Our final project, Place Pattern Flow explores movement and fluidity. It utilises the human body as an instrument to convey pattern and shape reflective of the physical world. The project is an experiential audio visual experience that intends to evoke an emotional reaction from the audience.

Online spaces are diverse and expansive and can allow for media that is specific, seemingly pointless, random, catered, linear, non linear, fiction, non fiction, immersive and interactive. Online spaces take down conventional barriers of media distribution and open a landscape where basically anything can be produced and consumed. In terms of content, our work Place Pattern Flow responds to these possibilities of online spaces. I would consider our final project to be very experimental and unique. It is not narrative driven, rather it is a modular, interactive, multilinear, non fiction exploration of movement, patterns and connections. In my third blog post, I considered the notion of the internet opening up spaces where content can exist for the purpose of “an aesthetic experience” (Miles 2015). Moreover, that the purpose of online documentary can simply be “to express” (Renov 1993) a certain emotion or feeling. Through our project we wanted to create a visual and auditory experience that made the audience feel something. Reflecting on the responses from the Media Presents exhibition, I found that generally people understood the work as a visual and auditory exploration.

In addition to content, what it means to be an audience is also changing through online spaces. The internet can allow for a more intimate audience experience, particularly through the use of interactive media. We utilised the software Korsakow to create our film, which authors contemplative interactive projects with a “multiplicity of relations” (Miles 2014). Online spaces create a landscape where “small scale” (Soar 2014), intimate works can be distributed and appreciated. Our film takes advantage of both the affordances of Korsakow and online interfaces. As a result, audiences can have a personal, intimate experience with our project. The audience can move through the project at their own pace, making visual and auditory connections between the landscapes and patterns. The interactive, multi-linear nature of the work means that each user experience will be unique as they create their own path through the project. Moreover,

Our project is highly web specific due to both its interface and content. The modular fragmented nature of the work makes it inherently web specific. The interface of the project, generated by the software Korsakow, affords a highly modular, fragmented and interactive project. This kind of modularity, the way in which each fragment operates separately yet as a whole creates a project that realistically would not be able to function on a traditional media platform. Moreover, the interactivity of the project also makes it web specific. The way in which the audience is able to move through the project, creating a unique journey would not be applicable to traditional media platforms. I would also argue that the content of the project caters it specifically for the web. The internet has allowed for niche content to be explored, such as ASMR, which has the sole purpose of creating an audio visual experience for the audience. The audio in our hands only clips is inspired by ASMR sounds which, combined with the visual component, created an associative yet upon feedback slightly strange or uncomfortable experience. The entire concept behind our project was derived from an understanding of web based content and affordances.

The process of creating this final work has allowed me to further develop upon my understandings of producing content for an online space. Throughout the entire process of creating Place Pattern Flow, I thought a lot about the work’s overriding intention or purpose and the effect the work could have on an audience. Online spaces are unrestrictive and permissive, therefore one has great freedom when producing online content. Given the expansiveness of the internet, creation of online content can be derived through striving to create a point of difference. In this way, I believe that our work is a unique audio visual experience that differs from the conventional web series.

Throughout the process of creating the work I intentionally attempted to consider the overall effect of the final project. We wanted connections between the hands only clips and the hands in landscapes clips to become apparent to the audience. Therefore, when shooting the fragments, we were thinking about visual connections and how best to utilise hands to recreate the physical world. Moreover, when creating the ASMR inspired sound, we were considering the associations between the movements in the videos and also what they were replicating. It was not our intention for the connections to be immediately apparent, rather that as the audience considers the project as they move through it visual and aural associations may become evident.

