DAISIES by Vera Chytilova
The movie is about two girls trying to understand the meaning of the world and their life. They decide to be bad seeing the world around them. The movie was labeled as "depicting the wanton".
I liked the way the spinning flywheel, the butterflies and the locks were used to transition between scenes, it was something new and that I haven’t seen in any recent movies.
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The Death of an Author
I found the reading really intense in terms of the message and thought being put forth through it. It talks about the meaning an author associates with their writings.
“The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book.”
I feel it focused against the author assigning a single meaning and interpretation to the text that they write. It criticizes the fact that it is not important that the reader has to elucidate the exact connotation that the author intended while scripting the writeup. It criticizes the emphasis put on re-tracing the exact meaning and intention associated with a reading.
I am not sure if I agree with this. I feel any book or text we read written by someone has a meaning attached to it. Yes, no one is stopping anyone from interpreting it from a different perspective but when you understand the text from the author’s point of view, you realize the true meaning and depth of the sentiments attached to that text. Though, when you read fictional or fantasy books which have a story to tell like ‘The Shiva Trilogy’ by Amish Tripathi, you don’t have much choice to deviate from the intended meaning of the text as it tells you a very specific story.
But, forgetting the author and the intention with which they wrote the text doesn’t seem to be very appealing to me.
“Once the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile.”
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How to tell a story with a video game
I found the writeup really interesting since I am keen on learning game design and making games. I found the points mentioned in the talk really helpful.
It triggered a series of thoughts of what I think of the games I play. I was surprised to know that the board game Monopoly had two versions and the first one was made as ‘The Landlord’s Game’ where one wins the game when everyone wins, totally in contrast to the monopoly I know. And definitely yes, I agree that passing through ‘GO’ in the game and getting to collect money was the only motivation to keep playing the game when you were losing.
“A rule implies a story.”
The article helped me analyze on a lot of the aspects of game design. Thinking about the interface that we choose for the game tells a story in itself. It was very interesting to note how some rules in a game can act as a motivation to keep playing the game even when one is losing the game. Level design helps us build a story better that the game is trying to convey.
“In games, we don’t visualize story as just one single line, but more as an interconnected structure, a network, a graph, a rhizome, or whatever you want to call it.”
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W. E. B. Du Bois’ staggering Data Visualizations are as powerful today as they were in 1900
Through data visualization, W.E.B Du Bois talks about the social condition of African-Americans. Not having extensively worked with data visualization, I realized how broad and important it is as a tool to determine the extent of a condition.
The facts and figures talking about the slavery of Negros were alarming. I was surprised to see that the percent of free Negros at its best was only 1.7% over 73 years. I feel that Bois’ work in accumulation & presentation of this data is commendable.
I also found it very interesting to see how Bois visualized data in terms of distinct nations to make his observations and his point evident to others.
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Society of the Spectacle
This reading was a very interesting and a new experience for me as the entire book is in the form of aphorisms, each thesis containing one paragraph.
Bit by bit, the author modifies and develops the concept of the spectacle. The ‘spectacle’ is the central notion in the Situationist theory which the author is trying to explain to its readers in the form of aphorisms.
It is very interesting how the author defines new terms like ‘understanding’, ‘separation’, ‘alienation’ and many more, and keeps on modifying and re-defining ‘the spectacle’.