“It is self-evident that any non-linear or multi-linear narrative, regardless of the medium, must be built from smaller, discrete components and that these will be viewed collectively in sequences partly described by the maker, and partly chosen by the viewer.”
This quote, taken from Soar’s article Making (with) the Korsakow System, epitomises Manovich’s qualities of Modularity and Variability. This quote, and these characteristics, also apply to our project. Obviously, making a project through Kosakow implies an inherent desire and search for these qualities, but it is possible to make a linear Korsakow film where the user has no agency. A similar “interactive” but actually non-interactive project is described by Mateas and Wardrip-Fruin as a “form of guided progress through a predetermined story” where the project is not at all user-driven.
To do this, the maker of the project would plan keywords so each SNU must be viewed in a certain order. Soar describes this as “absolute linearity”, with the opposite being “complete randomness”. Our project falls somewhere in the middle, as some clips must be viewed in a certain order (for no narrative purpose, but just because of keyword categorisation), and no matter which path the user takes they will always end up at the same “end” SNU. Between the beginning and end, most clips are connected through a complex web of keywords that allow the user to explore and re-explore the project.
Something else interesting that Soar writes is “the SNUs in a Korsakow film are not connected together with a fixed path.” He later expands, saying that story elements aren’t connected through a “master-sequence” but through a hidden keyword search. While this is definitely true in our project, it reminded me that with projects with much more SNUs, there is actually no guarantee that any connection (that you set-up through keywords) will actually be taken by the user. Of course, this relates heavily to the final parts of the chapter in which Soar speaks of the unique assemblage each user makes when navigating projects (and how there is no set path through a web).
However when a project is as small as ours (with only 12 or so SNUs), it is actually quite likely that each connection will be made at some point, and each SNU viewed (if the user wishes to continue engaging with the project). But in a larger project, with hundreds of SNUs, there is no guarantee that all SNUs will be previewed (chosen by the algorithm to be previewed), let alone chosen- consequently, while there are many options for paths, many of them may never be explored.
We also got work-in-progress feedback this week. The idea of a traumatic or unlucky story being told over a happy photo (representing the reality of bad experiences vs what we tell people about/put on social media) was well-liked. We were given some ideas about including ‘breaker’ SNUs, such as symbolic videos to put between keyword clusters, or at the beginning and end, to diversify the media and take a break from just image/audio.
We are now up to finalising the construction of the Korsakow project in preparation for the presentation on Thursday.