The REAL First Artifact

Well well, a whole month since my last post. I thought i was staying on top of this.....

After a lot of thinking and discussions about my first artifact i decided to scrap the idea of showing surrealist films and asking the audience to come up with a narrative as, as many of you might know, there IS no narrative to the surrealist films i was planning on showing. So there would nothing to compare the answers to.

I decided not to scrap the film idea completely but time constraints made me change my last artifact. Instead i made ten stills from five different films and asked five volunteers to arrange the stills in the order that they think they were originally in. With this artifact I aimed to test an audience’s understanding of narrative when each is based in their own version of reality or what it is to be real. Each film being set in a different version of reality or portraying different aspects of what is real. The films were Alphaville, Mulholland Drive, Labyrinth, A Cock & Bull Story and Princess Mononoke. Each film’s representation of reality differs from actors talking directly to the audience ‘out of character’ (A Cock and Bull Story) to the audience having to comprehend alternative dimensions (Mulholland Drive) to magical, fairytale worlds (Labyrinth & Princess Mononoke).

It was imperative to the experiment that the audience member had not seen the films before, therefore a handful of occasions a 5th and 6th participant was asked to take part instead of the original five. The participant was brought into a room with a computer. On the screen were ten still images in a random order. The participant was then asked to arrange the stills into the order that they thought told the original narrative. Upon completion they were then asked to type a short evaluation of the narrative they had created.

The film viewing artifact is now in full swing and i have already shown my first film. David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. A film, released the same year as The Matrix (not the best time to release a sci-fi film about reality) which challenges the audience's understanding of reality and leaves them asking questions as to what was real throughout the film. My second film will be a documentary called Malcom and Barbara - Love's Farewell which is a documentary about a man with Alzheimers and the struggle of the both parties as Malcom condition worsens and Barbara tries to cope with looking after him day and night. (Although to be honest, i really don't want to watch this again and it's heartbreaking !!) The film after that will be Downfall. A film about Hitler's final days. My final film will be A Cock and Bull Story. A film based upon Laurence Sterne's novel 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen' which was referenced in my essay.

i'll be in touch......