This is the opening introductory chapter (PDF of John Law’s After Method: Mess In Social Science Research. It could be the manifesto for this semester. Law is a colleague of Bruno Latour (actor-network theory, mentioned in the Bogost readings andRead more…
Updates, Notes, Clips, Quotes
In the lab I showed the very opening of Chris Marker’s Sunless (Sans Soleil). Widely regarded as the masterpiece of essay films. What I showed was the film’s first minute: I emphasised how it discussed itself, solved its problems byRead more…
Corrigan, Essays
This is the opening chapter of Corrigan, Timothy. The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker. Oxford University Press, USA, 2011. Print. Read it. If it appears too much, then you must at least get up to page 30. (PDF extract,Read more…
Recommended about ANT
This is an essay I found recently that uses Latour’s actor-network theory in relation to documentary. I haven’t finished reading it, but the first few pages where they talk specifically about actor-network theory – what it is and how itRead more…
Bordwell and Thompson
This is an extract from Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art An Introduction. It is where they write about what they call ‘nonnarrative’. The section immediately after discusses experimental film. This is relevant to us as it helps with some contextRead more…
Reading 04
This is an odd extract from the middle of Latour’s Reassembling the Social. The one book where he explicitly addresses just what he means by actor-network theory (ANT). This chapter is written as an imaginary dialogue between Latour and aRead more…
Reading 03
This reading is from Bettina Frankham’s PhD thesis (she’s an academic at UTS in Sydney). Frankham, Bettina Louise. “Complexity, Flux, and Webs of Connection.” A Poetic Approach to Documentary : Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience. (2013). 137-176. pdf,Read more…
Bogost 02
Bogost, Ian. “Alien Phenomenology”, Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University Press of Minnesota, 2012. (via RMIT account) We started with Bogost’s second chapter. This raised questions, as it should. To help untangle these (butRead more…
Bogost 01
Bogost, Ian. “Ontography: Revealing the Rich Variety of Being”, Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University Press of Minnesota, 2012. (via RMIT account) This is difficult reading, if only because it is not, at firstRead more…
Ontography, Round One
The reading to be done by Friday (yes, it is difficult) is chapter two of Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology: Or What It’s Like to be a Thing. If you didn’t get a copy in class it is available as aRead more…