Tag Archives: epiphanies

Industry 4.0

Self-driving cars + 3d printing + A.I. + Designer babies + Economics = Best Reading Ever! 

In The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), Klaus Schwab provides a global economic perspective on how the fourth industrial revolution is changing the way we live, work, consume, and think. Schwab highlights the mega-trends in science and technology which have lead to today’s physical, digital, and biological revolution. These new developments and innovations have significant impact on the economical, political, social, and individual levels.

Some areas of the reading that I found interesting or sparked some insights:

On the nature of work

The on-demand economy:

Projects are being compartmentalised and outsourced to independent workers around the world. ‘A series of transactions between a worker and a company more than an enduring relationship’ (p.47). We can already see this trend in media and other creative industries. Not only do more creative workers establish themselves as freelancers compared to workers in other industries, but this also appears to be the trend in the larger collaborative structure of creative industries e.g. when major production houses from the U.S. outsource visual effects work on their films to Australian companies, or when smaller production companies – who tend to specialise in areas of graphics, sound, and other production areas – collaborate on a larger scale project themselves.

The downside of the human cloud:

I have always been excited about the collaborative, content sharing and networking possibilities opened by crowd-sourcing. ‘Belonging to a global virtual network’ (p.48) is a very appealing thought to me. But it had never occur to me that there was a downside to it. Whilst enabling greater opportunities for skill sharing and more diverse ways of making a living, this new form of employment is currently under-regulated and prone to exploitation as companies are free from the requirements of employment regulation such as minimum wages, taxation, and social benefits. I am not disgusted by this new perspective, but appreciate how complex and delicate this fast-changing, technologically-driven economy is; and how this text has broaden my views on this topic. There is always two sides of a coin to consider. As Schwab summed it up: ‘it all depends on the policy and institutional decisions we make’ (p.49). 

The importance of purpose:

Though this segment was brief, it struck me most personally. Younger generations are beginning to realise and understand the importance of viewing work and life as a unified concept, and the importance of passion and purpose in both. However, as work become more of a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life rather than a means to make ends meet for the younger generation, the economy is evolving to be more compartmentalised, and less personal and communal.

Karl Marx’s concern and Buckminster Fuller’s words contextualises a question I have been trying to figure out since the start of this year: For the past six months or so, I have been thinking hard and thorough about my strengths and weaknesses in terms of my career. I know myself well enough to say that I am thoroughly a generalist. This is my biggest strength as it gives me the ability to intuitively understand the world around me through the relationship of parts. But this is also my biggest weakness as the industry is heading in the opposite direction – particularly in its value of specialisation within the crowd-sourcing and skill sharing landscape. In this regard, I have very little to market professionally.

On the impact on governance

The impact on power:

The fourth industrial revolution has created a world that is more integrated, boundless, and empowering. But these liberations comes at a price. Schwab points out that:

‘With growing citizen empowerment and greater fragmentation and polarization of populations, this could result in political systems that make governing more difficult and governments less effective.’ (p.67)

As evident in the lack of regulation in the new work landscape, governments and legal systems around the world are often struggling to keep up with the fast-growing developments of the online and technological economies. Adding to this delay is the growing public engagement via the empowerment of social networks.

Power is becoming more elusive: 

‘As Moisés Naím puts it, “in the 21st century, power is easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose.”…With a few exceptions, policymakers are finding it harder to effect change…Micro-powers are now capable of constraining macro-powers such as national governments’ (p.68). 

Whilst social empowerment is a liberty I do not take for granted, social opinion is gradually becoming a red herring among political debates. Leading to political parties trying to winning popularity contests rather than paying attention to game-changing developments and their significance. It is not just new economic systems that need new regulations. As Schwab emphasised, the advancements in the biological sector are the trickiest to regulate. Not only are we absolutely unprepared for the world these developments are leading us towards, but the ontological questions they challenge us with are ones we have not yet been able to successfully define.

Other topics in Schwab’s text that intrigue me greatly on which if I choose to elaborate, this post will not be delivered on time, even with the “backdating” feature…

  • Artificial Intelligence!
  • The Internet of Things!
  • Bioengineering and its ethical implications!
  • Virtual and physical integration!
  • The dynamics of discovery!

99% invisible

It’s been a while.

Since I have visited this place…or listened to Radiolab…

Discovered a very interesting podcast in the latest episode on Radiolab: 99% Invisible

At first, I thought it was something to do with Dark Matter, something invisible and undetectable to us which scientists say makes up something like 94% of the universe!

Then, I thought maybe it was a metaphor for how much we can’t see: as visible light only makes up a few percentage of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

This is what I soon discovered: “99% Invisible is a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.”

