The Korsakow workshop held this past weekend at Concordia University was, by all accounts, a huge success. The participants came away with a much better sense of the possibilities offered by Korsakow, and we (the development team – Florian, Dave and Matt) got some valuable feedback in terms of the current strengths and weaknesses of the application.

The workshop also served as a reminder about how confusing it can be simply to prepare video files for specific uses. The wonderful world of video codecs (literally COmpression and DECompression), with their mysterious names (eg H.264) can be intimidating even to the most savvy tech person. With this in mind, we’re making available a small set of preprepared video clips that can be used by anyone to allow them to just get on with exploring Korsakow, and not to have to worry about prepping them so they’ll work properly. These were originally put together by the very talented Steve Anderson for the recent Korsakow workshop at USC. All the files are at a manageable frame size and file size, and have been lovingly compressed using H.264. They were sourced from quirky old public domain films found at the invaluable Prelinger Archives. (Like all Public Domain materials, they are free to use for any purpose whatsoever without asking anyone’s permission, ever. Including us. So don’t ask. Just. Do. It.) Download the entire package here (143MB, zip).

Finally, one of the participants at the workshop, PhD student Mél Hogan, produced an intriguing k-film which riffs on the cultural mythology of an impending 2012 apocalypse. It also demonstrates the flexibility offered by Korsakow in terms of conceptual approach and interface design. And it deserves extra points for being entirely type-based.

Take a look now, or begin by reading Mél’s background notes.

The context

This is a project completed during a 2-day workshop at Concordia University (Jan 2010). Over the course of a few weeks, I have collected comments on YouTube about 2012 prophecies. Contemplating the end of the world, these comments debate and emote our global fate.

The motive

While the Korsakow System is a computer program for the creation of database films, this project happily thwarts the process by using text-based stills all the while cashing in on the system’s incredible capacity for balancing rules with randomness. This was important for this project which I organized according to meaning and intensity. Scenes relate to one another according to these two organising principles: intensity of emotion (based on a colour scheme) and meaning (based on categories like science, history, religion). Where you end up, when the ‘x’ options disappear, may reveal something about your subconscious hopes and fears. Korsakow was an ideal tool for this project because of the conceptual interactivity it provides, allowing me also to send this project back out to where it came from.

Adrian Miles is doing some really interesting stuff with Korsakow right now. In Fragments, he’s assembling a free-form ‘vog’ (video blog) of everyday video clips which has already expanded noticeably in its first week online. The loose associations between each SNU become apparent the longer you stay with it, and the use of allusive (one might say ‘coy’) text adds another layer of meaning. Adrian’s also blogging about it as he goes.

Tonight we released Korsakow version 5.0.3 for Intel Mac and PC users. This point release comes with some great new features, including a way to control the video export codec settings, plus heaps of fixes. Simply download the new version and delete your old one.

We’ve also got a comprehensive new Manual which explains every single feature, setting and option (better late than never), a better-organized Quick Start guide, and a growing list of Tips & Tricks to help you on your way.

Finally, we’re as frustrated as you are with the slowness of the current website, and we’re poised to rebuild the whole thing in the next few weeks days. Stay tuned!

Two classic (can I say “classic” yet?) Korsakow films, 13ter Shop (Florian Thalhofer, 2007) and The Way I Saw It (Paul Juricic, 2007), will be featured in the Until the End of Cinema program at the Share Festival (Piedmont, northwest Italy, November 3th-8th 2009). Congratulations to Florian and Paul!

Florian will be a featured speaker at ¡Documentary Now! A Conference on the Contemporary Contexts and Possibilities of the Documentary, Birkbeck College, London, England, Fri/Sat 15/16 January 2010. The event is billed as “an annual fixture on the UK documentary scene…bringing together scholars, filmmakers, students, and interested members of the public to discuss current trends in documentary film.” Organized by CRFAC.

Other events in the planning stages include a Korsakow workshop in Montréal, possibly in November, (UPDATE 11/2: this workshop is now full) and another Korsakow workshop in London early in 2010. More details to follow.

