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‘We Are Legion’

Aug4

Here are my thoughts while watching this documentary:

This documentary kind of broadened my knowledge on all things to do with hacking on the internet. I’d heard of the group ‘Anonymous’ before, but many of the other sites and groups were unfamiliar to me. This just proves how huge the space of the internet is and how many of these kind of ‘hacktivist’ groups can actually exist. If I’m being completely honest, the whole ‘Anonymous’ hacking group does frighten me a little. It is a little scary seeing what they can do, and the extent to which they can take their hacking abilities. I really don’t particularly think it’s very cool to hack into someone else’s online profiles and alter them for a joke. It just makes the internet out to be a place that is definitely not safe and user friendly.

Social Media plays a huge role in creating a community of people who share similar interests and views. It provides people with a platform with which they can express their interests and opinions, where like minded people can find each other (through usernames, hashtags, mutual friends etc), and connect on a virtual basis. People feel like they are part of a community and fell as though they can express themselves and be who they are, or want to be.

“You meet your own people finally.”

 

4 Corners documentary ‘Generation Like’ on ABC iview.

Jul23

How does this documentary alter your understanding of the way you use social media?

Honestly, it doesn’t really alter my understanding. Just because I am an avid user of social media such as Twitter and Instagram, and I use my accounts to support and promote the things I love. And I don’t really mind that companies can make money from me liking their posts, or using their apps/websites. I have fun on my social media accounts and don’t really see a problem with this stuff.

What connections can you make with the role of a Social Media Producer?

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What ideas does this documentary raise in regards to the event your group is planning and the task of achieving participatory engagement?

Sharing our event and making people discuss and find interest in it will be hugely important online…..

Participation. Week 12.

May27

What did you do well?

 . Completed my weekly checklist to an appropriate standard – All weeks bar one I have completed the readings and written up a blog post in conjunction with that – my posts consisted of things I found interesting, or things that I didn’t quite understand from the readings

. I Worked well collaboratively – when it came to group project I put in a lot of thought and effort, and feel as though my input along with the other two members helped build up a strong idea and final Korsakow film.

. Kept up with the weekly readings and wrote a bog post a each week on the things I found interesting or confusing – wrote down notes and quotes that I could go back to and refer to later on.

. I Attended every tutorial I could, bar 2 as I was away in Sydney – But I made sure to keep up to date and inform my tutor of my absence.

. Completed all the sketch tasks at the beginning of the semester.

 What have you learnt to do better?

 . Approaching online software – online tutorials – made sure I kept up to date with the online blog and kept referring to Seth’s website with links to Korsakow information. I have definitely learnt how to use Korsakow (technical skills) – at the beginning it frightened and confused me a little. But after weeks of reading about it, hearing about it, and actually using it, I feel as though I now know a lot more about how it works.

. My networking skills I feel have improved over the course of this semester – as this is something I wrote in my participation contract that I wanted to accomplish. Especially when it came to the Korsakow work, I found that I was reaching out to my peers and friends outside of this class on many occasions to help my understanding and further my learning. The group project also helped enable me to improve my networking skills as I worked in a group with people I had never worked with or spoken to before.

. To be more open to new ideas and new software – with all the readings and korsakow work.

 What could you have learnt to do better?

 . I could definitely have learnt to work with Korsakow at a little more of an advanced level. I said in my contract that I would spend about 2 hours per week researching and working on my technical skills, at the beginning I did do this, researching as much as I could as the thought of Korsakov kind of intimidated me. However, as the weeks went by, this time allocated to working on my technical skills disintegrated. So I could have done more work outside of class time.

. I could also have put in more of an effort with attending lectures!

. Also more effort when it comes to writing my blog posts. My blog posting has been consistent, however I Could definitely have put in more effort with my posts. – Longer, more comprehensive – more ideas could have been thought about and discussed.

Week 11 Reading

May22

This weeks reading focuses on discussion around documentary, data and the effect of the internet on such things in todays day ‘n’ age. It also talks a lot about the project film: We Feel Line.  ‘Still live, We Feel Fine still impresses for its innovation and for its realisation, bringing computer science, data visualisation and storytelling to bear on content that is unlocked by tapping into the common metadata structure of blogs.’

As usual, here are some quotes and notes I took from the reading:

‘The affordances of networked connectivity offer the potential to re-contextualise documentary material through mobilising the enormous co-creative potential of human discourse captured in the web. The challenge in these marriages of mass media form and rhizomatic network is to find new ways of shaping attention into a coherent experience. To do so we have to re-invent the social praxis of documentary, creating new visual and informational grammars.’ 

‘In 1926 John Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. In using the term ‘actuality’ he was referring to a specific form; the newsreels – short film observations of topical events – that were shown alongside features in cinemas then. The snatches of self-expression which are Harris’s raw material, can be seen as ‘actualities’ of the Information Age, units of content reflecting the world which can, with a creative treatment, be fashioned into a documentary artefact.’

‘Documentary presents us with arguments about our shared world, propositions about the world that are made as part of a process of social praxis. ‘ – Nichols

‘Video content ‘of the web’, live to the affordances of networked connectivity, has particular attractions to the documentary producer. It has the potential to introduce different voices into a linear text, to offer in-depth investigation of particular sequences, and to re-contextualise documentary material through mobilising the enormous co-creative potential of human discourse captured in the web. It offers the potential for new ways to construct argument and bring evidence to bear in documentary’s attempt to shape our shared world.’

Week 10 Reading

May16

Plotting The Database 

So with this weeks reading I focused on the notion of Plot and the way in which it is used within a database interface. Below I have listed some of the statements/quotes that I found most interesting..

