The right thing is the wrong thing to do – Narrative strategies for the attention economy

The money, according to the technology writer Kevin Kelly (2017), in a networked economy does not follow the path of digital products, ‘rather it follows the path of attention’. Increasingly we can see the disruption of television production and distribution not just as the result of a corporate strategy (Christensen et al. 2015) but as an outcome in relation to a changing model of audience engagement. The first half of this paper will look at the long tail strategy adopted by media networks such as HBO and Netflix to produce programmes, such as Breaking Bad and House of Cards, which gave filmmakers the creative freedom to build audiences over several seasons. These programmes are products of what many are calling television’s third golden age (Spacey 2013, Landau 2016, McDonald 2016,) We may therefore wish not only to identify formal characteristics in their narration (McCormick, 2016) but also how the visual attention of their dedicated audiences differs (Smith & Nako, 2013) Along with the new narrative experiences expressed through these programmes are a new set of expectations that commissioning editors are beginning to place on filmmakers (Woolcock, 2016). Binge viewing, viewer-to-viewer engagement, the rise of influencers and the decline of the critic are a few of the new patterns of spectatorship to have emerged worldwide in recent years. In the second half of this paper I will look at what tactics some filmmakers employ in the face of these expectations and the styles of filmmaking that appropriate and transform technological demand within the attention economy

The Boyle Family and Radical Enactivism

The aim of radical enactivism, according to Hutto and Myin (2013), is to remove the foundation of representationalism entirely from the model of mind developed by traditional cognitive science. However their notion of ‘basic minds without content’ leaves many perplexed as to what relevance the theory has outside of being an anti-representational polemic. In 1972 the artist Mark Boyle declared that ‘nothing is more radical than the facts’ – his aim was to encourage students to develop an artistic practice and a relationship with the environment that was not filtered by personal prejudice or cultural conditioning. This paper focuses on the history and artistic strategies of Mark Boyle and the Boyle Family as a means to bring radical enactivism a broader contextual appeal. Identifying the links between the Boyle Family’s aims to remove, as far as possible, any subjective content from their artworks, with certain theories underpinning earlier minimalist and romanticist practices and with the aims of Hutto and Myin’s philosophy. But beyond any parallels between the Boyle family’s art and the scientific processes of recoding, the Boyle’s objective is to produce imagery that is neither scientific nor artistic but which invites audiences to experience reality for its own sake (Locher, 1978)

Live on the Surface of Dreams

In waking life, our approach to dreams is often limited by conceptual language or fixed cultural conditions. Artists can play a role in taking the public beyond such constraints. This paper examines the material environments artists have produced for transforming audiences’ attitudes toward their oneiric experience. Since the 1960s two contrasting strategies have emerged in the UK in artist’s work in relation to dreams. These two strategies transfer authorship, in the understanding of dreams, from an external source toward aesthetic judgments that are generated by audiences themselves. One approach has waking audiences encounter the performer asleep and the material analogue of their dream. This paper looks at ‘Studies Towards an Experiment into the Structure of Dreams’; a collaboration between Mark Boyle, Joan Hills and Gaziella Martinez, which materialized dream activity in a sound and light show. The show ran for seventy performances in the winter of 1967 at the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, London – a setting of temporary autonomy for the communities of young minds transformed by the liminal state of British culture during that period. In contrast Luke Jerram’s installation ‘Dream Director’, which last toured the UK in 2007, had audiences of strangers sleep overnight within a gallery space and experience their own dreams within the artwork. Both strategies are united in treating the dream as a live happening rather than attempting to represent its content after the event. Why make art in relation to dreams but without representing dream content? The artworks discussed in this paper reflect the material conditions from which the dream state emerges but avoid the conditions of meaning that absorb its psychic potential. These are radical gestures, the results of which sit uncomfortably between art and science, but provide an experimental setting whose analysis might help to reveal changes in cultural attitudes toward the dream and public space

