Category: KORSAKOW

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Das Zeitkonzept der Zelle

Wir verstehen Zeit in der Regel als linearen Ablauf (ich verstehe auch zirkuläre Zeitvorstellungen sind in diesem Sinne als linear, als Gerade, die zu einem Kreis gebogen ist). Wie ließe sich Zeit anders vorstellen? Die These dieses Textes ist, dass unser Zeitempfinden durch die Art und Beschaffenheit unsere Körper bedingt ist, eines Körpers, der ein Verdauungssystem besitzt, in dem die Stoffe die zum Leben gebraucht werden primär auf einer Seite aufgenommen und auf einer anderen Seite ausgeschieden werden. Dieser Text versteht sich als Gedankenexperiment, nicht um eine Wahrheit zu postulieren, sondern als Inspiration, Zeit anders, nichtlinear, ich möchte sagen, Korsakow-artig zu verstehen.

DAS ZEITKONZEPT DES REGENWURMS
Zeit scheint linear. Mit der Vergangenheit auf der einen Seite einer Geraden und der Zukunft auf der anderen. Und dazwischen ist ein Punkt, der das Jetzt symbolisiert. Der winzige, flüchtige Augenblick, in dem alles stattfindet, was ist.

Man könnte es das Zeitkonzept des Regenwurms nennen. Der Regenwurm gräbt sich durch die Erde, indem er auf der einen Seite Erde frisst und alles, was er nicht braucht, um Regenwurm zu sein, auf der anderen Seite wieder ausscheidet. Vor ihm die Stoffe, die sich umwandeln lassen in das, was das Lebewesen am Leben erhält. Vor sich die Zukunft (das was Regenwurm sein wird), vor sich mögliche Zukünfte, denn der Regenwurm kann die Richtung in die er sich bewegt ändern.

Hinter dem Regenwurm die Vergangenheit, das Ausgeschiedene, das, was nicht oder nicht mehr genutzt werden kann im Prozess des Lebens, der von Maturana und Varela “Autopoiesis” genannt wird. Zukunft kann man verstehen als das, was sein kann – das, was Baustein für den lebenden Körper sein kann.

Vergangenheit in diesem Sinne ist das, was durch den Regenwurm gegangen ist, was Teil des Regenwurms, innerhalb des Körpers war und nicht mehr ist. Das Jetzt ist in diesem Bild, was ist, was Körper ist, was im Körper ist, ob es verstoffwechselt werden kann, oder nicht.

Nun lässt es sich natürlich nicht sagen, ob ein Regenwurm eine Vorstellung von Zeit hat, aber wenn er eine hätte, würde ich vermuten, sie wäre linear.

DAS ZEITKONZEPT DER ZELLE
Wie würde eine Zelle Zeit empfinden? Eine Zelle ist von einer Membran umgeben, die durchlässig ist für die Stoffe, die die Zelle braucht, um Autopoiesis zu betreiben. Die Membran ist auch durchlässig für Abfallprodukte, die im Prozess des Lebens anfallen und die durch die Membran hindurch von innen nach außen in die Umwelt abgegeben werden. Die Dinge, die Zukunft und Vergangenheit ausmachen, liegen also in jeder Richtung um die Zelle und nicht, wie beim Regenwurm vorne und hinten. Vergangenheit und Zukunft ist also nicht in Richtungen geordnet, sondern in alle Richtungen um die Zelle herum.

Dieses Zeitkonzept, “das Zeitkonzept der Zelle”, kommt mir plausibler vor als das lineare Konzept. Denn es beschreibt viel besser, was ich wahrnehme, wenn ich mich beim Denken beobachte. Es beschreibt die “Gleichzeitigkeit” von Gedanken an Zukunft und Vergangenheit beim Denken, bei meinem zumindest.

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Korsakow – Utopie nicht Vision

Es gibt zwei Arten mit Korsakow einen interaktiven Dokumentarfilm zu bauen. Die eine Art möchte ich die “kausale Methode” nennen, sie besteht darin zu planen, vorzugeben, zu versuchen zu bestimmen, was der Betrachter beim Betrachten erfahren soll. Die andere Art möchte ich “Korsakow-Methode” nennen, denn sie beschreibt die ursprüngliche Motivation, die zu Korsakow geführt hat.

