#blogpost 2

[emmyysworld]

*ACADEMIC BLOGPOST 2: Emotions through Characters in 'Alice In Wonderland'

Introduction 

Emotions come through connection with what is being viewed. It’s a key aspect of how narratives are experienced in the digital world. Sobchak argues that film and digital media are experienced as embodied encounters along with intellectual ones. Feeling every emotion deep within, Alice in wonderland  is a great reference for this to examine how emotions are produced through media. In this blog I will be analysing how emotional engagement is shown through media with the movie Alice in wonderland as it focuses on disorientation, imagination, and immersion. 

Emotional atmosphere 

Generating feelings of curiosity, wonder and anxiety, a key emotional theme in Alice in wonderland is disorientation and changes in space. In the fantasy universe of media these emotions are heightened through visual distortion, rapid smooth transitions and out of the norms environments. Supporting Manovich’s claim of new media prioritising modulation and transformation over fixed media, not only does television allow the viewer to experience Alice’s perspective, but it also allows the viewer to expand their relativity through other characters such as the Mad Hatter, Thackery Earwicket, White Rabbit and more thus producing emotion not only through narrative but through structure.

Emotional environment is heavily shaped by digital aesthetics such as transitions, colour, movement and sound. Vibrancy through colour and exaggerated motion increases the sense of wonder and unease allowing anticipation to seep in. 

“To the degree that the encounter affects the body, it produces subjective effects like those that arise from physical contact: it’s not just a metaphor.” – Laura U. Marks 

Marks states that despite not physically being able to touch what is being shown, whilst not being immersed in reality with the narrative, the viewers are able to experience the imagery and visual through feeling before being able to fully understand the concept of the narrative. As a viewer I agree with this statement as the story comes after the visuals and emotions set in. narrative is truly important however immersivity and emotional connection in just as important if not more. Alice’s travel through the underland, her struggles, her faces with femininity and societal standards, her fight against not only herself but the world around her, all of these developments and struggles allow the viewer and the character to bond over relativity through real life experiences. Everyone has a character they are connected to for different reasons, there’s a sense of familiarity which allows for emotion to flow easily through the body of the viewer thus proving Marks’ point of emotions and effects being subjective.  

Emotional engagement 

“...That you literally get lost in a story and obliterate the outside world from your awareness.” – Janet H. Murray (1997)

Agency is more than just action with the expectation of outcome. Murray states “activity alone is not agency” , through the Alice in wonderland movies emotional engagement intensifies through agency and participation. Unlike contemporary cinema, digital media cinema allows the viewers to experience wonderland at their own pace, allowing them to indulge their entire being into Alice’s adventures for the duration of the movie. Rather than simply having an observational view, it allows them to interact with the narrative on a deeper emotional level through movement, choice, intensity, rhythm and more. 

Emotional engagement is heightened through the sense of involvement. Mirroring the uncertainty Alice has whilst she navigates her way around an unpredictable world ahead of her, the audience would feel a sense of responsibility and curiosity whilst following Alice’s journey with her, thus resulting in emotional intensity. Murray’s statement explaining that the digital world allows the viewers to become completely absorbed into the world of virtuality is proven through Alice in Wonderland as the visual effects and the intensity of the travel and journey she goes on accompanied by the intensity of her decisions allows the viewers to completely engross themselves in her world, practically removing themselves from reality. 

Meaning through narrative allows emotional engagement as morals and lesson are taught through storytelling. Alice in wonderland teaches empathy, curiosity, vulnerability and lack of control. Through the digital production of the movie, emotional meaning is portrayed through action, lessons and interaction. 

Conclusion 

Digital media allows Alice in wonderland to be seen in a new light through new and out of the ordinary visuals. It brings imagination and wonder to life through distortion, interaction and embodiment. The concept of emotional engagement is highly relevant to my personal medium as I ain to portray a sense of ownership through emotion with my work. I don’t want my work to influence emotion, rather I would like my viewers to allow emotion to influence them. I want curiosity to be an outcome of my work. 

References

Marks, L., Chateau, D. and Moure, J. (n.d.). The Skin and the Screen -A Dialogue. [online] Available at: https://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/downloads/files/Marks%20Skin%20and%20the%20Screen.pdf.

Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal thoughts : embodiment and moving image culture. Berkeley, Calif. Univ. Of California Press, pp.53–84.

Murray, J.H. (2016). Hamlet on the holodeck : The future of narrative in cyberspace. Cambridge, Ma ; London: The MIT Press.

Nogueira, P. (2020). Features and Trends across Interactive Documentaries (1 of 2). [online] iNOVAMedialab. Available at: https://medium.com/inovamedialab/features-and-trends-across-interactive-documentaries-1-of-2-e6e43f321507.

