Lars Von Trier is famous for setting up the Dogme 95′ series of films which imposed a ‘vow of chastity‘ on participating directors. This vow was a series of obstructions, limiting recourse to filmic devices that have become second nature in most mainstream film making (the use of special effects, shooting on set, artificial lighting etc). Dogme 95′ was an attempt at getting back to the basics of storytelling through film, “to force the truth out of characters and settings”.

If we consider blogging as another form of story telling, no matter how informational or didactic our content may be, the biggest difficulty to overcome as a blogger is finding new and exciting stories and to tell them in ways that are out of the ordinary, in short we must battle with complacency.

All too often when you’re looking for a new story, there’s the prevailing feeling that anything new has been covered elsewhere, if it’s not on digg, it’s on youtube, it it’s not on youtube it’s on myspace etc. But perhaps we can apply some of the prinicples of ‘obstruction’ to blogging in order to shake up our foundations once in a while and create something exciting and different.

The following is a series of ideas and excercises I’ve had, that suggest ways of breaking the blogging mould and trying something a little different. If you do decide to take heed and tackle one of these ‘obstructions’ then please let me know how it goes and add a link to your post in the comments section of this thread.

• Obstruction 1: Collage

Collage, as a system of thought or conceptual approach to creation has long been practiced in art. From painting to cinema, theatre and dance, poetry and novels, at its core, it has challenged the notion of linearity, particularly in terms of the use of time (including history) but also in terms of logic and representation. In its most basic plastic form collage unlocks tacit links between unlikely elements and allows for a complete visual redefinition of what we take to be ‘logical’ or ‘normal’. Think back to when you were a child, I’m sure many of you were at some point given the task of cutting out images from a magazine and arranging them on a large piece of paper or in a scrapbook. You were perhaps given a theme to work on as a starting point, but slowly out of what may have seemed like an unintelligible pile of scraps came an image and with that image a different perception.

Activity: Choose a theme that interests you. Write it down as one word. Next with that one word in mind, think of 3 other words that come immediately into your thoughts. They can be anything at all, related or unrelated. The ‘theme’ is only important in acting as a trigger. Now spend the next 5 minutes searching the Web for each of the 3 words and record anything that catches your attention. Now from the information that you’ve gathered, begin writing a post that includes elements from the resources you’ve gathered. You could present this in a written way or a visual/graphic way or both.

• Obstruction 2: Time

How long does it take you on average to write a blog post? Are you the type of person who likes to get it done in 15 minutes or do you take longer, perhaps saving your posts as drafts and revisiting them at a later date? Time is a crucial factor in our creative output because it decides a number of key mental and physical states that influence our work. The time of day will be resonisible for different creative energies, mornings may allow for clarity and speed, night time may grant us access to a darker side of ourselves but we may be slower in our response to thoughts. Writing time will of course play a huge role in the content we create. A quick 10 minute post will, for many, result in poorly thought out writing, but a 2 hour post may see us loosing focus and energy. So how can we play with time in a way that will allow us to produce some original and unusual work?

Activity: First of all identify the time of day during which you are most productive. Now choose a time at the opposite end of the clock. So for example, if you are usually most productive around 10 am, the time you will need to choose is 10pm. If you are most productive around 9pm the time you will need to choose is 9am etc etc. Next determine whether you’re a slow or fast writer. Do you take 15 minutes to write a post or 1 hour? Again select the opposite to what you’re used to. Finally then, using these obstructions try writing a post in conditions that are usually alien to you and see what comes up. You might just be surprised!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 6:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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