Today’s class was at long last an eye-opening one, Adrian asking the class for questions on Bogost’s writing made his philosophical ramblings all the more tangible, a comforting experience. Groups, cool. Assignments, cool. Understanding, cool.

Below are some notes I took that needn’t worry you.

•  Object-Orientated-Ontology:
  • ontology: interested in what things are, what something is. Mainly focused on humans.
  • OOO: interested in separating humans from the centre.
    • things are the centre, not people.
  • premise: no more pyramids.
  • diamond analogy. many faces (facets), some recognised by others. Facets recognise facets on other things.
  • Infinite. Expands infinite in terms of what it can relate to.
  • Facets will come to our attention depending on different situations, eg. being in this room vs falling off a cliff (gravity, the ground, etc.)
• Flat ontology:
  • related to OOO.
  • Lists advocated as methodology. Lists are flat.
• Tiny ontology:
  • Unit Operations: like Lego bricks. Assembling a group of things into something, eg. students in a group = class = Unit Operation. Classes together = University.
  • Units don’t hold hierarchy.

FYI, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 just got added to Netflix. And inspired by my recollection of Rushkoff’s analysis of this show and the pop culture it exists within, it seemed right up my alley and I gave it a go. Within the first 20 minutes the show presented a truly dense network of references and in-jokes that I fell for it. I became a part of it. As Rushkoff puts it, “To belong to MST3K culture is to understand at least some of the literally hundreds of references per show and, more important, how they relate to one another.” I’m in. I’m with them. I haven’t been able to have a movie night with my movie friends (now spread across the suburbs of Melbourne) so today these robot dudes were my companions.

To relate to his writing with depressing irony is that while househunting I’ve been posted up in a friend’s apartment in the city (a place which brings along with it an ounce of loneliness) during the week. Some days he leaves for uni before I wake up and gets back while I’m out (that’s today) and the whole situation is kinda of isolating. I don’t have a key so I’ve just gotta chill. Rushkoff writes that for the most part, those who watched this show during its original broadcast were ‘isolated in their apartments, using these images on their screens as surrogate companions’. And I guess today that’s how I felt.

Ironic, telling a story to empathise with the collapse of narrative. Yes, I realise how much of Rushkoff’s analysis I’m ignoring with this post. Yes, I will get back to work on philosophy and stuff.

For obvious reasons everything still seems up in the air with this studio. I know that’s how the learning is taking place, more flexible than other straight-to-the-point, teacher-is-the-beholder-of-all-information classes. I like this. But I still don’t see the light through assignment 1. Missing Tuesday’s class was obviously detrimental towards understand how to reflect on this project, but regardless, shouldn’t I be able to give myself feedback otherwise? I don’t know what I did that was particularly creative, but the process was somewhat interesting.

In response to Adrian’s prompts:

• what matters to the camera? why? how can I use this to advantage?
  • Light is essential to the functioning of the camera. Play with strong contrasts? Shadows?
• what matters to the frame? why? how can I use this to advantage?
  • What’s in the frame matters to the frame. Things can exist outside this frame, but placing something in the frame is acknowledging that it exists. The more space something occupies in the frame, the more important it becomes.
• if I treat my images as more abstract and not ‘telling a story’ then what is editing? is it composing (like music), making rhythms? Is it also visual rhythms (like painting), and also of cadence (pace)? How can I use this to advantage? (What do I need to notice in the image to be able to do this?)
  • Films rely on emotion. Film editing heavily relies the editor to cut with emotion for storytelling. If we remove the story, do we in turn remove the emotion?
  • Cuts on motion provide a smoothness, a visual rhythm. Cutting on a graphic match could also be beneficial for maintaining a visual rhythm. Quick cuts (see Resident Evil: The Final Chapter) vs slow cuts.
  • What if instead of ignoring story altogether, we remove it from the foreground and focus more on such things as editing and the let the story tell itself through this?

As it’s an early piece, it’s not one I’m particularly proud of. It goes for too long, is too specific in its questioning of concepts we’ve touched on and needed more thinking.

To strengthen my writing skills, to keep my words warm for essays or reviews, or just to get the mind flowing. To do something that makes me feel like I did something with my day. To communicate. To participate. To expand the community. To add more recycled drivel to the dashboard. To show (pretend?) I understand the readings. To force myself to understand the readings. To connect with classmates, coursemates. To get Adrian to hyperlink my posts. To develop skills for the future. To make the best use of a platform that has less boundaries. To break the ice. To satisfy a craving for attention, a want to be noticed. To get my work out there. To pretend like what I’m writing is some poetic gesture. To do something I enjoy.

• We are the environment of 10,000 species.
• We are hosts to the ecosystem of 100 trillion.
• Invert your centrality.
• QQQs:
  • How casual can it be?
    • As casual as you want, but keep in mind that your grandma can read your blog. And the big bad copyright men.
  • What are we supposed to notice?
    • Relations.
    • Blog like you post to Instagram.
  • Why five posts a week?
    • Technological resistance. Turn it into a habit. Second nature. Get into the habit of noticing and documenting, a la the name and aim of the studio. Do it all the time, embed it.
  • What is expected in the blogs?
    • Idea starters: pick a sentence/word from the reading and write about it. Take a photo of something. Scale doesn’t matter.
    • 5 posts on topic.
    • A blog post should be self-sufficient, cinematic: like a single shot, not a long take.
  • Can we have blog time in class after different discussions?
    • An enthusiastic yes.
  • About class or our lives?
    • The best do both. Give life context to your writing.
• Intrinsic motivation: the strongest motivator.
• A return to the finite quality of media. Stories end because the media we put them on have an end.
• If our media doesn’t have an ending, do our stories need to end?
• Rushkoff – games: players replace readers.
• How to read:
  • Slow it down, go around the sticky bits, mark the parts and bring them to class for routine unsticking.
  • The reading/playing music analogy has merit of course, but notes in a song are a different breed to words in a book. About big concepts.
  • Understand the reading before taking notes. If you don’t understand, your notes won’t reflect which parts matter. Don’t stop because you’re stuck. Reread.
• Cornell note-taking method