Marks, L.U. (2000). The Skin of the Film Intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press.

[yareadinggood-blog]

Ari & Dante and Me

This is a rather well known book I believe within the middle school era for my generation. We had to read it for a book report so this is my third time actually reading this novel. Aristotle and Dante are very relatable characters in the aspect of finding your identity. Sáenz does a really wonderful job with both of his characters in discovering their own sexualitites and the challenges of internal denial. I believe this novel could really shed light to readers about the ways adolescents find their own identities that interact with each other such as sexuality and cultural and the fact that they are not alone. This book does an effective job of honoring the goals of the Stonewall Award though I do believe personally there could have been more about the gay relationship between Aristotle and Dante for this award. 

“I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”(pg 84)

This specific quote is right after Aristotle decides to give himself the nickname, Ari, as he doesn’t really like his name. He believes everyone expects something from him and I can relate in a way. Being named after someone in your family or someone your parents idolize is always a bit heavy to carry. I definitely went through a phase of not enjoying my name and wishing desperately I could have a nickname like Ari. 

Having this being my third time reading this novel, I find that my reactions are a bit different then when I read it in middle school. In middle school I didn’t really enjoy reading this novel as I believe I couldn’t separate my anger as a young teen and Aristotle’s anger. I definitely harbored angst and anger growing up, similar to Aristotle’s in that I was searching and not really understanding my own sexuality. Reading this now as a college student and an outed bisexual, I really understand and can enjoy reading this novel as a learning chance and can separate my own emotions to just read about Ari and Dante’s story.

[justcamilleschapter-blog]

BRIEF INTRODUCTION:

 Life is the most precious gift from above thus, we as stewards of God must value and treasure it. 

WHAT IS A DEFIBRILLATOR?

By definition, defibrillator is an electric device that applies an electric shock to restore the rhythm of a fibrillation geart. 

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Defibrillator involves a process of defibrillation wherein it is performed to correct life threathening arrythmias of the heart specifically ventricular fibrillation and non perfusing ventricular tachcardia.

WHY I LOVED IT:

I consider it as my favorite technology compared to other entertaining inventions because it does not only perform ordinary things but it saves life and helps the humanity. I like it because I aimed to become a cardiologist someday, and for me this would be the best physical weapon I can have coupled with my spiritual weapon which is prayer, the best of all the best.

[fable-rules-blog]

Fable Rules- Post 2

We play-tested the first prototype thrice and iterated over some rules here and there. Like we worked on a few rules concerning the betting system. But we tried to keep the basic system somewhat similar throughout the first prototype. We wanted to keep the freedom of creating story as much as we could. So we went forward in our testing with the following questions in mind-

Did the players have a hard time coming up with characters and stories?

Did the players get confused between stories and rules?

Were the players able to form cohesive interconnected stories between themselves?

How did the inclusion of power cards affect their play? Did they want more cards like them?

Was it fun coming with stories?

Our main aesthetic that we are aiming for is narrative, so we were very focused on the joy of storytelling and the freedom in doing so. Even though we wanted this fundamental to be something that was prevalent in our game, we soon came to the realization that this might not be the case. People are not generally inclined towards creating stories on the go. In our prototype play-tests with other people we came to the following observations-

We observed that people were getting confused with the point system.

Even Though people enjoyed making stories, they had some hard times with building their own characters.

Some participants forgot what rules they had created before and had a hard time merging them up with present rules.

People were not able to follow the story line of the game that everyone was coming up with.

They did not have much of an idea as to what rules they had to come up with.

They had really good times making up their own story.

Power cards we created to make them help for creating story were less.

We also observed that while playing games if there were less people they would have enjoyed more than in a group with more people.

People really had good time while making alliance and even enjoyed breaking each other’s alliances.

Even though our observations were within the realm of our expectations, it did help to reinforce or doubts and pushed to work on mechanics that will be more helpful to the players in creating their stories and creating fun situations. The players that we used for our first play-test were sadly distracted, the game itself wasn’t capturing their attention. They kept forgetting stuff and wanted to get the game over soon. It was late so that might have been a reason, but it can’t be rejected that the game itself wasn’t able to incite interest in them. However this play-test did still spark fun and excitement in the players about their characters and their stories from time to time. Our 2nd play-test grouped shared somewhat similar experiences, they had to leave early and tried to finish off the game as quickly as they could. In our 3rd play-test group we found an interesting shift, the players were invested into their characters and their stories from the start till the finish. They wanted to get things done their way, so they did whatever to get their way. They formed alliances, betrayed and just full on turned to the dark-side even though their character started off as a hero.

