[Nettime-bold] FLTR 5.0 <narrative version>

[Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>]

FLTR 5.0 <narrative version>
[12.4.01]


Content:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

{multimedia}
1. donniedarko.com, requiemforadream.com: hi-res
2. otnemem.com: webflow solutions + musth design

{comics}
3. when i am king (chapter 4): demian5

{festival}
4. seoul net festival
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1.

donniedarko.com, requiemforadream.com: hi-res
http://www.donniedarko.com
http://www.requiemforadream.com

Two promotional web sites for two terrifying films.  But they're not 
promotional web sites like you'd thing.  Basically, the studio just 
told UK experimental web design studio hi-res to do what they like. 
So although the Donnie Darko site has a pop-up at the beginning which 
leads to trailers of the film, the rest of that site, and all of the 
Requiem for a Dream site could just as well exist on their own apart 
from each film.  In fact, I spent a lot of time on the requiem for a 
dream site before I ever saw the film or even knew there was a film. 
And I've yet to see the Donnie Darko film.

Donnie Darko unfolds like a cryptic mystery site.  Your job is to put 
the pieces together by discovering clues that lead to succeeding 
levels of access.  But it's less a Raymond Chandler mystery and more 
a metaphysical Haruki Murakami mystery.  Hi-res knows web 
conventions, and they know how to manipulate them.  An entire 
separate URL is set up to represent a legitimate newspaper site. 
Links go from the Donnie Darko site to faux newspaper stories that 
are actually part of the Darko narrative, created by hi-res.  But 
because of the legit layout of the newspaper site, and because it's 
at a separate URL, we wonder.  Until we click on one of the links at 
the newspapaer site, and it melts into this possessed Flash 404 error 
message complete with evil bunny ascii art.  Kewl.

The Donnie Darko clues are none too difficult to discover, just a 
vehicle to draw you in and get you participating.  So you're more 
than likely to make it to the last level if you care to.  The 
narrative is not exactly linear (what page with multiple links is?) 
But it does build on itself.  I love this indirect way of spelling 
out a plot by inference.  The signposts of the actual site are in 
flux.  Hi-res sabotages our conventional expectations of the web, 
giving us just enough normal look and behavior to make us think we're 
at a "regular" site, and then they jank us.  Those little touchstones 
of orthodoxy right before the meltdown make these two sites a lot 
more disorienting than many a "freak-out-from-the-get-go" art sites. 
If you're going to have a punch line, don't neglect the set-up.

requiemforadream.com is an oldie but a goodie, already mused on by me 
in greater detail here:
http://www.fathom5.org/discussion/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=webrevs&Numb 
er=6381&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&part=

requiemforadream.com is a lot less linear than donniedarko.com, and 
it uses more motion and audio.  For my money, it's a lot more 
immersive.  You're making choices, but you're not aware that they are 
choices -- like life.  There are actually about four or five 
different paths through the site, but you'd never know it your first 
time through.  Having seen the film, which is a horrifying moralistic 
tale -- The Rake's Progress on smack, literally -- I almost prefer 
the web site.  There's no point comparing, but the web site is almost 
more horrifying because it's less didactic, it gives less away.  You 
know someone winds up ameliated and brain dead, but you're not sure 
why.  You know someone winds up in a fetal position tucked away in 
some corner of some dark basement, but you don't know why.  When 
asked to fill in the blanks and given enough creative momentum to 
fuel that filling-in process, people will come up with horrors that a 
Hollywood screenwriter never dreamed.


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{advert}

don't believe the hype(rtext):

If all u got is text, what do u got?

http://www.spark-online.com/november00/discourse/cloninger.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


2.

otnemem.com: webflow solutions + musth design
http://www.otnemem.com

Yet another movie promo site (this one for Momento), similar to the 
two hi-res-designed sites above.  otnemem.com is more text based, but 
its text is in Flash files and jpg's and gif's.  No old-school html 
ascii text.  Because the narrative is not a computer narrative.  The 
"core navigation screen" is just a newspaper clipping of a murder. 
Different words in in the clipping are actual links.  These links 
lead to psychological evaluation records, police records, and 
eventually notes that the protagonist has written to himself.  We 
come to discover the chief plot vehicle simply by linking around and 
"researching" -- the protagonist discovered his wife murdered, and 
now he's turned into mr. short-term memory (kind of like the Tom 
Hanks character on Saturday Night Live, but with scary tattoos).

