Play to Create

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Play to Create

• Briefing
• 10 February 2009

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• You are asked to create a visually dynamic
  interactive presence (web site) to imaginatively
  interpret (and publicise) the narrative,
  emotions, spatial and temporal (time-based)
  experience and meaning of a cinematic film. The
  research and explorations undertaken by you
  should examine the conceptual ideas, plot, user
  experience, context and sequencing of events
  (narrative) implicit within the film.
• If appropriate to your concept, the narrative of
  the sourced novel / book should be referenced and
  even, dare I say it, read. You must critically
  engage with the subject area to demonstrate an
  understanding of the key issues / concepts
  debated within the film and / or novel.

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• Your final solution should be imaginative,
  expressive, original and propose some interesting
  / innovative interactive treatments for the
  narrative, navigational structure, hierarchy of
  information (sequencing), spatial and temporal
  (time-based) experience that pervades in the
  film. The deployment of sound / audio in relation
  to the visuals may be integral to the conceptual
  framework of the work.
• It is important that the solution it not a
  literal translation of the film to screen, but a
  new way of seeing, representing or
  re-contextualising the narrative structure and
  content that could only be formatted through an
  interactive medium.

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• Do not take an existing corporate (film) identity
  or realms of footage and transpose to the screen.
  Re-align, re-contextualise and possibly extend
  the story, narrative and content for the screen
  through a medium that can explore ideas in a
  different spatial and interactive dimension.
• The work should not be pastiche (a work of art
  that imitates the style of some previous work) of
  the film, but an innovative treatment that
  possibly looks outside the central framework at
  peripheral directions in narrative, content and
  time e.g. an extension of a narrative outside the
  film, what the characters may have done outside
  the text, speculative scenario's, back stories or
  future stories / contexts.

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• You are asked to choose a film from a genre that
  plays with temporality, narrative structures and
  / or has a particular twist or interesting visual
  exploration. Some films you may wish to consider
  are
• La Jetee (and Twelve Monkeys), Pulp Fiction,
  Memento, Alphaville, Catch 22, Timecode, The
  Draughtsmans Contract, Breathless, The Third
  Man, Throne of Blood, Mystery Train, The
  Leningrad Cowboys, Helvetica, Fight Club, Hollis
  Frampton and Ken Jacobs (both Structualist
  filmmakers).
• The work should be process led, content-driven
  and context specific.

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• In the information age graphic design is or
  should be at the core of this field of cultural
  production called visual communication. Even
  though public attention for graphic design is
  often limited to its formal qualities, an
  interesting and influential graphic design
  product, be it a poster, a book or a website, it
  is rarely just an aesthetic thing - it is a
  precise shape for a precise content. (Bruinsma,
  2003, p.18)

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• What is the wow factor to the story / narrative?
  Human, emotive, scale, orientation, projection.
• What is the essence of the story / narrative?
• Envision the story at a human level, abstracted
  level, narrative level, imagined or fantasised
  sequence.

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• How to engage the user. Do not assume the user
  knows anything.
• Concept message and audience interaction.
• Age and audience. Who are you targeting?
• Does it facilitate the user to develop their own
  subjective pathway, rather than an explicit
  information dissemination service that negates
  autonomy and engagement, to allow the narrative
  to be drawn out of the user?

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• Does the space (resolution) allow for casual
  exploration? Do you navigate the space in an
  abstract, hierarchical or linear / non-linear
  fashion (similarity to web site navigation)? Do
  you feel autonomous in your navigation of the
  space?
• The sequencing or narrative of the interactive
  presence to represent the enduring and expressive
  qualities of the film.
• How does the narrative help reveal or unfold the
  story to engage the user through positive
  experience?
• Hypertext - user affect narrative from inside
  the field of representation. Subjective,
  non-linear journey of discovery.

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• Explore and design an interactive presence that
  extends the functionality and narrative of your
  film / book, with particular reference to the
  distinctive qualities and demands of interactive
  media. Basically, the interface design dictates
  how user communicates with the content.
• Decide to what extend your site and the film
  should mirror one another and how new ideas might
  develop through the use of spatial based media to
  reflect the living form of the discovery. This
  is an opportunity to explore the dynamic nature
  of navigational structures / constantly shifting
  information unique to interactive media and
  exploit ideas of space that arise out of your
  analysis of the spatial resonance and hierarchy
  of complex information.

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• The development of your designs should also be
  influenced by the playful interactive qualities
  of the screen, which could allow a level of
  autonomous participation from users not
  implemented in the cinematic format e.g. how the
  user interacts, affects, plays and explores with
  the narrative structure and content in the web
  site.
• The layering processes of interactivity allow
  information to be revealed and concealed
  incrementally. How could you develop and
  incorporate various techniques of this
  methodology within the design and organisation of
  the information?

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salaryman6Jake Knight

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v8VRJ5OAtR5E

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• The short film salaryman6 by Jake Knight
  (OneDotZero_dvd_1) analogies the formulaic
  pattern of the modern urban milieu, through a
  transient existence of a Japanese salaryman
  constrained in a memorial loop, who records his
  working week on a digital camera to procure an
  assurance of his cultural identity and self-worth
  in society. The film explores temporality,
  banality, endless searching, repetition and
  cultural belief systems in an ephemeral account
  of the everyday.
• The daily routine and the workers loss of memory
  are a metaphor for the bereavement of creative
  autonomy in a self-absorbed networked information
  society an imagination stifled. The habitual
  repetition of the monotonous juxtaposed with the
  loss of cognitive wherewithal envision the brain
  moulded by the mundane or explicit. The
  subsequent externalisations of the salarymans
  life in a series of photographs that document his
  recurrent daily schedule commoditise this
  cerebral almost automated self.

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• Think about some interesting innovative
  treatments on this short film based on earlier
  notions of narrative, context, spatial and
  temporal exploration (navigational and
  hierarchical information structures) of the
  social, cultural and technological themes
  explored in the storyline.
• How could you envision the premise beyond the
  filmic boundaries to extend the notions of
  repetition, life-cycle, banality, technology,
  memory, the mind and identity?
• What are the stories that remain hidden or
  untold?

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• Presentation date Tuesday 17 March 2009 (see
  board for group times)
• Submission date Thursday 19 March 2009 before
  16.00 hours
• Format / SizeThe sketchbooks with annotated
  notes should be numbered in chronological order
  of research. The final artefact should be burnt
  on a cross platform DVD / CD that works on
  operating system Mac OS 10.5. Work will not be
  accepted in other formats and presents the
  possibility of a fail grade. Please do not hand
  in work on a memory stick.