10/10/05

Notes on Kant 1790

The subjective aspect of the detachment of art from the practical concerns of life is reflected.

It is not the work of art but the aesthetic judgement of taste Kant investigates.

Situated between the realm of the senses and that of reason between the interest of inclination in the case of the agreeable. And the interest of practical reason in the realization of moral law and is defined as impartial.

Freedom of art from the constraints of capitalist society aesthetic is not about the maximisation of profit. Detachment of the aesthetic from practical life contexts.

Demands aesthetic judgement be universal.

The sensuous and the moral

Art as the realm of non-purposive creation and disinterested pleasure.

Did Kant launch conceptual art?

Iroquois Sachem:- The most interesting thing about Paris is the eating houses.

11/10/05

Signifier and the signified.

Signified what the signifier means in our conscious.

Lessrain.com

12/10/05

Notes on 4/10/05 visit to Compton Verney to see work of Luc Tuymans and Susan Hiller.

Hiller, The J Street Project

A systematic documentation of all the streets in Germany with the word Jew or Jewish in their name. Large screen video showing all the street signs in all the towns in Germany. Were all the people we saw in the streets ghosts from the past? Presumably the streets were renamed by the Nazis during the war and then changed back after the war as part of de-nazification.. The street names must act as a permanent reminder to the German nation of their guilt in the holocaust. There were also large panels of still photographs portraying the streets and the signs.

Jewish signifying a religion, a way of life, a nation, Israel. In Germany the signs are indexical in indicating real streets, symbolic as a reminder of the holocaust, but are the images overall iconic? The cannon of holocaust art is largely documentary and in a way the video and photographs could be looked at as documentary, but they are presented in a gallery context, which can be seen as signifying art. Also the work is syntagmatic in presenting the street scenes one after the other. But the signs within the scenes could be seen as paradigmatic in that the signs signifying a Jewish presence within the photographs could be interchanged. There is an image from the project on the facing page.

Luc Tuymans painting/collage/mixed media looking very like Degas in places.

Compton Verney, beautiful carefully renovated buildings. I shot 36 frame film of buildings. They are set in picturesque countryside. This could be seen as affirming one of Kant’s criteria that art should be removed from commerce. Yet they charged an entry fee. Should all art be viewable without charge?

12/10/05

Notes on 11/10/05

Started with presentation about semiotics. The language of signs.

Look at Kant’s Critique of Aesthetics, keep creative log /diary There was a presentation of previous students work. Alex Jeromovic particularly impressive. He had authored a three dimensional linear temporal narrative of characters in a building the building being very detailed. He had previously done work on games. And also Leith showing examples of other previous students work.

Must pick topic to research:- Visually the thing that interests me most is cinematography. Digital Cinematography? High definition? Interaction in high definition?

Blast theory presentation of interactive technology enhanced games. Hide and seek for the 21^st century? GPS system and handheld computer. They were working with Nottingham University. Does it have a point? Does interactivity need to have a point? Look up Illuminations, Jon Wyver’s work seems similar.

Visit to One Dot Zero. Saw many modern computer generated animations all of them linear narrative in outlook. Could non-linear narrative linearly presented be seen as fractured narrative?

12/10/05

Work on fine edit of Beltane. Tried showing it to more people. Also look at collaboration with dancer, try Alicia. Also look at EIGHT NINE TEN.

Digital cinematography, digital film aesthetic.

Low Budget Digital Film Aesthetic.

15/10/05

In looking at low budget digital cinematography almost the first question you will be asked about video is "How do you make it look like film?" Film could be seen as a sign signifying a more a more pleasing aesthetic. Although the film surface itself is not indexical (And here, for this paragraph, I will use the word used in film for aesthetic, "look".) As though the "clean" digital surface is not in itself a valid representation of a scene. And in reply about the "look" of film one has to state that there is no one film "look". Film can have lots of different "looks", even between black & white stocks made by the same manufacturer the "look" can be very different, as for instance the very grainy fast Kodak 200ASA TRI-X which has a distinctly old archive "look" and the slower 50ASA Plus-X which has a much more contemporary "clean" "look". Can film be viewed as video with a filter on it? Personally I think that the filter would have to be dynamic, i.e. responding with different characteristics dynamically across the frame. There is much more to it than a simplistic treatment of video by reducing the edge definition and introducing noise.

