CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT: Hong Sang-Soo, the Woody Allen of Korea

Photo via Mubi.com

Thanks to Open Culture and Martin Scorsese we discovered filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, the Woody Allen of Korea. He hardly needs further presentation after that title, but still we share with you his words: “for me, there’s something especially interesting about the films of Hong Sangsoo. It’s got to do with his masterful sense of storytelling. In each of his films that I’ve managed to see, everything kind of starts unassumingly” — but then things “unpeel like an orange.” Open culture compiled fragments of Sangsoo movies that ca be seen in YouTube and one full film: The Day a Pig Fell into a Well. Have a look at all this goodness in Open Culture. E.T.P. A bit over 2 hours.

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Estimated Time of Procrastination (E.T.P.): 5' (without hyperlinking).

Our Weekly Procrastination this past week was absolutely meaningful as, thanks to our fellow procrastinator Marie, we went to the 8th Power to the Pixel: The Cross Media Forum. Power to the Pixel, as defined by themselves, is a company helping international filmmakers and the film industry make the transition to a cross-media digital age, and for what I witnessed in the forum, they are good at it!

The two days of the event that were open to the public, the Conference on the 7th and the Pixel Market on the 8th, were held at the BFI in the Southbank starting as early as 9am and until 5pm when the drinking/networking session started. The first day, the lovely view of a crispy sunny London was the preamble of a really inspiring day where lecturers like John S. Johnson, co-founder of Buzzfeed and the Harmony Institute for Advance Media Research, shared his vision of "a dystopian view on media measurement."

Photo. John S. Johnson, Descartes and Mary Shelley @ Power To The Pixel.

Johnson, encouraged us as media professionals to overcome the Enlightenment vs Romantic duality and to mix the strengths of the data-freaks with the emotion and the intuition of the artists, as real empathy can only be built when quantitative data meets great storytelling. "Embrace data and optimization" he said- "the train is leaving the station and you need to be on it, for all our sakes."

Photo. Lance Weiler @ Power To The Pixel.

Lance Weiler, co-founder of Connected Sparks and Reboot Stories, had me at "Story Driven Innovation", a notion/vision/practice very powerful and a very necessary in a world where as he said "those formerly know as 'the audience' are storytellers too." That was probably the reason why he started his intervention with a listening exercise (the 5x why?), something that we really are not very used to do anymore. Lance also mentioned some of the projects he is developing alongside the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University like Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things. Again, the need of working at the intersection of arts, humanities and technology to create meaningful stories or objects or experiences in the 21st century became evident.

Photo: Alexa Clay @ Power to the Pixel 2014.

Alexa Clay, co-author of The Misfit Economy, blew my mind, not only because of her vision of misfits as innovators, a bridging species between the old and the new economy, that fight against institutional inertia, but for her capacity of having apparently endless cool side projects. Going beyond of the moral issues that divide the world into good and evil, in The Misfit Economy she documented the practices that were used by hackers, copycats or pirates to innovate. If we can see drug-smugglers as rapid prototypers, con-artists as outstanding storytellers and pitchers, and anonymous as a modern hierarchy with a decentralized leadership, we will be able to learn from the fringe and to find innovation in the fringe, and that my friends, that is really innovative.

Five practices comprise the main misfits' skill-set: copy, hack, hustle, provoke and pivot. These five calls to action made me remember Kenneth Goldsmith championing re-contextualization, copy-pasting, ready-made-ing, plagiarism and the even more delightful self-plagiarism in his book Uncreative Writing, a particular invitation to reflect on the act of writing in and for the digital era.

You can have a look at the trailer for the upcoming The Misfit Economy film here, and another look at Alexa's side projects: Wisdom Hackers, the League of Intrapreneurs, and her analogue nomad alter-ego Amish Futurist.

There were more great speakers like The Project Factory's Jennifer Wilson (best 'feedbacker' ever), Immersive Journalist Nonny de la Peña, and Rovio's Mikko Polla. Also very interesting cross-media projects like Fort McMoney, Netwars and the Seven Digital Sins, but I'll tell you all about those in the next edition. Stay tunned! (:

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Les InRocks.

Eleven years after The Ignorance (2003), Milan Kundera is back with the novel La Fête d'insingnifiance. Always ironic, but maybe with less grief, is how El País describes it. Le Monde says that is as light as a quail's feather, or maybe an angel one. Originally written in French, the novel will be available in Spanish in September. Read full article (in French) in Les InRocks (E.T.P. 4') and in Spanish in El País (E.T.P. 7'). Couldn't find an article in English, but I found a great interview conducted soon after Kundera’s most recent book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, had become an immediate best-seller, by Christian Salmon in The Paris Review. E.T.P. 15'

Photo via Co.Create.