In the first week of classes, we considered the questions relevant to online media:

1. How do we make engaging online content?
2. Why is there such a big interest in online content?

Throughout the studio I have been considering how to make content that engages audiences, particularly with the fragmentary nature of online spaces. However, within the studio we created content that utilised the fragmentary nature of the internet to form a cohesive project. Content that is unique, aesthetically pleasing, experiential, variable, provoking and modular can be engaging to online audiences. I also think that interaction has a major part to play in audience engagement in online spaces. Interactive works are highly participatory and therefore are able to create a more personal connection with the audience. Moreover, interactive works on the internet are also creating broad interest with online content. The internet has revolutionised media content, creating online spaces where new forms of media are emerging. It is this kind of new interactivity that is so exciting and newfound that it attracts people. It is the way in which online content can be so engaging that has generated such large scale interest.

Miles, A 2015, ‘The Aesthetics of Documentary Interactivity: A Pamphlet that Emerged from a Curated Panel at Visible Evidence XXII’, Toronto

Renov, M 1993, ‘Theorizing Documentary’, Psychology Pres

Miles, A 2014, ‘Materialism and interactive documentary: sketch notes’, Studies in Documentary Film, pp. 205-220

Soar, M 2014, ‘Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly’, New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, edited by Nash, K et al., Palgrave Macmillan

 

 

We have commenced production and in doing so have made a few changes to the project. The most predominant change we made was that we decided to have four different landscapes from the one location rather than four different locations. The reason we decided to make this change was partially because of time constraints but also because we believe this change will make the work more of a cohesive project and more visually connected.

In terms of the process of shooting the media fragments for this project I found the process to be completely different. In creating the last project Spaces, we focussed a lot more on how people interact with spaces. We thought more about what normal interactions people had with specific spaces. In spite of this, due to the cinematography the actions looked bizarre regardless. Expanding on from this in this project, rather than thinking about what was a normal interaction with a space we just thought about what could be visually appealing. Once again the outcome was quite strange, we created almost jarringly weird visual shots of hands interacting with places. It kind of reminded me of distorted body art, just in the way that it was so weird but kind of beautiful.

We presented some of our fragments in class on Thursday, and in my opinion they were received with a mixed response. Some people completely understood what we were trying to achieve whereas I got the sense that some people found the videos weird and did not understand the point of them. However the experience of sharing the fragments was helpful in giving a bit more understanding of how audiences could receive our work. This is a unique situation as we were able to explain our intentions behind the work though, which you do not really get the opportunity to do in the real world.

Thinking more about audience reception and what our work could do for the audience, Hannah suggested in class that we could include a question in the project to guide the audience’s thinking. We discussed this and decided that we would include a few questions at the end of the work, more as something the audience can reflect on rather than dictate the audience’s initial reception of the work. The questions we have decided to include are:

1. What did you notice about movement?
2. Did you see any patterns?
3. How does this project make you feel?

In terms of the effect our project has on the audience, we definitely want the work to evoke a certain feeling or emotion in the audience. We do not want to simplify the work’s potential or audiences as a whole by intending for the work to generate a single emotion or response. This caused me to think about audience theory, such as the hypodermic needle theory. I definitely do not view audiences as passive, rather I believe that both audiences and creators have autonomy in creating meaning from media. In Interactive documentary setting the field Aston and Gaudenzi (2012) describe ‘consumers of media content’ as ‘gradually becoming more active participants in the creation and interpretation of content’. Therefore, I believe that it is relevant to discuss the potential of the work and what emotions or responses it could evoke in an audience, rather than be guided by a singular perceived outcome. We explored what emotions we believe our work could evoke as a group and decided some possibilities were:

• relaxation
• confusion
• curiosity
• awkwardness
• distaste
• pleasure

Our work has the very real possibility of making the audience feel uncomfortable, or it could be understood as what we perceive it to be- an audio visual exploration of places, patterns and movements. Like ASMR, it has the possibility of generating many emotional outcomes. This article explores how some find ASMR creepy and others find it comforting, some find it intriguing. Our work could have a similar result.

