Tag Archives: i-docs

the finale hurdle – week 11

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this is it!!! we’re almost there. 11 weeks down and just a k-film to go. or so i thought. then this reading got thrown at us. it’s our last one. we were all hoping it would be a nice simple one. something enjoyable, easy to read. but of course it couldn’t be like that. oh no. it had to be evil. and by evil, i mean pure evil. devil worthy. mark pellegrino singing stairway to heaven 50 times over kinda evil.

let me begin by telling you that this reading is “concerned with the social praxis of documentary  in the sea of ubiquitous data that is both consequence ad driver of online social mediation”. let me then continue by saying that i have no idea whatsoever what that means. the article discusses the benefits of web 2.0, HTML5, regular documentaries, i-docs (remember i-docs? like back from week 1!), popcorn maker, and pretty much anything else, online, nonlinear or korsakow-y. so, in a sense, yes it is kind of like a conclusion to the theory from the semester. it’s just a very long, very painful one to get through.

we hear about the “industrial revolution of data” that is coming our way. everything we know about online information is changing and we can only imagine what it will look like in a number of years from now because you can guarantee that it won’t be the same. a big part of this article was the difference between “on the web” and “of the web”, the latter being the direction this revolution is taking us and our data. Dovey and Rose discuss the new ways that video can be seen and uploaded online, integrated within the page and consisting of links inwards and outwards rather than being situated separately within their own player. everything is joining together and becoming one with each other, forming an all mighty ‘online’ that pretty much has everything. the program called popcorn maker is mentioned which, like our lovely korsakow, allows users and creators to view and make interactive documentaries where films link into and out of each other or even to anywhere else on the web that may be relevant. as i’m sure we are supposed to be believing, this is the future the internet but also just of media and communication itself. korsakow again here. everything is connected by associations. link make the world go round. linear narrative doesn’t.

Participatory mode – database documentaries – week 3

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so, in my ever present abundance of work and readings and work and reading logs this week, i came across something from the cinema studies course that i felt very well attributes to what we’re doing over here in the study of Integrated Media. this was an excerpt from a somewhat lengthy book called the “introduction to documentary” by Bill Nichols about a specific tripe of documentary, the “participatory mode”. i have included the link below, hopefully you’ll be able to see it but you may not be able to without an RMIT login (although i doubt anyone reading this would be from outside RMIT anyhow so yay, readings for everyone!)

http://reader.eblib.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/(S(iywjtj5u3xlhsdp4xfuaglw1))/Reader.aspx?p=624329&o=116&u=JN9cOMM1ezwPTbqabsS80g%3d%3d&t=1395557139&h=594FCCE8182AEC8650EAF151775A781769D65091&s=11699655&ut=337&pg=1&r=img&c=-1&pat=n&cms=-1#

the book introduced something called “database documentaries” which seemed all too familiar to the “i-docs” which we read about in this course in week one. what the chapter discussed was how the participatory mode of documentary making sometimes extended beyond the interactions between the filmmaker and the subject of the film to being between the viewer and the film itself, thus making the audience a participant in the film, contributing to its structure and how it is viewed. this seems similar to the idea behind the korsakow films, where, as is mentioned in this book, the “viewer (is able) to chart a path through the spectrum of possibilities made possible by the filmmaker” and so each viewer, being a unique participant within the construction of the film, will have a unique experience of the film based on the choices they make and the paths which they follow.

it would seem that this new “participatory mode” or the database documentaries allow for a much richer viewing and storytelling experience, much like the korsakow films and the i-docs, which allow users to get what they want out of a film but also allow for potentially thousands of different ways to view one film, creating thousands of narrative possibilities. and it can only go up from here!