Sam on narrative, language, seduction, flow. Zoe on bots writing news stories, gaps, media specific criticism.

Mardy on hammer’s ingredients of f%%$$# Hollywood. Bec’s notes, though still confused about narrative (not everything is a story, not everything that has cause and effect is a story, but if you don’t have cause and effect, you don’t have a story). Carl, with notes on intent and senders and receivers and a grab from The Whale Hunt. Torika with notes, the flirting comment made sense apparently.

Not symposium, but Ella appreciates Tiana’s observation that Korsakow is a system for trying new ways to use video. (yep.)

Sharona single points for the questions discussed. Kylie with brief notes. Tiana on stories, closure, telling it well, and more hammers. Edward on hammers, cause and effect, us as centres, while Imogen also notes the subjective voice and the importance of the engagement with an audience as who is explicitly addressed by the essay film.

Ella took away Jasmine’s outstanding comment about seeing with alien eyes. It really was a great observation, memory, and idea. Mardy has notes, as does Bec, Sharona. Carl has dot points that do a good job of listing the salient points. Torika worries about art, and, well, why. Good worries to have, but right now I think it’s worth learning how, then doing, and then thinking why. Worrying about the why before you learn to do something risks deciding before knowing. Brenton has a good summary of form and how documentary addresses the world.

Emily on thumbnail points from the questions. Sam discusses, positively, Thalhofer’s The and the Greeks example that was touched upon. Troy muses about what experimental films might offer, and I’d suggest more broadly being able to develop ways of ‘experimenting’ – however that might be – is a simple and valuable way to develop a creative practice (it is hard to be genuinely creative if a return on investment is the primary motivating factor to what you do). Tony has a well considered post about interpretation and the experimental, and nicely considers that in a Korsakow film is a way to build different things from the same footage.

Yeah, let’s begin with a whinge. Tuesday, teaching and meetings from 10:30 to 5:15. Wednesday, only time to teach, today should be my research day (a day spent writing, editing, reading) but instead am catching up here, doing admin. Tomorrow, meetings and additional teaching from 11:00 to 4:30 when I have to head home. So I jump in to my RSS feed for integrated to find 435 unread blog posts. (wipes brow.)

So, some catch up.

Bec notes around taxonomies that rather than work from a definition, make what you want to make and let someone else worry about what it is – or isn’t. Documentary is also about having something to say, and saying it. Mardy has very good notes, and yes, define things by what they can do, not what they mean. Gina notes that taxonomies are useful, but perhaps don’t misjudge this for what things are (something I’d certainly agree with). Torika picks up the point that taxonomies make the world seem discrete but in reality there is always and for ever variation between things, so what comes to be in one box rather than another is both arbitrary, and therefore informed by (pick: politics, power, ideology, etc). Ali notes the role of power in classification, and uses this to also think about Habermas, YouTube, Sørenssen, the public sphere and taxonomies. Sam adroitly notes the point that taxonomies are about trying to define and classify a world that, in actuality, is not the same thing as how we define and taxonomise it. Brenton sees that taxonomies create boundaries, which can cause stereotypes, whereas we might want to begin from the premise that everything is different in itself, not similar. Not sure Brenton realises how radical a proposition that is, but it is at the heart of recent work in what we call the ‘post humanities’. Laura has some notes, worth checking, ditto Koston… Tiana seems to have picked up the point about entanglement, also provides a good thing of what was described as the ‘linguistic error’ or ‘semiotic error’ where we think language is all there is and exhausts all that can be or is. We are trained to jump straight past the thing in itself (experience, reaction, object, event) to what it means, to its description or analysis. But what things do, and what we can do, is not the same thing as what they mean, or might mean (what that mosquito means for me is quite different to what I ‘mean’ for it, let alone what it means for my blood).