Although this podcast mainly focuses on design, architecture and cities, the concept of its name still sparked ideas for me.

As I am working on a project with a friend to understand the different influences on climate change, and why it is still so easily denied, I think the concept of 99% invisible is a suitable metaphor to describe not only the easily forgotten yet significant impact we have on our planet as a species, but also our blindness to the true insignificance of our selves, race, gender, countries, species, planet and even our solar system on a cosmic scale.

The phrase highlights the wonderful duality of human perspective: that we ought to be humble of our place in the universe, yet never underestimate the impacts we can have in our environment.

Reviewing the Act of Filming

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.

– Stan Brakhage.

Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences onto screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with nonhuman characters). But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that I realised what we often take for granted. The camera sees things that we are too limited by our human subjectivity to see. Though not an entirely an omniscient perspective (the very word implies the contrary), as reminded by an earlier inspiration John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) which sparked my initial investigation, the camera has its own unique perspective. Brakhage’s film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.

Since then, I have performed several experiments exploring the act of film by ways of seeing, filming and moving as well as investigating the relationships between them. Reflecting on my experimentations and observations, my research have diverged from the original research I proposed to conduct in week 8. Rather than developing a set of auteurist codes and personal filmic devices, I discovered tools that can be used to creatively navigate or engage the world around me. The act of filming when conducted aimlessly as a form of meditation, is an effective way to implement experimentation into the creative process.

I have also observed several classmates on their research projects as well as other productions outside of class. During these events, I observe and compare their methodologies to my own developing ways of working. This led to a further curiosity of whether or not they also contemplate about the meaning of the act of filming and the relationship between observing as a personal experience and the decision to frame or film something with the eye of the camera. With this in mind I conducted some recorded conversations with the people I have been working with to generate discourse surrounding this topic. The process of having conversations is an organic and dynamic one that I have discovered as part of my methodology, which I will continue to use throughout my creative endeavours. Through these conversations, not only did I get to know a bit about what others are thinking and how they perceive the act of filming. As well as generating a much needed local discourse surrounding film culture within the student community, it also brought upon insights on aesthetics, cinema, experience, identity, philosophy, culture and even politics. This became one of the significant revelations during this process: that cinema and filmmaking should be explored constantly in connection to the world around us, particularly in contemporary society.

Another epiphany led to the decision that a compilation video of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming, would be a more suitable documentation rather than creating a conventional scene or simply writing a reflection. The experimental footage and recorded conversations formed the basis for this visual summary:

As a result, accompanying this written statement is a film essay recapturing the journey of exploration and a concluding conceptual performance piece that summarises the relationship I have with the camera.

Research: Filming as Meditation

During this session of experimentation, I started off with a conventional perspective, holding the camera right side up and performing standard camera movements such as pans and tilts. But gradually my focus on such conventions dissolved, I started to ask:

– why do I need to keep the camera in the same position or orientation?

– why do I have to avoiding filming myself or avoid any kind of distraction from my subject?

I began to let my mind and my camera roam freely and separately, knowing that the camera is a free agent, capturing not my experience at the time, but its own perspective. I made turns and tilts that were mainly motivated by the simplest route to film from where the camera and I was to my next point of focus. This meant sometimes disregarding the camera’s orientation – landscape or portrait or on any other angle.

Without filming with any intention, my perspective and the camera’s starting to diverge. I focussed on my experience of being in the space, my physical and conscious interactions with the subjects, and the camera, in its own way, did the same without much of my direction (aside from loosely maintaining its perspective on the subjects). Doing so, instead of thinking about how to frame or what to film next, I was able to react to my surroundings as I filmed, experiencing several epiphanies during the process instead of after. Instead of discovering codes for how to film as I initially started out to look for, I discovered tools of how to creatively navigate or engage the world around me. The act of filming, when conducted aimlessly, can act as a form of meditation, an effective way to implement experimentation into the creative process.

 

 

Conversations: Azim

A conversation with Azim

 

– Memory in fragments, thinking back to our past

– Voyeurism, memory of eavesdropping

– simultaneous individual experiences, our ability to relate two individual experiences or events. (consider Soviet Montage)

– I am the camera, its my pair of eyes

– knowing what is beyond the frame vs. letting yourself be the camera through the screen

– presenting reality. Reality TV ‘more representative’ of America than movies are

– Ways of Seeing – John Berger, picture worth a thousand words

– Image or words are just different and equal mediums that can be suitable for delivering certain concepts depending on what it is

– The Nature of the Physical World – Arthur Eddington in David Lynch Swerves by Martha P. Nochimson

– imagery, visual aesthetics limiting concepts or imagination or experience down to a 3 dimensional visual experience that is then flattened onto a 2 dimensional plane

– act of filming being related to the expectation to present it to others. Filming for others

– Obsession with coherence in watching a film. A film as one story, has to make sense. rather than every bit of seemingly unrelated experiences or events being a part of one film (LIFE).