 

“It is possible then to see documentary, not as a replication of the world but as an aesthetic experience in its own right that finds credibility through an indexical link” (Miles, 2015)

I found this quote from a pamphlet that emerged from a panel on the aesthetics of interactive documentary. I think that it is highly relevant to our final project and also allows me to expand on my perceptions on a concept of new media I have been developing throughout the course. As I explored in this blog post, does media have to have a meaning? Does all media inherently have a meaning or point simply because it exists and can evoke a response?

In terms of how the quote is relevant to my understanding, it highlights the side of new media that is purely for the value of aesthetics. I have realised that a major difference between traditional and new media is distribution and regulation. The internet has taken away the barriers of distribution and regulation and essentially simplified them making it easy for creators to post anything online. The internet has allowed for spaces where media can be produced and distributed for the sole reason of being an “aesthetic experience” (Miles 2015).

Traditionally, documentary has been perceived as factual and serving the purpose of conveying a specific message or information. However, as Hannah pointed out in class, documentary that tells us how something filters the world through subjectivity. Whereas, documentary that simply shows the world and intends to evoke a feeling is closer to showing our experiences of the world. As Renov (1993) states in Theorizing Documentary “the expressive is the aesthetic function that has consistently been undervalued within the nonfiction domain”, the idea of documentary serving the purpose of expressing a certain feeling or emotion through its aesthetic. This kind of documentary is relevant to the film that we intend to produce, we just need to consider what kind of response we intend to evoke in our audience. I think that this will be interesting to explore due to the highly experimental nature of our intended work.

To inform our work we having looking into the specific works within the Fluxus movement, and how such films can inform our own work. “Fluxus’ interdisciplinary aesthetic brings together influences as diverse as Zen, science, and daily life and puts them to poetic use.” (Ubu Web) – a number of the films focus on small every day aspects of life and depicts them in a way that makes it interesting to watch. For example, Yoko Ono’s One portrays the small (sometimes) everyday action of lighting a match. Whilst this action may be perceived as boring, the extreme close up shot portrays just the finger tips and depicts the action in a unique way. Moreover, the speed on the video, being slowed down, also adds another interesting element. Watching these Fluxus films have caused me to think about what feeling we want to evoke in our audience and how we will do this as creators. How can we use speed, variation, camera shots and angles to initiate audience engagement and express a certain emotion?

Miles, A 2015, ‘The Aesthetics of Documentary Interactivity: A Pamphlet that Emerged from a Curated Panel at Visible Evidence XXII’, Toronto

Renov, M 1993, ‘Theorizing Documentary’, Psychology Press

Ubu Web, ‘Fluxfilm Anthology’, viewed 15 May 2018 <http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html>

We have continued to further refine our conceptual thinking with regards to our ideas for this final project. We have been researching relevant academic articles that explore interactive documentary and relevant art movements such as Fluxus to inform our work. One article I found particularly interesting was written by Adrian Miles titled Materialism and interactive documentary: sketch notes (2014). The interesting thing about this article is that it explores the agency of Korsakow and the impact utilising this specific software has on informing the outcome of an interactive documentary.

Miles argues that the software of Korsakow has agency, and its affordances and constraints invite an iterative form of construction and consumption that it a result of its ‘computional architecture’ (Miles 2014). Miles engages with the impact of such materiality on understanding of interactive documentary and specifically on the comprehension of both creation and reception of k-films. He contents that the result is that K-films are ‘complex, possibly autopoetic systems that rely on patterns of relation to emerge for author and users’ (Miles 2014). As we haven chosen to utilise Korsakow again to produce our film, the software’s agency is relevant to the outcome of our final film. The idea of creating a personal experience wherein the audience can see ‘patterns of relation’ between hand movements and the physical world (Miles 2014).

