Category Archives: Integrated Media 1

Week 03: Gaze

This week I watched the k-film Gaze which I found on the Korsakow website’s showcase section. 

The film is about how we encounter strangers in our day to lives, without ever knowing their story or their experience of the world. There are twenty fragments to this piece. Many of these fragments have internal-monologue-like voiceovers of the male strangers who see a woman walking through the city. The content of their discussion seems to provide an insight into the predominant ‘male gaze’ with is ripe with desire and objectification.

I like how you can select either a low, medium or high quality viewing of the k-film, as this means that if you have a slow internet connection, you’re not penalised. However, what I found interesting was that this is the first k-film I have seen which stitches together its video fragments with cross-fade photographs as opposed to videos.

All of the fragments have been edited to black and white, with the exception of spot colour on the lips and scarf of the main protagonist: a woman who is seen walking through the city.

Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 4.49.06 pm

Each time you click the red woman, you are given a viewing window of her with three preview windows on the right hand side showing three men’s faces you can choose from. When you select one of these, it takes you to an interface with a viewing window and two previews below, and eventually one of these previews becomes the girl. When you click on her it takes you back to the original interface. It goes through this cycle about three times until finally you arrive at an end SNU of the girl finally talking and giving her perspective of how she is perceived by strangers.

Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 4.50.21 pm

The feeling of the film becomes quite eerie as you get deeper in to it. There is a background track which plays the entirety of the time you are in the k-film, which also adds to the somewhat sombre mood.  The footage comes across as almost obsessive, and I found myself starting to feel sorry and sympathise with the girl after each clip. I think the filmmakers have made a very effective piece which highlights problems with femininity in our society, and the inescapable reality of voyeurism.

Week 03: The power-plays behind definitions

This week, following the concept of definitions and taxonomies discussed in symposium 02,  I had a conversation with my friend about the politics of definitions. These are some of the things we said:

There is always someone, or a group of people, who choose what a definition is.

For everything that gets included in a definition, there is something that is excluded.

Maybe it’s dangerous for us to always categories things to fit perfectly into clear-cut definitions. The fast-paced world we live in is fluid by nature – things are always changing. Definitions can be counter productive and restrict these changes and innovations.

I like taxonomies because they have boundaries and let me know how to think about something.

Adrian mentioned in the lecture that definitions and taxonomies are always problematic. It it not always the case that things can be pigeon-holed in the way that definitions demand. Adrian says that taxonomies are artificial, because the probabilistic world we live in is not a binary world that can be classified into black and white. Even though humans have an inherent need to coral and domesticate things in order to make sense out of them, perhaps definitions are not the most productive way to go about this.

(Image via flickr)

 

Week 03: Reflections

In this week’s symposium we had a big chat about taxonomies and definitions, which inspired me to write this post about the politics of definitions.  Adrian pointed out the danger of categorising things too much and thinking everything fits perfectly, when the reality is that we live in a fluid environment. As such, definitions can turn out to be counter productive, and instead we should embrace the possibilities of new technologies and what this means for different art forms. Apparently students and academics tend to like taxonomies because they have boundaries (and I can definitely agree with this – so can my borderline perfectionism…).

Adrian really encouraged us to think more about what our work can do, then worry about how it’s classified or defined later. I still find this a little problematic because I see this as giving away your agency as a filmmaker. What about authorial intention? Do others just suddenly get to decide instead of you? Although I’m starting to learn that perhaps this is something I’m definitely going to have to let go of during the IM1 course (and maybe in life as well). From a young age we are taught to search for meaning first and foremost, which has led us to forget to think about what something can do. However, Adrian, Seth, and the IM1 course are trying to get us to step back and look at content from a different perspective.

We then moved on to talk about participatory documentaries, and how filmmakers approach things like attribution, copyright and intellectual property. Adrian explained that a lot of us think as if this is a radically new thing, when in reality this has been happening for many years – think about all of the data mining and analytics on sites like Google, YouTube, and Facebook. As online users, most of us give away our rights with the click of an agree button on the terms and conditions.

As media students, we are learning to use technologies to represent and construct reality in new and meaningful ways. There are no formulas/recipes/rules that we can follow to achieve success, but we must look at each project (and each platform) individually and specifically. They are always different.

The last question of the symposium was about a concept raised in the week 02 readings: the 90-9-1 principle as cited by Jacob Neilsen in 2006. This suggests that there is a participation inequality on the internet with only 1% of people creating content. 9% editing, modifying and remixing this content, and 90% who view this content without actively contributing. I wonder how those figures have changed since 2006 and what they would look like in 2014.

(Image via flickr)

Week 02: Troubleshooting

This week I set up my mediafactory blog and began learning how to navigate WordPress (having only used it a handful of times before). I also set up a vimeo account in order to start filming my constraints. I faced a number of challenges learning about codecs for the first time (as Korsakow requires clips to be h264 in order to run). I also had to learn a bit more about compressions, as my files were very large owing to the fact I filmed them on my DSLR camera. I did this by performing some google searches and speaking to a friend of mine who studies filmmaking.

I began thinking about the relationship between iPhoto, iMovie, Vimeo, and Media Factory, as my clips went through the processes of being shot, uploaded, sometimes edited, published online, then embedded into a blog post. Additionally, I joined the Korsakow Facebook group and began reading more widely about the software and what it can be used for.

I also sought out my first interactive documentary to watch and review. I found that many were easy to find through simple google searches, and through some links I found on previous IM1 blogs. I am now building up a list of these films to watch and review.