So what is the digital aesthetic? Aesthetics is defined by the dictionary as "A set of principles of good taste and the appreciation of beauty." Does this imply the need for video to be more than just a true representation of the tones and colours in a scene? Is a video image of an idyllic rural scene more beautiful than a video image of urban dereliction? The representation/mediation of a scene/image by a mechanical/electronic/photo chemical representational system presented at some point distant or near and, probably, at some time removed. The rays are not coloured and neither is the representation on the video screen fixed it is volatile whereas the film image on a print is permanent. Colour is agreed by cultural convention, we don’t know that we all experience colour as the same thing within our personal experience, as we can’t look inside each others heads. Breaking the image into colour and grey scale as television does could permit a more detailed technical examination.

18/10/05

Aesthetics the study of beauty what is beautiful about super eight? And the harsh reality of video?

Mandy Havers

Feminism Own body for reference soft materials sculpture, babies, perception of scale. Work is finished to a very high technical standard.

Eroticism came into work. Work with body physicality. Mandy Havers work could be seen as primarily about fetishism. And in particular leather fetishism.

John Jostins

Convergence and decline of the original, signs in woods, people and signs. Things that couldn’t be sold in galleries, as much change as possible. ARX184@coventry.ac.uk

23/10/05

Lev Manovich talks about two types of cinema and says claims of digital of being more realistic are false. But that the new form of digital is the hard drive data based film, this could be fractured narrative. Nonlinear narrative presumably shown from a tree based structure. Lev states that he thinks web cams are essentially boring. Looks at the digital aesthetic in terms of computer generated moving images, and the way it shows us new things. Lev states that computer generated images are becoming more believable all the time. Difficulties with moving computer generated imagery effects can tie the camera down like the start of sound movies with their huge cameras.

25/10/05

aesthetics as picture.

Cgi believability

Aesthetics in terms of edit The art of editing is an aesthetic in itself. The cumulative effect of a montage of images.

Lev Manovich sees past artists who were seminal in the field as new information designers.

Change in perspective

Robert Rodrigues, Sam Becket

Working with information.

How do we perceive design?

Straus:- A city is a collection of animals.

Get de soutos article

Get a scene story

Lots of brick in Birmingham vernacular.

THE PURPOSE OF THE LOG BOOK IS TO INVESTIGATE PRACTICE.

Jim noble technically mediated art.

26/10/05

Abandoning aesthetics as dead end. I would have to do basic physical research. I intend to look at interactive media narrative. Remember trips to museums. Shoot all super eight dance video with interactive elements talk to Alicia about dance choreography. Also look at sound to light wiring for floor. Look at generating sound from footsteps or footsteps being displayed visually. Looking at Ridley Scot’s BOY AND BICYCLE It is very nostalgic and just goes to show you don’t necessarily need expensive sets or locations to make an effective film. I want to make films, I’m a filmmaker taking two years out. Sound on film a floor wired for sound. Talk to Alicia about dance possible dance interfaces. A computer that can react to peoples brain waves? Web design look at etoy Could UBERMORGAN be seen as art terrorists. Dada paint drying??!! Look at all forms of interactivity. Physical theatre, what’s the theme? What’s the narrative? Look at EIGHT NINE TEN. A shop that sells dreams, interacting with your dreams. And yet part of EIGHT NINE TEN deals with a physical attack in the street, physical violence.

27/10/05

Look at practice so far. Picture, sound with camera feedback, or wiring a room for sound.

