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Please post comments on our outlines so I know if I should feel smart or dumb (and so we can use your comments for our paper). Thanks.
CJ
Hi all,
I want to mainly take semiotic approach for my final paper because I think this way of seeing is very important, and I want to get some practice on that since I got practice on phenomenology in the pre-writing assignment already. However, I’m not feeling comfortable or confident to really do that in this busy semester end. I feel that we’ve being talking about semiotics for only so short time(far less than the time we devoted to phenomenology) that I don’t feel I have a decent grasp on this. Also, when I look back at the papers on semiotics now, I do not see how they can be referenced in the final paper except explaining some semiotic terms. For example, the papers on film, I don’t see how camera angle, depth of the field and montage can be applied to interaction…I have another concern which is, I don’t see what my expertise(if I have any) can be drawn upon since it depends on what interaction I pick. So I really want to know how to pick an interaction that is both interesting to me, not too big not too small in scale, and also can utilize my expertise.
Well, I’m curious to know if some of you might feel the same way? Or you have any suggestions on how to do this?
I found the introduction to the Hedbige article that referred to Jean Genet’s experience of being stigmatized due to the tube of Vaseline really powerful and poignant. The idea that an artifact could be so revealing in terms of one’s identity or how one belongs to a certain group I found fascinating and so it got me thinking about what would be an equivalent artifact in the present day. My first thoughts were clothes (especially after reading Entwistle’s article) but that seemed too obvious and I tried to think of an artifact that exists in the media world we live in today that Genet never experienced. I was reminded of a story my friend told me about his friend who ‘came out’ to his friends and family recently and revealed that she was gay. If you look at her facebook page and did not know her on very personal terms then there is no way of knowing she is gay because she does not explicitly write it anywhere nor does she show on the ‘information’ tab on her profile page the female she is in a relationship with. However, if you look through her pictures, there is a photo that someone else has tagged of her with two other females with a caption that says underneath “our coming out party”.
There is the obvious connection of homosexuality in both the stories but perhaps there is something more; maybe the facebook viewer is the equivalent of the police in Genet’s story where if one digs a little deeper, a lot is revealed by making meaning and connections from given evidence that exists in our culture. Facebook is part and parcel of so many people’s lives nowadays that it is arguably the equivalent of Genet’s Vaseline and can be one of the “most mundane objects” that Hebdige refers to as it has a “symbolic dimension”. Just like Genet, the police and the viewer of my friend’s profile, we “must seek to recreate the dialectic between action and reaction which renders these objects meaningful” (p.2). This arguably in many ways sums up what we are trying to do when critiquing interaction design.
I keep playing around with this in my head and I can’t come to anything but the conclusion that the unit of analysis for a sequence in interaction design is always dependent on the interaction and that dependency is because something is inherently important about each artifact and their functions differ. Or maybe it’s based on function? Can two artifacts that do the same thing have the same unit of measure in a sequence analysis? Or is it based on the sequence chosen that the unit of analysis? Would it be better to set the units of measure before even considering an artifact or would that miss the point?
While reading about reflective qualities of the interface, it made me think of not only The Reflective Practitioner, but the way it was conveyed seemed to me that this type of interface quality is not only to strike a conversation with the artifact, but also to make us think and ask questions of the world around us (and the examples of net art and digital art presented were pretty epic). Anyways, I started looking for an example of an “artish” augmented reality type of design to comment on, and I found this:
This augmented reality pet was pretty interesting from the fact that the pet actually has pretty realistic behaviors, and that I could have a pet without actually having it in my house (as I am allergic to pet dander). But that was pretty much the only thing I liked about it (along with all of the comments of it on youtube – comments), as I didn’t like that I had to constantly keep adding semacode markers to allow the dog to move and behave in a larger amount of space. That didn’t seem like something a real dog would need in order to move around (and also, it makes me think that this would eventually be monetized, and the amount of cards one would have to buy would be epic, potentially leading to a large amount of waste when this whim of an interaction is over with), along with having an owner put this much effort in to having a pet move. While having a device that overlays the dog in real life is part of AR, I would have liked to see this interaction pushed further – incorporate our glasses, or other types of “reflective” surfaces in the environment to bring the dog to other environments. After all, a dog pretty much comes and goes wherever it pleases, and having a dog that sat still until you prodded it didn’t make me engaged with it at all.
