Tagged: narrative

What do we do with the fragments? Week 7 lecture

  • Social media are more lists than narratives, eg Twitter, Flickr, etc. They are fragments listed together, not narratives.

I think I’m beginning to understand what Adrian has been getting at for the last few weeks: that we need to shake this kind of romantic notion that everything is a story or narrative, but I still can’t seem to get over it! Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit From The Goon Squad I would argue is a list of fragments, but I would also argue as a total these fragments come together to present a narrative. I feel is we did list all of these fragments from Twitter it would present some kind of narrative: the progression of news stories coupled with people’s reactions, etc. Would this add up to some kind of narrative? Or just a collection of the current zeitgeist? Is there a difference?

  • Representation as tyranny? –> This idea fits in with Plato’s theory of representations in art which we studied earlier this semester in Philosophy/literature
  • Semiotics
  • The words matter more than their specific forms (although always exceptions, eg, if we were a designer clearly typography etc would matter.)
  • The world exceeds us in every possibility
  • Singing mice
  • We need to get over ourselves
  • We are not at the center = trees have rights
  • Representation can only say a little bit, and in doing so represents the whole. As such representation is a tyranny.
  • Because of this tyranny we keep misreading the world –> eg, digging up and burning coal because we believed the world belongs to us and is there for our use/consumption.
  • Riding a bike to work = a web of lists: places, things, rules, reasonings = Adrian riding his bike to work is not the centre of the bike’s story. Every part of the network has agency.
  • We can turn everything into a song, but it doesn’t follow that everything is a song. Maybe this applies to Twitter fragments… we could turn it into a narrative but it doesn’t mean it is a narrative?
  • Re: Google and Korsakow = what about the ads? Where would they go and how would Google make any money?
  • YouTube is old media

I found this comment from Adrian amusing because only the morning of the lecture I was listening to an interview between Jenna Marbles and Rhett and Link, both popular YouTube personalities. They were discussing TV not understanding YouTube, as exemplified with Jenna’s interview on GMA and her being described as “The Most Famous Person You’ve Never Heard Of”.

Also in the interview with Rhett and Link they discuss he being recognised over traditional TV actors. So for Adrian to say that YouTube is old when ‘traditional’ media isn’t even recognising YouTube is being ‘here’… I hate to say that it shocked me a bit! But ultimately I have to agree: afterall YouTube doesn’t rethink what video is or how we consume it.

  • Cusp of media change
  • Vine = fragments; Charlie bit my finger = fragment
  • What do we do with the fragments? One example is Korsakow.

I’m glad Adrian brought this up as I have been questioning lately why the majority of our grade this semester revolves around a single program, and this idea that it’s simply an example of what we do with the fragments has answered this to a degree.

  • Niche audiences + media users
  • We can’t work on the model of traditional grand audiences: we timeshift, illegally download, etc, and we can’t make-believe that our audience won’t also do that.

 

 

Ryan + Bogost

Ryan’s reading regarded the semantics of a narrative, with the suggested definition: “story is an event or sequence of events (the action), and narrative discourse is those events as represented.”

The following dimensions were also suggested to define what a narrative is:

I like to think about narrative and story because I enjoy reading and writing both fiction and non-fiction, so this reading is interesting to compare these two genres, but I’m unsure of the importance of this reading in regards to what we’ve studied so far in the course. Previously we have discussed in lectures that definitions by definition are inherently wrong and there are always exceptions to the rule, and that we shouldn’t waste time thinking about which box our work fits in to. On the other hand, I have felt strangely liberated by the constraints of the constraint tasks, so perhaps this reading can fit in to the course this way, but I’m still unsure. Ryan mentions the ‘do-it-yourself’ toolkit for definitions based on her eight conditions, so maybe we are able to satisfy ourselves with only a couple of these factors and ultimately define things individually.

Bogost’s reading about lists and literature made me ask myself if our sketch tasks are the film equivalent of a written list. For example, here is a ten second clip of things that define me: guitar, laptop, a candle, etc. It’s quite reminiscent of Barthes’ list of likes and dislikes mentioned in the article.