So based on these observations we came up with a bunch of new things, and scrapped a lot of our previous mechanics in our quest to balance the game and make it more accessible to a wider audience. We also came up with a new board that goes more with our narrative aesthetic. “The story unravels” as the game progresses. One of the things that we are getting rid of is the points system. In effect our betting mechanic will also be removed. Also we have to replace the power cards system with a different set of card-decks.

The card decks that we came up with-

Character cards- This deck will be drawn from at the very beginning of the game to decide on the characters of the player. Explanation- To help the players come up with characters. They pick up one card from the deck during the first arc’s beginning.

Story cards- These cards will direct the player's story and will be following the customary 3 act story structure.  Explanation- The board will be divided into a 3 act structure, entering the 1st act player picks up 1 story card. Entering the 2nd act they pick up 2 cards (which they use on 2 different turns in the same act). Entering the last act on the board they pick up one card.

Animate cards- The players are no longer capable of making their own rules. Instead they will have to pick from this deck, which will define the rule that is played onto the game. The rule can be anything and it is employed only once. But before picking a card they have to decide on whom to apply this rule (themselves, some other player, or everyone). This will give a little chaotic randomness as to what happens, since this rule might be beneficial or not on the player drawing them. Now the fun part of this card is that they have to actually do the thing that is written on the card in real life. They have to “animate” it. For example- The rule says to move 2 steps forward, so the card will say that the player who drew the card has to run 2 laps of the room they are playing the game in.

More on the Board- The Board is designed in a spiral structure and is colored in 3 different colors to mark the 3 acts of their story. The inciting incident (1st act), the character arc (2nd act) and finally the climax (3rd act). The players will start off from the middle of the spiral and have to make it out through its end on the outside.

On the matter of Disputes in the story- The players initially start off by only telling their own character’s tale, they are not allowed to include other player’s characters into their tale until they get an animate card that gives them the permission to do so. Once this phase starts the players are allowed to discuss the stories they are telling on each others turn and come up with the tale for both their characters together. If a dispute occurs and they are unable to come to a resolution. The player will have to roll a die at the same time and the one who has the bigger number wins this dispute. But this die roll has to emulate as to what is happening in the story. For example- If the players are in an actual battle they have emulate a battle and throw the dice at each other. Or maybe if it’s a dramatic scene where one character is trying to convince another to do something they have to play out that scene in real life and then throw the dice to see if they managed to convince the other player or not.

Over the Goal of the game- The goal of the game is still the same as before, the person who gets to the end first gets to tell the resolution of the communal tale. However, in this iteration the game just ends and the winner doesn’t have keep to telling the story and doesn’t have to wait for the other players to reach the end.  The game is over once we have a winner. They tell the ending and that is it.

About the number of players- we have decided on keeping the number players 2-4 only. From our previous play tests we came to the conclusion that we more the number of the players harder the story is to follow. So we are trying to keep this under controlling by limiting the number of players.

These about cover the new inclusions to our game, these new mechanics still have the heart of our aesthetics, they complement the narrative aesthetic by actually giving something to the players to build. They hint on what is to be done and leave it to the player as to where they want to take the story. Hopefully with all this players have a better sense of what stories to tell. Also we hope that the Animate cards help to brings more chaos by introducing randomness, the same goes with the Dice-dispute System. All the other aesthetics still are prevalent. The players are still competitive and cooperative from time to time. The fantasy aspect still remains and the submission aesthetic is even more concrete now by removing the challenge factor from how the other players ended the game against the winner.

The only lagging mechanic that seems to come to mind right now is the merging of the stories. If we are to use the animate cards to allow players to merge stories, we have to make sure that players get to combine stories and are not left out. After all telling stories together is the actually fun part. What we have been thinking, is maybe making the deck in such a way so that the players always draw a story merge card at some point or another in the game. Or maybe we could decide on which character gets to meet which characters at what time in the game. We could do this by marking the character cards that players pick in the beginning with this kind of information.

Our brainstorming session proved to be very helpful, very more so than our previous session during the last prototype since this time around we actually knew what we had focus on. Hopefully we can continue on this improvement to deliver an excellent experience for the players who play our game.