Dave, Florian and I took a short break in early September, but are now working on the next point release (5.0.3).

This includes some new features and improvements, including an option to adjust the video compression settings for Exported SNUs, better feedback for the user during the Export process, and the ability for viewers to skip the current SNU by hitting the X Forward arrow key. (Viewers can already pause the k-film by hitting the space bar.)

Thanks to Korsakow user Frederico, version 5.0.3 will not only ship in English and French but also in Portuguese!

We’d like to apologize to some users who have difficulty making Korsakow run on their Windows PCs. Dave is hard at work solving this issue, which will likely mean that PC users will go directly from 5.0.1 to 5.0.3.

Finally, I am working on a short (and very informal) k-film about making Korsakows. That should be ready in a few weeks.

As ever, keep in touch and let us know what you’re doing with Korsakow!

Matt, Florian, and Dave

Korsakow version 5.0.2 includes around twenty improvements and fixes. The new version has an inbuilt option to change the entire application to French. Please consider contributing other language options; just get in touch. In addition, users can now import and export Interfaces as separate files, which means designs can now be created and shared. (Remember that you can use as many different interfaces as you like within the same project. Just specify any interface design you’ve created or imported while SNUifying.)

Matt traveled to LA last week to participate in the Visible Evidence documentary conference. On Sunday he led a Korsakow workshop attended by around 25 conference participants. Holly Willis did a great job of blogging about it on Blur and Sharpen.

In other news, we have just posted a new video in the Tutorials section, in which Florian shows us how to SNUify. Check it out!

We are thrilled to announce that Korsakow 5.0 is now available for download on this, our brand new website. The development team began work on this project in October 2008, and I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to Dave, Stuart, Gabriel and Florian for their hard work and commitment throughout the process. It’s also worth adding that, without Florian’s brilliant insights about nonlinear storytelling, there would be no Korsakow at all.

We have made several important changes. Korsakow is now a single, integrated application. Features such as interface design and subtitling are now all handled inside the application. It even comes with a prebuilt K-Film called Circle of Life, which will be familiar to those of you who have used Korsakow in the past. Best of all, Korsakow now publishes a browser-ready Flash file (ie .swf), instead of a Shockwave file. It even allows users to import old K-Films built with version 3 and republish them in a much more accessible format.

We’re still working on this website, but it already includes a vernissage of new and republished K-Films, a Quick Start guide, and FAQs. We’re also committed to improving Korsakow, which is where you come in: We invite all of you to become an active part of the international Korsakow community by introducing yourselves in the Forum, telling us how you use Korsakow, and contributing your ideas for improvements and enhancements. Since Korsakow is now a free, open source application, it offers all kinds of possibilities for development, but we can’t do it properly without your ideas and energy!

We hope you enjoy using Korsakow. We look forward to hearing from you, and to finding out all the amazing ways you use Korsakow in your creative endeavours.

One of the things we want to do with the portal is publish information on Korsakow-related events: workshops, seminars, shows, etc, wherever they may be happening. With that in mind, I will be leading a very short Korsakow workshop at the Visible Evidence conference in Los Angeles this August. (Visible Evidence is an annual gathering of documentary makers, scholars, writers, critics, etc., which includes screenings and panels – and the occasional workshop! I highly recommend it.) Hope to see you there. The conference is being held at USC from Aug 13th-17th; the workshop is from 2-3.30pm on Sunday the 16th. Conference registration required for access to the workshop. If you’re organizing a Korsakow-related event or have heard about one, please let us know.

We are now hours away from launching Korsakow 5.0. There’s some final shuffling of files between servers going on, and harmonizing three formerly distinct domains (korsakow.ca, .com, and .org) into one portal. Tikiwiki (the CMS we chose for the portal) also has some slightly odd behaviours. Anyway, stay tuned: we’re closer than close. Can’t wait. For a quick peek at some Korsakow films we’ve already republished using version 5.0, check out the Vernissage.