In today’s studio we worked on our 100 video assignment. I have already completed my 100 videos so today’s class mainly consisted of me organizing my videos on Flickr, appropriately titling each one in order. We paired up and reviewed wheat each student was up to with three prompts.

Example : Rens Ontograph Cats

What do you think it does? (Is doing)
Although in its planning stages, I believe that Ren’s list about cats aims to teach its audience about cats, highlighting fine nuances about their physical facets.

List all the things it means?

Means cats and humans are very different in their genetic makeup. Cats are complex living things with many unique elements.

What else/other things could it be about?

Differences between cats and humans.

What makes a cat a cat.

Adrian gave me the name of a couple of artists so I can explore my topic further. I will be looking to either present my work in a different way e.g. one large video, Korsakov etc.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/130806214@N05/sets/72157652041704976/

Both studios this week focused on, as a group, getting on top of creating things. The aim of this week was to make it clear to all of us what the next assignment is asking us to do. Each member of the group needed a direction to go in for the 100 video task, so that they could begin creating as soon as possible.

Adrian gave a short introduction about the concept of facets to get us thinking about topics we could potentially explore. He discussed how all things have facets that make up what they are. These facets form networks and networks are the main thing we are interested in. This amusingly led into a conversation about whether unicorns and Jedi knights are real but it illustrated the point, that we have grown as a group to now be able to discuss the technicalities or ‘nitty gritty’ of what things are, a skill that had many of us confusingly looking in Adrian’s direction in the first few weeks of this semester.

We heard a number of group member’s ideas for the next assessment and enthusiastically discussed the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas, specifically in relation to the time frame we have. The focus was to have your idea take on one of three categories.  A field guide, letters from or a list. Ultimately after conversations about movement, Melbourne, mice and dogs each of us had either a direction to go in or the beginnings of an idea that we could now go away and think about. This was achieved by all of us figuring out what this assignment would be together, setting the constraints ourselves and working as a group despite it being an individual assessment.

Image source: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7177/6899274793_68dd3e1f31.jpg

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, or entire thesis.

3 quotes that interested me from Complexity, Flux, and Webs of Connection Reading

For the social relativist, nothing exists that cannot be explained through the machinations of human society – particularly the complex, evolutionary forms of culture and language.

“When then to make of “the world” or “the universe”? they are concepts human agents mobilize in an attempt to contain and explain things in a neat and tidy way.”

“Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) constitutes the primary purpose of the instruments. Radio telescopes listen to the sky, SETI collects and analyses the data in a hopeful search for electromagnetic transmission suggestive of extra-terrestrial life

UnStudio

With Adrian’s absence we set out to conduct our own studio. We began by asking each other questions on what we thought was an ontograph. Hearing other students views on what the meaning of this topic was interesting and allowed me to hear about the topic from another point of view. We chose to discuss the prompt “How do all things equally exist but yet do not exist equally”. We recorded each class members thoughts on the prompt and the results we quite different. Some saw the prompt as a comment on society while others argued it was stating common sense.

My response: All things equally exist but many of us place less importance on some things or even choose to ignore them all together.

Although not a great deal was accomplished in this studio it was a bonding time for us as a group and really helped us to get to know how each of us think.

Source: https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/7/005/091/18e/2279946.jpg