Category: ENGLISH

Posted on

From Film School to Bitcoin: A New Vision for Documentary Makers

For IFM2024, a conference on interactive documentary, I, like everyone else, prepared a video presentation outlining my research. For the panel, participants are asked to summarize their papers.

Instead of summarizing my paper, I would like to take the opportunity to react to the other presentations in this panel from a Korsakowian perspective, which is the focus of my research. By doing so, I aim to provide insights into my research and offer solutions to the problem described in the presentation by Umer Bilal and Manuel Contreras, which I would summarize as follows:

There is substantial criticism of the Western gaze in documentary filmmaking, and rightly so. The issues highlighted by Umer and Manuel indicate that documentaries, both past and present, often portray a distorted image of reality. They rightly argue that some individuals in the West act as gatekeepers, controlling the production and dissemination of images. Umer and Manuel point out that the lack of funding plays a major role in perpetuating this problem.

Sonali Sharma presents a case study of an artist who uses Instagram as a platform to share his perspective on a particular aspect of the world—his observations and comments on the Delhi metro.

I am a 52-year-old human ape, and I have struggled with the issue of distorted perspectives since I developed an interest in documentaries over 25 years ago. In response to this struggle, I developed Korsakow, a system that shares similarities with Instagram, such as the tagging system that Sonali described. In Korsakow, tags are called “keywords” and play a central role. At that time, I had to create my own tool as Instagram or YouTube were not available. These tools now allow for different strategies of ordering and sense-making, moving away from linear storytelling forms.

I generally agree with the points presented and would like to offer a concrete idea to address the problem of under-complex and mono-perspectival views on people and societies in the Global South. To explain this idea, I would like to conduct a playful thought experiment and invent a fictional character named Jan.

Jan is a 26-year-old who lives in Delhi, Karachi, or Bogotá. He understands that the images of the world presented in the media are often wrong, distorted, or incomplete. Jan considers becoming a documentary maker and thinks about attending a film school to learn the craft, write proposals for funders, and build a network within the industry. If Jan asked me for advice, it could trigger the following thoughts:

If Jan follows the traditional path of attending film school and learning to navigate the system, he will likely become the kind of documentary maker the market has learned to value. He will produce media products that align with the perspectives of those willing to pay for them. As Bilal and Contreras note, if Jan does not adhere to the “Western gaze” formula, he will likely lack the resources to continue his work.

So, what can a young person do when they see the problem of distorted reality and want to improve it? What could be a feasible path?

I think that at this particular point in time, there are numerous opportunities. I would like to connect two seemingly unrelated fields. First, as Sonali Sharma exemplifies, the internet and platforms like Instagram or YouTube (which I have studied much more deeply) offer possibilities to reach people without dealing with the old gatekeepers mentioned by Bilal and Contreras.

My solution might sound laughable or ridiculous to some, and if it does, I invite you to take it as a joke. But maybe there is a young future documentary maker who can sense the path and just needs a bit of encouragement from an old ape like me.

My suggestion to Jan: Don’t go to film school, art school, or university. Take the money it would cost and invest it in Bitcoin. Use the time you would spend at film school to learn everything about films using the internet and available tools. Study film history, theory, and practice. I recommend YouTube as a place to find some of the best teachers, no matter where you are. Learn about films and also study the workings and philosophy of Bitcoin, which will teach you about how people come to their perception of reality. Don’t trust old or even new knowledge blindly—Think through everything you recognize as relevant, use your own brain. Don’t trust, verify.

Use online platforms to conduct your own experiments. This hands-on experience will teach you a lot. There are many students like you out there doing the same, and you can learn from them as well and you can learn and experience how to think collaboratively. When you are finished with your curriculum after lets say four years Bitcoin should be ready and provide you with the funding you need.

That is my 10 cents of advice.

Posted on

The Korsakowian Approach – A Metamodern Method That Shapes The Thinking Patterns Of Those Who Apply It?

And why this title is wrong

This is the paper I submitted alongside a video that can be viewed on YouTube.

Abstract

The thesis with which I started my PhD, and which is also reflected in the title of this talk, is that my particular way of working with korsakow – which I call korsakowian – has shaped my thinking in a way for which I have been using the term “multi-perspectival” since 2012. My auto-ethnographic explorations now point to that it is the other way around. Media that affords a korsakowian approach attracts people with a certain kind of mindset, that I would like to call multi-perspectival.

Keywords

multiperspectivity, media-literacy, Korsakow, korsakowian

1. Introduction

Six months ago I submitted an abstract to IFM with the title “The korsakowian approach –  a metamodern method that shapes the thinking patterns of those who apply it?”. Meanwhile I changed my thinking and as a consequence this talk is about why the title is wrong. 

To keep this paper brief I will not talk about metamodernism, a concept Judith Aston linked to i-docs (Aston 2022). For more details on how I think Metamodernism is related to korsakowian practice please check out the talk I gave at the Mobile Studies Congress in December 2023.

Today I will talk about multiperspectivity and its counterpart monoperspectivity and thereby I hope to illuminate the understanding of what korsakowian practice is and what it is good for.

