The aesthetics of sound

The FilmTV 1 reading was about Sound Design and as I have begun to understand and be fascinated by the significance of sound in media, I really enjoyed it.

Two major points that excite and inspire me are:

Narrative sound: the ways that sound can aid the plot and particularly the way that commentative sound uses sound to tell the viewer something about the plot that they can’t see.

Sound design itself: This idea that sound is constructed the same way that the visual scenes are constructed. That we can manipulate everything about it and use it to our advantage and to progress the plot.

My thoughts on the Bordwell reading

Thoughts on the Bordwell reading, I was Well Bored. Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha. But no it was actually quite interesting and got me thinking about my own creative practises.

Of the different forms of film covered in the reading, experimental, abstract, associative, categorical documentary and rhetorical documentary, which will I concentrate on in my documentary? Abstract aesthetics, conceptual or visual connections, will I make an argument or will I simply categorize my film? And how do abstract film and associational film fit into the sphere of documentaries?

The Korsakow films I looked at were categorical and associational. The associations had to be made by the viewer, this was the interactive element of the documentary, but the selection of clips that each main clip lead to was carefully selected by the maker, so that the viewer would draw connections, and thus it is a categorical and associational documentary.

So documentary can involve more than one element. I really like the idea of making aesthetic and conceptual associations using a categorical documentary form. I think I would prefer to leave it up to the viewer to interpret meaning rather than make an explicit argument.

Reading 3 Notes Integrated Media 1

Causality, the relationship between cause and effect.

Narrative is spacial, temporal and causative. It moves between spaces, through time and has cause and effect.

Databases are not narrative, but can be formed into narrative.

The story constitutes of the lines and what’s between the lines.

The plot is only the lines. What is visibly and audibly presented to us. Including nondiegetic material.

Cause and effect take place in time.

Temporal order is easy to follow and commonplace.

Temporal duration refers to the time span that the film covers. It could be one night (Prom Night) or a lifetime (Benjamin Button).

Screen duration is the length of the film. This influences how much can be shown, how much cause and effect can occur etc.

Temporal frequency is the amount of times that we see something in a film. This can be used to show the double meaning of a scene that at the time seemed trivial.

Space does not always need to be shown, it can be imagined. Like the scene in Pulp Fiction where Christopher Walkin recounts the story of the watch to the dead soldier’s son.

Over time the ending is different to the beginning. If you look at only the beginning state of the world examined and the end state of the world examined you can see what differences arise. The narrative of the film tells us how these changes happened. This could be an interesting way to study narratives and it would be interesting to apply this to other mediums, not just film.

Patterns of development are similarities in cause and effect within narrative. For example change in knowledge, or goal plot.

Experiential film challenges conventional ideas what the movie can do and how it can do it. Perhaps to present difficult ideas or to explore the possibilities of the medium itself. This cinema may follow really unusual narrative paths.

Abstract form, experimental film-

This concentrates more on the aesthetics rather than the story. Uses music as a recurring and changing motif.

“In a film, these abstract qualities [of ordinary objects] become interesting for their own sake.”

Rhythm of editing is as important as the rhythm of individual shots.

It’s all in the editing, how the data is arranged. User interface, narrative combined.

Associational form, experimental film-

A poetic series of transitions. Drawing connections that might not be logical or obvious. Aesthetic connections or conceptual and emotional connections?

“First, the filmmaker typically groups images together in larger sets, each of which creates a distinct, unified part of the film. Each group of images can then contrast with other groups of images… Second, as in other types of form, the film uses repeated motifs to reinforce associational connections. Third, associational form strongly invites interpretation, the assigning of general meanings to the film…. The filmmaker will not necessarily give us obvious cues to the appropriate expressive qualities or con cepts. He or she may simply create a series of unusual and striking combinations and leave it up to us to tease out their relations.”

Principles of variation and repetition are present.

“…the power of an associational formal system: its ability to guide our emotions and to arouse our thinking simply by juxtaposing different images and sounds.”

Animation

Each frame is carefully constructed and shot individually. Kind of like the longer shots in an abstract or associational film.

Documentaries

“Many, perhaps most, documentaries are organized as narratives”

Alternative forms are categorical form and rhetorical form.

Categorical form organizes knowledge to make sense of the world. Sometimes scientific, most commonly and in daily life ideological associations.

