Andreas Project Proposal

What do you want to make?

I want to make a film that features interviews and observations on the topic of brevity. Does generation X, Y and Z really consume more written and spoken information, thus resulting in a shorter attention span, like modern sociologists are making us believe? I want to bring the brevity discourse into the film context with these questions: Can simplification improve the reception of content? From which point of reduction or maximisation of content is the content itself being distorted?

How do you plan to make it?

In attempt of getting an even profile of the society I want to film people from all ages.

Describe how you will go about conducting your research through reading, writing and practice. In other words, through a combination of these approaches, you will explore questions or interests you have laid out in your general introduction. In this section you can help us understand how your project will come together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s). Of course, the outcome(s) may change as your research evolves, but it's important at this stage to have some concrete idea of how your project could come together as a whole.

What is your timetable?

November
Film: Sketch ideas on how to approach the film: what will be the content and how can it be shot

December
Film: film testing, map out all technical details: get in contact with individuals, begin production plans; complete screenplay; begin storyboarding; Write the script and the shooting plan for the final film.

January
Thesis: first thesis draft complete by end of month
Film: all resources/people/support secured by month’s end, complete storyboarding, fix schedule with all individuals

February
Thesis: second draft
Film: set design etc., schedule for filming fix

March
Thesis: complete thesis
Film: Shoot first versions and get feedback from tutors and classmates

April
Film: editing and contingency for filming, if necessary shoot additional shots

May
Film: final editing and completion
Exhibition: exhibition layout plan; printing/construction of any supporting work

June Exhibition

Why do you want to make it?

I want to find out how a varying extent of content is changing the mediation of communication.

   How much communication is necessary?
   And necessary for whom? For the sender, or the recipient?
   What defines, what is exceeding the needful, what is unnecessary or what is missing to the needful?

See: As much as necessary - as less as possible

Who can help you and how?

Aside from the tutors who can help me with critical thinking and narrative skills developing, the PZI classmates can always offer excellent ideas for my work. I will reach out to Susanne Janssen, Florian Cramer and Kenneth Goldsmith and see if they would be open to be interviewed for my film. On top of that I will be able to borrow equipment from the photo-studio I am working at right now. Since the Academy is very poorly equipped, this is a substantial help on getting cameras and lenses.

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Here you can use the descriptions you made during the Methods seminar or make new descriptions. Your Text on Method will also be useful in completing this section.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. For example, if you are researching urban interventions, you might want to research about Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets. Or, if you want to explore the way data is tracked, you might touch upon the politics of data mining by referencing concerns laid out by the Electronic Frontier or highlight theoretical questions raised by Wendy Chun or others. (Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.)

References

COUPLAND, D. (1991) Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Press

EAMES, C. and R. (1953) A Communications Primer [online]. Available at: https://archive.org/details/communications_primer (Accessed: 23 May 2019)

FLUSSER, V. (2000) Towards a philosophy of photography. 1st ed. London: Reaktion Books

GOLDSMITH, K. (2016) Wasting Time on the Internet. 1st ed. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers

JANSSEN, S. (2019) Software organism BA Research Project [online]. Available at: http://www.susannejanssen.eu/software-organism-ba-research (Accessed: 07 October 2019)

ROSA, Hartmut. (2016) Beschleunigung und Entfremdung: Entwurf einer kritischen Theorie spätmoderner Zeitlichkeit. 5. Auflage. – Berlin : Suhrkamp

Sketches

Visual Inspiration:

Metahaven – The Sprawl

The project explores the mutation of propaganda in the age of social media, with a particular focus on how the diffuse, networked circulation of messages through these channels affects how we read, interpret, and understand events.

Quote from http://sprawl.space/about-the-sprawl/ Nowadays, films live in a thousand and one forms on the internet. As short trailers, fragments, cloud-based copies of copies, endangered data, self-hosted vaults, and so on. Viewing cinema on a laptop screen is only possible when remembering that such an experience has little to do with cinema itself. As a hybrid, episodic documentary, “The Sprawl”‘s story isn’t linear. The film lends itself to be seen as a succession of impressions—a trailer, forever unfinished; the duration of each of those video pieces, or “shards,” is attuned to an attention span that is less cinema, and more internet.

Back to Main Project Seminar:

http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/index.php?title=Graduate_Seminar_2019-2020