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what we did: week five

In Wednesday’s class I used the questions you posed from week 4’s reading by Bettina Frankham to shape an open-form lecture unpacking relational aesthetics, categorical documentary and web documentaries.

If you missed out and/or want to find out more here is a list of articles/works I showed/referred to:
–Anika D’s article on relational aesthetics
–Lorenzo Pereira’s article on conceptual art
–Gap Toothed Women as example of categorical documentary
–Are you Happy Project? as an example of how web docs might erase the line between spectator and maker (a relational documentary)
–The Quipu Project as an example of why we might make web docs – as places to elicit participation
-This excerpt from High School as an example of mosaic structure because it accumulates facets to draw an image of high school as an institution

I then introduced Task Three where you have to use one of your questions from your refining post in task two as a prompt to conduct an experiment in noticing.

In Thursday’s class you shared your refining questions from task two and started thinking about how you might respond to this question by making. You then developed recipes for practice, which might look something like this (as an example). For Task Three you will do three iterative cycles of question > making > reflecting > from week’s 5-7 that will then lead you to developing a large scale noticing project which you will pitch in week 8 to an external panel.

I then introduced the films of James Benning, showing clips from Ten Skies and 13 Lakes. We then posed these questions in response to Panse’s “Ten Skies, 13 Lakes, 15 Pools – Structure, Immanence and Eco-Aesthetics in The Swimmer and James Benning’s Land Films.”

Finally, in pairs we did this long-take exercise based off Panse’s reading. Due in class next week.

Some reminders:

– Make sure you create a tag/category that you use for your portfolio of posts that will make up task three. If you don’t know what this means there are tutorials on Lynda in WordPress Essential Training. While your at it make a task 3 media folder in your Google submission folder.
– You get to decide how many posts you’re going to do for your portfolio based on your experiment. These posts need to cover (at minimum) your question, recipe, media you make and reflection.
– Your portfolio posts need to engage with ideas from readings and discussions.
– I will go through the criteria for task three next week, where we will look at each other’s blog posts and give feedback.

See you next week 🙂

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questions for week 6’s open lecture…

In response to the week 5 Silke Panse reading…

  1. What constitutes pure and impure film?
  2. What are some other examples of structural cinema?
  3. What is the impact of eco-aesthetics to an audience?
  4. Why do we feel anxious about stillness in moving images?
  5. What does Panse mean when she says “the airplane in the plane of immanence offers no line of flight (what Deleuze calls a way out). Nothing is transcended” (52)?
  6. Why can’t humans and nonhuman animals be considered “collective forces of moving maters” while water, sky and wind can?

 

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what we did: week four

This week in Seeing the Unseen we focused on workshopping the completion of Task Two along with wrapping up the first four weeks by linking back to documentary with Bettina Frankham’s A Poetic Approach to Documentary.

In our Wednesday workshop everyone worked in their Task Two pairs to think about the differences between what we notice when we experience a place and what we notice when we go in as filmmakers. As filmmakers we often notice the rhythms, colours, patterns and movements of places that differ from what we notice when we experience a place to do something – buy groceries, catch a train. We focus in on something which creates blind spots everywhere else.

In our second workshop we discussed week four’s reading by unpacking what a poetic approach to documentary is – opening spaces for interpretation because the glue between elements is left looser. We looked at this part of Koyaanisqatsi as an example of a non-narrative poetic documentary and Attenborough’s Galapagos Islands as a more explicit documentary. In Koyaanisqatsi we are asked to contemplate the visual quality of the images, whereas in Galapagos Islands the visuals explicate the voice-over for us, not giving us space for contemplation. We talked about how we’re tempted to make stories even though we’re not given them by the film itself.

In pairs we then unpacked some of the ideas Frankham introduces; relational aesthetics, categorical structure, mosaic structure, non-narrative, narrative and webdoc. The job here was to summarise how Frankham uses the idea, find two extra sources to help expand upon that idea, find an example of that idea and provide a question. The questions which came out these discussions were:

  • Would the conceptual artist consider the audience when creating relational art works?
  • How do we apply relational aesthetics in making documentary and can these documentaries be narrative?
  • Does category have to be explicit?
  • What is the purpose of a web documentary?
  • What kind of audience would a webdoc attract?
  • In mosaic structure how do we make connections so the audience can see the bigger picture?
  • Does non-narrative confuse audiences?
  • Can noticing be non-narrative?

These will definitely be some questions we respond to next week after we have made a narrative and non-narrative piece with our media that we collected as part of Task Two. So, as a way to understand through doing the task set at the end of the workshop was this Glueing together exercise, where each of you have to construct a narrative and non-narrative out of your raw documents collected in each other’s locations.

These two one minute videos are due in Week 5’s Thursday workshop.

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the glue between parts

In a poetic approach to documentary, the issue becomes one of finding the balance between offering a definitive, unquestionable single pathway at one extreme and presenting a loose collection of raw documents at the other – Frankham (145)

Based off the above quote from Bettina Frankham we will be doing an exercise based on how much glue we need between parts to make narrative and non-narrative nonfiction.

This exercise can be viewed here.

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week 4 in Seeing the Unseen

Today, you will be working on task two for Seeing the Unseen, where you will work closely with your pair with the media you have collected in each other’s locations. Please bring your media to class.

I will be going through the noticing, reflection and refining blog posts by showing you the rubric and marking sheet that I have now made available.

Tomorrow, we will be discussing the Bettina Frankham reading on poetic documentary and doing an exercise based on this reading with the media you have collected for task two. I will also be introducing you to some creative works which adopt a poetic approach to documentary.

 

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