For Creatives, Brand Builders, Academics, Enterprisers and anyone who is interested in how their life is shaped by stories and how those stories are shaped.
From
the bison sketched on the cave wall to the latest meme posted on the facebook wall, the interface of the spectator and
the spectacle, a physical and cognitive intermingling of consumer and
content, is an integral identity and
reality constituting process, that quite literally tells the story of
our universal and underlying ways of being.
Building
on the award-winning research paper, 'Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle', in a continuing endeavour to reconceive the spectator
and the spectacle as
the-actual-being-within-and-perceived-being-without, 'Ways 2 Interface'
is a progressively inclined transdisciplinary research project that
reconsiders the study of the content and the consumer in relation to a
wider spectrum of knowledge and considerations.
The fundamental focus of the project is the idea of an interfacing process - the introspective and expressive capacity inherent to us all - that we have always interwoven throughout our day-to-day existences and that we continue to do so at a formidably greater capacity in our contemporary digital realities.
By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, 'Ways 2 Interface' will aim to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process - the brand at the heart of all our stories.
By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, 'Ways 2 Interface' will aim to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process - the brand at the heart of all our stories.
We are the stories we tell ourselves, the key to
understanding the purpose of the interfacing process is in realising
both the deceits of the abstractions in which we constantly immerse
ourselves and the ways in which we constantly immerse ourselves in the
truths of those abstract deceits.
From the two million year odyssey of
our intellectual growth, to our current plugged in transmedia and
transhuman digital re-birth, 'Ways 2 Interface' covers a lot of ground
in its creative academic endeavour to ascertain how an interfacing habit has always driven our ways of being stories, how it can empower us to create better content, how it can enable us to embody better brand identities and what it can tell us about the
transcendence of where our networked narrative is going...
A Bit of Background
Hello, you wonderful stories, my name is Peter O'Brien (that's me in the photo above), I am a freelance creator, writer, filmmaker and researcher based in Bristol, UK. I hold a First Class BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies. Accordingly, I have the temperament of a creative and an academic that is centred around an expertise concerned with the grey subject located somewhere between stories and film
a.k.a.
I have an expertise about how we make sense of the world through the stories we
tell ourselves and what role the applications of mass entertainment and branding (film,
being a prime example) play in this mass narratology.
a.k.a
I have an expertise about our ways to interface.
The project that now finds itself branded as Ways 2 Interface, was originally initiated in October, 2012, with the research for my graduate theoretical dissertation: Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle. The research actually started even earlier, if you look at my pinterests (I could not resist).
After a hugely exhausting, but educational, seven month period of creating Ways of Being, I had a Masters length paper that went on to receive a great deal of praise and the highest mark ever awarded to a Film and Screen Studies dissertation at Bath Spa University. Furthermore, it has been bestowed with the Media Futures Centre Research Award for Excellence in Film and Screen Studies research.
"This is a well researched, conceptually sound and cogently argued dissertation which is striking in its originality of argumentation and in its nuanced reading of a wide range of film and critical material.
It draws on a plethora of examples from traditions of visual culture from prehistoric cave art to contemporary film, the IMAX experience and future practices of audio‐visual consumption in order to examine traditional and contemporary theories of spectatorship and the spectator’s relation with the spectacle.
The introduction clearly sets out the structure and methodology of the dissertation and provides a useful overview of the technological shifts which have resulted in a reconfiguration of the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.
This is clearly an ambitious project.
It makes a passionate case for the revival of grand theory in studies of Spectatorship in particular and Film Studies in general and sustains this case through argumentation of an exceedingly high order.
It acknowledges the need to expand the scope of such studies beyond film, in its reference to a wide range of media texts as much as to critical literature, all of which are directed towards an understanding of spectatorship from points of view as diverse as the sensory, experiential, philosophical, spiritual, metaphysical and neurological."
The Ways of Being project ignited such a fascination that I continued to conduct research even after I had submitted the final paper in June, 2013. There is still much to be said on this project's focus and it is my pleasure and my passion to say those things.
Not long after deciding to continue the research, I hit on the novel idea of building a website based around that extended research; this was done in the spirit of trying something new and crazy, but also because of the influence of my EYES of a Storyteller blog/portfolio.
A reflexive expression of contemporary networking attitudes and their implications on our ways of being, EYES is my graduate practical dissertation: an experimental web series concept proposal package comprised of a series bible, a pilot episode, a creative enterprise planning portfolio and the EYES of a Storyteller blog/portfolio that houses the entirety of the project's materials. This creative enterprise project was also awarded the highest mark of its module!
"These materials are comprehensive and strong, showing a close attention to detail throughout... verging on the overwhelming, from an assessor's point of view."
In addition to serving as a commentary on our technologically networked world, the EYES proposal I presented (some of which I managed to demonstrate in the pilot episode) was of a storyworld where telepathy between certain characters was a reality. Through the application of this overriding telepathic story device and the way in which each charaters' point of view would have been reflexively fragmented through the web series' particular stylistic presentation, I conceived of a much more immersive experience between spectator and spectacle.
EYES would have amounted to an audio-visual Rubik cube that would have required the spectator to be much more actively involved in the experience of the web series. Alongside the characters grappling with the mysteries within the storyworld, the spectator would have had to arrange the overall EYES storyworld spectacle into the correct sequence in order to discern its true coherence, which would have been open to further subjective interpretations...