How I got to where I am

I am the guy who invented Korsakow, a software system that is commonly thought of as a tool to create interactive documentary. Korsakow came into being in 2000 and since then it became the center of my life and my thinking. 

For the first 15 years my energy mostly went into producing Korsakow projects (Korsakow films, Korsakow Installations, Korsakow Shows). After that I moved my focus more towards reflecting and trying to understand what I vaguely described as “the magic of Korsakow”. My turn towards research was inspired by people like Matt Soar, Judith Aston, Adrian Miles and others who I had the privilege to get to know personally, not so much through their writing as I did not have the necessary academic language skills. For many years I did my private research, in a style that Michael Hohl, who is now one of my PhD supervisors, calls *cowboy research*.

Two and a half  years ago I was granted the opportunity to quit my day-job and fully focus on my research. I am currently doing a practice based PhD, and in this presentation I want to report where I am currently at.

My autoethnographic research

After spending quite a bit of time, wrestling with the system and trying to learn academic languaging, I turned towards auto-ethnography with a focus on my first works, which includes the reconstruction of my very first computer based narrative work called Small World which I made in 1997, the piece with which the whole story started and that later led to Korsakow. Small World could be described as a nonlinear, interactive slideshow and is in many ways the predecessor of Korsakow, the software tool that still is being used today. Small World, puts flashlights on 54 data points of what it is like to grow up in a small town or and more concretely what I experienced growing up in a small town in Bavaria. Back then, I built a small world in Macromedia Director, a software that later became Adobe Director and which later went the way of all earthly things and largely disappeared into obsolescence. 

I am currently in the process of reconstructing Small World in Korsakow.

The thesis with which I started my PhD, and which is also reflected in the title of this talk, is that my particular way of working with korsakow – which I call korsakowian – has shaped my thinking in a way for which I have been using the term “multi-perspectival” since 2012 (explained here).

What do I mean by multi-perspectival?

Being multi-perspectival is the habit, one could also say the pleasure or compulsion, of looking at, considering and understanding things from as many perspectives as possible. It is a particular pleasure for someone who is multi-perspectival to hold contradictory or even mutually exclusive perspectives in the head at the same time. It’s like juggling and the more balls you can keep in the air, the greater the pleasure. On the other hand, there is the mono-perspective, which assumes that there is one best perspective from which to understand the world and strives to find this perspective. People with a multi-perspectival disposition are characterized by the fact that they are always delighted when someone comes along with a clever thought that renders their own system of thought obsolete or at least reveals a perspective that makes them say, “Oh, I never thought of it that way”. There can never be such a thing as truth for someone who is multi-perspectival, as all perspectives can never be considered. Mono-perspectival people strive to find the *best* perspective and once this perspective has been identified, they tend to propagate and defend it. Mono-perspectival people generally feel little pleasure when their ideas are criticized and viewed from a different perspective that contradicts their own. Multi-perspectival people, on the other hand, are often extremely skeptical when one perspective is presented to them as an unquestionable truth. 

This is, of course, a very and possibly overly simplistic depiction. Of course, no binary distinction can be made and it would be a little ridiculous to divide humanity into mono-perspectival and multi-perspectival people, so one should rather imagine a scale with mono-perspectival on one side and multi-perspectival on the other. Individuals then tend to lean in one direction or the other. People are often topic-dependent, mono- or multi-perspectival. Experts tend to develop a more multi-perspectival view in the field of their expertise, which means they see things in a differentiated way and usually don’t  take a single viewpoint. However, the multi-perspectival view in one subject area does not prevent mono-perspectival experts from not transferring the realization that things are complex and ambiguous to other areas.

There is no value judgment associated with mono- or multi-perspective. Both have advantages and disadvantages, I went into this in my talk at the I-docs Symposium, Crisis and Multi-perspective Thinking in May 2022. The talk is documented on my blog.

Tool affects thinking vs. tool attracts thinking

Korsakowian practice affects thinking and sense making (Aston 2022; Wiehl and Lebow 2016; Soar 2014; Gaudenzi 2013), in the sense that it questions linear causal thinking, calls categories into question, and directs attention instead to circularly acting relations within complex systems.

So far I have assumed that my style of working with Korsakow – the korsakowian approach, which I would describe as an extremely open approach to any topic – that this korsakowian exercise was formative for my multi-perspectival thinking. 

This is how I have perceived it so far – that the korsakowian approach has reinforced my multiperspectivity. My auto ethnographic research now suggests something else, which my mother would simply describe as: I have always been like that. This in turn would suggest that it is not so much the medium and the way of using that particular medium that makes the thinking, but rather that a medium allows, or makes possible, a certain way of thinking that is already inherent in the individual. In general terms: certain forms of media attract certain kinds of thinkers,  in specific terms media that affords a korsakowian approach attracts multi-perspectival thinkers.

This is also suggested by a series of intensive conversations I have had with other practitioners in the field of interactive documentary. In this context, the dust has fallen from my eyes: I have never succeeded in convincing anyone of the korsakowian approach who has not already practiced multi-perspectival thinking. 

