Ideas of The Project

In the last week, our group had a basic idea of the project after experiencing the Korsakow. In this week, we tried to make the final decision of the project and started working on it.

We set five landscape at first, which are the library, garden, beach, supermarket and the bedroom. Then, we came up with six actions that might happen in each landscape and three of them might be seen in usual, the others might be unusual to see.

Library: 

• grabbing the book
• typing the laptop
• flipping the book
• grassing the floor
• looking at somewhere
• sleeping

Beach:

• swimming
• picking up sands
• looking at the view
• typing
• catching something
• smelling

Garden:

• smelling the flowers
• touching the grass
• looking at the view
• lying on the grass
• making up
• collecting the leaves

Bedroom:

• making up in the mirror
• sleeping
• picking clothes
• pushing chair
• picking up sheet
• rolling on the floor

Supermarket:

• pushing trolly
• scanning the item
• looking at the fruit
• reading the words on the product
• stroking the produce
• looking at the view

There might be at least two actions happened in the landscape that similar to the other landscape.  For example, ‘pushing trolly in the supermarket’ can link to ‘pushing chair in the bedroom’, ‘stroking the produce in the supermarket’ can link to ‘grabbing the book in the library’. Our idea is that, if the viewer clicks one video, the action on the video might lead them to the next landscape. The changes of choice would lead to different landscapes they will experience.

FEEDBACK

As we shared our ideas and showed the current process of the project in the studio, fortunately, Hannah and another group seem interested in it. We discussed how to arrange it on Korsakow by showing them the videos we shot so far, and I think we will stick with similar to what we planned originally.

However, based on Hannah’s feedback, one thing that vague the project is how to make the connections among the landscape. For example, if the keyword is ‘smell’, will there be the scenes related to “smell” appear, such as ‘smelling butter’, ‘smelling flowers’? Or the next scene will be touched when the viewer clicks the video of “smell” in one landscape. We are not sure which method works until work on Korsakow in next week’s class, so hopefully, we will make sense then.

In addition, based on the previous week’s feedback, we came up with the question of ‘colour’. Will it makes the project strange if we set the ‘odd’ clips in black-and-white? Thanks for Hannah’s suggestion, the element of colour seems not so necessary for the project and what we focus on is the actions that link to each landscape. Thus, we will not think about ‘colour’ anymore, instead of focusing on the process so far.

Reading

• Week 7 – Soar, Matt. “Making (with) the Korsakow System: Database Documentaries as Articulation and Assembly.” New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, edited by Kate Nash et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 154–73.

This week’s reading could divide into six parts and the part of ‘Spatial montage – working with Korsakow’ might help to understand the project deeper by linking to the idea in week 5B’s reading. Based on the experience of Korsakow in the last week, I think the usage of Korsakow is intended for creating multimedia presentations, not the software application, just followed by Manovich’s idea, ‘spatial montage ‘could involve a number of images, potentially of different sizes and proportions, appearing on the screen at the same time’. (2001) In our project, we tried to let all videos which happened in the same landscape to appear at the same time on a screen to achieve this idea. Moreover, I noticed the reading mentioned, ‘In a Korsakow film, one ‘image’ area is where the ‘main’ video plays.’ When we experienced the usage of Korsakow, we played six videos on the screen at the same time, so it looks a bit confusing. After considering the reading, we had a fresh idea which is just playing the main landscape as the video and set other scenes as still images around the landscape. The other images (or paused videos) are the clickable previews to load the next spatial montage.

In addition, the part of ‘small-scale films and the slow web’ in the reading is useful for our project as well. Our project is typically small scale, observational and character driven because we tried to focus on tiny things which are easy to ignore in daily life under the general landscape, we focus on people’s actions, the wildlife and everything happened around us. Furthermore, ‘Korsakow films place the viewer at the centre of the narrative, explicitly inviting them to play a role in the story (Journey to the End of Coal).’ and I think our project reveal this idea because we encourage the viewer to click the scene or image they interested in to continue the next step. It is unique to their own experience because the viewer becomes an editor so that to achieve the interaction with the viewers.

Summary

In this week’s, I had the further study of the background of Korsakow and learnt more about ‘spatial montage’. The usage of Korsakow is more intended for creating multimedia presentations, while is similar to ‘spatial montage’. Moreover, the small-scale work always useful for achieving the better project. It would be easier to observe more tiny thing if divided the whole landscape into separate parts. Observation is a crucial skill for each media workers. In addition, we experienced how to use Korsakow in a deeper layer. Based on the experience, the general framework has done but we still need to think about how to make the connection between each action and how to create the transaction among the landscapes.