User:ChloeXX/thesisoutline 1123

Thesis Outline: Why boring live stream is addictive and how do I reflect it on my project

Introduction:

After watching a talk on “slow TV” by Thomas Hellum who designed the 7hours 14 minutes live documentary “Bergen-Oslo Train Real Time”, I was impressed by the statement “Boring is addictive”. The concept of “slow TV” with no storyline or drama, just let the objects in the footage themselves tell the story is an interesting perspective to me. In a meanwhile, people like to watch live stream even though it is boring. For the audiences, sit down and enjoy the boring live stream is safe and comfortable. No matter what the content are, the live stream simply feed up audience’s mind and make them feel like they are experiencing. Also, the audiences in each live stream room are connected due to they are watching the same character. They talk about the characters as if they actually know them. Some characters developed their own sense of style that attract people and make numerous profits by hosting the live stream. In the time that no one can live without social media, It also reflects that people need to be accompanied due to boredom and loneliness is so hard to deal with.

Quote by Aldous Huxley: “City life is anonymous and, as it were, abstract. People are related to one another, not as total personalities, but as the embodiments of economic functions or, when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this kind of life, individuals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their existence ceases to have any point or meaning.”

Chapter 1

Human civilization is made out of illusion

(What the addiction is)

(Taboo and guilt )

The face-to-face communication becomes less important, the social circle ended up with digital contacts. Even though you don’t see each other anymore you can still get updates of one’s life. Social network creates an illusion to make people live in each other’s texts and images. In live stream, even though you do not know the character in person, she can still live in your mind, those videos collaborated with the sounds jumped out the step that we see each other.

In somewhere a hostess make her life happen, then her life has been transformed to codes and signals gone through the receiver’s screen. So I assume that live videos revealed one thing: that human civilization is made out of illusion.

Chapter 2

What audiences want from the live videos?

(Consume boredom) In film school I was taught the classic “3 acts screenplay” and its storyline structures. It is too detailed that what happened in each minute can be designed. People love the simple ”good people win the evil” ending, when it comes to film industry we can clearly see the 3 acts play gets the most viewers and this story core works all the time. But in live stream it does have a particular form.

The risk of becoming addict?

• They are the surface of pop culture.
• Each individual make this commercial society run by consuming and digesting.
• Knowing what other’s doing and gossiping about it would make one fit in.
• Think less and do more.
• Desire

Referencing

Key text:

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World Revisited
P.D.Ouspensky:The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
Sherry Turkle: Alone Together
Reeves and Nass: The media equation