Conversely, it can also be said that no one has ever succeeded in teaching me a mono-perspectival way of thinking. 

5. Conclusion

Korsakow is a tool that affords a multiperspectival (korsakowian) approach but it can also be used in a more mono-perspectival way. This is because the mono-perspective is always part of the multi-perspective (it is just one of many perspectives). So Korsakow is not multi-perspectival per se, but it does afford a more multi-perspectival approach than more linear legacy media can. The same applies to other potentially korsakowian media, such as YouTube, Twitter or podcasts. This is confusing in that at least podcasts are neither interactive nor non-linear. The commonality is the digital and I would like to speculate at this point that it might be especially the abundance of resources that allows us to not have to know in advance the outcome of a media production, and that makes the korsakowian approach possible on a large scale. Interactivity might be overrated, one could say.

On the basis of this speculation, I would like to continue my research.

So the title for this talk should have been:“The Korsakowian Approach – A  Metamodern Method That ShapesHelps The Thinking Patterns Of Those Who Apply It?”

Posted on

Multiperspectivity

Multiperspectivity

One could say that people are multiperspectival, as everyone perceives the environment through different senses. These different senses can be understood as different perspectives, through which various aspects can be perceived. Most people are also aware that other people have different perspectives. And there are people who have the ability to understand and incorporate into their own perspective the perspectives of others that they themselves cannot perceive. There are few people who possess the ability to include in their perspective the perspectives of people they do not understand. These are the people I mean when I speak of multiperspectival people.

To not understand a perspective, one must first think it through. A perspective that one does not understand without thinking it through is a perspective that one does not allow oneself to engage with.

Posted on

A small change to fix the internet

Me

Binary is Boring

In the contemporary digital landscape, the internet stands as a colossal infrastructure that shapes our perceptions, interactions, and even the fabric of society itself. However, this powerful tool is not without its faults. A pressing issue that demands our attention is the increasing polarization online. The root of this problem, surprisingly, might trace back to a seemingly innocuous feature ubiquitous across platforms: the binary system of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down.”

The Problem of Polarization

Polarization refers to the division of society into distinct groups, often with conflicting ideologies or preferences, leading to a fragmented community. The internet, with its vast potential for diverse expression, has paradoxically become a battleground of echo chambers and polarized camps. This issue has been exacerbated by the binary feedback mechanisms embedded within digital platforms, where complex opinions are reduced to simplistic likes or dislikes. Such a system discourages nuance and fosters an environment where middle ground is often overshadowed by extreme views.

The Binary Culprit: Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down

The binary feedback model, epitomized by the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons, encourages a simplistic, black-and-white view of content. This model lacks the ability to capture the complexity of human opinion and reduces rich, multifaceted discussions to mere numbers of approval or disapproval. The question then arises: What if there was an alternative? A solution that could mitigate polarization by embracing the complexity of human perspectives?

A Proposed Solution: The Slider

Imagine a digital world where, instead of a binary choice, users are presented with a slider ranging from 0 to 1. This slider would allow users to express their opinions with greater precision, offering a spectrum of values that better captures the nuanced shades of agreement or disagreement. Such a system could move us away from the divisive nature of binary choices and towards a more inclusive, gradient-based understanding of content and opinions.

High-Resolution Reflections of Ourselves

By implementing a slider mechanism, the internet could become a mirror reflecting high-resolution images of our collective consciousness, rather than crude, 1-bit graphics devoid of nuance. This shift towards a “gray scale” representation of opinions could encourage more thoughtful engagement, foster empathy by highlighting the common ground between seemingly disparate views, and ultimately, contribute to the healing of the polarized landscape.

Posted on

New Reality

We are forced to develop a new idea of reality because the non-real in the sense of the virtual is obviously becoming all too real. This is not a new phenomenon; media historians such as William Uricchio have studied it in detail. New media has always frightened parents who worry that their children will not be able to distinguish real reality from virtual reality. There may still be proponents of the theory that computer games lead to violent crime, that television makes people stupid or that comics are rubbish. Proponents of the latter theory are currently dying out; those who were concerned about the radio, telephone, railway, photography or book printing have already died out.

It was always the same recurring worry that arose in “our time”, the worry of drowning in information and no longer being able to distinguish between what is true and what is false. So far, we have managed to adapt to these new realities brought about by new technologies, at least the next generation has more or less managed it. However, we seem to have fallen behind in terms of adaptation if you look at the number of confused people around us. Quite subjective, quite mean, quite honest.

We need to develop a new conception of reality, not just in the way it has been capped over the last few hundred years, namely in adapting our understanding of reality, but we need to develop a fundamentally new understanding of what reality is.

This is also nothing new in history, as Davor Löffler describes in compressed words. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Mayans all had “mystical” notions of reality that are incompatible with our concept of reality.

We cannot, for example, have an adequate idea of the reality in which the Egyptians or Mayans lived because they had a different idea of reality that is incompatible with ours.

Such will be the new idea of reality that we must develop as quickly as possible. Before our current reality, or rather the inadequate representation of it, kills us.

Next page