Where is narrative? We have had to shift our understanding of the Aristotelean concept of Poetics (one where a work has a definite beginning middle and end with subsequent arches and movements of action towards a main arc with a build up and release in the end) relative to the current epoch where artists have mediums that by their temporal, net-based, interactive or other qualities construct narratives in outer-contextual forms that deny or break the traditional narrative structure, like geographic, spatial, time-based and visual mapping.If the point once fixed to line and plane in perspective is now free to float across vectors in time and space can we locate the axis or center of any narrative, can we even begin to comprehend where story begins and where it ends and is this necessary? How does the shift in linear story-telling change the experience of the "vanishing" point of a story? I our own lives what is the "point" is there an arc? Post you blog reactions to todays lecture here.. and try to come to the next one even on Thursday...
cheers
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My understanding phenomenology is applied to sound using words to describe sounds that are not related to other senses. I suppose it is just philosophical way of looking at the world as opposed to scientific. Applying geometry to this seems to be more a more scientific way of looking at the world. Applying this to digital information like stories we are able to better move within a story in none linear way. This means we are able to see one or many views of a space, like video games or other artificial realities. In this way we are able to freeze a period of time artificial or not. This is an ultimate escape of which new media is capable of. we are able to create artificial reality and give ourselves the freedoms we wish we had in our own reality. This is a form of escapism that has been around since the invention of fiction. Escapism is the way of the day most people of my generation seem to escape this reality more than they are active in it. This is a dangerous scenario why on earth would we need more forms of escape; especially better ones. Because we can would be the answer. This idea is not reserved for fiction in reality we transcend time and space using Internet and video like Raphael said.
When ever the mention of tele-porting or time-travel comes up i cant help but think about the books Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind (all by Orson Scott Card). They are all science fiction and are in a series taking place after the book Enders Game. Within the books the secret for tele-porting is discovered and instead of moving through space the key lies in moving outside of space. So instead of moving through space all you have to do is move outside of space and then back into it in your desired destination. It takes the phrase thinking outside the box literally and because of that i thought i would add it to the conversation.
On another note the current assignment is going to give me a lot of trouble because i am a very musical person. I have a hard time doing anything involving sound without trying to make some sort of music out of it. My challenge will be to find some sort of rhyme scheme that is still slightly musical without crossing over into a completely musical piece.
As was mentioned, we are able to locate ourselves in both time and space-- fixedness. Breaking the traditional space/time continuum, we are able to create a different narrative structure. This reminds me of the movie Eternal Sunshine, in which Joel is able to traverse through memories and ultimately change the narrative, essentially existing in that space at a different time and expanding upon that memory's time and space. He is breaking the memory's narrative not only by what he says but by expanding the amount of time he is there, going beyond the physical space of the memory and traveling into a space in which he actually has no memory of, creating a new memory. I had never thought about it like that until just now, but it's rather interesting. I enjoy movies that can tell a story in a new light, especially the age-old love story which has been beaten to death. It's refreshing watching something that breaks traditional chronology. I'm not actually sure if what I just said makes any sense but... there it is.
The challenge is to avoid mere restructuring of the narrative structure. I have seen attempts where it was not so much a reinvention of traditional linear narrative, but chopping it up and reordering it. It seems extremely different just because we have to work harder to understand it.
I don't know, it seems as if we are still operating with the same language, but with more esoteric vocabulary. Or maybe it is that we are translating what we are seeing into a framework that fits our traditional idea of narrative. Like when we take something we have never seen before and have to relate it to something familiar in order to comprehend it. What I mean is that even if narrative is reinvented, the tendency will be to still look at it from a traditional perspective.
I tried taking on deconstruction, but I need to find the idiot's guide to it or something.
Did this make sense? I'm really tired.
I'm going to get straight to, what I found to be, the most interesting portion of this lecture/discussion. When discussing online games and the time and space within which they exist, an interesting point was brought up concerning our vision and experience with time.
Previously to these games time was defined in two realms:
--Physical (breath, pulse, heartbeat)
--Metaphorical (12:00, 7 days a week)
These two realms were enough for us to exist within our own physical understanding of time up until this point. When discussing massive online digital worlds, the topic of how do we define the space to be relatively similar to what we know. While we were able to define time and space so simply before, I would offer a third realm of time that is determined entirely by computation and processing; digital time and space.
Our own physical and metaphorical time, before that of the digital, were easy enough to gauge and really allowed for any number of interpretations. What we get in digital spaces is a limitation of a definition of time and space. While the digital understanding of time and space is relatively limited compared with that of metaphorical and physical iterations, I believe it still possesses a great deal of importance in our current understanding of time and space.
One instance would be the lectures that we partake in in this class. We each are existing in two completely different spaces, but yet, digitally, we occupy the same space (in theory...). We are existing within the same metaphorical time and we also each have our own physical time. All of this is basically supporting my possible theory of a third measure/realm of time and space that we are currently adopting more and more today.