Back project a feedback screen. A video theramin. A musical instrument in which the dancer/participants movements in front of the screen and affects the picture and sound. But is the dancer necessarily a better musician than a composer? Could it be fractured audio in which the dancer effects the order segments are played back in.

Look up Ars Electronica and find out an installation with parallels.

The use of net art.

Cutting edge net art film resulting in video performance.

Looked right through Ars Electronica catalogue trying to work out current practice to get up to speed with current practice. Rolf advises that it would be necessary to mount the sensors on a false to enable sufficient movement for sensors to pick up.

29/10/05

Lev Manovich

Images were originally spatially presented but cinema has mostly been temporal. There are exceptions such as Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON. Several triptych type images from this film are on the facing page. New temporal new computer media is spatial.

Can I put over the concepts I want to work with better as interactive work or will the move to 35mm preclude this?

Malcolm Le Grice:- Is virtual reality a tautological oxymoron?

30/10/05

What’s visually the best way to approach 35mm cinematography? Why do I struggle with story having studied it for so long? Form a cinematography group in Coventry. Put together a film group. Telling stories, talk about passion.

What’s the best way to develop a visual sense ? How do you tell a story in pictures? What’s the best way to tell a story in pictures?

Single screen work.

Present forms of moving image presentation formulated by Annika Blunck as:-

1/ Challenged cinema.

"Standard" three act cinema narrative with closure.

2/ Expanded cinema.

Cinema which exceeds the cinemas’ customary film projections and which questions the conditions of the performance. As for instance Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON.

3/ Immerse cinema.

Taking cinema in to the street.

4/ Synaesthetic cinema.

"Only through total exclusion from the outside world and feedback in the inside world(by depicting the images on itself) can the fiction of an endless space without horizons emerge. This is a space-and this an important ingredient of the fiction-which can be completely controlled."

5/ Cyberspace.

"The computer has been inserted between projector and projection, and takes away the control of the timeframe from the film medium."

Annika Blunck final statement. "What is needed now is a new expansion of the cinema. A cinema that frees itself from the suction of immersion and that goes beyond all the limits of simulation."

Is this actually possible?

31/10/05

Look at gap between what’s intended to be the story and what the story is

Do practical research.

Read everything on story look at films. Film about story. Look at interpretations.

When the first surrealists films were shown the audience reaction was so strong they destroyed the cinema.

Research is about chucking things away.

1/11/05

What’s the best way to tell a story in pictures?

6/11/05

Ken Feingold

interaction

Users of his interactive media expected a user friendly interface as predictable as a cash machine. Is it random? Is a question he was often asked. People want order from there art he stated. Martin Rieser stated he preferred non-linear/fractured narrative.

Martin Rieser stream of consciousness as new story.

12/11/05

Reading book about Dada and surrealist film. Look at gap between intended story and the story the audience perceives Look for material of surrealist audiences destruction of cinema after screening of L’age d’or and Un chien andelu .

Look up the plastic as used by Eisenstien. Talk about the plastic arts.

Cinema stories, not one history but many.

Dada and surrealism.

This log is discursive. A spatial log as opposed to a temporal log. Many stories at one and the same time. Dada and Surreal, there is more aspects to the log than many a Dada presentation. Many layered and discursive, a mechanical story, interactive Dada, Expose to the realization of life. What is Dada? Is anything real? Can anything be surreal or is everything imaginable within the realms of possibility? In an infinite number of possible realities there must also be a number, an infinite number, where nothing is possible.

The history of art, WHAT IS DADA?

Look at Man Ray films. Is there a story the story? There are many stories/histories of art. Description of stories and explanation of spatial layout. Look at stream of consciousness story for interactive work. Look at using Director for story segments.

Does everything have to have closure? Why can’t I do three act story?

Art a continuing story will only have closure at the end of human life. But who will be there to write it? Or to read/hear/discuss/appreciate it?

THIS ISN’T NOISE!

13/11/05

Does Interactive story telling go back to medieval stories around a fire? At present it is only Interactive in terms of one audience member and the computer. But can the computer pick up interactions between audience members?

Interactive story telling interactive but spatially originated.

Aphorisms are these truisms?

Turn part of EIGHT NINE TEN into non linear narrative as exercise.

WHAT’S THE BEST FORM OF NARRATIVE FOR INTERACTIVE STORY TELLING?

Look at surrealists interaction with audience destroying cinema

If then dialogue interactivity. If what light from window shines then..

Un chien Andelu extreme audience interaction for a non linear, but purely temporal, film. An example, and now iconic, image from this film is on the facing page.

Blair Witch for web, Blair Witch’ promotion was largely done by a web presence. Could this go forward to an interactive horror story? An immersive horror story? We never actually see blood in Blair Witch, it depends strongly on suggestion and the power of the imagination to fill in the gaps.

A story told in pictures. Silent cinema is cinema at its purest.

The image speaks sound amplifies.

Words symbols and archetypes Interactive non-linear Charlie Chaplin.

Martin Rieser’s stories are essentially text based, use pictures to tell story.

Charlie Chaplin seen as slapstick. Mack Senate, Buster Keaton, temporal and spatial.

People play computer games for closure when they win.

Lacan:- Desire is that which is never satisfied.

New Screen Media cinema/art/narrative:- Each member of an interactive audience should be a transient nomad.

Quote:- Stories help to form the values of a culture and also provide a language to subvert it.

Can I appropriate Charlie Chaplin segments as ready mades? Or is this really just a stream of consciousness post modern picture?

Computer interactive dance, look at precursors.

15/11/05

Signifier-signified

Each one of Emin’s bed is a parameter

Deconstruct paradigmatic and syntagmatic

Look up words

Semiotics and visual language

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic

Semiotics and visual language

Look at aesthetics residual ready mades Du Champ. Always go back to Du Champ and his ready mades as the precursor to post modern appropriation of anything from the art/art historical past.

What does interactive mean?

Signified signified is it art read narrative into narrative.

Claude Levi Straus. Look up signs.

Have a look at codes. Daniel chandler

Sign is signifier and signified

Iconic- picture

Symbolicv- rose-love

Indexical- point- clock

Type in visual language in google.

What does it say?

Is narrative a theoretical concept?

Deconstruct what you’re looking at

Martin Rieser, deconstruct one of his works.

Look at the film Brazil and City Of Lost Children.

The sum is worth more than the parts.

21/11/05

The interactive Charlie Chaplin Sections of Charlie Chaplin movies using Charlie Chaplin as a found readymade. A field of responsive iconic texts visual texts using Charlie Chaplin segments. Charlie Chaplin smiles in response to audience smiles. An example Charlie Chaplin image is on the facing page. The text as used by Martin Rieser bears a considerable resemblance to a Harold Pinter play.

Plot playing out, change script, change sections, plot path is interactive.

Charlie responding to villain or the kid or one of the girls.

Buster Keaton badie or Alma Coogan. The interactive chat up line. Could the Marx brothers be another possibility for a segmentable found ready made?.

A visual aphorism--- a pithy piece of video portraying a maxim. Charlie smiles, wins against baddies.

The use of AI. A Turing test for drama. Can you tell the difference between drama written by a machine and that written by an author.

Look at using bits of EIGHT NINE TEN. The interactive father confessor.

A spent psychopath as a father confessor, carrying a lot of guilt as well as hearing the confessions of the public.

The following is an example of tree diagram story as referenced by Martin Rieser telling the viewer/listener goes down a tree diagram, to get from one story possibility to another he must go up the tree again then down.

!.[The battlements of Elsinore Castle] HAMLET: To be or not to be, that is the question. If Hamlet takes up arms against a sea of troubles go to 3: 3; if he shuffles off this mortal coil go to 2.

The networked telepresence shop with spatially arranged options of linear for traditionalists, non linear (fractured narrative) linearly delivered, interactive steerable and fully artificial intelligence based dreams. The reach through holographic touch screen with auto come to front enables more options to be spatially offered reducing the need for tree diagrams structure as several levels could be displayed at the same time. Auto come to front means that the chosen image/screen within the display would automatically come to the front of the display, either allowing the display of succeeding levels, or, within the hologram, the ability to display all levels at once if the data to be displayed was limited. If there was some vital information it could be displayed on all front screens. An image of a model of this interface, along with a typical tree block diagram, and a block diagram of the tree sections this interface is capable of displaying is shown in the preceding pages.

The mechanism needs oiling, the work needn’t be presented as being high tech but could use old symbols and old footage as the graphic entry symbols. The user could personalise it as for instance like the desktop image in Windows XP. .

The shop is hidden away in a dark corner of town, yet people know it’s there. The shop is called eight nine ten. The shop is full of old curios and covered in cobwebs, it hasn’t been cleaned in years and years. The dust blows in the dust blows out. The owner is an old man who has a young granddaughter, she is spirited and a bit of a devil, her eyes flash and she is very lively. His grandson is about three and he plays with the toys on the floor, old Victorian wooden toys. The customers come in on a regular basis, they are coloured grey when they come in and multicoloured when they go out of the door in a flash of daylight. The dreams are arranged in packages, good, bad, nightmares, daydreams, birthdays and Christmases There is an old cash till on the counter with a bell that goes ding every time a price is rung up. The dreams come in various prices from the retro ten shilling dream to the ten pound dream. There is a spiral staircase in one corner of the shop going up to the upper floor. Leaves blow in to the shop every time the door opens.

The dream is inter cut with the walking actor, man or woman? It’s in the dusty corners and the shop window is blocked up, it’s an empty bay window

The old shop little as it is has a cavernous warehouse down a very narrow alley all the shelves are labelled and alive like the front of video monitors. They contain images of monsters, demons, love demons, demons of love, nice time angels or devils, no one can tell what some of them are.

The entrance could be by a holographic portal to a bare warehouse where the space is projected on a few fixed walls and floors. What about the young granddaughter? Clattering music box music, questioning, frightening, always a day like today.

cheers. You never see the life in the shop.

The first dream.

THE AUTOMATED FATHER CONFESSOR DIALOGUE

Image in a corner of a large room. The scene late at night a troubled person opens the door of the booth and sits on the telematic telepresence transponder. Looks for connection to the shop for later use and its telepresent holographic portal. Seeing a screen floating as a three dimensional hologram in front of him on which spatially organised is a list of options from a phone directory to a telepresence speaker and a list of services including the shop. He selects the councillor button and selects the councillor type on a tree diagram type interaction. He likes cowboy he can sense that he’s known the rough and the smooth in his life. Cowboy appears. The dialogue could be lengthy, discursive. If he is stuck for words the telepresence unit he is sitting on could sense his emotional state and might suggest various responses which he could try to seek an appropriate response from the computer generated holographic image. He’s split with his girlfriend but really there’s something deeper underlying that has struck him. He finds the aesthetic of the system soothing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder it is said.. Yet this system requires payment to enter rather like a public telephone needs payment to connect. Kant says that beauty must be disinterested and divorced from the world of profit and loss. But in this world all art makes a profit or a loss. This is seen by all signs on the connection unit requiring a positive indexical response. Some of the services offered would use well known iconic icons as they are seen to be the best form of advertising. And here the icons could change to the ones they know you like best. In this respect all the booths icons could be set to your particular culture and/or religion as for instance for an Islamic person in a hurry and unable to make a mosque in time the system could rotate to face Mecca. . If the user just wanted to watch someone with similar problems as a way of empathising and so seeking relief from the problem. He might choose steerable story mode here the text could change with choice on the telepresence sensor. The dialogue becoming audio iconic or aporismatic. At the same time he could select a corner mime character which was mimetic in a visual sense and was non steerable. We all like to laugh. There follows steerable mode dialogue presented for the moment linearly.

Cowboy

You don’t need to feel guilty you

know, there’s no guilt in following

the fashion.

Charac 1

The long dark corridors and the beds

in neat rows with hospital corners.

Cowboy

You never did anything wrong.

Charac 1

Then why did they have to die?

What was their crime? The sins of

the fathers are visited on the children

Cowboy

it’s said. But it’s not true.

Charac 1

Are you a priest?

Cowboy

There’s no need for priests, or fathers,

or confessors, just follow your heart

and the answer will come to you.

We all need to feel the sun, light

and warmth. Do you remember?

Charac 1

I remember the long tall windows

marking space down the room, the

shiny floor and the steps down.

The images stopped at six thirty

every night. I always told myself

stories and was told off for talking

after lights out. The stories

no one else would hear.

Cowboy

The shafts of light of

an early summer dawn.

Character 1

If I ever have a child I will call it summer.

Summer the very winter of my darkness,

the light will burn out the memories.

Why do we have to remember?

Selecting walk through portal into bare warehouse with projections.

EXT DAY

The door to the shop in the distance lit by twilight, the person talks at a set of visual aphorisms nodding support and using feedback from the telepresence sensors to generate suitable response. The user just wants someone to listen.

What will the man

have for me tonight? A

landscape after a nuclear war?

There’s an adventure! There’s

a door in a wall, I can see

it and yet it’s such a small

door, but then I was only a small child.

Hold my hand please, please hold

my hand.

Selects response start mode for Artificial Intelligence response unit as this requires much more computer power the booths rate goes up.

SHOPKEEPER

What can I do for you sir? Would

you like a nightmare or a birthday?

Would you like to see your parents again?

There was a day, always a day,

no other.

INT Night

Interior of the shop

A Burbury turns up to buy a dream of a hot date or a good fight,

the shop lights go from dim to bright

INT Night

A flash scene of a fight in a subway

 

INT Night

Back in the shop

Suddenly a bulb explodes, and the young woman gleefully changes it like it was a Christmas tree light, tossing the old bulb in a bin, it tinkles and smashes sparks appear out of the bin. The lights in the room go dim again.

 

The shop was busiest at twilight during winter. The people with projects to build would come in, some would buy bits, some would buy whole units. The counter was L shaped with shelving behind it. It was run by a pair of brothers. A cowboy in Coventry. This is someone who’s sassy and assured. They sold how to books. There was a spiral staircase up to another floor. There was a small adjoining room partitioned off. Old at the end of the second world war, decaying old building. Old bomb, it’s a prop but doesn’t explode at all. Old transistor boards for twenty six pence, diode transistor logic. There was a logic to this old street, it’s been a café and then a photographic firm. Now it’s going to be something else as chemical processing dies. It’s an old process for storing images, images of frozen dreams, and old moving images kits, with names on them. Hawaii. Sunset walls, the Gower or Whitby or Blackpool or Newquay or the Isle of Wight or California Miami. Where and when were they born? How old is he? How old is the young girl. Does the man who has tattoos

A burnt out psychopath who longs for a good time but who has been sentenced to punishment enters. He must relive his crimes as seen by society.

VO

He cries, pitching his woes. He used to beat

people up, he travelled as part

of a pack, hiding his face, seeking

anonymity with the crowd.

EXT NIGHT

YOUNGER ACTOR PLAYING PSY

PSY laughs as he kicks someone in the head who’s lying on the ground

INT NIGHT

PSY Sucks his thumb, then holds his head in

his hands and bangs it on the floor.

PSY

Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up.

VO

He regrets his past, yet he remembers it.

To run with the pack, to hunt with the

hounds, respond to the sound of

violence. He carries the marks of his

past with him now. But the exhilaration

sickens him now. What can he do with his life.

Holds his head as he says it and cries.

23/11/05

Trip to London to see Tate Modern.. Whitread, white cubes. Formally art in blocks art as a built environment. Very white. Innocence? racist??? Was it site specific? Could it have been rebuilt exactly somewhere else? Was thought given to the arrangement of the masses? It could have been seen to reference Andy Warhol’s Brillo pad boxes but without the box paintings. The combined effect if looked at from certain angles could render sight snow blind/ box blind. The building itself is amazing, especially the old turbine hall. It dwarfs the work when looked at from the entrance. There was no indexical content. The boxes if used by the artist repeatedly could be seen as iconic in the sense of Andy Warhols Brillo pad boxes but formally the display/work is best described as abstract.. There was no narrative as such, other than perhaps a trip around a white faceless city, which brings to mind the song "little boxes little boxes… and they all just look the same." could it perhaps reference a city such as Manhattan. There is an image of the work in situ in the Tate Modern on the facing page.

Jeff Wall photography exhibition. Set up like a film set could have been influenced by Cindy Sherman. Very urban in the sense of the use of "ordinary" people.

Design museum looked like Bexhill pavilion.

ICA exhibition of Steine and Woody Vasulka. This was displayed as a "lab" and the various projections were displaying single screen work, which was largely black and white, which, in itself, could be seen as iconic these days, as referencing the past. There was no interactivity. Interesting to see old work in the light of modern work, to see just how far we’ve come. Also iconic in the sense of the display as "landmark" art. The work was syntagmatic in the sense a general linear exhibition of the work. One gained a more overall impression of the work in looking at the displays as a whole. It was a "lab" with the experimenters absent so no real research was possible other than the viewer "researching" their work. Some of the work was formally abstract and worked with simple geometric shapes, I,e circles and squares which were themselves filled with abstract patterns and in one case noise.

Dada could be seen as a reaction to the pointless waste of life in a modern mass produced war. A war in which the German Kaiser was told he could not delay the start as it would put out the railway time tables on which victory depended.

Yet art is technology driven Van Gogh’s sunflowers would not have been possible without chrome yellow.

Digital Technology has been heavily dependent on the military. Malcolm Legrice states the obvious when he talks about digital being random access, any location is accessible in the same time you don’t have to rewind digital memory like tape. Non linear narrative in tape or DVD is played in a linear fashion completely non linear means a collection of sound bites or visual aphorisms.

With regards to the Martin Rieser chapter of New Screen Media Cinema/art/narrative which I have looked at in some detail

First of all the key lesson from the uncertainty principle with regards to narrative is that everything cannot be reduced to data. There is always some uncertainty and this is brought about by the act of observation. In terms of image production this is obvious because of its application to documentary. People will always be aware of what they’re saying when cameras are around, hence the act of filming changes the way people behave. Big brother is one example of a programme which might be seen as documentary, but, on close examination, it turns out to be the most manipulated programme I have known. It’s interactive in the sense of viewers having the ability to evict tenants, and also being given tasks which are set by the show producers. There is also isolation from the real world. Yet there is manipulation of the way the viewers view the audiovisual presentation in the sense of camera angles and calls to the diary room. And, at all times, the participants are aware there are cameras pointing at them.

Having looked at the use of text segments/aphorisms within New Screen Media (p153 Martin Rieser) I find it very similar to the work of Harold Pinter and/or stream of consciousness work. In Pinter two characters could be talking seemingly at cross purposes. One character seeking to avoid another’s reality, yet, in their demeanour, obviously, being aware of it. As for instance dialogue might go as follows:-

#1

I have to tell you your husband has been involved in a road accident and was certified dead on arrival at hospital

#2

I think the flowers need some water.

I have included part of Martin Rieser’s text on the facing page.

Overall the narrative in his work is very text based. In an audio visual sense the image is preferenced. Statements such as that made by Lindsay Anderson. (The image speaks sound amplifies.) come to mind.

To this end I have been looking at a possible visual way of non-linear interactive story telling and would postulate a system based on visual segments/ aphorisms. In juxtaposing/ selecting visual segments in a non linear sense the work of Eisenstein comes to mind as demonstrating the different audience responses possible from rearranging film segments.

Looking for something highly visual and evocative the work of Charlie Chaplin comes to mind and, specifically, using a Charlie Chaplin movie as a found ready made to "cut up" as visual segments/aphorisms. Then arranging the segments/visual aphorisms to respond to an audience. Have Charlie smile in response to an audience member smiling. This would need the use of a scanner/interpreter to detect the viewers facial expression.

Interactive narrative would appear to be a prime application for artificial intelligence and one thinks of a visual version of the Alan Turing test when a person can’t tell whether he’s talking to a person or a machine then that machine has achieved reality. There could be a visual corollary to this. Could it be that a machine achieves real social existence when a person can’t tell if they’re watching a machine or a real person. In terms of an image projection system this would mean the inability to tell the difference between the telematic telepresence of a real person and that of a computer generated persona.

An application could be an automated 24 hour 7day father confessor/ councillor a script segment for such a dialogue is written in the work EIGHT NINE TEN above..

CONCLUSION

Narrative types

1/ Linear as used in the classical Hollywood films, beginning –middle-end. Using closure. Still probably the best in the view of television programmers. Best used for Hollywood blockbusters it would seem.

2/ What at present is called non linear by bodies such as the Arts Council England West Midlands. This I feel would be far better described as fractured narrative, as, although the segments are interchanged, i.e. middle beginning end in any combination with or without closure, the work is still played back as a temporal narrative. Hopefully this could be used for alternative feature length work, to wean the audience away from being spoon fed. It is my personal narrative of choice.

3/ Interactive tree logic driven narrative with IF THEN statements.

Interactivity at it’s most primitive and used by computer applications such as Windows XP. In order to go from one lower branch to another it is necessary to travel up the tree from a lower branch point to a common point and then down again. Very limited use in terms of a wider narrative context. Ideal for simple computer dialogue. Also would be good for simple child’s teaching aids.

4/ Limited random access narrative as used for instance in Martin Riesers work LABYRINTH. Here I think the work would best be described as a user steerable narrative. The viewer cannot input his own story segments to the work. Best used for someone who wants a more passive interactive experience but still requiring more than completely passive involvement.

5/ Interactive narrative artificial intelligence driven. Here the user is an integral part of the story and can drive it off in any direction he chooses. The artificial intelligence would have an appropriate response. This could be rather like playing a game of chess with a computer, but without the need for either side to win. Although closure would be possible if the user wished it. Such stories could be put on pause to enable them to be continued later. Probably best used by a person or persons who want a full on authoring experience. Would be ideal for use in schools.

At present the use of interactive media narrative is going to be limited by the number of story segments available and, ultimately, this would need the use of a high level artificial intelligence application to resolve.. Present applications such as Martin Rieser’ LABYRINTH contribution use segments which have the ability to make some sort of sense in multiple combinations. The overall effect is that of a Harold Pinter script. The sense of the whole is more than the sum of the individual parts as interpreted by the listener/ viewer. The use of visual aphorisms would be one way forward. In the work in progress (EIGHT NINE TEN) which I have used as material for a possible interactive narrative I found that accumulated meaning would also depend on the emphasis, timing and rhythm with which the segment was said/presented. This is rather like a machine reading of the time or train announcements, where it is obvious that the spoken text has been assembled from words not intended to form sentences. Here much of what is becoming possible is to be viewed in science fiction films. And I would say that something has to be thought of and specified before it can be brought into the real world. In terms of science, from the dawn of time we knew it was possible to fly because we could see the birds, but it took thousands of years to turn manned flight into a reality. Which narrative form is used is according to application demands, it’s a clear case of horses for courses.