This seems to be becoming table tennis.

The next iteration of the introductory paragraph I’ve been asked to comment on:

In the novel ‘Alien Phenomenology,’ Ian Bogost discusses how lists of objects that lack ‘explication’ can draw ‘greater attentiveness’ towards them. Bogost explains how people naturally want to ‘join the dots’ and create relationships between things. When objects are stated on a list, they don’t have the narrative structure of a sentence. Lists do not provide explanation and therefore encourage more ways to join and relate things to each other. When objects in lists lack description, they let the audience question how they might be related and how they might join. This in turn can make the audience more attentive as it requires a deeper level of understanding. Bogost also talks about how lists that are ‘disjointed’ and illogical can ‘excite viewers’ as they have to put more effort into understanding them. In order to test out Bogosts discussions about lists, a one minute soundscape was created for the locale ‘by water.’ The soundscape includes a non-narrative list about the Merri Creek with ambient sounds (recorded at the location) in the background. Specific individual parts of the Meri Creek where included in the listing. Words such as ‘hydrogen’, ‘pollution’, and ‘bubble’ where included in the soundscapes list to try to draw attention to the locale without actually describing it in narrative form.

We will need to work on this in the studio, won’t we?

  1. It is not a novel
  2. perhaps “stated as a list”
  3. Still not sure how you get from lack of description, questions about relations, therefore requires greater understanding. Because implicit in there is something about understanding of something, but what? (figure that out and things here might make more sense)
  4. suggest Bogost isn’t discussing but is making claims/arguments about lists
  5. Merri, not Meri

much better. Now go on and do the rest. (You can’t tell if this is ‘right’ until you have the rest. I can’t stress and make plain enough how important this is.)

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