Patterns of development are generally simple and this risks boring the spectator.

It can’t depend too much on repetition, the challenge is for the filmmaker to introduce variations and adjust expectations. Also can add aesthetic variation to add interest.

Rhetorical form the filmmaker presents a persuasive and explicit argument. It addresses the viewer directly and asks them to believe or to act. The subject of the film may not be scientific truth but a matter of opinion. The viewer might accept is as true because the filmmaker makes a strong case for it. The filmmaker may appeal to our emotions if fact isn’t enough. Often the film tries to get the viewer to change an act in their daily life.

Arguments from source are fact based claims from reliable sources. Subject centered arguments are based on subject.

Week 3 Class Notes

Reality:

Must have verisimilitude- it can be verified. It is of this world, and not a world (eg. fiction). In interactive documentary we make claims about reality. Between the user and the artefact, claims are made about reality.

The tools that we use have limitations. Take these limitations and ask ‘what can it do?’ The limitations set the groundwork for what cannot be done, and also help you to understand what it can do. Therefore we enhance our creativity.

Simplicity is best.

It is difficult to negate in film. In some media forms, like film and picture, it is easy to show what something is but not what it is not. In something like a documentary it is possible to negate what something is, thus creating a multi-dimensional point or points of view.

The new avant-garde in documentary realized?

The third reading was about how technological advances in media change the ways that media is used and functions within the public sphere.

I would like to go into my own thoughts on this. As much as technology creates possibilities, it always has limitations. As discussed in this weeks class, photographs are constrained by their lack of time. In a less clear way film is limited because it is difficult to negate a point of view. It is easy to show what is, but not what is not.

There’s also the fact that the limitations that create opportunity or enhance creativity. By asking, What can it do? you can really utilise the creativity and possibilities of a media form. Particularly with digital where the answers to ‘what can it do?’ are become more and more vast.

The invention and development of digital technologies in particular has expended the possibilities within media phenomenally in the past decade. It has also made the technology to create and produce content available and easily accessible to the masses. The public sphere connects in social online networks and create and share content. For example the platform Instagram allows users to share their photography withe the world and is used by millions of people.

However this also has its drawbacks when lines are blurred between what is valuable and what isn’t. What is art and what isn’t. Time magazine used Instagram to document Hurricane Sandy and Jeanette Hagglund uses Instagram to create stunning architectural photos, but 90% of the population are using Instagram to take photos of food or their cats, like me.

Money and the Greeks, GELD.GR

This Korsakow documentary was mentioned in the lecture and so I decided to watch it. Adrian, in the lecture at the time that this i-doc was mentioned, was discussing user interaction and the different ways that documentaries interacted with the user. He said that this documentary was different in user interaction to another documentary that the creator has made. I decided to watch and explore the documentaries in what they do and user interaction and compare two.

The documentary was created by Florian Thalhofer, he is an interesting guy, an artist, film maker and creative who explores the possibilities and limitations of creative technological mediums, he also created Planet Galata, another Kosakow i-doc and I used that to compare to Money for the Greeks.

In terms of design and content, Money for the Greeks, was brilliant. These things contribute to the meaning of the documentary. In terms of what it does, the documentary allows the user to explore different aspects of the economic situation of Greece, in a very personal way, from the voices of 32 protagonists.

It is non-linear, and the pathways are all equally important and the user interacts with the content by deciding what they want to watch next. It is exploratory and the user is external, looking in. They are given options based on relevance and aided in choosing by being shown which demographics of Greek people liked that clip. In the pyramid of user, reality and artefact, the three interact very closely. The artefact, different aspects of money and wealth in Greece are explored in a real way, and are presented by real people in a real setting. The user navigates this content.

In Planet Galata, these specifics are very similar. The user navigates content, it is explorative, and all those specifics etc etc. However the user interaction is different, they options are limited and based on time, and other times the options are always available. It’s just a small change that doesn’t change the specifics of how the user interacts, but it does change the way that the story is told to the user and the ways that the user is able to navigate through the story.

Narratives

Some notes on narratives from the Banston and Stafford reading:

Joesph Campbell studied the myths of different cultures and proposed that certain ambiguous archetypes were central to myth across all cultures and societies.