Changes in knowledge

Bordwell and Thompson‘s reading this week focused on narrative and relations. A quote in the beginning on the reading explained narrative as a way of organising knowledge which I found quite adequate. I think all we try to do through art and creation is organise our knowledge. We explore, interrogate and critique the world and our ideas through what we express, whether it be through writing, film or painting.

We can also express and organise our knowledge through non-narrative and multi-linearity. As humans I think we crave narrative: we look for signs, symbols, patterns; we believe in fate and destiny, and that everything happens for a reason. But does that necessarily mean it’s the ‘best’ or most appropriate for our lives?

The reading explained relations in narrative: we connect events through causality, time and space.

This chapter also mentioned reactions to conventions, which got me thinking about creative rebellion.

Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings; otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will just be a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; and it lives a dragging life, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical. – Osho

Find the extraordinary in the ordinary

Actively interacting interactively

The importance of interactivity in digital texts and how that differentiates old and new media.

Not all digital texts are interactive, but those that aren’t could usually be taken out of the computer and played by another medium.

Ryan asks what this might mean for narrative form and storytelling, and as a self-diagnosed, scaffold-loving, traditional narrative fanatic, I am also interested in what the future might look like in an ever-expanding networked media.

I really like these diagrams of plot graphs Ryan provided – they offer a range of perspectives on narrative that don’t necessarily have to conform to the traditional structure.

I found most interesting what Ryan raised in the last section, that interactivity is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of relations between the user and the text. So far in the examples of hypertext I’ve looked into, at least online, I’ve had to simply click different sections and links and I’ve been transported to a different story segment. But where else could this idea of interactivity lead as technology progresses? Admittedly, I’m still transfixed by the idea of a build your own adventure theme park, but the directions that could be followed… I can’t begin to fathom.

  • Links:

On Evan Williams’ newly launched publishing platform, Medium, a big focus is on sharing and collaboration. Articles are arranged by themes so that readers can contribute and gravitate toward content that fits their likes. The comments are set up to aid in that too. They’re not at the end of the piece, but sprinkled throughout, paragraph by paragraph. The aim is to foster dynamic discussions around what you’re interested in.

“The crowd can actually improve the quality of the content,” says Williams, who also co-founded microblogging site Twitter. “Our goal is to create a better place to read and write.”

The Publishing Industry’s Secret Sauce Is You

Television has already grown to have what AMC calls the “two–screen experience” with certain shows. The new NBC show, Hannibal (which I recommend highly), live tweets during its episodes, and Sam Witwer live tweets during the SyFy show Being Human for both the East and West Coast air times.

So let me bring this back to the issue that spurred this blog: ensemble casts and the changing nature of big movies.

A Different Kind of Experience

The world’s first interactive street-furniture installation is for Nokia’s N-90 and the moment it detects a pedestrian it springs into life. The monolith-like installation first swivels either right or left to ensure that the creative message is directly in front of the consumer. It then snaps a photograph of the person and displays it on a screen.

Street Furniture Gets Interactive (2006)

There is no way to deny that fact static pages just don’t cut it anymore. With every company combining social media profiles with their standard websites, designers are discovering more and more that creating a successful site means embracing interactivity.

Internet users view countless websites each day, so as a brand you need to figure out how to stand out and make your mark in the mind of the viewer. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate interactive elements on your site. The goal is to draw the customer in and engage them through interactive element—innovative scroll navigation, animated characters or unique click controls. Whatever you choose to do you have to make it worth talking about.

Interactivity Is King

Interaction is something as simple as pressing Space to make the story continue, and as complex as deciding the fate of a universe based on your actions. Such interactive storytelling breaks down into three rough categories. There are games that wish to tell you their story, and ask you to complete tasks that allow it to be told. There are games that have stories which can go in multiple directions, and allow you to choose which of these pre-determined routes to take. And there are games that provide a template in which you can tell your own story.

– Games Are The Ideal Place For Telling Great Stories

A very important factor of interactivity in games is how the player experiences and learns about the story. Audio, visuals, and other elements of a game help to create truly interactive experiences.

– Interactivity as it Relates to Video Games and Story