Additionally, we have also been looking into other online works that we can derive inspiration from. I managed to find a short video published on Vimeo titled Hands (2012). I will utilise this video largely as a visual reference to provide aesthetic inspiration for our project. Hands has numerous characteristics that indicate it was produced for the internet including content, temporal duration and aesthetics. Hands contains no narrative, rather it is very experimental and focuses on generating an audio-visual experience for the audience. The video portrays hands and forearms moving and creating patterns in a manner that appears to be replicating the physical world. It causes the audience to consider what the hands could be replicating, initiating audience interaction in that way.

Miles, A 2014, ‘Materialism and interactive documentary: sketch notes’, Studies in Documentary Film, pp. 205-220

Cooper, D & Arkelian, L 2o12, Hands, Vimeo, viewed 7 May 2018, <https://vimeo.com/37639703>

 

We have commenced our final project and for this we have chosen to expand on our previous work Spaces. Our last project explored how people interact with places, juxtaposing actions with the spaces they were in and other spaces. An unexpected aspect of the project that came through once we had completed it was the visual representation of human bodies and actions. Utilising extreme close up shots and the repetition of movements created interesting visual aesthetics. Feedback from the pitch in the last assignment indicated that we could consider further exploring this aspect of our project.

Therefore, we have decided to explore actions within places once again. However, we will be focussing solely on hands and the movements created with hands. This project will have less of a focus on the meaning, connections and understandings of the actions and is more about the visual experience. We have decided to continue to utilise Korsakow to create this project, as this software affords us the ability to generate the interface we believe is appropriate for our project. In class we discussed the importance of interface and design, and its relevance to an interactive project. The interactive documentary The Iron Curtain Diaries is an example an an interactive project that utilises interface in an integral way to convey information. The projects main interface is an interactive map that shows the iron curtain and 17 clickable hotspots along the line which correlate to cities. I like how the interface in this project provides context and is highly relevant to the project itself. In terms of relating this to our project, we need to think about interface and how to incorporate its relevance to the overall project.

Our current idea for the project is that it will have three clusters and two tags; landscapes and hands. The first section will consist of still photographs of four different landscapes with audio recordings of the place- this section will be tagged with landscapes. The second section will be videos of hands creating movements within the space with no audio- the tags will be both landscapes and hands for this section. The second section bridges the three sections, connecting to the third which consists of only hands and is tagged with hands. This final section will be videos of hands recreating movements from the landscape with ASMR style sounds from landscapes. Each section has an element taken away from it, for example in the first section the audience will be able to see the place, hear the movement but not be able to see the movement. In the second section the audience will be able to see the location and see the movement but not be able to hear it. In the third section the audience will be able to see the movement, here it but not be able to see the place it originates from.

The project will be responding to these four characteristics of online film production:

1. Interactivity
2. Variability
3. Modularity
4. Multilinearity

The project is intended to be once again an audiovisual experience, however this time we are focussing on a both visual and audio experience. I think that incorporating audio will create a more experiential project for audiences. Moreover, we will be attempting to recreate sounds from the landscape in an ASMR inspired way. For example, we intend to use water sounds like this ASMR video with clips of hands replicating the action of interacting with water.

 

My group and I created Spaces, a experiential non fiction work that explores how people interact with spaces. We focussed on actions within numerous spaces that make sense and make no sense. We explored body movement and shape, human interaction and what can be perceived as normal and not normal. In terms of technical constraints for the work, we decided to include five landscape shots and then six close up shots within that. Our temporal constraint was that each landscape consisted of twenty seconds and each close up was ten seconds. The overall work consists of two interfaces, one that portrays a landscape shot of a space as well as six close up shots of actions within that space. Three of the close up shots portray actions that make sense and three which do not. In order for the audience to move through the work we created a second interface. The audience may click on a close up action that intrigues them, this could then bring up a related close up shot from a different location. If the audience were to click on this screen it would bring them to the second interface when consists of two screens, one portraying the action and the second portraying the landscape shot of the next location.

