How can we use new media forms to correlate a poetic list of individual fragments in a non-narrative way?

The question was formed through our shared interest and passion to try and avoid our need to ‘storify’ (Weidle 2016, pg 122) and the pull of ‘literary linearity’  (Weidle 2016,  pg 112). However, in the early stages of planning and brainstorming, that desire seemed possibly too broad, and we struggled to initially narrow it down to something we could execute.

After fleshing out the concept and question further, we as a group decided that Tumblr was the new media platform that suited our idea the best, and has equally facilitated and helped create some of the most successful aspects of our artefact, as well as the least successful aspects in my eyes. Allow me to elaborate.

The way Tumblr as a platform allows to connect pieces through tagging has made our artefact turn out even better than I could have imagined. Even in the early stages of our brainstorming, we really wanted to encourage the viewer to feel as if they had power in the choices they made whilst interacting with our work, whether that be indirectly through their scrolling in the preset relatively random layout (which after some helpful feedback in the pitching stage of our artefact expanded its column numbers, allowing for more power in choice through what your eyes chose to follow), but also through some more deliberate options of moving through the artefact, which is were the tagging came in. We wanted the viewer’s journey through the work to feel unique to them, and the tags allowed us to encourage the audience to explore the content in whatever way they felt compelled to. This process was inspired by Hannah Brasier’s Sometimes I See Palm Trees, in which Brasier groups these 6-second videos through tags, and allows the viewer to make their own choice on where to go next. However, unlike Sometimes I See Palm Trees, we wanted there to be an impassive way that promoted the affordances and traditions of new media content, and allow for (relatively) mindless scrolling, if the viewer chooses to do so.

Whilst I think the layout and tagging worked in our favour for the work, some of Tumblr’s presentation constraints hindered the overall flow of the artefact, leading to what I believe is our least successful aspects. Videos on Tumblr pages do not autoplay, which means a viewer might not engage with the video beyond the thumbnail, and miss content. Furthermore, portrait videos are not displayed like portrait images, and have ugly black bars to the side, severely shrinking the videos they harbour. Although once video’s start playing, they do loop and play alongside others, these presentation issues do hinder the flow of the artefact. Furthermore, we have had issues with the platform in the past flagging content as inappropriate when it was not, so there’s potential for complications in the future.

However, I think we ended up having a really incredible selection of diverse content, with plenty of pathways already within the exploration of tags, as well as when scrolling. We worked really hard to separate similar image ideas as much as we could, hoping that every full-frame of content was different and engaging. Like Manovich stated in his reading, we wanted our new media content to feel like a collection rather than a story (2001, pg 221), and I think the idea of longing, at least to me, is conveyed nicely through the ambiguity, and will hopefully allow a viewer to feel and engage with their emotions in their own ways through interacting with the over 80+ pieces of content available.

Unavaliable

Overall, I’ve learnt that the process of making and engaging with new media and poetic lists media is so fluid, there is no rigid conformity to it. When we as a group set out to make our content and then later tag each other’s, there were only rough guidelines (no more than 10 seconds in length, 6 – 10 tags, etc), allowing for our creativity and emotions to guide the experience, which I think results in really open-ended results. Furthermore, my newfound understanding of the fluidity of the poetic list has had me noticing them throughout all types of media that I never would have expected to see them before this assignment  (which is evident in how much I bring up the Charli XCX forever [music video]). 

Furthermore, poetic lists are inclusive in that sense, as their openness allows for all different types of content. A poetic list can be narrative in nature, but also facilitates non-narrative works, which is something that traditional narrative structure doesn’t allow for. It allows for really inspiring and interesting work to be made, and I can’t wait to see how people interact with ours!

Reflection References

Brasier, H., 2018, Sometimes I See Palm Trees,

Manovich, L., 2001. ‘The Database’ in The Language of New Media. The MIT Press, Cambridge. pp. 218-243.

Weidle, F., 2016. Korsakow Perspective(s): Rethinking Documentary Knowledge in Digital Multilinear Environments. (Links to an external site.) VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 5, 110–123.

XCX, C., 2020. Charli XCX – Forever [Official Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbJE-KVZvTA

The rough cut of our Assignment 4 artefact is almost like a small sample of what our Tumblr blog is going to be, with each person uploading one of each style of content we will have on our blog, that being one archival video and image, and one new video and image. This results in a total of 16 pieces of content, which is roughly just over a quarter of the total content our blog will have by its completion.

Here is a sample image of the blog and a link!

Despite the world idea that Zimmerman and Kaplan have posed about the world of only close-ups in with a digital filter and “ariel long shots” from drones (2020), we as a group have been able to reach that elusive mid-shot through incorporating isolated home shooting and archival footage, creating this sense of longing through powerful imagery. I think one of our biggest strengths in this rough cut is how powerful the content can be emotionally, both in the sense of longing for the days of yonder with archival footage, but especially with the eeriness and missingness of newly shot content, and how each frame feels like its missing something crucial; life.

I thin group member Adele’s photograph of a painted sun (pictured above) is an amazing example of that, as it blends that line of hope and despair really nicely, making at least me long for a more open world for the children living right now.

However, while I do really like the indirect power of choice the columns in our Tumblr layout provide, especially with the feedback from the class to up the number of them to three from two, I think our least successful aspect is not encouraging enough choice. While I think the tagging in the coming days will promote this deliberate choice further, we got some great feedback from Chelsea to consider finding a layout that allows for columns as well as a small panel on the side that highlights either our most used or chosen tags, with the power to lead off to pages filled with numerous entries from other Tumblr users who have tagged their own posts with those terms. This could also extend the infinite nature of our artefact, as well as utilising more aspects of the new media format.

A big thank-you to everyone to both Hannah and the class for the helpful and insightful feedback, can’t wait to see how it evolves our project!

