Why

Why do we want to do this project?
What is unique about the story treatment?
What is the message?
Proyect Implications

Why do we want to do this project?
People enjoy stories for their suspense, drama and emotions. But when we gain new knowledge and understanding from a story, it becomes a powerful source of influence that can shape our thoughts and even change culture.

By appreciating the significance of explanation, we bring the debate to the center stage. The story is only secondary - it provides a framework for construction of meaning. It also examplifies the aesthetic pleasure in gaining knowledge, understanding and socially passing it around through conversation and debate.

We learn from Mishna studies in Jewish tradition and debates and commentary in Tibetan Buddhism in order to bring traditions of scholar debate to currency in contemporary society, arts and culture.
The Talmud has been used frequently as an example of early hypertext. In addition to its inherent manner of linking commentaries to a story, the Talmudic method of argumentation has interesting relations to methods of modern game theory in particular and scientific inquiry in genral.

The presentation / story treatment
This multi-disciplinary (art-humanities-social sciences) project combines a scientific symposium and scholar debate with a novel form of new media production. It explores novel approaches to understanding human situation by looking into stories and using their narrative to critically traverse through massive cultural data sets and social theories.

Using state of the art design, novel display, spatialized audio, database technology and cyber-infrastructure, this new media production will anable a compelling aesthetic encounter with cultural, social and historical data and methods, fostering curiosity and intuitive understanding for general audiences of the basic human problems and tools for dealing with them.

This also gives new meaning to "database narrative", where the trajectory of browsing through information is lead by story events, interrogating new methods for collective meaning production.

See Performance for more details about the artistic method.

The story message
The story has multiple interpretations. A common interpretation is about "needless hatred", or showing how little conflicts can escalate and bring a whole society to destruction.

We believe that the central message here is slightly different and it is about the sense of belonging - to a social group, to a country, to the world. This requires mutual understanding, a sense of value, a
ppreciation, and common belief. Availability of information and ability to communicate it are essential in this process.

Society, much as a living organism, can be viewed as a collection of selfish individuals (genes? parasites?) who coexist in harmony, but also can turn against each other in the case of danger, much like spread of desease in a wounded animal or colony collapse.

In the Kamza story we will see different steps that lead towards destruction. The debate will try to understand how completely rational human actions (or may be God's will?) can cause such collapse, trying to identify the points where collaboration ends and why…

See Performance for more details about the debate points.

Kamza project has multiple implications:

  1. Interdisciplinary: Create a bridge between arts, scholar research and the public.
  2. Artistic: a new art form that uses commentary and alternative explanations for dramatisation.
  3. Academic: exposition of state of the art research in social sciences and humanities.
  4. Educational: tell the story and learn from it, practice defending your idea in public setting.
  5. Participatory: event that is open to public involvement and interaction.
  6. Technological: new tools for debate and commentary.
  7. Historical / Political: old story that parallels today's Jewish and universal national / religious / political tensions.
  8. Religious: questioning the roles of leadership, ideologies and God. What are their roles today?
  9. Dramatic: universal aspects of human struggle on personal, social and ideological levels.
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