– Life is boring, spontaneous, random

– Film is a part of reality, films or film culture makes up part of our reality

– “Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.

– The camera changed the world not just historically, but in a more recent context, globalisation would be a slower process. Moving images and images in the social network, or information world.

– Without TV I wouldn’t be able to articulate my thoughts. (We should have mentioned how language affect our thinking process)

– It’s more realistic to think of media depictions of culture as “what American like to celebrate or value” or “what Japanese culture like to celebrate or value”

– Australian identity? Australian cinema?

– conversation gets into hippy territory…

 

Methodologies: an Update/a working Reflection

The beginnings of 4.2

After several weeks of experimentation and observations, it is time to review progress.

There have been several changes to the original proposed method and process of research in week 8.

Since then, I have conducted several exercises exploring the ways of seeing and filming and moving as well as the implications of their relationships.

I have also observed several classmates on their research projects as well as other productions outside of class. During these events, I observe and compare their methodologies to my own developing ways of working. This led to a further curiosity of whether or not they also contemplate about the meaning of the act of filming and the relationship between observing as a personal experience and the decision to frame or film something with the eye of the camera. With this in mind I will be conducting some recorded conversations with the people have been working with to generate discourse surround this topic.

An epiphany I had early last week was that rather than creating a scene or just written reflection, a compilation of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming would be a more suitable documentation. The experimental short clips and conversations with other filmmakers will be the main source materials for this final statement. It may also feature some reflections or quotes I have previously posts as well as some footage from other people’s projects which I have participated in.

Whilst looking at experimental films in another class, a quote from a reading intrigued me deeply and also began to answer the many questions I have been thinking about this semester:

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.

Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences on screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with non human characters).  But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that we often take for granted. It has its own perspective, sees things that we are too limited to see. His film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.

As well as a video compilation and a final written statement, I will also like to do a performance piece that summarises the relationship I have had with the camera.

 

Research: Movement

Following the first scene I posted that initiated this research, here are some of the self conducted investigations of movement:

  1. Dancing Pedestrians – This exercise was originally aimed to film the movement of the escalator.  It was one of the most uninteresting footage I shot when I first reviewed it on my phone. However, when transferred to the computer, the file was registered upside down. It suddenly became an amazing study of our physical movement from an unfamiliar perspective. We are so used to watching each step fall downward toward the earth below that watching this in any other direction seem almost like floating or defying gravity.
  2. Streetlights – an attempt to capture the movement and pacing of a car through its relation to its surroundings. The frequency of the streetlights provide a rhythmic indication of the car’s speed. The effects are also seen in the unstable handheld gestures of the camera as it is subjected to the physical vibrations of the cars movement.
  3. Sun Dance 1 & Sun Dance 2 – after 5 minutes of wandering around with a camera in my room to some music, I found something to focus on. The music, my movement, and the visual that was captured in the camera merged into one performance that felt like it had a purpose. The result was mesmerizing and meditative. One of the videos is played backwards. It surprised me how the music sounded just as melodic and emotional when played backwards and also provided another level of interpretation to the piece.
  4. Cat project scene – Over the week I also assisted on a project outside of class. The project was a story from a cat’s perspective. Although I was volunteering to act and provide location, I also participated behind scenes in working out how the ‘cat’ was suppose to move around. It was a unique exercise in trying to understand, mimic and capture its liveliness without showing any part of the cat itself. I chose to include this shot because it also captured an unexpected technique I may use in the future. When the camera is inside the box, it captured the pin hole image of the exterior world inside as I moved around. This was a unique way of capturing movement that we accidentally discovered.

As I am investigating movement in these exercises, some of the videos have been muted so that the viewer can focus on the visual movements in frame.

These exercises may be inspiring and creative endeavors, however, they are no more useful than poetry. I hope that in my next lot of investigations, more methodological process will be discovered.

Week Eight: Reflection/Epiphany

This week I attempted to investigate camera as movement.

“In the first volume of Cinema Deleuze reclassifies classical narrative filmmaking as a cinema of movement-images – naturally structured stories in which we do not usually feel the attitude of the camera (for example, the film will normally simply follow and react to character’s movements), and where edit shifts are there to deliver an indirect (realistic) image of time, time in its empirical form.” – Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy

A few ideas came to mind…

  • camera being pushed around by natural causes, moved by unintentional physical influences.
  • perhaps the camera doesn’t capture the moving object visually or photographically, but through the physical influences of its movement on the camera. This led to the next idea.
  • A dancer/performer with a camera strapped on in front or attached to them as they move and react to music. The dancer is never seen on camera.
  • a character sets up a camera ready to film, walks away, different characters come in, without predetermination, interferes/moves the camera around and displaces it or alters its visual settings.