On Finishing Machines

How do we know when something is finishing? In everyday life there are no clips, cuts or frames that demarcate the boundaries between one moment and the next. Yet we are able to order the continual flow of our experience and this ability guides our reading, memory and planning of actions. With cinema conceived of as creating a simulation of reality, editing may be taken as an 'analogue for real-world shifts in attention’ (Munsterberg, 1916). According to some studies in cognitive science understanding these shifts in attention is also key to understanding how people’s perception of events differ. Studies of event structure perception have involved videotape playback of daily activities where a participant will tap a key “whenever, in [their] judgment, one unit ends and another begins”(Newtson, 1973). Playing what, for those unfamiliar to the process could be considered, at least in part, the role of the editor. In these experiments it was found that identifying with a role or goal led participant to spontaneously adjust their level of segmentation. In this paper I will discuss the epistemological exchange between cognitive science and cinema, screen and user, artist and technology. Focusing on original editing strategies that extend our perception and conception of unfolding audiovisual continua, I will look at the work of Hollis Frampton and Peter Greenaway. Both filmmakers who have teleological opinions with regards to the cinematic apparatus, each attributing the introduction of a specific technology (the radar and the remote control respectively) as representing a catalyst for the demise of their art. Reflecting upon these inventions in relation to spontaneous adjustment of event segmentation, I will suggest how the art of editing can provide strong insight into the nature of creative and mechanical thinking, contrasting the techniques of cognitive science and film studies with the innovations of new media and the avant garde

The Future of Cinema’s Historicity

Cinema is full of empty intentions, embedded in the cinematic technology and just beyond the reach of the spectator. Most will experience cinema through a view that is orientated towards the past, but the editors’ orientations, in their specific activity of selecting and sequencing material for assembly, are directed towards the future. In this paper I will investigate cinemas process of becoming from the perspective of the editor. Recognizing the instrumental impact of the cinematic technology on the sequencing of audiovisual material, I will discuss the relation between old and new editing technologies and where the mental processes distributed between the editor and cinematic technology are being directed

The Frame of Attention

The process of editing, and the technology that enables it, are central to our understanding of how mind and media relate. Many film historians have observed a causal link between the practice of editing and the development of the filmmaker’s technique. The broad scope of editing strategies within fiction and non-fiction filmmaking can be interpreted from a wide range of standpoints but the ‘fundamental psychological justification for editing as a method of representing the physical world around us lies’ according to Ernest Lindgren ‘in the fact that it reproduces the mental process in which one image follows another as our attention is drawn to this point and to that in our surroundings. In so far as the film is photographic and reproduces movement, it can give us a life-like semblance of what we see; in so far as it employs editing, it can reproduce the manner in which we normally see it’ (Lindgren, 1963). That is, we often experience life as a series of events, or a continually unfolding stream of sensory information, details of which may be brought into focus by the intensity, duration and direction of our attention. Hence the comparison that is often made between edits and real world shifts in attention (Munsterberg 1916, Metz 1975, Baudry 1968) By re-organizing a stream of audiovisual events into an original sequence the editing process reveals to us aspects of cognition that are invisible but wholly dependant on sensible experience. This requires sensitivity on the part of the editor to the quality and flow of attention felt in response to the rushes and assembled sequences of audiovisual material with which they are working

Where is the mind of the media editor? An analysis of editors as intermediaries between technology and the cinematic experience

