Reflecting on the Infinite Lists studio as a whole, I feel like I’ve gained a significantly greater understanding of how both new media and poetic pieces not only work, but how they can be engaged with. For Adele, Galih, Meg and I’s final artefact for the studio ‘Unavailable’, we wanted to create an experience in which the viewer progressed through our library of video and image content, making their own personal choices on what to impressively and intentionally engage with, possibly evoking a sense of longing or missingness as they did so. While we intentionally hinted at two possible ways a viewer could interact with our work at the start of the Tumblr (suggesting that they either scroll or click into the frames), we have no real preferred way for someone to interact or engage with our artefact.

Personally, I would like to think that someone clicked straight onto the first video or image that caught their attention, and proceeded to pass across content using the tags, however, I feel like the average viewer would mindlessly scroll, as that is one of the affordances in the ease of online new media. I do not see this as a bad thing though, as I am proud of the way our column layout facilitates the potential for at least 3 different viewing experiences, with dozens occurring if their attention swapes between the lanes as the scroll.

I think we as a group could easily and effectively continue Unavailable in its current form extremely easily and efficiently, as the Tumblr format invites adding additional content. We could very easily keep filming and tagging new works that we feel evoke that sense of longing and missingness, and potentially infinitely continue the blog, which I am really proud of as it pretty much embodies the title of the course, we would be infinitely listing.

If we had to transform Unavailable into a different style/form, I think an art installation would work best at replicating the experience. The exhibit could have three lanes that allow an audience member to change between at intervals, with screens on the walls displayed a rotating selection of the few videos and images we displayed. There would also be headphones attached to each screen, to evoke the sense of deliberate power in choice of what you engage with, so you could choose to further engage with the sound design. This would contrast nicely with the sensation of walking directly down the lanes representing the act of impressively scrolling on the web page. Furthermore, having all the sound be accessed through a deliberate use of headphones would not only encourage people to engage with content on a further level, but allow for the exhibition itself to be silent, bolstering that sense of longing and missingness further than with the Tumblr we have now.

Reflecting on Stories of Ennui by Chelsea, Delena and Leanna, I think their artefact as an exquisite corpse evokes a sense of freedom (and restraint in contrast) through its pacing and colour. Viewing the piece on Instagram plays to the affordances of new media work, as it allows each video to be viewed as much or as little as the audience member wants, creating their own pacing. Furthermore, I personally love their colour grading throughout, it creates this sense of nostalgia in certain moments and emptiness in others, both working to either bolster the feeling of freedom or restraint in each.

In Overwhelmed by Jack, Joeseph and Rachel, I think they did an excellent job at making you feel overwhelmed, both by the sheer amount of content they have across 4 different new media platforms, but also in how the presented the content. The YouTube video might be my personal favourite, as the combination and paring of visuals and audio both bolster that overall feeling, As you watch a sink slowly start to fill up to the point of overflowing, along with chaotic miscellaneous sound effect underneath as everything builds, I would argue that its impossible not to feel overwhelmed! Even on their Tumblr which only has two posts, you can see the thought and effort that has gone into the formatting to create that feeling.

Reflecting on Demagogues, Doubters and Douchebags, it was interesting to see how much power the tone and content of a voice-over had over the sensations and context of the video they accompanied. Initially speaking about how Robert Drew called voice-over a sign of failure, I enjoyed the journey in how they debunked that statement and showed the influence the practice contained, specifically in the studio’s final assignment, in which they were tasked in overlaying three different types of voice-over onto the same clip. The first that stood out to be were Ria Pflaum’s experiment with the Disney footage, and how different informational/documentary-style audio made the footage feel in comparison to reading out tweets from a Disney shareholder. Another that I felt was really effective in showing that difference was Isabel O’Riain’s, and the extreme contrast in something like an ASMR overlay in comparison to an influencer’s vlog audio.

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.

Manovich’s understanding of the internet and all it’s infinite (pun intended) possibilities really excited me going into this week’s artefact experiment. The idea of infinity comes back to anything on the web never truly having a finished state, as websites and content can always be uploaded and updated, resulting in ‘a collection, not a story’ (Manovich 2001, pg 221). I also really appreciated thinking about infinite list content as something that can be isolated and still have meaning. Granted, it would be different to that of the work in its collective state, but this idea of each fragment standing tall on its own, with viewers constructing their own narrative based on the works they find in the database (Manovich 2001, pg 237) a super fascinating prospect.

Thinking – an Infinite List by Meg Dolphin and James Heywood

Meg and I decided to use Tumblr as the format for our infinite list experiment because we both appreciate the variety and freedom the platform allowed for in the form of mediums. This meant we could use sound, gif, text, image and video to create our work, which allowed for a varied piece.  We experimented with this idea of daydreaming, which was helpfully suggested by Hannah, allowing us to explore the ideas of place and the theme of blue that we originally thought out to explore. I also took on Chelsea’s advice from my explosive list experiment, and whipped out the tripod, as all my filming was done at home, which allowed me to greater explore stillness and subtle movements within my frames.

I think we did a good job at creating an artefact that when compiled together, serve a greater purpose, whilst still presenting an idea when isolated, like what Manovich speaks about. We then added tags to each post to further the expansiveness, allowing you to delve into all the other posts that are tagged the same way, creating this sense of infinity that bolstered my original idea and understanding of web-based content and storytelling having no pre-determined end. A truly infinite list of things.

Reflection References

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

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Bogost said about meanwhile being an extremely powerful tool in the world of ontography (2012, pg. 50). It reminded me of the “yes, and” concept when I studied drama in high school, always prompting something further. It has also been my preferred way of exploring the possibilities of an explosive list, relating back to this practice of noticing,  and being able to ‘draw attention to the countless things that litter our world unseen’ (Bogost 2012, pg. 51).

My rough mindset going into making my explosive experiment was to present the meanwhile, in my neighbourhood right now, and contrast its quietness and stillness with a constructed soundscape similar to that of when we are not in a pandemic, eg: bustling.  This juxtaposition would challenge you to think about what aspect felt more peaceful and calm.

But I feel like that mindset shifted slightly, as I began to notice aspects in my footage I did not necessarily intend, and pieced together a further explosion, meanwhile, within my frame.  While I am not too terribly happy with the quality of the footage gathered overall (it felt selfish to go out with a tripod and camera during quarantine, so I just used my phone and a water bottle to prop it up whilst on an isolated walk, so it’s kinda grainy and pretty bland pre colour correction), I did find I noticed a lot more exploded elements within the shots. I noticed that nature and animals were really dominant within the focus. They aren’t directly affected by the pandemic, as they get to go around their routines of blowing in the wind or grooming, and that felt kind of beautiful.

I took Conor’s feedback and played around with consistency, and chose to make all the shots 10 seconds each to give the piece a more structured flow. I also wanted to incorporate music, but couldn’t find anything under creative commons that fit, but did find something that wasn’t that I can’t use for my official submission, which is a bummer but understandable. If you want to check it out, it’s embedded below as a lil extra! If you do watch it, let me know which version you like more and why 🙂

Reflection References

Bogost, I., 2012. ‘Ontography’ in Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 50-59.

Video References

Sound Effects from BBC Sound Library

• Cars passing on open road – tranquil cicadas and distant birds — – disturbed by occasional cars passing at speed.
• Group of young people walking in park, with some voices.

Lady Fingers – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass