For those of you fortunate ones who do not have to complete a Networked Media Project worth 40% of your entire semester mark, here's the low-down:
Select one of the extracts below. Each is selected from the readings
provided in the dossier. You are to write a Web based essay that
addresses or responds in some manner to the extract. (Your essay
should include images and text). The finished work must contain a
bibliography. The bibliography must contain at least six academic
references. Only one of these references can be from the dossier.
The finished work will consist of multiple pages. It is expected that
some consideration would be given to hypertext design in the work.
As you can see, it's rather convoluted, espicially when you try to apply that to this extract taken from Lev Manovich's “Cinematic and Graphic: Cinegratography”:
This new cinematic aesthetics of density seems to be highly
appropriate for our age. If we are surrounded by highly dense
information surfaces, from city streets to Web pages, it is appropriate
to expect from cinema a similar logic. In similar fashion, we may think
of spatial montage as reflecting another contemporary daily
experience - working with a number of different applications on a
computer at once. If we are now used to switching our attention
rapidly from one program to another, from one set of windows and
commands to another, we may find multiple streams of audio-visual
information presented simultaneously, more satisfying than the single
stream of traditional cinema.
If your brain isn't spinning as much as mine is right now, then you're either Lec Manovich himself or Seth Keen, I believe the only two individuals who have the capacity to comprehend this statement. However, as I got into it, I realised that there were two words that kept popping out at me: cinema and density.
Now, for those of you who know me, I love the cinema. I adore my Authorship major class and movies are my number one pasttime. Which is why I chose this extract in the first place. I figured that I could use my cinema background to somehow word the essay into an exploration into the changing dynamics of cinema through ages, particularly in relation to the second word, density.
Again, for those of you who know me, I am a big advocate of bringing down the world-wide overpopulation dilemma and try and promote ways in which to combat it on numerous occasions. For me, I know that there is a link between the way the world has developed and what it can be defined as today, and the way in which cinema has developed and how it can be defined today.
Stories are more complicated with more parallel narratives or explorations into the "six degrees of separation" theory. Millions of dollars are spent on sets, costumes and actors to make the whole production bigger and better than the last great blockbuster. And in general, the films we are watching today are presenting us with ideas and themes so densely integrated into the plot of the movie that it may take us a good 2 days to figure out what it was all really about.
To get a better idea of what my train of thought was at this point, here is the mind map I did up literally 5 minutes before class:
Well ironically, as it turned out, Seth said that that was too complicated for what I was attempting to accomplish within the two weeks before the project was due but these were the main point that he said I should focus on:
As you can see, much, much easier.
He also said that I should look at linking these ideas to a film and suggested I rent out Blade Runner. So that's where i'm off to now. To get Blade Runner from the library. I hope its good because I'm really tired and I can't watch boring movies when I'm tired...I'll keep you posted.
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