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‘Lecture Notes’ Category

  1. Unwhatever 0.5

    September 18, 2013 by oliviapaterson

    Can video games be considered hypertext narratives? How? Why?

    • The relationships between different media forms…but sometimes it is clear that they are not the same. Games don’t have a narrative
    • Example: pinball does not have a narrative
    • Gaming meet television for example survivor.

     

    How do you actually write a hypertext narrative?

    • Hypertext like blogs are an emerging structure
    • When you write a hypertext narrative each individual sections make sense all by them selves similar to our blogs, to understand them you don’t usually have to read the last three weeks of posts to understand the one that your reading.  They are highly granular
    • Context of audience…why and how will the audience connect with the piece?

     

    Why is hypertext considered influential in the future development of media making and story telling?

    • Interplay between hypertext and networks and history itself.  History can be explained as a highly complex network  that has been put into narrative.
    • As human beings we always try to find a linear context to everything.
    • There is a hyper textual mode of reading that has become an important and more engaging way of reading texts.
    • Hypertext is cinematic… the only difference between film and hypertext is that film is fixed. Where hypertext there can be numerous different options, which are not fixed.
    • One shot next to another can change the meanings of both shots.
    • The meaning is not in the shot it is outside the two, its in the relationship between them. It no longer sits inside the narrative but in the connection and the relation ship that exists in the relations of the parts.

     

    The long tail seems to advocate a free market model for the entertainment industry. Anderson says this model allows for more diversity, however, do you think problems such as a recommendations hierarchy could emerge?

    • Facebook feeds… you liking some things disregards you from other things. Facebook learns what you like and then almost stops you from other interests.
    • Similarly in music, programs have started to learn our particular tastes and then discourage too much exploration.
    • Facebook has become a social media disaster…it has become overcome by advertising and it doesn’t necessary work on recommendations hierarchy.
    •  Page rank on google works on how many links go to your page.

     

    Does a network have a center? Or do we all create centers for our own networks?

    • No not necessary become they work depending on the relationships and links between people, which we make. Yet given this in a way are we the centers for networks given the necessity of our input.

  2. Unwhatever 0.4

    September 18, 2013 by oliviapaterson

    What kind of genre is an interactive documentary? Is it still a documentary or would you say it is a new genre because of the hypertextual interface?

    • Genre is never just about the textual form
    • Genres are also always about the industries that help create them
    • Interactive documentary allows for a more creative and unfixed approach to documentary genres.
    • The conventions that hypertext have introduced effect the way we read other texts.
    • All stories make truth claims for example: in The World or A World.
    • Genre-on the one hand you can argue that documentary is the genre but you can also argue that there are genres within documentary. One being interactive documentary.

     

    If, interactive narratives have no singular, definitive beginnings and endings, then what would be the constraints for an author of interactive media to control the interpretation of a narrative?

    • Authors cannot control the interpretations of the audience.
    • Authors have no way to control their thoughts and should not claim to do so.
    • What we interpret is text not authors.
    • What rhymes with shop and you buy at the butchers…what do you do at a green light?
    • Hypertext allows and encourages you to generate and imagine how two separate situations can relate, as we need to find a connection between the two.

  3. Lecture Notes BETA SYMPOSIUM 2

    August 30, 2013 by oliviapaterson

    How does Hypertext relate to storytelling in different Media formats?

    • programs that allow you to navigate your way through film. can be random how the links are made between the films.
    • the experiences that go with hypertext- meant to be linear but jump all over the place this is becoming the normal.
    • “i’m a Hypertext theorist” – hypertexts gives an archaeology its dated but present.
    • text- that has multiple relations to other text
    • joined to other things in multiple ways
    • not about navigation- navigation is only theory its not just about the reader. not just about giving agency to the reader.
    • the thing with hypertext is you come back to things, though you might think that “oh i’ve seen this already, whats the point” it allows you to take a second look, a second chance to process that information.
    • its like storytelling in a musical poetic form- repetition is ok.

    Is the work we publish online only validated one it it viewed/consumed by others?

    • No, example a personal journal. not intended for anyone to see. but is still helpful to you.  just because people view it doesn’t make it more valid.
    • ontology- what is it if it hasn’t been viewed by anyone? our blogs don’t exist until people view them- divided opinion.
    • when we write in a blog it exists with an audience or not. difference between wether we need an audience to validate what it actually is.
    • the beauty of blogging is that you can write for an imagined audience and if you keep to that style a real audience or readership will come.
    • a link on a webpage is the way to get google ratings on your website- a way the get an audience.

    Do you think the digitalisation of literary texts and the use of the E-reader will eventually replace the physical book completely?

    • example- theatre and film
    • no the physical book has the potential to become a collectors item?
    • libraries- they will still be available?
    • value of the book- you can’t rip pages out of a book because its a book, they almost have a sort of sentimental value.
    • if you take the word literary out of the question it immediately changes.
    • take literature out of the question and they are dead.
    • the only way books will survive is through literature.
    • another problem about books it the environmental footprint of making a physical book….it will become a digital footprint…it will still be literature but it just might not be in a book anymore.

     

     


  4. Do Schools Kill Creativity?

    August 26, 2013 by oliviapaterson

     

    • The ted talk focused on children’s capacity for creativity and how schools, or the traditional teaching methods tend to squander children’s talents.
    • I think that its true that nowadays creativity is as important as literacy maybe even more important, especially when it comes to original thought
    • I thought that his observation of the ways children compared to adults was interesting in that a child will take a chance,
    • “if they don’t know,  they will have a go”
    • They are not frightened of being wrong. He reiterates that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.  So my question is how does that happen? When do we become unprepared to be wrong? And why are we so afraid to be wrong?
    • Most adults have lost the ability to have original thought.
    • Sir Ken’s answer is that schools and universities are educating people out of their creative capacity.
    • “all children are born artists” Picasso
    • another example- William Shakespeare, imagine him as  a child, even worse though imagine being his English teacher.
    • When you look at schools all over the world it is clear that they all have the same ranking of subjects….maths, languages, humanities, arts. With even arts being divided with music and art above drama and dance.
    • At school and as children we are steered away from the things that we like on the count of the fact that we will never get a job doing those things. Which is a notion that came about in the age of industrialisation where the more ‘useful’ skills got you a job and earned the most money.

  5. Lecture Notes- Beta Symposium

    August 13, 2013 by oliviapaterson

    What is the practicality of design fiction for people who are not designers? What separates it from science fiction?

    • Science fiction is a good example of how we can implement the principles of design fiction.
    • Design fiction is about the broader ways of creating things. It does not rely on being evidence based.
    • Science fiction has its own hang-ups and traditions that differ from that of design fiction.
    • Design is fashionable… designers have the tools to solve problem within businesses or in the larger context of society. i.e asylum seekers, politicians find ways to ‘solve’ this problem but has it solved the overall issue? No.
    • Question. What do you think your job will look like in 2020? Will it still exist? Our problem is how will we make money?
    • Design fiction is a tool to dig ourselves out of a hole i.e housing commission and its effects on society. Was there social equality?
    • Design fiction is very humble it can be done in small increments, it is not neutral it is not trying to pretend that it will have the ultimate solution.
    • Designers look behind to see what has been done, they nearly always attempt to change and make better what has already been done. i.e Google, allowing 20% of their paid time to ‘play’… or speculative thinking.
    • Question. How does innovation occur? You can’t have one idea without the other?
    • As the Internet evolves it becomes easier to find out where you found the information but harder to remember what that information was.

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