Currently I'm working on a project at the University of Dundee in Scotland. (You write a Programme of study which you spend the year, or in my case the semester working on, similar to capstone) I found this lecture very interesting and informative because the topics that were covered are the main focuses in my research and project ideas. I’m basing my work on time and the chaos and complexity within it, along with my love for the use of perspective and structure. Everything that was covered in the lecture I found very interesting and beneficial and it all tied in to the research I’ve been doing here. The art school here is very big on research, and I have maxed out my limits on library books, and my obsession with time and chaos is getting worse. The book Nonlinearity, Chaos and Complexity (The Dynamics of Natural and Social Systems) is one of my current reads and tied in a lot to the things said in the lecture.
Modelling in the book was described as being the ability to predict/anticipate before one acts or speaks, and that its necessary to be based on previous experiences and mistakes. Mathematical models are often used as tools to describe the evolution of their systems. We are fixing ourselves within our world, giving us a point in time and space. I’ve always loved perspective drawing and was fascinated with the connection to time and Cartesians Geometry and our ability to try and understand ourselves in relation to the physical world.
“Travel physically, and virtually, the more we distort our own relation to space time and sense’ the better. The more ways we look at things the better understanding we will have of our world, and how things work in a complex manor. The idea of time and relating back to memory and always living for the moment is simple but complex at the same time. We predict the future by past experiences but can never be in the moment because that instant is always passing.
The time continuum is constantly structuring us and our lives, and we run everything off this structure, mathematically and mentally, whether it’s internal or a numbered time or even a location. The last discussion of the lecture about time physically and virtually is a fascinating topic, because its proof how technology has begun to brake these barriers, and its as if we haven’t even noticed it coming upon us. With Raph being in a completely different place and ‘time zone’ as the class, we have eliminated the structure and made the world flat, on the same plane. When I could still participate (damn you Leopard) I was also in a completely different zone and located thousands of miles away but was able to interact with the class on the same plane. As I listened to the last part of lecture on my ipod I was walking around campus, and it really allowed me to perceive the ideas that were discussed in class and felt it opening up a set of new complex ideas but also it felt more simplistic then it ever had before.
Notes
Introducing the idea of space
Locating point and time in space
Berlusci - Discovered perspective "Father of perspective"
Once upon a "time"
Happily ever after - continuation of time in the future
Time has beginning middle and end
Place can exist without us
Descartes - fixing point in time in space
Without cartesian geometry there wouldn't be an exacting science
GPS works through cartesian geometry
Organically chronological - body has rhythm 'pulse'
Jumper - organic ability to teleport based on memory and experience of a place
there's always a beginning middle and end
can't reflect on something until it's passed
middle the question
Reflection
I think that time is a topic that can't be discussed enough. It influences everything, absolutely everything. The way we handle time distinguishes who we are as people, as where we are plays a smaller role. It was also an interesting point to talk about being organically chronological. Our bodies have a direct correlation to time, which also contributes to time being such an important piece of who we are. It dictates how we feel in a certain moment, whether it be tired or amped; our personality is directly effected.
If the once fixed point of perspective could "float" across the vectors of time and space, the task of locating the center of a narrative became rather difficult. I became annoyed at how broad the answer I had forming in my head was shaping up to be. I then realized that this question, in my opinion, was just that, an opinion question. Now, armed with the knowledge that there was no wrong answer to the question, I asked myself the question once more and I kept thinking about how the human body was brought up in comparison to narrative during the lecture. The thought of a never ending story is hard to encapsulate in ones mind, but to the argument if such a thing exists, I would have to say only until we find the end of the universe that yes, such a thing does indeed exists. My opinion is that we, as humans, tend to naturally believe that there is a beginning, middle, and end because we naturally go through such a cycle. We're born, we live, and then die. Is there any point to our lives? Well we've all been mentally trained to believe that we need to make something of our lives, and just be the best we can be in whatever we do. But why should we? Why should we believe that we must do something in the course of our lives? We obviously were not asked to be born and it's not like we had a 'choice' in the matter. But then, from the second we're born, the "training," or the idea that we NEED to and MUST accomplish something, i.e. go to school, get good grades, fall in love, get a job and so on, before we die begins to be brought to our attention. But with all this forced upon us, can we, with all of our unique natural capabilities accomplish something that actually matters? You could grow up and cure all diseases and bring peace to the world, but some day there will be some end to all things. Sure, many people will remember you, but "the end" will always find a way, and when all things, as we know it, do come to an end....will time and space still continue? Well, I guess thats near the same question we started from.
-Just my very strange and disturbing thoughts on the matter.
Isaac, I'm pretty much experiencing the exact same thing as you. (I wrote about it in detail a few posts ago). I use the metaphor of language. A native english speaker can learn other languages, but in most cases, true meaning will only be derived once those other languages have been translated. Likewise, we tend to translate non-traditional narrative into a form we understand.
The difficulty of understanding non-linear, geographic narrative is all in conditioning. Through complete immersion in a world where linear narrative was not used, one would begin to understand how to think spacially. Since our entire conception of narrative is the standard beginning-middle-end model (its all we see in movies, TV, books), then it is all we are trained to understand.
Spacial narrative fairly unexplored territory, mostly because its so hard to get into.
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