Mad Men premieres tonight and its creator, Matthew Weiner speaks with Co Create about advertising, the loneliness of social media, the eternal nature of storytelling and the theme of crafting your own narrative. The end is nigh. Read full article in Co.Create. E.T.P. 7'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Photo via Fast Company.

Harvey Deutschendorf writes for Fast Company a nice article about one of the latest buzzword in business: Storytelling. "Not only is it commonly accepted that good storytelling beats other forms of communication hands down, there is scientific evidence that backs this up. When we receive information from a presentation on powerpoint the language parts of our brain that decodes words into meaning becomes activated. However, when we listen to a story a lot more happens. Not only does the language processing part become activated, but other parts are used to process the experience of the story for ourselves. For example, descriptions for foods would activate our sensory cortex. Hearing a story puts much more of our brain to work than simply listening to a presentation. Not only can we stimulate various areas of the brain, but if the listener relates to a story, their brain’s can become synchronized with the storyteller’s. Emotions that the storyteller is experiencing can be shared with the listener". Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 6'

Photo via PSFK.

So, finally here they are, Google Glasses will be used in a trial by Virgin staff to offer personalized service to passengers. "Virgin Atlantic concierge staff in the Upper Class lounge at London Heathrow wear Google Glass to provide a hyper personalized experience to all customers. Google Glass will enable the staff to immediately be able to identify a customer by name as well as see their flight details and preferences in food and drink. This experiment was created in response to findings in a Virgin Airlines survey that stated over half of travelers worldwide think flying is less glamorous or exciting than it was in the past." Read full article in PSFK. E.T.P. 2'

Photo via Wired.

"The Toy Fair is exactly what it sounds like. It’s been going on for 111 years, and it’s huge. This year, more than 1,150 toy companies squeezed into New York City’s Javits Convention Center to show off the new things kids will be clamoring for later this year. Toy traditionalists and forward-thinkers have much to get excited about: While apps, robots, and meme-based toys are all trending, plenty of old-school playthings are in the mix, too. " Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 3'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Steven Soderbergh in Venezia via Open Culture.

For a reason that I don't understand Open Culture published a list of every movie, book and play that Steven Soderbergh watched, read or attended during the year 2009. There is a lot of material, and it's amazing procrastination time, so if you want to have a look and ponder if you could have a nice time having a pint with Steve, click here. And just out of curiosity, do you also keep a viewing log? E.T.P. 6'

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Storytellers have more fun, writes Refe Tuma, in Medium: "if we look at the interesting people in our lives, I think we’ll find few of them have climbed Mount Everest or broken a wild mustang. Most have never wrestled an alligator or gotten embroiled in a covert operation. Most haven’t seen a whole lot of real excitement. So, what makes them so compelling? Interesting people often lead surprisingly ordinary lives, but they are not ordinary. What sets them apart is their ability to tell a good story." Read full story in Medium. E.T.P. 5'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Illustration: Tom Bachtell via The New Yorker.

"On Sunday morning, I rose early. I had decided the night before to go to the ocean, so I slipped a book and a bottle of water into a sack and caught a ride to Rockaway Beach. It felt like a significant date, but I failed to conjure anything specific. The beach was empty, and, with the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy looming, the quiet sea seemed to embody the contradictory truth of nature. I stood there for a while, tracing the path of a low-flying plane, when I received a text message from my daughter, Jesse. Lou Reed was dead." This is how Patti Smith piece about Lou Reed in The New Yorker starts, read it here. E.T.P. 3'30'

Photo: Allstar HBO via The Guardian

Stuart Jeffries writes a provocative piece in The Guardian: Think digital distractions have killed our attention spans? Think again. He argues that the rise of complex TV series and vast novel shows demonstrate that we still prefer commitment to a quick fix. "In a culture of speed-dating, quick fixes, fast food, bullet trains, pop-up everything, and unreadably long jeremiads about the increasing incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the single-minded commitment required to read a long, absorbing book serves as a rebuke to a culture that favours those who can simultaneously email/tweet/instant message/hold up their end of a phone call/Skype while live blogging the whole shebang." Read full article (and prove Jeffries right) in The Guardian. E.T.P.: 7'

Photo via The Economist.

Do different languages confer different personalities? "It’s an exciting notion, the idea that one’s very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways (exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is broadened. Yet it is different to claim—as many people do—to have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here?" If you speak more than one language and, as me, you always feel that you are not the same when speaking in your 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) language, then this article is for you. Read it in the Economist. E.T.P.: 6'