I still haven't seen this film because I know it will haunt me, and I 
already have enough actual things haunting me; no mas.  I really 
don't have to see the film to be haunted, since this form of 
participatory web narrative is compelling and eerie in and of itself. 
It's true that we are led along.  We're not writing the whole thing 
ourselves.  And to me that's a plus.  The genius of this type of 
narrative is not merely that it's "interactive."  (Isn't everything 
interactive, more or less?)  Its genius is that it leads us to a 
place of its own devising, and leaves us there disoriented and 
fearful, with gaps in the narrative for us to supply.  Freak somebody 
out and then leave them to fill in the blanks, and they are going to 
generate some freaky, fear-blob stuff.

If you've already seen the movie, the collateral web site experience 
will be largely a color-by-numbers gig.  Sadly, such is unavoidable.

So far in this FLTR we have discussed 3 commercial sites promoting 
Hollywood films as if these 3 sites were something cool and 
noteworthy.  If that bothers you, why?  McLuhan observed that the 
"content" of all new media is actually old media itself.  He also 
blithely observed that the advertisements are by far the best part of 
any newspaper or magazine.  Wake up and smell the cross-media 
marketing, and prepare to be soft-[c/s]ell invaded by The Madison 
Avenue Frogmen-Of-The-Mind.  Sure, why not.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
{advert}

The Griffin & Sabine Trilogy:

Is that a stamp in our pocket, or am i just happy to see us?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811806960/lab404webcreatio/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


3.

when i am king (chapter 4): demian5
http://www.demian5.com/043.html

Scott McLoud is the Socrates of comics, and whenever he's asked which 
comic best works online, he usually points folks to "When I Am King." 
My favorite chapter of the 5 so far is this chapter 4, which includes 
several dream sequences and a hallucination.  The hallucination is 
the best.  Up to this point, the entire comic is colorful but 2D. 
Yet when the king eats some of the llama's magic plant, he goes all 
3D and animated gif.  Again, the "art" of much narrative lies in the 
set-up (or "exposition," if you must).  We've been set up for 3 
chapters to "read" in this flat, motionless, wordless, frame-by-frame 
language.  Suddenly adding 3D and motion to the narrative makes the 
strip seem to leap out of the page.  It seems to be doing something 
that it can't -- the perfect narrative form for a hallucination 
passage.  Joyce, Faulkner, demian5.

Comics have already developed their own intricate representational 
vocabulary by now, and here demian5 takes comics to the web in a way 
somewhere between an orthodox print "strip" and a full on Flash 
cartoon (which is technically not a comic, but an animation).  So 
what if "When I Am King" is mostly about erectile disfunction.  Heck, 
these days, what isn't?


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
{advert}

the definitive comic book novel; there's nothing comic about it:

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375404538/lab404webcreatio/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


4.

seoul net festival
http://www.senef.com/english/index.htm

Yes, another Korean net festival.  This one also feature YHC Heavy 
Industries, but I think that's about the only similarity between the 
two.  The Seoul Net Festival is really a digital film festival, but 
they stretch the definition of film pretty far, so that "film" comes 
off seeming more like an operative paradigm and less like an actual 
media genre.  There's an offline aspect and an online aspect.  Since 
most of us won't be in Seoul to make the offline aspect (which 
consists of mostly screenings and lectures), we're left with the 
online aspect.

Online and out of competition, there's some funny leggo star wars 
animations, some films that excerpt and loop snippets from British TV 
ads, and YHC Heavy Industries.  Online and in competition, the 
categories seem to have been created after the fact, based on the 
entry pool.  There's a "Flash" category, but then some pieces in 
other categories are also Flash.  It's kind of hard to figure.

Most of the quicktime links wouldn't work for me.  I'm on a mac. 
Maybe you'll fair better.  One of my pieces was selected to be in the 
online competition (which is how I heard about the festival in the 
first place), and I'm listed as "director."  It has made me rethink 
my animated gif fetishism and web motion in general.  Am I merely a 
director?  What is it to be a director?


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FLTR is filtered by Curt Cloninger <curt@lab404.com>.

To keep things from getting all spammy-like, I'll [try to] only ever 
mention my personal work in the {advert} sections.  That way you will 
be forewarned of the evils of self-pimping and possible "commerce."

FLTR is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, 
organization, or institution; does not wish to engage in any 
controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes.  Our primary 
purpose is to stay creatively sober and help others to achieve 
creative sobriety.

Back issues of FLTR are archived at <http://www.lab404.com/fltr/>.

FLTR -- less sporadic; more emphatic.  because you can't get what you 
want (in two thousand aught one) till you know what you want (in two 
thousand aught one).






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