…but nothing practical or solid that I could really shoot a scene on.

What I realised this week is that the research I have set for myself was inspired by an aimless experiment which led to a discovery of subconscious methodologies upon reflection. And what through me down the rabbit hole was the attempt to design the experiment by determining its outcome before conducting it. Therefore, the investigation from now on can not be “designed”. Perhaps the experiments are focused, not on such discoveries, but on technical/narrative/conceptual investigations. Another thought is to assist and participate in other classmates’ shoots to study their methodologies, whilst working out my own without having too much concern with narrative or the end product.

Nevertheless, and feeling rather desperate, I shot, with my phone, whatever movement I could capture.

 

Week Eight: Research Proposal Feedback

My research proposal

Objective:

In my research I will be exploring the role of the camera and the implications of the act of filming.

Producing our own scene last week have set my investigation on an early start. I realized in the filming process, or during the process of ‘decoupage’, that I started to develop my own set of film ‘rules’ that are based on how I interpret my experience of reality. In this scene, the camera is used as a representation of the act of observation – playing my consciousness or awareness of my sense of self within the scene, as well as the absence of it when I am doing the observing upon others. Having established this representation, I then applied them to the different events or shots in the narrative depending on their nature. Whether it was a personal observation of another individual or just consciously observing my own self, a simple task quickly became an exploration of ontology and a question of the nature or act of observing anything.

Noticing the way I think about and respond to films, I find that I am generally trying to make sense of or rationalise the existence of a camera:

  • Camera as perspective
  • Camera as movement?
  • Camera as a participant/performance
  • Camera as an omniscience/omnipresence
  • Whether it is depicted as a physical object recording or baring photographic witness to the events in front of it or an invisible window through which the viewer is looking.

This led to an epiphany of how I can explore my research through methodological experiments.

Schedule:

The language I develop over the next weeks will reveal how I seek to interpret the world as I create them.

  • I will first develop a series of filming exercises.
  • Through observation and reflection on the exercises, I will set up a list of my own devices that expresses and represents implications about the characters’ or my own experience of reality.
  • This list will be applied to the events or acts in the final scene according to express what they indicate.

So far, what the exercises will be is undetermined. But I have come up with a few possible directions that can further explore method (or the filmmaking process itself) as an act of creating meaning or documenting the experience of reality:

  • Covering an unscripted scene that is dictated by the firsthand experience of a place or event
  • Composing a narrative dictated by any kind of sensual data of a piece of non-lyrical music or the space in a building etc.
  • Writing down an action or event that occurred each hour/day/week etc. to form a story that is condensed and flows continuously in time.
  • I am also open to work off found scripts or something anyone else has written.

Outcome

This list of ‘codes’ is not a canon to how to use or communicate with film language, and it may not be an absolute treatment of reality and neither are the more institutional and traditional ways of filmmaking. It is merely a personalized and individualized artistic expression that may potentially be a way of consistently expressing my own experience of reality.

Last week all focus was on our proposal presentation. It was interesting to have teachers and mentors from other different courses to sit in on our project proposals since everyone is interested in conducting research in different areas. It was very helpful to get feedback from a diverse panel.

Some of the things that were mentioned in my feedback:

  • Dziga Vertov’s writings
  • documentary or drama
  • heightened reality or fiction

The next step from this point is to set up some exercises. I also plan to participate/assist in other’s exercises in order to observe and compare our different approaches to methodology. As my own research is mainly to do with reflecting after filming a scene, I have no need to form a story or construct an actual scene myself at this point anyway. Also, working with others keep my non structural investigation grounded as it may easily become too conceptual and irrelevant to methodology in the end.

Week Six: Reflection/Epiphany

Having time this week to share and discuss our ideas for proposal with our classmates was certainly very helpful and inspiring on many levels. Not only because we can use this opportunity to deeply think about what and how we are going to investigate, but also because we can hear what everyone else is interested in and are going to investigate. For me, that is the most intriguing. Although we were introduced to work with one another at the start of this course, we don’t seem to know much about each other or what everyone is interested in or want to do after this course. I think we all felt the strongest sense of community during that class as we all listened to one another and tried to suggest ideas or help each other out. We all got to know each other truly as individual creative thinkers rather than just a collaborating partner in a weekly exercise.