I guess the only part of this interaction that would make me reflective would be the fact that this would not want me to get a pet, because it would serve as a reminder of all the effort I would need to put into the care of the alive being. If this was the intent of this interaction, then it certainly has succeeded, as it made me think (and then the authors would also have another exemplar of an interface to put in their mixed reality category, although I didn’t think that lumping mixed reality and digital art as reflective interfaces meant the same thing to me – they are pretty much different, in my eyes, as the mixed reality apps usually are meant to place more information in our environment to help us make the choices we need to make, whereas digital art helps us to push our understanding of the world around us and what we can do with it. This app, even though it may push developers to change the world, doesn’t really make me reflective in the same way the authors intended, so I guess I am looking for others’ thoughts here).
If you haven’t seen “text rain” before, it’s pretty darn cool, and is the kind of cool stuff I usually keep around in my head for off the wall concepts.
So when I was doing my Outline last week I re-found this quote in the Prince True Lies reading.
“Spielberg’s dinosaurs made such a huge impact on viewers in part because they seemed far more life-like than the miniature models and stopmotion
animation of previous generations of film.”
But as I read this the first time and again last week all I can think about is how much I miss movies where the special effects were done without as much technology, and I don’t think technology always makes it more life-like. When some freaking ninjas had to wear 80 pound turtle costumes to do flips and jump kicks and stuff it was AWESOME.
And I’m not trying to say that the effects available today are not incredible too.
But too often I feel like I see movies that could do really cool stuff with live action or “old skool” miniature models that dont, and I wish more movie makers wouldn’t just settle for using technology for special effects.
So I often find I have many notes in the margins of our readings commenting on some statement or claim the author has made that I don’t agree with. But I do not get so bothered by them most of the time to feel the need to vent about them. For some reason I do feel that need with this piece (very possibly influenced by the knowledge that I have’t been on here for a while and need to post something). Sadly though I know I am not critiquing this piece in any sort of one vein, which would be good practice for class, but I just didn’t have quite that much time on my hands.
My first note (and realistically it is likely only this late because I was feeling over whelmed while reading before this) is on page 9, toward the end of the continuing paragraph from the previous page, when Davis notes as if its a second thought, something note very important at all, “right down to the very shape and bearing of the body itself.” Well of course. The way someone carries them self can nearly completely refute the feeling their clothes would give me, no matter what setting we/ I/ they are in. If I see a man in an expensive suit standing on a side walk corner, waiting for traffic to let him walk, standing aloof from the crowd around him, looking at his blackberry or snidely looking down at some begger down the block I will think a million degreee different from if I see the same man on that same corner in that same suit bending down and happily playing with/ petting some dog among the crowd while he engagingly talks to its owner. Bearing and manner speak volumes about people; as much or more than their clothes do.
The next note I have on the reading to complain about is probably very personally driven. On page 12, about in the middle of the first actual paragraph, Davis notes again as some sort of after thought (in parenthesis no less!) “some of whom truly are artisits,” refering to the people who design the fashions being discussed. Of course some of them are real artisits, really it should be said all of them are real artisits! There is no clothes designer one could sit by and watch them puzzle out some new idea or way to cut something, some new pattern to use in a novel way, that you could say is not an artist. How could you sit by someone who is sketching out idea after idea after idea (so very like any one of us) and say it is not their artistic process?
