Ways of seeing — Netnography Notes

These notes — might not be totally clear to the reader — but are for my immersive journal its basically my PhD diary…

For my immersive journal, which is the way I must document the landscape of the internet / metaverse / apps / social media / chat / video / images and the rest as part of a Netnography Methodology, which will make up an appendix in my thesis — I have decided to use video to document what I find using OBS ( https://obsproject.com/ ) — I will go into more detail about this particular programme as part of my thesis or any papers I publish — in short what this enables me to do, is record the screen I am viewing and create a voice over, so that I can describe what I am seeing — again, I will document the process of creating an immersive journal and how/ why in thesis / papers.

But what became apparent was that I needed a framework to use, when I was immersing myself in the media of the metaverse / internet — what would I say, how would I describe what I was seeing / feeling / my emotions, my choices — what was effecting me and why?

Its here I found John Berger and his landmark BBC Series and his book, which gives an academic framework to use.

And so in my thesis on how ‘I see’ and form opinion to describe what I see in my immersive journal — to give me a visual vocabulary which will in turn give me data to use — John Berger’s work is to be an influence.

Each episode of ways of seeing is listed below and found on Youtube — I can either reference from the Book, published in 1972 — or reference the Youtube videos (which might help the reader to click and watch) — I have just seen the films, and they have been a huge help — especially as I have dyslexia.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

In addition to (Berger, 1972) I have also found quotes which will help me ‘see’ how Avatars could be viewed..

As I research Avatars, I also start to think how we see them — are they us, or projections of us.. and when we look at them, we are removed, but we control them — are they a manifestation of our imaginations.. this then led me to William Blake.

In a revealing epistle, Blake discusses the fundamental role of imagination in artistic creation and, more so, in our perception of the world. For William Blake, imagination represented the pillar of the spirit, an essential part of being human and an inexhaustible source of beauty.

“The Portable William Blake”, p.136, Penguin The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal.

What is fascinating here — is the role of the human imagination, which lies with us — with in our 3rd eye, for what we can see and others can’t, for the solo experience — but for artists, these humans, project what they see, there inner mind, they project it outward.. in the case of the 18th century, William Blake used Poetry and the traditional arts to project his inner most imagination / its emotion and ideas into the culture — but now in 2021 the tools of human cultural arts imagination communication is such a huge array, that they are too plentiful to list — from poetry and oil painting, we have gone to graphic novels and video games, via charcoal and abstract art, to drum and bass music, coded on an mp3 — to streaming 22 shows on netflix to playing candy crush on your mobile phone — to a fair ground amusement at disneyland to a t-shirt with your favorite cartoon character on it.. and to Virtual Reality and the Metaverse, and to NFT’s which underpin the originality of this world and makes things 1 of 1.

I quickly also want to note Phillip Pullmans reference to the ‘Narrator’ in literature — In his book trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’ — of which I am currently listening to the audio book of ‘Northern Lights’ — Phillip Pullman in his Oxford Lecture (below) says that ‘Who is the narrator of the book — its not me, its a character, or is it — the narrator can see the past, present and future, already knows what is happening or will happen to the main characters and also scenes that they are not present in, and can jump around time and form — who are they, who is it — is it from the first person, 3rd person, or from this God like vantage point’ (ive totally paraphrased it here — and i need to directly quote from the below film)

Talks about demons 37min (Body, soul and demon) — Demon is Greek, meaning Guardian Angel, Guardian Spirit ? — Avatars?? Do we already have one?

46min — talks about imagination, ‘we create a world with our imagination’,

56.12min Everything is conscious — The way I think and Narrative, what sets off a story… how do you read… who is telling the story, where is the ‘camera’, some writers only tell stories in the first person, a lot of people tell stories in the present tense — Pullman says this is nonsensical, — how can they be the character and also tell the reader what is happening at the same time? he says he lies about reading books written like this by his friends..

In ‘Northern Lights’ the narrator describes the actions and the situations, and perhaps the odd recap and sometimes a bit of context to how that fits into the story — descriptions are short and breezy and flow in and out of the dialogue — the narrator is trying to stay out of the scene and not block the camera which is capturing the performance — the camera, is picking up the characters, the action, covering the scene and picking up the dialogue — the narrator, may or may not reference the action we have just seen (through our imaginations) when they pop back in — the narrator is almost like a character, it speaks directly to us, and points us towards the bits of information we need to ‘imagine’ the story….. So the narrator guides us in ‘ways of seeing’ the scenes, which make up the whole story.. the dialogue alone in literature is not enough — if it where laid out this way, than surely, this would be theatre, it would be a play — it would need to be performed and viewed with actors bringing the words alive in a 3d real reality space — instead of in our imaginations…….

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The metaverse is also a spatial space, set within a computer — and so my frames of reference and my ways of seeing, are informed from my own theatre practice — my ways of seeing theatre, are best informed by Peter Brook — his Empty space (published 1968) — and part of the same peer group of Berger?

The Empty Space is a 1968 book by the British director Peter Brook examining four modes or points of view on theatre: Deadly; Holy; Rough; and Immediate.

The book is based on a series of four lectures endowed by Granada Television and delivered at Manchester, Keele, Hull, and Sheffield Universities in England. The first lecture, on The Deadly Theatre, was delivered on 1 February 1965 at Manchester University.

The work was considered controversial when first published in 1968 and received mixed reviews. However, it is now widely taught in higher education theatre studies courses.

The Empty Space is defined by Brook as “[A]ny space in which theatre takes place.” “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged”.[2]

I have often discussed with my peers at my Immersive Arts Labs, how we must use Brook as a reference, for when looking at performance and story telling within virtual reality — the tendency is to lean towards video games and game design — quite a few of the developers that I work with are from this discipline — but what this means is that virtual reality experiences become, games first, experiences last — I think, by starting with a theatre methodology, for example (Brook, 1968) we can start with an emotional centre, and layer gamification and interaction over the top of this.

(Brook, 1968) also gives us a ‘ways of seeing’ in much of the same way that (Berger, 1972) does in the way that we are looking for how art, triggers emotions and the psychological connections of this — this leans towards a more anthropological study of virtual worlds and Avatars and not a traditional computer science approach — I no longer see 010101110101 binary, yes or no — what I am looking for is the emotional reasoning within the worlds.. to understand this, is to understand the role of art and music within this world.. so I feel, as I have outlined here — I think I need to LEARN how to SEE in the Metaverse, if I am to describe it and then convey this in my thesis and papers.. and so, this blog is my notes on that particular enquiry.

Happy to discuss in the comments.