This reading sucked. Not only was it boring, it was, well sucky.
Like I get it, new technology now provides new ways to make documentaries that are about both changing and observing the world blah blah blah
And then there was other stuff that was confusing…
Plotting the Database
So basically you can’t have a database without first having an interface. Fair enough.
You need to use “entry points” to establish the plot, narrative, start and finishing points etc. Cool.
Missing narrative helps further narrative. Wow.
The way it’s presented is important- where the footage is placed and how creates meaning. Interesting.
Diagrammatic narratives are important to control the narrative, the even create hierarchies. Awesome.
Patterns, structure and content that relate help create links and meanings in the narrative. Wicked.
Something about fb being a major database where we share images and videos of our lives with an assumption of an audience and therefore create a narrative from our experiences. Neato.
This weeks reading was concerning editing in a narrative, simply stating it is a cut and paste task. I suppose it less of a ‘putting things together’, and more of a ‘taking things out’ approach, especially when relating this to Korsakow.
A couple of things I found interesting (mainly the highlighted sections… which is mainly what I read… which I think is all I had to read)
“Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason, and I want to say, no, it doesn’t”
I beg to differ David. I think that everything in a story happens for a reason, maybe I’m interpreting this wrong, but it is the author/director etc. that edit the narrative for their own specific reason- even at random it is still with the reason to be random.
“The main question collage artists face: you’ve found some interesting material, how do you go about arranging it”
This statement got me into a philosophical debate about the artist being humanity and the collage being life and so on, I suppose it is something we all do, arranging and rearranging our life schedules as films do with placing different shots in a different sequence order, designing which clip comes up after clicking another on my korsakow film.
Reference: Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print. (Extract, PDF.)
This reading was short, therefore had my attention. (Well at least the reading I chose)
Lists in literature “refuse the connecting powers of language“(40)
I often write shopping or to do lists on a daily basis in shorthand, confusing to someone who is unaware of the context
In saying that there is a “problem with lists” (40) I do feel as though someone is looking into lists being something more than they are, intact this person must have a pretty mundane life if they are analysing lists in the first place.
I was more interested with how it made me think about why and what we name things, like “lighthouse” which is rather literal but it made me play the name game with every object in my house.
Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University Press of Minnesota, 2012. Print. (PDF)
Fin
For this weeks reading I had to dig deep into the abyss to find my long lost lover, Film Art: An Introduction by the ever so square Bordwell and Thompson.
After blowing off the dust and settling in to a comfortable position, I braced myself with what was to come.
Here is what I want to talk about:
Narrative- “considered a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space” in general it is the story behind a film. Narrative can be linear or not, I mean lets think about Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) because that is definitely non-linear.
Most things tell stories, even our own lives a basically set as a narrative blah blah blah (so deep).
Documentaries- this supposed “truth” cinema, that present a “real” issue and seem unscripted and edited to give this sense of reality/real time. Documentaries have narratives I suppose, they tall a story, they inform through a sequence of events, cause and effect and all that.
Experimental films are fantastic. Watching them last year in Cinema Studies was a treat, they were all so weird and abstract. The shots were beautiful and there always seemed to be this focus on timing and patterns as opposed to telling a story or having “meaning”. They are simply “avant-garde” and if I say so myself, trés bien.
Fin.
Wow this was long.
I reckon an important part was:
the vision presented by Astruc contains three implicit conclusions, in addition to the overarching one, that I shall attempt to apply to the contemporary situation for audio-visual media:
1. New technology provides new means of expression. As a result of this the film medium (i.e. forms of audio-visual expression) develops from being exclusive and privileged to a common and publicly available form of expression.
2. This, in turn, opens space for a more democratic use of the medium.
3. It also opens up new possibilities for modern (contemporary) and different forms and usages (avant-garde).”
I suppose that Astruc’s ideas are important to look back on, even so far in the past as they give us some scale of change that has occurred since.
Fin.
Sørenssen, Bjørn. “Digital Video and Alexandre Astruc’s Caméra-Stylo: The New Avant-Garde in Documentary Realized?” Studies in Documentary Film 2.1 (2008): 47–59. EBSCOhost. Web. 19 Sept. 2013. (Get it while it’s hot.)
The Database as Symbolic Form
So this reading talked about the new media and the databases that are included within it.
I don’t really want to talk about it. I kind of read it with about half the effort I put in to sleeping when I am over tired. Whoops.
Therefore it went through one ear and out the other. I think it has something to do with words like ‘database’ and other technical terms that I tend to avoid.
But in the words of Miley “it’s my [blog] I can say what I want to”
sidenote: readings should be shorter.
Manovich, Lev. “Database as Symbolic Form”. Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow. Vesna, Victoria, ed. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2007. Print. 39-60. (PDF)
Readings, readings, readings. Every week. For more than one subject, it’s driving me insane. I say that we choose our own readings and then write them with some sort of link to the class (maybe then people would actually do it and we wouldn’t have this whole punishment thing)
Anyway, what I got from this one was about how products for niche markets are becoming increasingly popular, and making other products similar to it, also become more popular, with that whole “if you like this, then you should check out these:”
I see it all the time when I online shop:
It’s smart. Cause obviously I want to match my new clothes with a cool jacket and shoes, and the website wants to make more money. Then ofcourse you get the weekly personalised emails informing you there is a sale and often showing clothes similar to the ones you have bought- all because they know your style. Then it becomes this vicious circle where I keep buying clothes and the website gets more money until my savings account is drained and I will need to move back to New Zealand into my parents house.
Went on a tangent but oh well.
Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.” Wired. Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Aug. 2013. (PDF)
When I began this reading, I started off very reluctant to finish it, procrastinating with cleaning my apartment and every time I would sit down at my desk to begin reading the same sentence over and over again I just got frustrated.
Although this morning I feel like I have made a good effort, in fact I even enjoyed this reading. Perhaps I am still sick?
Anyway, the reading talked about science and the modern world we live in today (well generally, and that’s what I think anyway) I thought it was interesting how it talked about people who worked in specialist scientific areas were losing the means to continue working in their areas in order to create new products, that could potentially help mankind. These devices and inventions that scientists have created that have benefits and have “extended man’s physical powers” however has created these specialised industries and skills that people need to acquire in order to improve or progress in society.
Do I agree that science and new technological inventions will create progress that is beneficial in society?
Personally I am quite skeptical, I mean I do agree that inventions, such as the internet and computers in general have changed the world. Not necessarily for the better, but it has created this incredible way to communicate and store information. It also has the ability to be just as destructive as it is beneficial. I was reluctant to get Facebook and the only reason I did was to keep in contact with friends and family back in New Zealand. Otherwise I see no real use for it (including other social media), except more time wasted online when I could be doing something physically proactive. More time today is spent in front of a computer (well at least for me) and I do feel guilty, unproductive and well increasingly undeveloped apposed to the internet supposedly created to develop society.
Do I believe that “specialisation becomes increasingly necessary for progress” in general? Yes. Yes I do.
Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (PDF)