Our initial concept for this project was derived through understanding of the affordances of Korsakow, the software we were expected to utilise to create the final work. Our final work achieves modularity as it consists of thirty-five separate media fragments the function both as a whole work but can also be consumed separately. We wanted to create a final project that could be viewed as a whole piece, but additionally for each individual SNU or fragment to make sense on its own simply through aesthetics. We wanted the project to be a visual sensory experience, in that each individual media fragment is shot in a way that made it interesting for the audience as an individual part. However, the visual component of Spaces was also significant in the work’s ability to be viewed as a whole. We wanted audiences to make visual connections as well as human associations. By this I mean that the audience can see the similarity between two clips in terms of the way it is shot and the action being portrayed through the camera. We wanted to portray actions in separate places in a similar manner, an example being smelling a flower in a park and then that same action being replicated in a supermarket through smelling butter. While the action of smelling butter in a super market does not make sense, it is through visual associations and connections that audience understanding may be generated.

Throughout the process of creating the work I thought a lot about audience interactivity and therefore variability. In my second blog post I explored the notion of spatial montage and how this can afford audiences the ability to make connections and associations between media fragments. Our work is variable in that each audience member will have a unique experience of the work. Korsakow affords users the ability to create work that does not follow a linear path, rather I would describe our Korsakow work as a looping meshwork of connections and fragments. Throughout the process of creating the work I learnt that I have no control over what the audience may conceive the work to be. In my third blog post I pondered the notion of media work having a point or intended meaning. The reality is that the audience may not derive the same meaning from the work as the filmmaker intended. As we were filming the close up shots of actions that made sense I realised that even those actions looked weird due to the extreme close up shot. While it may be normal to stroke grass in a park, shot extremely close up it just looks weird. I needed to let go of thinking it needed to mean something or make sense. When I complete work I think a lot about audience perception, perhaps too much so. In theory I can understand that media work does not inherently need to have a point however through creating this project I realised that it can be difficult to apply what I have learned to actual making. However, I have also developed a further appreciation of the visual side of media production and what that may mean for audiences. In this way, our work is variable in that each audience member may experience it completely differently and may derive completely different meaning from it or no meaning at all.

I gained a lot from the process of creating this work. I was able to further develop my understanding of media production for online screen. The aspect of the work that I found the most challenging yet also the most intriguing was the visual aspect, in particular visual connections and derived meaning. Is it possible to create a fictitious project through extreme close ups of body movement and actions? How can we utilise camera to explore the human body as almost an object? Furthermore, how would this translate in terms of audience interaction and understanding?

 

 

 

This week we commenced the production process of our project. I am not going to pretend that it has not been challenging as we encountered a few roadblocks along the way. However, moving from the conceptual stage of this project to actually creating has allowed me to further develop my understanding of what we are trying to achieve. I can often find myself stuck in the conceptual stage of projects in the sense that I struggle to realise my creative concepts for online media. For the last project I wasn’t able to construct the project in the way in which I wanted to, which consequently caused me to feel a disconnect between myself and the final actualised project. However, we approached developing this project through an understanding of the software we would use and the interface we intend to create for the numerous media fragments.

I really enjoyed the process of filming the media fragments for our project. While we had pre-planned the possible fragments of media or SNUs we could shoot, we found ourselves inspired by the actual location. Also some of what we had pre planned simply was not easily possible to film, such as scanning items in the supermarket – no one wanted to buy anything and we would have to get the shot in one take which is incredibly difficult. We did not have one person filming, rather we shared the filming. Choosing to share filming was an interesting decision considering the need for accuracy in shots, particularly those of the same action in different locations. However, sharing the filming actually helped us as other group members would remember if a shot was taken from a certain angle or distance and this helped us to recreate the shots of actions in the various spaces.

In terms of the post production side of creating the project, following discussion with Hannah on Thursday we decided to have two interfaces. One being the initial interface we developed early on, with one landscape shot and the six close ups surrounding it. The audience could then click on one of the close ups, and the relevant close up from another location would come up. From here the audience could either click through the close ups from the current location or click on the close up from another location to bring up the second interface. This interface has two screens, one being the close up and the other being the landscape shot from the related location. The audience could then click on the landscape to be brought back to the first interface with the relevant landscape and continue this process.