Vladmir Propp created eight character archetypes which he believed all characters from heroic folktales would fit into (hero, villain, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher, false hero), thirty-one events which move the plot. His was a very old fashioned and basic methodology, quite sexist too. Although it was the literature he studied that was sexist, not exactly the work.

Tzvetan Todorov had the idea that all stories began with an equilibrium, a peace, and then this was upset by something before returning to a different equilibrium.

Barthes‘ ideas were more complicated, he pointed out the “enigma code”, where little puzzles are set up throughout the story to prolong the ending in a pleasurable way. This isn’t always pleasurable though, and sometimes I feel like people do this unnecessarily in films just to stretch it out, or that it moves to blatantly from one puzzle to the next like a deliberate chain that almost insults the audience with its simplicity.

Syntagmatic relations– the structural order that a narrative follows

Syntagm– an element that follows another in a particular sequence

Paradigm– a class of ideas or objects

Levi-Strauss pointed out that narratives are binary, there are two conflicting sides. And I thought he only made jeans.

The stuff covering narrative was quite basic, covering sensical revelations, first/third person voice etc. I did like the point about how in short narratives, like ads, narrative can be established by certain signs, appearance of characters, setting, etc. The product will often be Propp’s ‘hero’ in this case.

Photography can use narrative in the way that the power in the photograph lies in what the viewer is lead to believe may have just happened or may be about to happen. In this way it has a story.

Cinema is time based, more being told and shown than anything.

Radio is also time based, but is quite dynamic and limited at the same time.

Institutional and industrial demands are kind of like the protocols of the internet. They are developed by the creators and users of the media, and are limited by technological advancements and also the format of the media being used.

Closed narrative ends, like a film or a novel with no sequel. Characters have a hierarchy, there are fewer characters, time and events are particular to and in the story, time is compressed, the same audience is assumed to watch from beginning to end, music and visual image is elaborate.

Open narrative continues, like television shows. Are more casual, as if it could go on forever, no end drawing nearer and no conclusions to expect or be drawn to, more characters naturalistically represented, characters are not hierarchical but come in and out of prominence as needed by the plot, characters can shift narrative role, time often is like real world time, the time makes broad references and is not particular to one period, each episode has to try and address both new and old watchers, more simple and less music, often has many storylines.

Some movies also follow an almost non-linear narrative path that echoes the non-linear narrative paths of computer use. This can be to advertise other products that the viewer could turn to in order to extend and manipulate the narrative but also in movies such as Sliding Doors where it is a tool to develop a complex story.

The last networked class, tying everything up.

So the stroke of genius that I had last night and sassily wrote about in my last post is now defunct.

During today’s discussion I had several epitomes about how the content of this course, although it wasn’t thrilling, is going to be useful in the course of my education and also my personal and professional life.

Design fiction is a total babe. It can be used in conjunction with the knowledge gained from studying other theories in this course in order to prepare myself for the rapidly developing future, prepare and adapt to the failure or success of my ideas and assist in my learning. The speculative model of the wiki assignments is an awesome way to gain a deeper understanding of a particular topic in relation to other theories. By speculatively attaching a previously, seemingly unrelated, theory to a topic it becomes easier to find connections through a speculative scenario, and then form a perspective that might otherwise have not been so obvious.
Hypertext and non-linear narratives are the shin-diggity. I’ve finally realised that when I study and explore concepts, I generally do this online. I start somewhere and follow through links and end up finding different media that relates in different ways. It is the best way to expand knowledge and to discover the areas of a theory of a topic that are most interesting and likely to engage you. I put this into play when researching Jonathan Harris and I didn’t even realise it, but it’s the reason that my research was so successful and then I applied it well to a sort of design fiction which expanded my understanding further.
Protocol on the internet is less useful for my education, but having an understanding of the frameworks which develop naturally through societies to develop conventions and technological limitations and possibilities on the internet is an important grounding for a career in media. As someone who wants to work on innovative ideas, I should know how these affect and are affected by the people using the internet and also the people developing it. By thinking deeply on online protocols and also the power structures of the decentralised network, the internet, and also potentially mapping these using actor-network theory, I might be able to create more innovative and relevant work. I might also better gain a better understanding of my place within specific online communities and their protocols, in order to create work that pushes some boundaries, which is always fun to do.
The stuff on databases was enlightening and has broadened my ideas on what can and cannot be deemed as art or narrative. Previously I would not have thought batches of data as anywhere near the realm of films and literature and photography and art. Now I understand that films and literature and art have become data, and also that data and the interface that is used to organise and display it can be an art form or method of story telling in itself. This has opened up doors to possibilities that I didn’t know existed, and will really practically apply to the way that I approach UX or User Experience design in my ideas for online advertising, portfolios and more general stuff too.
As explained in my previous and excruciatingly arrogant post, actor-network theory is a methodology which might aid in my understanding of many different networks and relationships. I won’t go into it again as I’ll probably end up repeating myself but here is a link to the post.
And, going back to the very start, all of this stuff will integrate together toward the pedagogic practice of blogging. This post is a great example, I’ve been able to organise my ideas in a single post, I’ll tag each of the theories mentioned for future reference and I’ll also link to relevant posts and information on the things covered in order to create an informative and relevant non-linear narrative.