[3lwimata-3lwihalima-blog-blog]

Blogpost 2

Een personeel ik- vertelstandpunt (vertellend):

1. Het verhaal is geschreven in de ik-vorm. In haar auto, op weg naar god-weet-waar, bleef ik het steeds maar in gedachten herhalen. Geen nummer dit keer, maar een woord. Overlijdensdatum. Overlijdensdatum. Had ik maar geweten dat dat het was, dan had ik het tegen haar kunnen zeggen, haar kunnen tegenhouden, weet ik veel. 2. Je ziet het verhaal door de ogen van de ik-persoon. Hij lachte toen hij me zag, kwam vlak voor me staan en zwaaide pal voor mijn neus zijn vinger heen en weer. “Foei, kleine meid! Wat doe jij hier?” Ik haalde mijn schouders op en keek naar de grond. Hij gaf zelf antwoord. “Werd het je te erg, weer een dag bij de Nul? Kan je geen ongelijk geven, Jem, die gast is gestoord. Die zou niet vrij rond mogen lopen.” Hij is groot, Spider, en lang. Zo eentje die te dicht bij je komt staan, niet weet wanneer hij moet kappen. Daardoor heeft hij op school ook vaak ruzie, denk ik. Hij zit je voortdurend op je nek, je kunt hem ruiken. Zelfs als je je in bochten wringt om weg te draaien is hij er nog steeds – hij vangt nooit een signaal op, snapt nooit een hint. 3. Je kent de gedachten en gevoelens van de ik-persoon. De lust tot lachen  verging me toen ik zag hoe gekwetst hij was. “Het is oké,” zei ik. “ Ik heb dit nog nooit gedaan. Ik ben zenuwachtig. Het is oké. Kom hier.” Het scheelde nu niet veel of ik huilde, al mijn emoties lagen veel te dicht onder de oppervlakte.

Er komen geen andere vertelstandpunten voor in het boek.

[lentelayla-blog]

Liever de Leugen

verstelstandpunt

Het boek zelf speelt zich af in het verleden en heden, beide zijn geschreven in een personeel ik vertelstandpunt dus handelend. Het speciale aan dit boek is dat je in het verleden niet echt zeker kan zijn over wie het verteld, want je ziet het boek eigenlijk door de ogen van 2 personen:

-Arne Maenhout -> antagonist

-Christiaan Lagae -> protagonist

van beide kom je dus doorheen het verhaal hun gedachten gang en gevoelens te weten.

bewijs 1: Ik hoorde iets vallen, een doffe plof weerklonk door het huis.

bewijs 2: Natuurlijk ging ik ze niet vertellen dat ik iets had zien bewegen.

bewijs 3: ‘Hou je rustig’ dacht ik bij mezelf.

~lente~

[cmudesign]

Jack-of-all-Trades, Master of None

Rachel Bullen

To a certain extent, everyone is a designer. On a day-to-day basis, everyone unconsciously designs in order to make his or her lives easier. However, with the advent of the technological age, it’s becoming increasingly easy for people to design and create more complex objects.

Back in the day, people would become experts at one thing, be it blacksmithing or bookbinding, etc. But today, that’s no longer the case. By making it easier for people to learn about a plethora of topics, we’re making generations of people that know very little about a lot of things. And though it is an amazing feat to see how far technology has come, it is also having an impact on how value is placed on an individual’s time, effort, and talent.

Take, for example, the 3D printer.  With a 3D printer it’s possible to create a three dimensional solid object from a digital model. It’s as simple as creating the digital model and imputing it into the printer. The actual process of printing on a 3D printer takes a long time, but it’s more satisfying for the user to watch that process than wait for an item to be shipped; 3D printing appeals to a person’s need for instant gratification. It also makes it so a person can say, “I made that.”

But it’s not just 3D printers, with the Adobe Creative Suite anyone can, to a certain extent make amazing digital pieces or alter existing works into more thought-provoking object.

Basically, I am arguing that while those advances have been helpful, they have also taken away the need for anyone to be an “expert” within a field. As long as someone knows a little bit about a lot of things, they can bounce between fields; whereas someone who is an expert and spent a great deal of time in on area is limited to that one area.

Additionally, in an age where anyone can learn how to do anything, less value is placed on items or ideas that are handcrafted by a specialist, so to speak.  There’s a type of mentality that goes “I could do that, so why should I pay for someone else to do it?’ There’s a devaluation of goods and services since there’s less of a gap between experts and novices.

Finally, with these advances, the amount of time that is devoted to a project has decreased. It’s possible to be the person that comes up with the idea, implements the idea, delivers the final product and do all of that within a reduced timeframe.  While there will always be projects that take more time, nowadays most projects can be done in the short-term.

To be clear, I am not saying that 3D printers, or the Adobe Creative Suite, or any advances are bad. I just want to point out that the evaluation process needs to be carefully considered. Yes, everyone can be artistically inclined and make great things, despite lack of education or talent. But the people with talent and those who put forth massive amounts of effort should not be placed on the same level as those who do not.  I just believe that it’s all well and good to be good at a lot of things, but it’s not the same as being great at a few things.