Isaac is a 19 year old singer/songwriter appearing on this years season of The Voice Australia. He got chairs to turn in his blind audition and chose TEAM JOEL! Check out his audition if you missed it, he is truly talented and one of my personal favourites to win the show.
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Week 11 Reading
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
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. ‘
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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.
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.
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
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.
Thoughts on the topic of Integrated Media
I know that the practical side of this course has so far been engaging with video material, but the whole concept of ‘Integrated Media’ is far broader, as discussed in the lectures weekly. This image is the basic representation of what Integrated Media actually means and how it affects and plays a major role in today’s society.The merging of traditional media and new media has and still continues to create a much smaller world, where everyone is connected by both small and large digital devices. Platforms such as twitter and Facebook enable people worldwide to share and interact with information, images, videos and conversations, in a way that was never possible before such media and the internet. Integrated Media is a huge part of our everyday lives these days, and I’m not sure how the world would survive without it.
Week 5 already?!
So I came on here to check up on the course blog, to make sure I was up to date with the readings and to see if anyone had posted anything interesting to read, and then I realised that it is week 5 ALREADY! Seriously, these first 5 weeks have gone by so fast, and I still feel like I’m confused by Korsakow and how exactly to work it… But I have been trying the program out, practicing adding key words and such. I think after more practice it should become a lot more simpler to work with. And by the end of the course I hope that I understand it really well!
Uni Life in a Sketch Task
I was just looking through some other student blogs and found part of Edwards week 4 Sketch task – Which I thought was really well done and a funny take on the constraint. Go check it out here: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/edward-wong/2014/03/24/life-right-here/
1st look at Korsakow
The Korsakow System (Pronounced ‘KOR-SA-KOV’) is open source software for creating browser-based dynamic documentaries. Invented in 2000 by Berlin-based artist Florian Thalhofer, Korsakow allows users without any programming expertise to create and interact with non-linear or database-driven narratives, referred to as Korsakow-Films or K-Films. The software can be used to produce documentary, experimental and fictional narrative works and has been integrated into live performance and installation pieces. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakow)
So we began looking at Korsakow this week, and learning about how it works and what it is used for. I feel like this was a really helpful tute and definitely provided me with some relevant information that I will need when creating my own Korsakow pieces.
Here are some notes about Korsakow I took down:
. Making relations between things – joining things together. Creating patterns using key words! Will our viewer know what they are?
. like creating a jigsaw puzzle!!!
. Interfaces
IMPORTANT: Managament – WORKFLOW
Key Word – A Tag!
SNU – Smallest Narrative Unit
POC – Points of Contact: In Poc and Out Poc
POCs are created by key words
A Korsakow film is a collection of Connected SNU’s