Einen Korsakow-Film entsprechend der Korsakow-Methode zu bauen ist immer ein Experiment und wie bei jedem guten Experiment ist es ergebnisoffen. Das heisst, es ist allenfalls ein Startpunkt definiert, ein Thema, das womöglich in eine Richtung weist, nicht aber ein Ziel, ein Ergebnis, eine Aussage.

Obschon es möglich ist, mit Korsakow Filme nach der kausalen Methode zu bauen halte ich es für sinnlos, denn jedes andere Medium, jedes andere Format lässt sich dafür nutzen. Korsakow hingegen erlaubt die “Korsakow-Methode” – einen anderen Ansatz, den wenige filmische Werkzeuge überhaupt zulassen. Es ist eine radikal offene Erzählweise, ein filmisches Nachdenken, das immer neue Bezüge aufzeigen kann und die den Autor zum Zuschauer, zum Betrachter der eigenen Gedanken macht und den Zuschauer zum Autoren, der Bezüge entdecken und aufdecken kann, die so vielleicht nie geplant und womöglich bisher unentdeckt waren.

Formal lassen sich diese beiden Arten nicht ohne weiteres unterscheiden. Ein nach der Korsakow-Methode gemachter Film mag aussehen wie ein nach der kausalen Methode gemachter Korsakow-Film. Die Unterschiede sind in der Haltung, in der Herangehensweise des Autors begründet und vom Publikum allenfalls spürbar. Was ist die Message eines bestimmten Korsakow-Films? Wenn sich darauf eine klare Antwort geben lässt, handelt es sich sicherlich um einen nach der “kausalen Methode” gemachten Film. Die Korsakow-Methode führt nicht zu einem klaren Ergebnis, die Ursache und Wirkung, gut oder schlecht, Schuldigen oder Helden aufzeigt. Die Klarheit eines nach der Korsakow-Methode gemachten Films besteht darin, die Erkenntnis zu ermöglichen, dass es diese scheinbar klare Aufteilung eben nicht gibt. In diesem Sinne ist die Korsakow-Methode radikal. Es gibt kein gut, es gibt kein böse. Korsakow löst Kategorien auf und ist aus diesem Grund für manche unverständlich, ja unerträglich.

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Eine Methoden Entdeckungen zu machen

Manche Menschen haben keine Lust sich sagen zu lassen, was sie tun und was sie lassen sollen. Derartige Menschen neigen oftmals sogar dazu, genau das Gegenteil von dem zu tun, was ihnen aufgetragen wird. Wenn da ein Weg ist, ziehen sie es vor, abseits des Weges zu gehen.

Die Wahrscheinlichkeit abseits der Wege wertvolle Entdeckungen machen ist höher als auf dem oder neben dem Weg. Ein Weg ist nur deshalb ein Weg, weil er schon schon oftmals genommen wurde. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass eine Entdeckungen an einem Weg bereits in der Vergangenheit gemacht wurde ist also hoch, die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass eine Entdeckung bisher unentdeckt blieb, entsprechend gering.

Wer nun wiederholt abseits der Wege wertvolle Entdeckungen macht, wird mit der Zeit ein Gefühl dafür entwickeln, wie man dort Entdeckungen machen kann. Ein Gefühl, aus dem sich eine Methode entwickeln kann.

Doch schon das Gefühl und mehr noch die Methode ist problematisch, da die Methode ist nichts anderes ist als wiederum ein Weg – ein Weg, der verspricht zu Entdeckungen zu führen. Man läuft also wieder auf Wegen und es liegt in der Natur von Wegen dass an den Wegen Entdeckungen mit der Zeit immer unwahrscheinlicher werden.

Was man sich also wünschen würde ist eine Methode, die permanent neue Wege generiert. Korsakow kann eine solche Methode sein.

