Pursuit of happiness?

Is this what this documentary project is all about? The pursuit of happiness?

Strange but I've had this song going round and round in my head for the last few days ... Nuno Bettencourt's 'Pursuit of happiness' ...

I've just been revisiting Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk. He reminded me that Flow is all about the pursuit of happiness. Flow is the state we feel when we're doing something that creates happiness. Perhaps talking about 'happiness' is going to be more easily digestible in the doco, a better way to talk about it, more genuine, than 'flow theory' which sounds dry, complicated and academic?

We're creatures in pursuit of happiness really aren't we? The dominant aspirations we hold: health, wealth, success, security. What do they all have as their underlying feeling for us when we get them? What promise do they seemingly hold? Happiness.

Happiness is transient, something that is continually moving, if you hold on to it for too long it disappears. Once you achieve your health, wealth, success, security, whatever, you only remain happy for a moment or two before you new aspirations take hold that take you to experience a different level of happiness.

Happiness calls us forward.

The entertainment industry is a channel of easily accessible happiness. Easily digestible flow experiences ... take one pill twice a day, if symptoms persist see your psychologist.

Interactive digital video is a bigger pill to swallow ... not so prescriptive, the user has more control over their experience and flow becomes even more precarious. The rules of digital documentary, at this stage of our digital media evolution anyway, need to be more guiding for the user, designed to guide the user into the flow experience.

The young seekers who travelled to Balingup during the 1970s were in pursuit of happiness. Mainstream life wasn't doing it but the promise of building a utopia (happiness) drew them in.

The artefacts that still remain of these pursuits of happiness are the archives that I'm now accessing: photos, super 8, letters, music.

One seeker in particular, Deacon Chapin, was drawn from the other side of the world to capture this pursuit of happiness (a personal pursuit of happiness for him) in a film. The result of that pursuit is the 16mm film.

Leaving one more pursuit of happiness to mention. Mine.

Sweet. :o) ... I think I'm on to something here ... hmm???!

the autotelic self ... thinking aloud/allowed

Spent some time re-reading a couple of the 'Flow' chapters this morning. I'm thinking about why digital documentary doesn't flow and how it can flow.

According to Csikszentmihalyi (pp205 - 212) flow requires unity with the environment, attention has to be immersed in the environment. The solutions to creating this immersion are put forward as -

1. focus attention on the obstacle (to flow) and then move them out of the way

     OR

1. create alternative goals for the user

Experiencing traditional documentary on a computer is disruptive to flow. There is a keyboard and mouse between the viewer and the screen which is totally different to the cinema screen and/or tv. So the computer environment is an expansion of the cinema screen. You can't apply the same rules to both systems. The challenges and opportunities for action that call to the user are different. The keyboard and mouse add this thing called interactivity, a new dimension, that breaks the flow of traditional documentary which relies totally on immersion in the storyworld.

Somehow the storyworld of the documentary needs to expand to include the keyboard and mouse into the environment. At the moment the digital documentary ignores the peripheral devices, pretends they're not there because in the native cinema and tv formats they're not, there is no external distraction to the screen. But perhaps digital documentary needs to find a way to consciously include these in the environment. Somehow in the story ...

Csikszentmihalyi suggests that flow requires the user to be autotelic, 'a self that has self-contained goals' (p209). These are the types of people who experience flow easily in situations. The autotelic personality is able to set their own goals from any given environment, they are required to operate with unselfconscious assurance, they easily feel a part of an environment, they can become immersed in the activity and are interested and involved in the experience easily.  

So, am I not getting into digital documentary thing because I am not this kind of person? I do often rely on other people to set goals for me. I'm not so great at unselfconscious assurance,  in fact I'm terrible. Am I too self conscious in any environment lose myself and to become easily immersed in the interactive environment. 

Perhaps the non-autotelic person will only ever be able to get into story in the cinema/tv situation - darkened room where there is no environment to be self conscious in. Perhaps flow in the digital documentary can only happen for those who find it easy to become immersed in an environment.

The question is then, how can digital documentary make people like me (overly self conscious) feel comfortable and immersed in this environment? If I can answer that then flow: the optimal experience of digital documentary should follow ...