Feedback Unit 1 - thoughts

In this post I will be dissecting my feedback from Unit 1 and looking at how I can improve the suggested solutions.


You have developed a distinctive visual style in the way material is presented, although it is still not clear whether the two strands of your work should exist independently or as one. 

I wanted to have some kind of contrast between real life and visualisations, kind of like how we see in films such as Tree of Life and Enter the Void. I thought it might be interesting to see both strands working together in a randomised grid. I'm thinking of having the watercolours as a representation of sound, but this might change.

With regards to chance, there is a need for you to define and delineate exactly which processes will be driven by chance, and how the mechanical processes that drive the narrative(s) actually function. Beware of the illusion of randomness - it is not a panacea, but you have correctly identified the need for boundaries and "structured randomness" that actually delivers an unexpected outcome. It will be essential for you to design a sequencing method for your material, possibly using Markov models or some other weighted probability system. Otherwise there will be as many unsuccessful moments in your work as there are successful ones as far as the audience is concerned.


I am actually using two methods of chance; the natural process - where I had asked people to tell me a story from their life. This is of course dependent of who I choose and how they are feeling at the moment ( + other factors). Besides this there is the way that the randomisation happens on screen, and this happens by randomisation through code. I am currently discussing with my developer the amount of radomisation that will happen at one go. I will be posting this on the blog soon.

Paul Coldwell research paper feedback:
This intelligent essay sets out to explore the challenge to mainstream  film narrative  by the use of chance and a database aesthetic. The argument is well controlled throughout and extensively referenced. There is a real sense of working through a proposition and exploring its validity. The writing is clear and the examples used to carry the argument are well selected. These examples take in a broad approach to the subject, Buneul, Cage and Duchamp along with others but keep the argument focused.  There is potential here to be developed into a conference paper.