Sunday 16 January 2011

Thresholds

Our first lecture was about threshold concepts and we watched a film called eXistenz. We were then asked to discuss the film using the three thresholds them being, Narrative, Interactivity and Convergence.
eXistenZ Poster
The film was about a games designer in the future that had created a virtual reality game and other gamers were trying to kill her. The console was like some rubber blob with weird controls as it just looked like they were caressing it  :/. With some type of umbilical cord that attaches to the player through their spinal cord.
I’m not too sure if i actually enjoyed this film, but the ideas and concepts were quite clever but sadly the film was confusing at times as the gamers weren’t always too sure if they were in the game or reality and if the game was actually the reality or if there knowledge of reality is the game which made the gamers able to create their own world and characters that made their world seem dull and boring. As i was watching eXistenz, a few films popped into mind like with all the weird creatures and gizmos and then also the matrix and inception with the whole dreaming thing and going into a fake world, and testing the boundaries of the human body and mind.
The interactivity concept in the film was number of events that have a connection and relationship between them that constantly keeps the viewer fixated and constantly thinking about what is actually happening and what possibly could happen. And what the characters think like i said before if they are in the game or not and if they kill someone does it actually kill that character or the real person. This made the charaters and the viewers wonder if they are real or just apart of the game.
Convergence of using both reality and the power of creativity of the mind, creating different worlds or parallel worlds that make them wonder what is going on and testing if you know where you are the game  or not the game.
I think some of the reasons why i didn’t quite like this film were due to the confusing it didn’t really seem all that planned out i guess that was due to some bad acting and the cheesy script, the sexual undertones did make it kind of funny and entertaining though.