The next note is a very small one, but one that again was perhaps a particular sting because I felt it more personally; on page 15, again about half way into the first actual paragraph, Davis says that “our intuition says no,” referring to the tiny differences possible in clothing that can make it difference enough to be a fashion or not. Of course a tiny difference in a garment can make all the difference. Take a knee length skirt vs. a mini-skirt. Merely a difference in hem length, they can even be made of exactly the same fabric, same number of pleats, same colors, even standing right next to each other, even match them with the same shirt! And you will get a radically different feeling about them. The mini-skirt is flirting and suggestive, the knee length skirt is conservative and possibly strict feeling.
Maybe all these previous notes really woke me up, or just got me going, because on the last real page(s), 16nd 17 I have three complaints. I will do my best to wrap them up quickly though.
The first one is actual in the notes of pages 16 and 17, it was a complaint until I read the note on page 17 and now it has tuned into perhaps a smaller complaints about misunderstanding/ Davis being unclear. In the note on page 16 Davis notes that there was not fashion in civilizations of old, such as Egypt and China. This is either a gross point of not having done the homework/ research, for China had VERY stringent fashion rules, or else it is unclear to me how “fashion” is being used, for in the note on page 17 Davis calls a possible example of first fashion “an institutionalized fashion cycle.” So would the fashion rules of ancient China be merely an institution, or would it not have been as it is now, a communication method they would have used to note (if nothing else) how much they cared to pay attention to the fashion rules of court or the market place?
The second note on these last pages is on 17, bottom of the end of the paragraph from page 16, where Davis notes that we all “[share] a strong collective component.” The point in this paragraph seemed to be that people growing up in the same situations would end up being very similar as people. I have huge arguments with this idea. From my own life I have a perfect example: my cousin and I had nearly exactly mirroring situations in life, with very strong mothers, seemingly very loving fathers when we were young, then abrupt and violent divorces between our parents. I came out very much of the mind “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, Paul my cousin is the greatest victim of the world, it’s always out to get him. We often can’t stand each other because of this huge difference in our reactions to the same situation. So I find Davis’ point here very aggitating.
Finally, my last note on this reading in on page 17, toward the middle-end of the only complete paragraph on this page, when Davis is talking about how the designers of fashion do what they do to give us the populace a way of expressing our selves, how fashion sprouts from their minds as only their attempt to help us truly reflect and express how we really feel inside. What nonsense! Sure, I suppose some fashion may come from this vein, like the militant shoulder pad example used earlier in this piece, but I am not wearing my jeans with the holes in the knees because I feel the need to rebel against the sterility of new jeans, or that I wish to convey that I’m a rough and tumble sort and I wear my jeans out, I just think they get softer with all that wear, more comfortable, and I just think they look fun, with all the texture and roughness.
It was awesome. I haven’t seen this kind of domination since Michael Jordan went to the Olympics.
As I was not fully quenched by Kickasola, I read the user comments on IMDB, a few other critics and blog posts. Here are a few things that I found interesting.
Roger Ebert:
Roger Ebert is no Kickasola but I found a few things interesting in his critique of the movie. It starts with the sentence “Here is a film about a feeling.” Then he talks about Kieślowski’s style as below.
“He is drawn to coincidence and synchronicity. He is little interested in focusing on a character hurling from point A in the first act to Point C in the third. He is fascinated by Point B, and the unseen threads linking it to past and present. His films can be mystical experiences. He trusts us to follow him, to sense his purpose, to leave the theater having shared his openness to a moment. The last thing you want to do after a Kieślowski film is “unravel” the plot. It can’t be done.”
Slavoj Žižek:
For the few of us who cannot sleep unless we unravel the message, I found that this small snippet almost paraphrases it. It’s an excerpt from an essay titled “The Forced Choice of Freedom” written by Žižek.
“The perception of our reality as one of the possible, often even not the most probable, outcomes of an open situation, this notion that other possible outcomes are not simply canceled out but continue to haunt our reality as a specter of what might have happened, conferring on our reality the status of extreme fragility and contingency, implicitly clashes with the predominant linear narrative forms of our literature and cinema.”