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Once I invented something

This text is based on a talk I gave in September 2022 @ HSLU in Lucerne

In this talk I reflect about the affordances of computers in when used in conjunction with media, and discuss how Korsakow, the software I developed, was constructed based on these affordances.

Once and more than 20 years ago, I invented something. I invented something that did not prior exist (at least in that form) and that was later on also used by other people.

Today I want to talk about Korsakow from the perspectives of the inventor and designer.

There are a few things to say about this. For one thing, when I invented it, I wasn’t aware that it was something new. It wasn’t anything new in a way, because it was based on what was there already. In my case, primarily computers, digital video, and a vague idea of what a database is.

Affordances

What I invented didn’t come out of a vacuum but was in a way already suggested by the affordances of the computer I owned, the sound and image recording possibilities of my camera and a very vague idea of what a database could do, an understanding I primarily got through my student job at “Daimler-Chrysler Research and Technology”.

So I combined things that were actually already there, and I made use of affordances myself to create something that would later turn out to offer affordances to others.

What were those affordances, what should this software be good for?

When I think back to 1996, I remember one thing above all, this incredible fascination that computers had on me. I had already observed for a while, that everything that was dear to me – notes, texts, photos and recordings accumulated in fragments on my computer and I wished I had a button I could press and then the computer would help me to make sense of all these fragments. I wished the computer would help me to read the data in a way that I could see the emerging patterns. I wished the computer would help me decipher what I thought.

I wished for a tool that could present the connections of the things that I had in my brain, the connection of my thoughts, memories and feelings, so that I could read them and that way understand what I felt.

This was the initial idea of what this software should be good for, as far as I remember.

Those thoughts lead me led to the use of keywords as a fundamental principle, to allow a flexible connection of the elements that later were called SNUs (Smallest Narrative Unit).

The idea was to organize all the elements in an open and flexible way. The elements apart from the SNUs are the interface, (the layout of how things are presented) and and additional layers of audio and text.

Designing a tool to create interactive films

Interactivity, that allows viewers of a piece to select clips offered by the system came as a consequence of this flexible arrangement of the SNUs and the wish to make it visible that there is no fixed order of things.

Because of the decision to make it interactive, options had to be presented to the viewer – there was the necessity for buttons to be pressed. I could only think of links being text, image, sound, moving image or a key pressed on the keyboard of the computer. And I allowed for all the options above, also in combination.

The intention of the designer and affordance

From the standpoint of the designer of Korsakow (me), Korsakow was not built with the intention in mind to make people use it in a particular way, but to give people possibilities, as many options that I could think of and that I was able to realize within the limitations of the technology I had access to and by my skills and the general resources that were available. So for example eye tracking could also have been a possibility for navigating interactivity, but that was beyond my scope of possibilities. So one could say the affordances that I made use of, were in the objects I used (computer, recording, database) and the environment I was in (things like my skill set or funding opportunities).

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Neutral Perspective

NewsRoom

In this text I want to contrast what I have observed in journalism with what I observe in areas of YouTube from the perspective of someone, who made interactive documentaries for quite some time.

I am looking at areas of YouTube in the context of documentary, building of the definition of i-docs by Judith Aston and Sandra Gaudenzi who say that:

“Any project that starts with an intention to document the ‘real’ and that uses digital interactive technology to realize this intention, can be considered an interactive documentary.”

I think that interactive documentary formats (like for example on YouTube) accelerate the trend to an increasingly multi-perspectival, what Gaudenzi calls “negotiation, that a society has with reality”.

Or in simple terms, I think that YouTube & Co have the potential to help us, in the long term, to become more nuanced – and as a consequence – more tolerant, more accepting, less judgmental – and more open to new ideas. This, I think, might increase our ability to collaborate and become more creative in finding solutions, for the problems, that torment us.

I think, that it is already recognizable, that connected individuals and societies develop an increased acceptance for complexity. And I suggest, that this has to do, with the interactive and conversational structure of these media formats and the increased multidirectional flow of information.

