Round object 1:

 

 

 

1. Kitchen Stories (2012)

The work is about the connections between different foods: arranged in either links between their raw ingredients or manner in which they are cooked. The foods are of all different cultures, food groups and levels of preparation (cooked or uncooked) to highlight the point that eating is universal.

The work is visually interesting and I like the way the food is arranged in the frame, often associations are made by the colours or shapes and similar looking foods are arranged similarly. The result is striking and it drew me to the thumbnail of the film immediately.

I don’t like the soundtrack they used or the way the dialogue continues throughout even though the clips are changing. It can be disorienting and confusing. While the film is visually interesting and presents a “theme” or “idea” it doesn’t really bring forward a narrative or a story which means you lose engagement pretty easily.

 

My impression of K films is that they are highly interactive and the narrative is very user driven (like a ‘choose-your-adventure’ story). each film or selection opens up to a new range of associations or connections and you can digress quite dramatically from the initial film. I can see how K films can be used for both narrative (interactive narrative) and non-narrative formats (database style) and that it has great potential as technology.

 

in last week’s class (wk 3) we were given this as a writing stimulus:

“fiction as a testing ground for reality” – Ward

how can writing something speculative and fictional test an idea

I have already gone over (or at least touched on) this in a few of my previous posts about design fiction, but I suppose it’s never a bad thing to rehash work. I suppose in a sense, you can never fail if you’re only speculating, and if your ideas are only in the development phase.  seeing your work in the fictional realm helps to avoid grounding yourself in reality and looking only at the present – therefore limiting the capabilities of your creation. if your work can exist in a fictional or make-believe realm (and you can assess, evaluate and iron out all of the possible issues with it) then it can just as easily exist in the ‘real’ world. through this concept of ‘testing’ and ‘experimentation’ you can pre-empt what kinds of problems you might encounter in bringing it to life. having said that, experimentation is a great way to broaden your horizons and stumble across ideas you might never have come across ordinarily – even if these ideas ‘fail’ in the sense that they can’t be translated into reality, you are at least opening yourself up to new possibilities. often, the best ideas stem from a random tangent – a topic or concept that you have digressed so far from that you can’t even remember the original idea.

how would/is/can double loop learning be factored in your own practice?

this is the question we were given to write about from our workshop. from what I gathered in the reading, double-loop learning is a much more progressive mode. if double-loop learning is about ‘prevention’ rather than ‘cure’, about leaving things undefined and not letting yourself be limited by labels, about looking forward rather than being focused on the present…then it would seem constant self-reflection and evaluation would be an excellent way of implementing this mode. if – before making decisions – you check yourself (before you wreck yourself…yeah I know, that was lame) and consider all of the potential options and outcomes, you have far less of a need to correct errors. as a freelancer or working media professional, there is much need to be able to scrutinise and evaluate your own work professionally, as often there is not somebody else (such as a teacher or boss) to do this for you. if you are constantly thinking ‘forward’ and considering what outcomes your choices might have, you will be far less likely to fail. you need to be able to think about the future, not just the present. rather than considering what your work currently ‘is’, it is better to consider what your work ‘can be’. this extends to not limiting the span (and volume) of your creations – if you constantly try to think outside the box and as expansive as possible, you will have a bigger reach. aim for the moon and if you miss you’ll still be amongst the stars…

(…or you’ll be this guy)