Joseph G. Kickasola
I am pretty sure this guy was stalking Kieślowski. I am absolutely stunned by both by the quantity and quality of nuanced observations and interpretations he provides us. He situates his interpretation based on the author’s previous works (references to The Decalogue), life (French and Polish politics), lifeworld (Kieślowski’s attitude towards old people) and through his own judgements as well. This, we all agree, is by no means a simple task and Kickasola has done a kick-ass job. (Sorry couldn’t resist it!)
And here is where I start whining. I have one huge issue with this article. He beautifully states of what I think is the paradigmatic glasses we need to be wearing while watching Kieślowski’s movies.
“… the essence of the film hinges on the experience of watching it, not simply on an understanding of its story, characters, and use of metaphor.”
After stating this, he does exactly the opposite – explains the story and provides rationalistic explanations to the characters’ traits by contextualizing them with respect to the metaphors and motifs of religion, spirituality, politics and philosophy. It does help us understand the movie better but aren’t Kieślowski’s movies meant to evoke? Does one need to have a rational understanding to “feel” it better? If Kickasola is trying to do that, then he is essentially at logger heads with Kieślowski.
Kickasola paraphrases Kieślowski’s attitude towards this by saying
“This type of abstract, nonverbal “rhetoric” can be very persuasive…”
In other words, to me it feels like Kickasola attempts to help us understand a movie that the director did not want us to understand in the first place.
All said and done, I do not deny the fact that knowing about the director’s life, his works, his beliefs, the metaphors and motifs used in the movie and Kickasola’s interpretation of them have definitely enriched me to understand the movie. But the answer to the question whether it has helped me to feel it better is NOT a big resounding yes!
PS: I wonder how Pauline Kael would have critiqued this movie!
I immensely enjoyed and appreciated ‘The Double Life of Veronique’ on so many levels but my immediate reaction after the film finished was ‘huh?’ and that I wanted to watch it again. I understood (well thought I understood) the main story line and the nuanced dramatic devices such as the clear ball and the symbolic emphasis on sex and death used throughout the film. However, there were still so many questions I had that were unanswered, for instance, what was the deal with Veronique agreeing to lie in court for her friend and was the piece of string related to her death some how?
Reading Kickasola answered many of my queries (turns out the part about Veronique lying for her friend in court was part of a subtext that had to be cut which is why it didn’t really fit in overall). Yet at the same time Kickasola raised more questions and brought out the cynic in me as I found many of his comments suspect and unconvincing. I tend to find myself feeling slightly sceptical when academic writers start using jargon that confounds the message rather than clarifies it. Was he just reading too much into the film or were the complex layers and meanings completely intended and decided upon by the director? For instance the theme of vision and new beginning is inferred purely from Veronique removing Alexandre’s glasses from his hand in the hotel room scene at the end. Also, the comment about the anonymous phone call being interpreted by postmoderns as “a recognizance of the interstitial image and a critique of the medium” (p.252) is not discussed or elucidated at all.
Maybe I am missing the point and I should just appreciate and accept what the author interprets in the film but it keeps making me think of when I had to read ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte for my English literature class at school. There are so many interpretations flying around of the book, one of which is a Freudian psychoanalytic reading which was predictably about sex and repressed desires. It just didn’t seem to make sense that people were reading Freud into Bronte’s book when he wasn’t even born when it was published so the author obviously had no intention of symbolizing the Oedipus complex in Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship.
I guess all this just comes back to the issues we have been raising in class, how much as a critic we are able to bring to the table and interpret a ‘text’ and how much we look to the author and their intention or even if that matters. Either way, I really loved the film and have been thinking about it ever since as it is a poignant and thought-provoking work of art. The director Kieslowski can include me with the fifteen-year-old girl he met in Paris (p.244) in being profoundly affected by the movie.
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