‘Plot arranges events to take shape in the mind as a single entity; a contemplative whole made of structurally related parts: cause and effect chains, points of tension and release, beginnings, middles and ends.’ 

The entire section on ‘entry points’ within an interface plot I found to be really super interesting and helpful, as it relates completely back to my groups Korsakow Film. This is reflective of the way in which a viewer is able to enter at any point (however constrained that point is by the creator) and bounce around form place to place within the interface, but also having it all related to tell a non-linear narrative. – ‘A user chooses when and where to exit a database narrative; where a user enters, as with most narratives, is usually through a designed portal. Certain types of networked, distributed or transmedia narratives do have multiple entry points, where an encounter with a narrative segment leads to a maze of other segments. But the opening interface to a database is a staged entry and may offer a broad, restricted or randomly generated set of files and paths. Entry points can establish narrative frames, metaphors for navigation , genre motifs, present views of data sets, describe elements of plot, character, setting or theme – or withhold any and all of these. However the interface is designed, the entry point prepares the user for interaction and most importantly the desire for interaction.’ 

.‘An interface is more than a map. It is a map that changes with the user’s navigation in time, offering multiple interpretive paths and levels of abstraction. But a plotted interface – to a database narrative or fiction, for example – withholds as much as it reveals. A plotted interface provides micro and macro views, but also limits and delays access to those views. ‘

…….

I apologise for the lack of clear intent with these reading blog posts. I write them along while I do the reading and just take notes on the things I think sound good or interest me. Sometimes it’s hard to find such things when I don’t fully get the main idea of the reading, but I just wing it and write about what comes to mind haha. So yeah, sorry, but enjoy!

So this video actually made me cry. Thruthfuly.

May15

Here is a video that has gone viral! It was all over my Facebook feed for a couple of days in a row, and I just kept scrolling past it. Until now. I was slightly sick of it appearing all the time so I just decided to watch it, and I’m really glad I did, as it made me smile and laugh and cry just a little all at the same time. I can understand why so many people were posting it and sharing it and forcing it upon all their Facebook friends – it’s worth watching. Especially if you are a talent show fan, or just simply a fan of good music and songs with strong messages.

It’s is a video from Britain’s Got Talent, where two young boys who go by the name of ‘BAM’ audition for the 2014 season. Their audition is hugely cute, and they definitely do have a lot of talent. But it is the meaning of their song and the impact it had on me emotionally, and obviously on majority of the rest of the world, or at least my Facebook timeline world, that is truly inspiring. Worth the 8 minutes out of your time to watch, so I suggest you watch it 🙂

 

K-Film Update.

May13

Yo, so this is just a little blog post to keep you (and me) updated on the progress of my groups Korsakow film… Today we presented our workshopped idea to the class, and i think it went well. I do feel like our idea can get a bit lost in the explanation,however, in our minds it seems clear enough and I think once it is actually filmed and edited and created, the audience will understand it. As always, it is not a given that the audience will interpret the exact meaning we intend the film to be portraying, but I think that with different viewings of the final product, the main concept or idea/theme will be pretty evident.

We start filming in a week and I’m excited. If it all works out the way we have imagined it, the K-Fim should be quite good and interesting.

Week 9 Reading

May8

Shields is a creative nonfiction writer, and this is a fantastic book. Why are we reading this? Because it is all about what in film is called editing, and in Korsakow might be thought of as linking via keywords. What Shields thinks of as collage. Could have been written for this subject. – Adrian Miles

So this weeks reading was a lot easier to read for me than the previous ones, however I have failed to grasp the exact meaning or intent of what the reading is supposed to be telling us. This is why I have placed Adrian’s explanation of why we are reading it above, as this has somewhat helped my understanding of the readings intent.

‘The law of mosaics: how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes.’ (317) – This statement was highlighted, so I feel like it’s kind of important. Once read along with Adrian’s comment about ‘editing’ and Korsakow’s keywords, the statement makes a little more sense. Then after reading further down through the reading, it becomes apparent to me that this reading is quite insightful into the way narrative and ‘collage’ style narrative relates to what we are trying to accomplish with Korsakow. It talks of rhythm and arranging material in narrative, and this plays in with the whole concept of Korskow and how a non linear narrative can still flow through rhythm and movement and pattern and relation.

Reading week 8

May3

This weeks reading informed me on the different ways documentary film relates and interacts with its viewer/audience when lists and categories are used. Here are some quotes/statements front the reading that I found fascinating and/or helpful:

‘Certain documentary projects use non-narrative form as a way to prompt dialogue between the spectator and the work. ‘ p. 137

‘As Kate Nash describes the form, particularly in relation to webdocs: “the temporal ordering of elements is less important than the comparisons and associations the user is invited to make between the documentary’s elements” (2012, p. 205).’

‘For Bordwell and Thompson: [a]ssociational formal systems suggest ideas and expressive qualities by grouping images that may not have any immediate logical connection. But the very fact that the images and sounds are juxtaposed prods us to look for some connection — an association that binds them together. (2008, p. 363)’

‘In associational form relationships are created through conceptual alignment, emotional impact, visual similarities and territories of gesture. A poetic application of associational form creates relationships between elements that are more often felt than thought.’ P. 139

‘Often structured around unifying themes or existing categories and classifications, the list can also inspire thought that follows the structure of memory, impulse and flashes of association.’ P. 141

‘It is an emergent structure that is only revealed as users work their way through a site, exploring originating material, user generated content and perhaps adding their own contributions.’ P. 142