Immersive Storytelling DSC : Week 1 Reading Response Prompts

Please write a short response to the lecture from Wednesday. What did you think of the topics Anezka touched on and how do you see them relate to your own practice/your discipline?

It is, in my opinion, of paramount importance for any illustrator regardless of graphical style or preffered medium to understand narrative structure. These are not exclusive to stories – or, it might be better to say, the essence of the story exists in all things, not just in books, films, and related media. There is a saying that a picture is worth a million words, and so art itself must contain enough sentences to fulfill the requirements of a narrative arch multiple times. Though illustration is not immersive, there exist ways to implement it’s concepts into new age media such as the types mentioned in Anezka’s lecture. My impressions of storytelling as a concept going into this class were very two dimensional, both figuratively and literally, but the contents of the course outline a path towards a different, more holistic and ergonomic form of narrative that I have yet to study. Illustration itself is usually defined as a picture, a flat image, but that does not mean it has to be bound to those rules. I believe immersive storytelling will lend an important hand in exploring my own path in illustrative art and narrative design.

After reading Chapter 1 of Computers as Theatre, how would you define ‘interface’ for yourself? Does it always have to be defined in relation to a human and a machine? If not, please elaborate.

Interface as defined by Brenda Laurel takes multiple different forms, some more unique depending on the intended actions they’re meant to have with a user. That relationship in and of itself forms the core of the interface, particularly as it relates to computers and humans. In any case, it is imperative in the interface for there to be ergonometrics – that is, for the communication between the user and the interface itself to be designed from the top-down for usability. In that sense, it will always be required that a user exists alongside the interface. This is not to say that the interface itself is an entity without it’s own inherent strengths as a designed system, simply that it is incomplete without one.

Brenda gives two reasons why theatre is a good way to think about interactions. What are they and why does she think they are worth investigating in detail?

One of the key reasons Laurel gives towards the importance of theatre is it’s intrinsic similarity to interfaces. This juggles a serious versus non-seriousness factor which Laurel explains as a popular misconception – theatre (and design, by extention) is representation of reality rather than reality itself which some believe cheapens it’s significance, yet interfaces share in that description and yet are widely regarded as useful tools with which our interactions are not just significant, but of great import. In the same sense that interfaces are representations of interactions, so too is theater a vehicle for exploring the same relationship from a different angle. The same key roles – users, experiences, visual language – are present in theater as they are in interfaces.

Going back to the seriousness factor of theater, Laurel explains that the physicality of theater plays an important role, as does the contents of the theater’s play itself. Melodrama, comedy, farce, and satire are handled in different ways in theater and are perceived differently by the audience member as a result, playing directly into “seriousness” not just in regards to the subject matter but in regards to how the actors in theater carry and gesture with their bodies in a given space. These form important interactions, this combination of physicality and narrative content, and represents a special kind of interaction that is especially easy to visually process and digest. In the process of the actor playing their role within their physical and imaginary space, one can observe how their actions represent a reflection of reality, and how that reflection is an important interaction in and of itself.

Bridge Project 4 (Int. Seminar 2)

Thesis (Revised):

Female beauty culture and the practices of beauty standards in South Korea has become an extremely powerful and recent cultural phenomenon – one that is infinitely more than the sum of it’s parts, seeing prevalence in various aspects of life for many women both within and outside of the country. This is due to the advancement and rise of beauty product engineering from Korean board-certified doctors and scientists who have mastered the art of reshaping the face and body, and are thus sought after by an extremely large female demographic from within both South Korea and, surprisingly, in the United States as well. There is a male statistic included in this phenomenon but, as it is to a much lesser extent, they will be omitted from this research for sake of efficiency. This present day phenomenon has produced some of the most significant results on both an economical and sociological level than ever seen before, becoming a prominent national asset of South Korea’s – this is undeniably linked to the and an undeniably intrinsic facet of the Korean culture itself. This topic answers to years of prior history within the boundaries of the country, but can be even further effectively highlighted through its comparisons and interactions with the same behaviorisms found in American culture. My research seeks to develop and answer questions concerning the past, the present, and the future of this phenomenon; how and why this culture of beauty has grown to such prevalence in South Korea, how these habits of beauty culture continue to be practiced in the present day, how the Korean standard of beauty uniquely affects other cultures and, ultimately, what we as human beings consider physically beautiful from a broad perspective.

Single Frame Narrative Collage

IMG_20160907_081737

Theme was “Failure.” Represented through tortured images of the artist and the clear process of created and scrapped ideas, along with the slow but sure degradation of the surroundings of the artist himself.