I have been working in the newsroom of an international TV-news-broadcaster for more than 20 years. My job was called ‘picture editor’ or ‘image producer’, I was responsible for still images and graphics mainly for television (and sometimes social media). I was just just a cog in the wheel of producing news and documentary pieces, that were then broadcasted into the wider world.

I was helping journalists, who were considered to be the authors, to produce news artifacts. In this little text, I want to focus on the concept of “objectivity” – in the news-room, at which I got an inside perspective for more than 20 years. I want to compare that to habitual methods, that I see developing within interactive documentary and YouTube.

I see similarities between Korsakow (that is the think I invented and used to structure my own interactive documentaries) and YouTube, that I consider to be more interesting, than the differences, that certainly also exist.

This is to say: I think, I see something in YouTube, that I so clearly sense, because of my experience in interactive documentary. I would say – my brain got wired through Korsakow. And similar to me, having my thinking shaped by Korsakow, I recognize people on YouTube, that have their thinking shaped by YouTube – in a quite a similar way.

“Objectivity” was a concept, that came up regularly in the news-room over all these years. And the concept of “objectivity” of course also came up, in the context of me making “interactive documentary”. According to Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (2007), the pursuit of objectivity, is one of the three basic scientific virtues (along with truth-to-nature and trained judgment), objectivity is considered a measure of quality in science and it certainly is considered to be a measure of quality, among the journalists in the news-room I was working in. Journalists tried to achieve ‘objectivity’ by reporting the things ‘as they were’, or at least as they looked to them, through the eye of a camera’ and not so much ‘as they, the journalists, perceived them’. With this approach they claimed to archive an ‘objective perspective’.

I took a different approach in my interactive documentary making, a different approach to that of the journalists in the news-room, but a similar approach to what I now often find on YouTube. I described reality as the thing that I saw, by describing reality from my subjective perspective.

I would argue that an ‘objective perspective’ in the sense the journalists usually claimed, a perspective at the thing somehow without a position from which it is looked at, does not exist. Reality can not be looked at from the outside, which is what an objective perspective would theoretically need. You can only look at reality from within reality. You can not look at reality from the outside, because – where should that be?

An “objective perspective” can in my opinion only be a fabrication.

Within reality there are many viewpoints from which to look at a thing. And only if one knows, from which perspective something is looked at, it can be seen in context with other perspectives, that almost certainly will not describe the thing in focus, the same way.

A subjective perspective without an agenda, this is what I increasingly see developing on YouTube & Co. In the title of this text I called this a “neutral perspective” and I would like to discuss with you, if this is a helpful term.

With “neutral” I mean, that the goal is to avoid classification, for example into good or bad – to avoid moral judgement. Maybe a paticual author on YouTube (or in Korsakow) has an opinion – of what is good or bad – but then the author makes this opinion clear and then focusses primarily on the arguments of people with different opinions, not in a way, that makes the arguments of the author stronger, as I so often observe not only in journalism – but to gain understanding for these other arguments and their resulting opinions.

To be clear, I am not talking about all authors on YouTube, but a particular kind of authors that are active in this kind of genre that I see developing on YouTube and in the realm of podcasts (Like for example Rezo, Lex Friedman, Sam Harris, Struthless and if you know more, please let me know down there in the comments!.

This in a way is not a new method: scientific methods usually work that way.

This is why I think this is important

I start with two very simple assumptions:

  1. The process of making a documentary artefact (like for example a documentary film, a news piece, a podcast, a YouTube-clip), influences the documentary artifact, that is made, in this process (Ok, this is obviously obvious, please don’t scream – point 3 gets interesting.)
  2. Documentary artifacts, have the potential, to influence the thinking, of the recipients of these artifacts, in a particular way. (Also kind of banal: you get influenced, I get influenced, we all get influenced by stuff we see/hear).
  3. The process of making must therefore have an influence, on the thinking of the recipients.

So this – as simple as it sounds – seems to me often overlooked. The “how” – how we communicate – if confrontative or seeking to understand, shapes the shared world, too – not just the facts. This is why I consider it to be so very important also on how we get to our understanding of the world.

