These logik-lives are always super-duper-great but I found this week’s to be particularly noteworthy in terms of all the closely connected nodes that ganged up to create a really resonant and well-painted picture of shared challenges and techniques for dealing and coping (coping interpreted as being-in-that-world). Whilst some aspects were not gender specific or gender-oriented, as with the life timetabling, I found the sharing ethos and open ethos to be particularly in evidence here.
This “micro-community” take on Logik really worked and it was not at all of the clique. I loved the point about Facebook, for example, and this is one of the reasons why I’ve never been into the larger Facebook world and so jumped on Logik, when it appeared. Putting a piece of string on the pen in order to create a centred circle really resonated as a clear “snarky affordance” of Facebook, and whilst one very very occasionally bumps into such “self-aggrandisement-at-the-cost-of-another’s-ego,” that is right on the edge of Logik’s comportment bellcurve, rather than right in the high middle, as a norm. This community-focused episode really provided a great model and Amanda did a great job in being the anchor node.
I loved the demo of the short film and the walkthrough and the film was a nicely focused version of a Black Mirror but much more poetic, than preachy, as I often find the latter. I loved the visual storytelling and, not that I am in any way arguing for the death of the author in terms of opening out what it meant, I loved that my interpretation was a little different to the intentional frame, even if there was a penumbral or feathering. I read it as a kind of techno-vampire story where the algorithm was mimicking a relationship (one often finds pseudo-personal hailing, “Hey You Tony” or “interpellation” being used to build a false or virtual relation) in order to suck up information and leave the target drained.
This piece was thus open, poetic and polysemic in order for the viewer to project their own reading without the piece being too loose and ungainly. This was a great example, in itself, of the artist having many nodes, themselves, at their disposal, and bringing them together in a great composite, in all senses. The episode, then, was a great mix of elements, and should be studied and debriefed as something of a model for some other eps based around sub-communities of interest that will open out to other users in making use or leaning upon those issues and concerns. Great stuff!
Cheers
Tony