Tag Archives: reading

Week 6 Reading Media 1

An interesting point to this reading was the fact that digital interactive documentaries are limited as much as they are innovated by technological advances. In this way works become outdated and not accessible anymore as online languages change.

Another point is that Korsakow stories are “contemplative, interpretive and explorative” rather than “propulsive.”

I would argue that Adrian Miles and the writer are wrong, and that even linear narratives are experience based, not only information based. I also think they’re rather interpretive works.

“Works that challenge easy consumption of ideas…” Does this statement infer that all works that are difficult to understand are challenging the easy consumption of ideas. And what is wrong with this easy consumption of ideas, what is wrong with clarity and transparency? Even metaphor and symbolism are easier ideas to consume (for example in literature) than many ideas represented in Korsakow works. The ideas are ambiguous. Difficult and potentially not even there, and therefor audience-constructed.

My thoughts on the Bordwell reading

Thoughts on the Bordwell reading, I was Well Bored. Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha. But no it was actually quite interesting and got me thinking about my own creative practises.

Of the different forms of film covered in the reading, experimental, abstract, associative, categorical documentary and rhetorical documentary, which will I concentrate on in my documentary? Abstract aesthetics, conceptual or visual connections, will I make an argument or will I simply categorize my film? And how do abstract film and associational film fit into the sphere of documentaries?

The Korsakow films I looked at were categorical and associational. The associations had to be made by the viewer, this was the interactive element of the documentary, but the selection of clips that each main clip lead to was carefully selected by the maker, so that the viewer would draw connections, and thus it is a categorical and associational documentary.

So documentary can involve more than one element. I really like the idea of making aesthetic and conceptual associations using a categorical documentary form. I think I would prefer to leave it up to the viewer to interpret meaning rather than make an explicit argument.

The new avant-garde in documentary realized?

The third reading was about how technological advances in media change the ways that media is used and functions within the public sphere.

I would like to go into my own thoughts on this. As much as technology creates possibilities, it always has limitations. As discussed in this weeks class, photographs are constrained by their lack of time. In a less clear way film is limited because it is difficult to negate a point of view. It is easy to show what is, but not what is not.

There’s also the fact that the limitations that create opportunity or enhance creativity. By asking, What can it do? you can really utilise the creativity and possibilities of a media form. Particularly with digital where the answers to ‘what can it do?’ are become more and more vast.

The invention and development of digital technologies in particular has expended the possibilities within media phenomenally in the past decade. It has also made the technology to create and produce content available and easily accessible to the masses. The public sphere connects in social online networks and create and share content. For example the platform Instagram allows users to share their photography withe the world and is used by millions of people.

However this also has its drawbacks when lines are blurred between what is valuable and what isn’t. What is art and what isn’t. Time magazine used Instagram to document Hurricane Sandy and Jeanette Hagglund uses Instagram to create stunning architectural photos, but 90% of the population are using Instagram to take photos of food or their cats, like me.

 

Miley Cyrus, Charles Manson and Rich get Richer

Overall, I found the reading, Rich get Richer, boring, repetitive and more technical than it aught to have been. Barbarasi spent a lot of words reiterating that: 1, networks grow (apparently this was some sort of revelation), and 2, the nodes of the network have a power structure.

What is this supposed to teach us? It is obvious from observation that networks grow. Even Charles Manson’s cult started with a few members or nodes, then attracted a few more, then a few more, a few died in mass suicide incidents and somehow, due to this preferential attachment of international interest they are replaced by more new members.

It is the same in all networks. I’m struggling to think of a network that doesn’t grow and evolve in a number of ways, except unsuccessful networks or those that once grew and are now waning.

The power structure of these is a little more interesting than the rather unsurprising nature of network growth. Online in the modern world, preferential attachment is a huge power play between the big corporations on the net battling for clicks, and the occasional little guy who manages to get an adorable video of his cat doing something hilarious. These days big corporations will pay some little guy and his cat to do something adorable and hilarious, just to get page views. And the more views that guy gets, the more new nodes are created that link to that node, and his brand becomes more popular and the rest of his nodes become more linked to as well.

It’s like high school all over again. Vying for schoolyard popularity on the big bad net. Using hashtags, commenting on popular sites, talking up the big topics on Twitter, all these things are examples of people fighting to work their way up in the unendingly massive network of power play that is the internet.

How can we use this knowledge of preferential attachment and power laws in order to get to the top of our desired network hubs? That’s the important question here, and the one that everyone is trying to get to the bottom of. Understanding the problem with Barbarasi’s scientific explanation of power plays changes my view of the game but I always knew the game was there.

At the moment rising to the top of a networking hub is pinnacle to the ongoing development of any kind of online presence, and it is what most money making endeavors and ambitious creative projects and hopeful writers/photographers/Youtube sensations aspire to. In order to be well known, you need to be well known online.

So, how do you get there? How do you rise to the top. If you want to follow Barbarasi’s equations, get in early. Create something that a lot of other people are going to want to link to. In his examples he stated that a new node will automatically and naturally be attached to two other nodes, manually attach it to more. This would be known as spamming. Something that Barbarasi doesn’t account for. He talks about quantity but what about quality. He completely neglects to mention that the quality, content and originality of the link is going to be the reason that new nodes are created in relation to it.

That’s where Miley Cyrus is a genius at creating online hype. Over the past year she rose to the top of online power play. Countless Tweets, Facebook statuses, news articles, opinionated blog posts and snide Youtube comments were posted about Miley Cyrus-both negative and positive nodes. Either way her name sky rocketed to the top of the online network by being the topic of countless nodes.

This is one method of self promotion online, creating controversy, and perhaps one that is only suited to a person hoping to sell records through a wild and unconforming image.

For creating a well known professional online presense, the answer would be to create original and relevant industry content, and as Barbarasi’s findings teach us, post it fast and link it to the source of interest early to boost the preferential attachment to your nodes. (Nodes is a terrible word, online texts would be a much better way to put it in this context.) The amount of links attached to your online texts would then cause your personal and professional brand’s status to climb the online power ladder.

On design fiction- my first impression

So, design fiction. Who knew that was a thing?

I’ve contemplated what the future will look like, both online and off. What new things will exist, how will they impact the world and how will it all impact me-particularly in the work force?

I mean, the iPhone didn’t exist until just seven years ago and look at us now!

I really think it’s interesting that, as Matthew Ward pointed out in this article,  everything that we create now, is not for now. It is for the future. The plans that we have for our ideas are all fictional, until they either do or don’t come into reality. If an idea actualises, it will be seen, read and used in the future; and will have implications, however small, on other work for years to come.

It makes sense to fictionalise a world in which our idea lives and breathes. To prepare. To adapt in advance. To better the idea for the future before it even exists in the present.

Design fiction has a lot of benefits. By moving from reality into a fictional narrative, new realms and possibilities are unleashed. As Ward says:

“By focussing on the speculative and fictional, design is no longer constrained by the practical reality of todays material and economic restrictions.”

There’s also the fact that with design fiction we can predict and prepare for the success or failure of an idea.

For me, personally, I think it’s important to design a fictional industry in order to prepare for it. The industry that I have always planned to work in is advertising, but the ad industry has changed profoundly since I fell in love with it and will continue to change as I prepare myself to (hopefully) enter into the field.

Design fiction could be a way of preparing myself for a rapidly changing industry, to be ready for everything because I’ve fictionalised the changing world in advance. Design fiction could also play a part enhancing my ideas while I study and learn.

And just check out this design fiction from the other reading.

It is taking a product that doesn’t exist yet, but may very soon, and is already looking at how it could work and the impact it could have on our lives. Very cool.