I., 2012. ‘Ontography’ in Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 35-59.