However, creating this using the Korsakow software was actually relatively difficult. Nagini did majority of the editing using the software, however we all tried to help her in this process. We knew from the start that what we wanted to create on Korsakow was possible, as both Mia and Nagini had previous experience with Korsakow. I think the most difficult thing was troubleshooting the issues in Korsakow. While on the one hand Korsakow is relatively user friendly as it does not require coding, if you run into an issue it can become difficult to figure out how to fix it. Moreover, we had a large number of SNUs which also made the process a bit more complex.

In the words of Adrian Miles cited in Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries “[Korsakow] proposes a reading and making of the world that is not pre-determined nor fully controllable, for maker, reader, narrator, or the work” (Wiehl 2016).

While it has been testing utilising the software at times, I can acknowledge the value of what Korsawkow affords to our project. Korsakow seems to be so innately a product of new media through its generation of a user based experience and audience interaction. It has allowed us to realise a project that I would never have otherwise thought I could create.

Weihl, A 2016, “Database aesthetics, modular storytelling, and the intimate small worlds of Korsakow documentaries”, NECSUS Journal

 

 

In response to the feedback we received last week we have begun to refine our ideas more and develop a stronger concept that we can create with the Korsakow software. The major conceptual aspect we had yet to completely figure out was the interactive aspect of the project. How could we create connections between the close up shots in a landscape? How could the audience interact with the project so that they move from one space to the next.

To address this we brainstormed as a group and have refined our concept further. We have decided that we will have three close up shots of actions that make sense within the space and three that do not make sense, but could make sense in another space. So for example, the action of swimming at the beach makes sense within the space, but this could connect to a close up of the same action occurring at a park where it does not make sense. In this way, we can visually connect actions between the places in terms of what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense.

Something I find quite difficult to grapple with is the notion of media products having or lacking a point. The experimental aspect of the concept we are developing makes it difficult for me to understand how audiences will interact with it. New media has allowed for internet spaces to become awash with seemingly pointless content. However, this weeks reading Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly (Soar 2014) has provided some context or ‘point’ to the ‘small scale’ (Soar 2014) online documentary projects  that appear to be pointless. For the case of some small scale documentary projects it is not about informing the audience about a specific thing or making a specific argument, rather it is about the work being experiential and personal (Soar 2014). The process of conceiving the interactivity of our work has forced me to take the work out of context. Our initial intent for the project was to create an visual sensory experience for the audience utilising cinematography. As our work will focus predominantly on the human experience of places the audience will likely create its own meaning from the work. Korsakow is software that affords this experience through tagging IN and OUT keywords. An article I found argues that ‘ultimately a Korsakow piece is built around the choices of a user, who has to perform the project to be able to see it’ (Raetzsch). Each audience member will have a different experience of the work through their own associations with actions and places but also simply through visual associations and aesthetic subjectivity.

Thinking about these small scale documentaries from an audience’s perspective, I have been considering the fact of engagement. How do these small scale documentaries engage audiences if they seemingly have no point or direct message? Perhaps it is through the fact that they have no inherent point that attracts audiences. For example, when I first viewed The Whole Picture, my immediate reaction was to question the point of the work. However, this intrigued me to try to figure out the point of the work and derive personal meaning from it. I suppose this is the kind of effect our upcoming project work could have, although I do think that the overall intent of our work will be obvious through visual repetition of actions. However, audience understanding derived from thing can be unique, personal and subjective.

Soar, M 2014, ‘Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly” New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses’, Palgrave Macmillan

Raetzsch, C, ‘The Korsakow System?! What the Korsakow System can do for your film’, mediamatic, available at: [https://www.mediamatic.net/en/page/13757/the-korsakow-system]