To be (maybe overly) clear here, I consider myself to be a constructivist. This means that I consider the world to be at least to a significant extent to be the result of the communication, that takes place between people, what they agree on and what then becomes the shared reality.

“Netral perspective” is a friendly way to negotiate the world

So what is the trick? How is this “neutral perspective” achieved for example YouTube or Korsakow?

I consider the main ingredient to be what Cyberneticians like Heinz von Foester calls “observing the observer” and “Second order Cybernetics”.

And that, I would like to describe in the following way: “If one wants to get understanding of a thing (or topic, or question), it makes little sense to get a description of that thing without understanding the perspective, from which that thing was described.”

I assume here, that we all agree, that there are always (and I rarely use superlatives!) multiple perspectives, from which an object could be described accurately, differently and maybe even contradictory.

So how did folks on YouTube get there? Of course, I don’t know how much these authors consulted cybernetics literature, but what I do know – that I didn’t. I applied cybernetics thinking without knowing pretty much anything about Cybernetics (until recently, now I know a bit, a tiny bit).

Looking at my first interactive documentary projects, that develop that ‘neutral perspective’ (and not all my projects do), I noticed a number of similarities in the process of making, similarities I see on YouTube as well. For example, all these projects were to the highest degree self-motivated, that means that I did not have an audience in mind, when I did them, I was the primary audience, and I wanted to look at those topics in the most unbiased way, to get relevant answers, for the questions, that I wanted to get answers for.

Recently I revisited the first three of my interactive documentary pieces, in an auto-ethnographic undertaking, on which I have embarked within my studies:

In retrospect these were the questions that I tried to answer through my projects:

How am I limited in my thinking because of my upbringing?
[small world], 1997 (project only still works on PC)

Am I in danger of becoming addicted to alcohol?
[korsakow syndrome], 2000 (offline)

How can I identify a good partner in life?
[LoveStoryProject], 2003

Journalists in contrast – at least the ones I observed, constantly seem to consider the audience. This is expressed well in a sentence that I feel I have heard a million times, often, when I suggested an – what we called – info-graphic: “This is too complicated, the viewer does not get that”.

It might feel counter-intuitive to many, to think that YouTubers are not obsessed with their audience. They think about it, too, but it seems different. The YouTubers I look at regularly talk about their audience within the pieces they produce. But they talk of their audience as a source of knowledge and a typical sentence might sound like this: “I am not sure if I described this and that correctly, if you know more, please let me know, down there in the comments.”

In contrast, it is very rare, that journalists speak open about their lack of knowledge. It is widely considered to be unprofessional and a sign, that they did not do their research.

I think, that the difference in considering the audience makes all the difference, when it comes to ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’ perspective.

I would say that ‘neutral perspective’ can only be archived, if the perspective of the author is just one possible perspective, out of many perspectives, that are possibly there in the wider world or in the audience. The author of such a piece therefor needs to locate his or her perspective, make clear from where he or she is coming from to give room to other perspectives.

The ‘objective perspective’ that journalists usually claim in their attempt to make things explicable is decreasing complexity. They usually want to tell the story in simple terms. But to decrease complexity you need to leave out information, that is considered to be dispensable, but who is it to know, what information is truly dispensable? Maybe information is cut off that would have turned out to be important later?

I make an arguement that ‘neutral perspective’ allows a higher level of complexity, it leaves more information intact, but it asks for people and societies have to develop an increased tolerance and resilience for contradicting information.

And I think this is what is increasingly happening?

Do you think that too? – Please let me know down there in the comments!

This text is based on a talk I gave at NECS, conference in Bucharest on June 24th, 2022. The talk was part of the panel “Interactive Epistemologies. New Knowledge Economies in the Context of Interactive Documentaries and Web-Docs”.

Also on the panel were Florian Krautkrämer and Tobias Conradi, two of my three collaborators of interdocs.ch, a research project on interactive documentary that is based at HSLU.

The European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) is a platform for exchange between scholars, archivists and programmers.

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