Josh Greesham- Artist Profile

Josh Greesham is a musician originating from the city of Melbourne, Australia. His career began as a teenager, performing at local Melbourne events before his career took off in 2008 with the release of “Fallout“.

Josh is known for his complex compositions and angelic aural tones.

This photo is from Josh’s upcoming Album, “After the Tears” which is set to be released later this year.

His chilling new track “Orphan” is getting multiple plays a day on popular radio stations Triple J and JAMM FM. The song has debuted at number 11 on Australia’s top 40 and looks like it is set to climb to the top.

DNS and IP Addresses

My topic, with Tim and Dana, for the next Wiki page, is DNS servers and IP addresses.

I’d heard these acronyms before, and seen them around when I surf the internet or troubleshoot my router from time to time, but I never really knew what they were.

So here’s a basic rundown of the DNS:

The letters, DNS stand for ‘Domain Name System’. Domain Name Systems are a complex collective of smaller networks which helps to connect computers to internet webpages by translating the domain name that they desire to reach, into an IP address.

The computer connects to the DNS when the user types in an internet domain name, and the DNS relays the IP address back to the computer which then connects to the site which the IP address relates to.

If an IP address isn’t within a DNS server’s domain, it will send a message to the relevant domain and query them for the IP address and then send that information back to the relevant computer.

The DNS also identifies and locates computers by using IP addresses, so different computers that are connected to the internet all have separate IP addresses. These change frequently depending on the Internet Service Provider, or ISP. The IP address of a computer is determined by the router which might reset the IP address frequently or rarely depending on the user’s settings.

And here is a basic rundown of IP addresses (WARNING, they’re pretty complex even in basic rundown form):

An Internet Protocol address has two main purposes: to identify and locate the host device or network interface, and to identify webpages.

There are two main types of IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 addresses are 32bit numbers, and are finite. So in 1995, IPv6 addresses were invented so that the internet can continue to grow.

IPv4 addresses have four octets, each divided by a decimal point. For example: 118.209.208.3, which is my current IP address.

There are 5 classes of IPv4 IP addresses, Class A, B, C, D and E. Each class is structured a different way and are allocated from largest networks (Class A) to experimental and rare networks (Class E).

IPv6 addresses are 128bit, and are 16 octets long. Each section of the IP address is separated by a colon ( : ) and they incorporate both letters and numbers. IPv6 addresses are also finite but provide enough IP addresses for the next 100 years at least.

Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are divided into two parts, the network identifier and the host identifier. Many hosts belong to a network and the size of the network determines what class it will be in and how many octets in the IP address are dedicated to the network.

The smaller the network, the more octets are dedicated to it and the fewer octets are devoted to the host. The larger the network the less octets are dedicated to the network and the more octets dedicated to the host. Class A IPv4 addresses are reserved for the largest networks, and so the network identifier is stated in only one octet, while the host is identified in the remaining three octets. It is a logical system because the larger the network, the more hosts it will need to identify. Whereas, with smaller networks, there are more of them and therefore there will need to be more space in order to find those networks.

The allocation of IP addresses is managed by the Internet Assigned Number Authority, or IANA. It allocates IP address blocks to ISPs and other entities.

Unicast IP addresses are the address for individual devices that are connected to the internet.

Here’s a pretty cool and simple explanation of the whole thing if mine was too complicated.

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Exploring and creating content on and about the online world.

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