man with a movie camera / i-be area

Game, narrative, database

Game studies
the study of games is now an academic discipline, asserting an
identity as a field of endeavor separate from media studies.
Raessens argues that with the rise of computer games, culture
undergoes a "ludification" where identities are formed by play.
Games are as important to understand as film, television, and
for some demographics their influence (particularly on notions
of self) may be greater than traditional media.
Ludology vs narratology
in studying computer games, researchers have operated from
two competing paradigms--those who study games as a form of
play (ludology) and those who study games as a form of
storytelling (narratology).
Raessens argues that it is possible to study games integrating
these approaches.

Narrative
as you know stories have a beginning, middle, and an end.
Most Hollywood films, and many plays follow a three-act
structure.
Most narratologists argue that all stories follow a sequence or
structure.
Narrative is an elaboration of cause and effect.
LUDOLOGY--studies the elements and dyamics of play within a
game structure
1. Narrative begins with a setting of
the scene and introduction of
characters in an initial situation, a
state of relative equilibrium.
2. It then proceeds to a disruption of
this equilibrium, with the
emergence of some sort of catalyst.
(antagonist)
3. An exploration of the causes,
implications or consequences
follows. Various attempts at
resolution build toward a climax, a
high point of tension, bringing
revelation or catharsis.
4. It ends with a resolution in a new
state of relative equilibrium.





Plot vs Story
Plot are the details that the (film, book, novel, play, game) gives
you about the story. Plot describes everything presented to us. Story
is what the view/user/reader creates out of the plot. Story is the
viewer's imaginary construction of all events in the narrative.
The total world of the story action is called diegesis. Includes
events presumed to have occurred as well as those depicted.





Narration is the plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects. The moment-by-moment process that guides our in building the story out of plot, involving the range and depth of story information.

In Birth of a Nation, the narration is unrestricted: we know more and see more than the characters in the film. In Singin’ we know unlike the characters that the Jazz Singer signals the onset of the era of the talkies. We also know that Cathy is at the same party as Don even though neither of them knows. Suspence is created by the revealing of this fact to the both of them. Akin to third person, omniscient narration in novels.

In films that are narrated via a voice over of one of the lead characters, we tend to know only as much as the lead character. This kind of narration is restricted. Akin to writing in the first-person in a novel.

Further increases when the point of view shot is taken from the perspective of the narrator, or if we hear sounds from his or her perspective. Perceptual subjectivity.

When we hear the character’s thoughts, an internal voice that different from the outward narration that frames the shot, this is mental subjectivity. Can also be accomplished through dream, hallucinations, fantasy sequences. 8 ½ is a prime example of this. Though one can argue that through this plethora of depicting the subjectivity of the director, we get to objectively view him, much more so in a film that might deploy an unrestricted narration with the guise of an objective camera.


Dziga-Vertov—Man With a Movie Camera could also be called Woman with Editing Equipment working with the database of footage

Always already the making of the itself.

Kino-eye
Vertov wrote "I am kino-eye, I am mechanical eye, I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it." And he boldly asserted: "My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you."

The camera is superior to the human eye and it reveals the world and its details to us.

(Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious”)

But also the camera fuses with the human become a cyborg hybrid long before Donna Haraway wrote The Cyborg Manifesto.

The db is a structured collection of data (that does not at least overtly tell a story)

All film is db; film are shot out of order according to production schedule not screenplay; editor assembles it into a narrative

The algorithm—the creation of a narrative in a computer/video game
Dziga-Vertov uses an algorithm to lace together MWAMC—it does not follow traditional narrative logic

The db logic is pervasive in new media—reverses the paradigm/syntagm hierarcy.

Sentences and outfits are syntagms the result of paradigmatic choices. The db makes visible the paradigm, prioritizing the pull down menu rather than the sentence

The db exists materially (or its visible) and the narrative only exists virtually in the connections or links that the user/viewer makes

Film has privileged the narrative but not necessarily in its production phase (in pre and post the demands of narrative are privileged and then reconstituted). It exists at the intersection between database and narrative
MWAMC is “perhaps the most important example of a db imagination in modern media art.”
We see the editing room with the shots organized in shelves, according to no visible hierarchy.
Three levels:
the sequences of a cameraman shooting film
the audience watching the finished film
the film itself, consists of footage shot by Dziga-Vertov and edited by his wife—shot in three places but meant to to portray the progression of a single day in a single location.

Crowdsourcing, user-generated content

Final

COM203 Fall 2012

FINAL ESSAY – Due 18 December 5pm

Answer one question in a full essay of at least two typed pages. Use quotations from your reading; cite all sources, use MLA style. If you plagiarize, you fail. Requirements: Double space, using 12 pt type and Times New Roman, one inch margins. Your grade goes down one full grade if your essay is shorter than requested. Hand in to my mailbox in the Media Culture office.  No email attachments. Remember you cannot successfully answer these questions by repeating my lecture notes; you must know the readings well.

1 Discuss the importance of narrative, play, meta-communication, and gender identity in videogames. Refer to all of our reading about play and game theory (Caillois, Bateson, Burrill, McGonigal).

2. Discuss the usefulness of the term “convergence culture” to describe the contemporary mediascape. What does Henry Jenkins mean by this term? What does he mean by the black box fallacy? Relatedly, what do the terms “transmedia storytelling” and “remediation” mean? Apply these terms to discuss a particular example of contemporary media.

Exra credit: In no more than one page explain Umberto Eco’s theory of “how culture conditions the colors we see”?

convengence etc

googlezon




Convergence Culture: "Welcome to c c, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways." (2)

vs divergence

Henry Jenkins at Google

joshua green

Remediation--new media consists of the recontextualization of old, or already-existing media. The constant remix of older media; think of the use of sampling in music--contemporary music recorded digitally relies upon older analog recordings in order to provide it with relevance, to refer back but at the same time to make it sound contemporary.

http://www.technorhetoric.net/6.1/reviews/blakesley/glossary.html
paul miller aka dj spooky the sublimal kid


transmedia storytelling--a narrative that moves across different forms of media (matrix comic books, movies, fan fiction) see http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html


"Bricks and mortar still matter" the physical realm, one's actual place in a territory.

bricks and mortar vs clicks and mortar

a business that has a physical presence (a store you go to) vs a store like Amazon. com that you can only visit virtually.


Black box fallacy--all of media is not going to be obtained from one central device.
see http://chrisstephenson.typepad.com/chrisstephenson/2007/04/the_black_box_f.html


user generated content

crowd-sourcing


lev manovich


the man with a movie camera


ryan trecartin

http://psych.hanover.edu/krantz/art/figure.html

http://www.psychologie.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/figure_ground.html