EYES would have amounted to an audio-visual Rubik cube that would have required the spectator to be much more actively involved in the experience of the web series. Alongside the characters grappling with the mysteries within the storyworld, the spectator would have had to arrange the overall EYES storyworld spectacle into the correct sequence in order to discern its true coherence, which would have been open to further subjective interpretations...
As they were orchestrated alongside each other, the considerations of the EYES project very much interfaced with those of Ways of Being. This can very much be evidenced in how I used the telepathically fragmented storytelling device of EYES as a means to explore the cognitive process at the root of how we interface as spectators and spectacles and how we piece our worlds together.
Ultimately, in terms of aesthetic considerations and research focuses, EYES serves as a further progenitor for Ways 2 Interface. Phase 2 adopts an approach that is very much a fusion of the ones utilised by EYES and Ways of Being. More so than its predecessors, Ways 2 Interface will showcase the breadth and beneficial adavantages of my academic and creative inclinations.
Ultimately, in terms of aesthetic considerations and research focuses, EYES serves as a further progenitor for Ways 2 Interface. Phase 2 adopts an approach that is very much a fusion of the ones utilised by EYES and Ways of Being. More so than its predecessors, Ways 2 Interface will showcase the breadth and beneficial adavantages of my academic and creative inclinations.
A Bit of Between
Between now and June, 2013, I have been transitioning the research focus of the project into its next phase; while exploring the best logistical and aesthetically pleasing way in which to showcase my findings online. To this end, I have held off officially launching this website until I had the research and aesthetic focus of phase 2 fully pinned down. After many headaches, I now have the overall approach well and truly nailed.
“I can't help but feel your careful consideration and reflection has developed formidable power. I wish that all my students had a fraction of your application and drive to dig deeper.”
Ways 2 Interface is only one strand of a larger life project and research web I have been building for a while now; there are a few other strands still waiting to be revealed, which I have been leaving to bake while I have been preparing this website. One strand that is already public is my blog: Something to do with Film.
Up until now, my blog is something that I have not done much with mainly because it has lacked a clear focus; 'film' is a very broad term, all I knew is that my focus had something to do with film. Well, after a few years working away at it, I have come to realise what that something is - it is the grey subject located somewhere between stories and film
a.k.a how we are stories and brands
Life writing has always interested me, but it has never really been something with which I have fully engaged, because I was never able to put my life in focus, until now. Like a well realised story, it just takes a little time.
I am going to use Something to do with Film to tell my story and, through the course of doing so, use that story to define and refine my own brand. Everything falls under this brand and in the same way that Ways of Being and EYES built of off each other, the same will be true of Ways 2 Interface and Something to do with Film.
"That is so typical of you, that you work while you work."
When readying this site for its launch, I was finding it quite a challenge to write a single introduction post that conveyed an effective and concise overview of the breadth of the second phase's focus; therefore, each post of the introduction batch introduces a particular consideration of phase 2 and/or re-contextualises elements of phase 1 for their re-application in phase 2. The posting of these I will be spreading out over the next month or so.
The order in which these introduction posts are posted may shift around and they may multiply. It is no secret that I do have a habit of writing vast amounts of material; Ways of Being was 20,000 words longer than it should have been and it is my aim to make its successor's posts as succinct as possible.
This current post I never intended to be the introduction post, but the actual intended introduction post still needed some work and I REALLY wanted to get the website launched this week.
As an extra incentive I had banned myself from watching the final episode of series 3 of Sherlock until I had launched this site. Well, after five gruelling days, I want to watch Sherlock! Therefore, I have put together this quick preface post to enable me to officially launch the site.
I spent a week working on the intended introduction post and what have I learnt after very quickly knocking up this replacement? It is vastly superior! There is something to be said for the spontaneity of the intellect, this post has succinctly, logically and entertainingly presented all the ideas I needed it to introduce, almost like it was telling a story...
A friend described Ways of Being as something new and fantastic and it is my aim to make Ways 2 Interface just so!
“Pete, you have a fantastic dissertation which deserves the highest possible grade. Really, it is brilliantly written which displays your thorough research and passion for the topic and, most importantly, it is original and not something that people have written about tens of thousands of times. You've done something new and fantastic.”
- Matt Coot, friend and fellow student.
Some of those new and fantastic things to come:
- Spectatorship Redux: Why we need to re-understand the Spectator and the Spectacle
- Consuming while being content: 'consumer' + 'content' = IDEAL?
- Spectatorship Redux: What is an Interface?
- Unfinished Business: The Story of the Interface
- Interfacing Stories: Our Ways to Interface = Our Ways of Being
- An Ambitious Project: Reviewing the Spectator's Interfacing Relationship with the Spectacle
- The Digital Rebirth: From the Cave of Complacency to the Age of the Upgrade
- Film and Media Studies Redux: A Transdisciplinary Blogging Approach
- Ways 2 Research: The Research Approaches Employed
- The Interface: Reconsidering the Terminology and the Perspective of Understanding
- The Network-Narrative: The implications of the World Wide Interface
- Something #2dowithfilm: The Path, The Story and The Research Web of Ways 2 Interface
Find out more About 2 Interface and our Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle
For an overview of my wider research web and the philosophy driving it, see Smartlife: my philosophy + my research web = why I am doing, what I am doing and why it just might help you to fulfill your potential...
@ways2interface
#2interface
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