Reflection References

Zimmermann, P., Kaplan, C., 2020. Coronavirus Drone Genres: Spectacles of Distance and Melancholia. Film Quarterly Quorum.

Throughout both Infinite Lists and Seeing the Unseen v2, one of the biggest themes/ideas that has permeated how I make and think about film is this idea of “informed noticing” (Brasier2018, pg. 67). Hannah talks about noticing these unnoticed and unseen patterns or similarities in the world around us (Brasier 2018, pg. 67), and while I do apply my ‘informed noticing’ in that regard, I feel like my mind is more focused in noticing grander themes in the frame, in scale, not importance. For example, recently I’ve been fascinated by how emotive a frame can be, especially when there really isn’t any explicit or intended narrative to it. Just how a moving image makes you feel, and I am so happy that we as a group in this upcoming assignment are all interested in this idea. I feel like this attention to noticing any and all aspects of a frame makes me so much of a more attentive and engaged filmmaker, whether its in areas of experimentation or not.

So for our creative test this week, we decided to make/repurpose clips of things that evoked feeling and emotion from us, and while following some constraints, seeing how all four of our different minds worked alongside our prompt;  How can we use new media forms to correlate a poetic list of individual fragments in a non-narrative way?

Even though we spoke about the ideas we wanted to explore within the prompt, its so interesting to see how varied each of our creative tests are. Each person had their own unique take on longing, and in this current stage, that’s so exciting. Mine are towards the end middle, with the picnic, party and layered concert videos. Im really proud of how still and seemingly lifeless the two original clips are, and how they feel really sad to me. I had a lot of fun playing around with colour too, especially with the picnic scene. I added both a cold and warm grade, and would love to know which you the reader like better. I think going forward, we might need to close in on a specific style a bit more, as these are all so vastly different, but I would still really like to keep the variety to some degree.

Brasier, H., 2018. ‘List,’ in: Attunings: Multilinear Ways of Thinking About, Making With and Sensing the World (Links to an external site.). RMIT University, Melbourne, pp. 52–67.

Treske’s reading discusses the everyday nature of video, how it has become one of the most universal mediums ever, with its ability to define and expose our emotions (2015,  18). “The beauty of video is that it is uncontrolled and unstructured, it does not underline a system of narrative dictatorship” (Treske 2015, pg. 19). I really like this quote because I feel it truly sums up how our group wants to explore the idea of a narrativeless artefact for our Assignment 4 submission. This idea that video, specifically new media and online video, has no hard or fast restrictions or boundaries, you capture what you want and use it to express your intentions, you don’t need to flesh it out like in words, it can be as simple and bare as you choose, allowing a viewer to decide what they want of it without any narrative ‘dictator’.

McVeigh speaks to a similar degree about how new media and video changes the way we think about narrative. They speak about factors “affecting the changing nature of narrative” in new media is “the nature of the text itself” (McVeigh 2011, pg. 78). While this quote does not directly apply to video, it speaks again to this idea that new media is forever changing the narrative landscape, even to the point where there is no narrative, no intended story, its just raw emotion and feeling embodied by video.

A creative work that accompanied these ideas and influenced by contribution to both the presentation pitch we had on Wednesday, as well as our overall idea formation and development, is Charli XCX’s music video for her song Forever. Made during this quarantine, the video is compiled by user-submitted content under prompts such as people/places/thing that you cherish. It culminated into this montage of emotion and feeling, as the clips really don’t say anything narratively, or connect that smoothly. We want to create the same feeling of drawing emotion out from the viewer, purely based on what they see. We won’t be using an absolute bop to aid with that as she has though.

Reflection References

McVeigh, K., 2011. Making the connection: Lev Manovich’sTexasand the challenges of interactive new media narrative. Digital Creativity, 22(2), pp.78-90.

Treske, A., 2015. Static-Ocean Blue, in: Video Theory: Online Video Aesthetics or the Afterlife of Video (Links to an external site.), Media Studies. Transcript-Verl, Bielefeld, pp. 11–24.

Creative Reference

XCX, C., 2020. Charli XCX – Forever [Official Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbJE-KVZvTA

Throughout my time at university, pretty much since I finished my first studio class “Seeing the Unseen V2”, I have been fascinated with my innate need to ‘storify’ (Weidle 2016, pg 122). While I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, as I love engaging with and creating traditional narrative content, and find the practice of thinking in the form of story helpful to my process, I am fascinated by my desire to, and why it’s so hard to break away from it when making experimental and non-narrative content. Weidle talks about how ‘literary linearity’ has left an undeniable mark on the creative industry (2016,  pg 112), making it so hard to approach thinking in the opposite manner, but I wonder what it is that makes people so unaccepting to the practice. Is it fear of the unknown? if it ain’t broke, why change it? I have no answers, and while I am here to embrace non-linear storyless content, based purely off feeling and enjoyment than meaning something directly, I think this battle for the need to make every a story is fascinating.

During the early stages of brainstorming and planning for Assignment 4, Adele, Galih, Meg and I have been exploring moving away from traditional narrative, with a relatively strong idea of interactively exploring feelings and sensations and the links between them, such as how an audience member weaves their way between these in their own unique way.

Our ‘logline’ for the work is:

How can we use new media forms to correlate a poetic list of individual fragments in a non-narrative way?

Above is some of the brainstorming we have been doing throughout this past week, getting us feeling a lot more comfortable for the upcoming pitch. I’m excited for the coming weeks to see how we further explore the medium of new-media, non linear, storyless, poetic gathering content (quite a mouthful, but an exciting one at that!).

Reflection References

Weidle, F., 2016. Korsakow Perspective(s): Rethinking Documentary Knowledge in Digital Multilinear Environments. (Links to an external site.) VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 5, 110–123.