Where is the mind? A typical response to this fundamental question might be to locate the mind within the brain. However an increasing number of positions within Cognitive Philosophy argue that our mental processes extend beyond the boundaries of the brain. Gallagher & Zahavi(2008) have termed these two views on the location of the mind: internalism and externalism. In cinema, the role of editor as mediator between the cognitive activities of filmmakers, audiences and the editing equipment, makes their practice particularly suited for investigating these two seemingly incompatible views. When editors cut or join chunks of sound and image, they assemble externally what some would recognise internally as the mind’s fluctuations between one object of attention and the next. Their activities reveal a side of cinema, but also of the mind, which is usually hidden from view. The purpose of this enquiry will be to demonstrate how studying the process of editing contributes to our understanding of the relationship between mind and world. In order to address the question of where the editor’s mental processes are located, this study applies a phenomenographic methodology. Rather than attempt to understand cognition from a preconceived or objectively constituted position, phenomenography starts by examining variation in how a group of individuals view a particular process. This leads toward research findings that are presented from a ‘second-order perspective’ (Marton, 1981). In this thesis an understanding of how audiovisual material is selected and sequenced is revealed through fourteen interviews with British editors and directors. From the analysis of these interviews a framework emerged of five critical interrelated ways to approach the editing process. This evidence suggests that the cognitive process occurs in virtue of an editor’s physical activities, the editing equipment, plus a broader network of social and cultural relations that support the filmmaking environment. Refuting the belief that the mind is separate from the world, the editor’s mental processes are to be found distributed amongst a variety of internal and external features of their environment. The outcome of this thesis is a phenomenographic perspective on the editing process. This, I conclude, will help to inform cognitive scientists of the kinds of mental processes that editors are aware of. It also provides a wider audience of scholars with a framework for further research on variation in the process and practice of editing

Edge-selenated graphene nanoplatelets as durable metal-free catalysts for iodine reduction reaction in dye-sensitized solar cells

Metal-free carbon-based electrocatalysts for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are sufficiently active in Co(II)/Co(III) electrolytes but are not satisfactory in the most commonly used iodide/triiodide (I-/I-3(-)) electrolytes. Thus, developing active and stable metal-free electrocatalysts in both electrolytes is one of the most important issues in DSSC research. We report the synthesis of edge-selenated graphene nanoplatelets (SeGnPs) prepared by a simple mechanochemical reaction between graphite and selenium (Se) powders, and their application to the counter electrode (CE) for DSSCs in both I-/I-3(-) and Co(II)/Co(III) electrolytes. The edge-selective doping and the preservation of the pristine graphene basal plane in the SeGnPs were confirmed by various analytical techniques, including atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Tested as the DSSC CE in both Co(bpy)(3)(2+/3+) (bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) and I-/I-3(-) electrolytes, the SeGnP-CEs exhibited outstanding electrocatalytic performance with ultimately high stability. The SeGnP-CE-based DSSCs displayed a higher photovoltaic performance than did the Pt-CE-based DSSCs in both SM315 sensitizer with Co(bpy)(3)(2+/3+) and N719 sensitizer with I-/I-3(-) electrolytes. Furthermore, the I-3(-) reduction mechanism, which has not been fully understood in carbon-based CE materials to date, was clarified by an electrochemical kinetics study combined with density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function calculations.ope

From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology

A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of an end or a purpose. So saying that ‘X came about for the sake of Y’ is a teleological account of X. It is a striking feature of ancient Greek philosophy that many thinkers accepted that the world should be explained in this way. However, before Aristotle, teleological explanations of the cosmos were generally based on the idea that it had been created by a divine intelligence. If an intelligent power made the world, then it makes sense that it did so with a purpose in mind, so grasping this purpose will help us understand the world. This is the pattern of teleological explanation that we find in the Presocratics and in Plato. However, with Aristotle teleology underwent a change: instead of thinking that the ends were explanatory because a mind had sought to bring them about, Aristotle took the ends to operate in natural beings independently of the efforts of any creative intelligence. Indeed, he thought that his predecessors had failed to understand what was distinctive of nature, namely, that its ends work from the inside of natural beings themselves

Aristotle on the Matter for Birth, Life, and the Elements

This essay considers three case studies of Aristotle’s use of matter, drawn from three different scientific contexts: menstrual fluid as the matter of animal generation in the Generation of Animals, the living body as matter of an organism in Aristotle’s On the Soul (De Anima), and the matter of elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption. I argue that Aristotle conceives of matter differently in these treatises (1) because of the different sorts of changes under consideration, and (2) because sometimes he is considering the matter for one specific change, and sometimes the matter for all of a thing’s natural changes. My account allows me to explain some of the strange features that Aristotle ascribes to the matter for elemental transformation in Generation and Corruption II. These features were interpreted by later commentators as general features of all matter. I argue that they are a result of the specific way that Aristotle thinks about the transmutation of the elements