0

what we did: week nine

Week nine was all about task four. If you haven’t read through the task please do so now.

Some things to note about task four –

  1. Your portfolio of blog posts should document the development of your project and refer to other media, readings and materials which help you think about what you’re doing.
  2. Your final project does not need to be one media piece it can be a collection of smaller media pieces, an interactive work or something else. The important thing is that you can justify why your work is in the particular form it is.
  3. You will be marked on the creative and technical quality of your project in relation to content (what the work shows) and form (how you’ve assembled your media together).
  4. The form of your project can evolve iteratively in response to the media you collect (just make sure you leave yourself enough time to think through this)
  5. Make sure you give yourself enough time at the end (after you’ve completed your task) to write a comprehensive reflection on the task and your progression through the studio.

After going through task four we discussed some different creative possibilities for the form of your task. We looked and listened to a series of forms including: video art, sound collage, new media art, installation art and mobile media works. Our discussion revolved around considering what natural and unnatural might mean, how our works might create sensory experiences as opposed to meaning and how showing your work as a mobile media piece might create a more intimate experience with noticing media.

You can find the slides and examples of these different creative possibilities on these slides, as well as a timeline for the rest of the semester.

Thursday’s workshop was all about planning your task four through the following exercise (which everyone is required to do):

  • BIGGEST THING – What do I want to know through doing task four? 
  • BIG THINGS – What do I need to do to know what I want to know?
  • SMALL THINGS – How can I break these things I need to do into doable tasks?
  • Locate the risks in these doable tasks by marking them in someway and then prioritise these in your head (what don’t I know how to do already – these tasks will probably take the most time)
  • In your list of “small things” number these in the order you need to do them
  • From your numbered list of “small things” create a timeline which clearly indicates what you need to do each week leading up to submission on the 20th of October
  • Write a list or brainstorm of all the things which matter to your project (think of this as hash-tagging your project)
  • Use a combination of some of these terms to do some initial research: what readings/artworks will youlook at over the following weeks to help you think about the making of your project? 
  • As this is a large scale project you will need to incorporate research into your portfolio of blog posts, where you might want to set yourself a set amount of readings and/or media pieces to look at over the next four weeks. Add this to your timeline.
  • A guideline for talking about this research might be:
    • What was the research about?
    • What did you find interesting?
    • How might you use ideas in this research to think about your project?

For an example of what to do see Mia’s post on planning.

Everyone made themselves accountable for next week by telling me what they will bring to next Thursday’s workshop to show and get feedback on. For those that didn’t attend please add what you will bring as a comment.

Next week reminders:

  • Wednesday’s class will be a practical workshop in using a piece of software that allows you to make interactive media work. Make sure you bring your laptop along with some pieces of media to work with.
  • I will talk about the Tsing reading next week to get you thinking about the last aim of the studio which is “to create media artefacts which come closer to performing the complexity of the changing world around us”
2

for next Thursday’s workshop…

Kris will bring her test shooting material

Zane will bring his list of objects (end of week 10 will have the photos from friends)

Vivian will bring four or five sounds of different objects

Rico will bring locations and items to film

Molly will bring rhythm and sound of water tests

Lizzie will bring location & first run of photos in colour and black & white

Sarah will have gone to the first location by yourself, so will have media from that location

Mia will have written two blog posts, a method for each place + shotlist + meditation + check-in with housemates

Jemma will have finalised areas and locations

Chloe will have the starting media item

0

week seven: what we did

Week seven was about thinking a little more deeply about what you’re making and allowing this to guide your refining post for your task three experiments.

Ways of thinking about what you’re making

In Wednesday’s class I gave you some prompts to respond to as a way of doing this. In pairs you discussed these questions in relation to your task three experiments. An interesting point which came through this discussion related to how much control we have over the media we produce in terms of guiding what attention is drawn to in the video or photograph. A close-up with a shallow focus guides an audience’s attention to one particular thing, whereas a wide shot allows an audience to scan a photo or video image to notice themselves. One group suggested that video allows a great degree of audience noticing because it is less selective than photography.

Essay films as experimental nonfiction

As you’ve been using noticing as a prompt to guide and inform processes of making iteratively, the essay form might be a way for you to think through noticing in the creation of the media itself.

Writing reflections

The main thing with your reflections is to show a trajectory of thought. So, your reflection is really about asking yourself “what did I learn through doing this making.” Have a look at the iterative cycle diagram in this reading or in my slides for this week. Your reflection should demonstrate that you’ve learnt through the process of doing this experiment and what is left to still learn.

Reminders

We drew numbers from a hat to decide on the running order for the pitches next week (for those who weren’t there I chose them randomly). You can find the running order here. Pitches will run from 1pm-2:20pm in our Wednesday workshop and from 8:30am-11am in our Thursday workshop. You each have 3 minutes each (no longer!). All pitches should be uploaded to this folder, where we will use the first half hour of our Wednesday class to check that everything works.

Paul Ritchard and Sophie Langley will be joining me on the panel for your pitches.

Slides that elaborate on each of these points further can be found here.

Thursday’s workshop was for student consultations. Some things that came out of these consultations…

  • Really try to articulate what you want to find out through doing your task four project. This is more important than knowing what your task four project will be
  • Think of your task four prompt as emerging out of what is left over out of your task three experiments – what do you want to build upon?
0

writing reflections – week seven optional reading

I know I said there wouldn’t be a reading this week, but…

If you’re having trouble writing reflections, have a read of this small excerpt on iterative cycles of making from a great book on creative art practice and research, even if you’re not having trouble have a look anyway.

Smith, Hazel, and Roger Dean, editors. Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
0

week seven & eight

Just a quick reminder about what’s happening in week seven and eight.

Week 7

Wednesday 6th September – Discussion on some ways to think about what you’re making + workshop on reflective writing to get us thinking a little deeper about what we’re doing for task 3. We’ll also work out the running order for the pitches.

Thursday 7th September – Individual group consultations, which you booked into here. This is to get some constructive feedback on your task 3 experiments and what you’re planning on pitching as your task 4 project.

Week 8

Wednesday 13th September – Pitches to panel.

Thursday 14th September – Pitches to panel, with some time to write-up your reflection to Part II of Task three.

Friday 15th September – Task three due at midnight.

 

 

0

what we did: week six

On Wednesday, I answered your questions from week five with this lecture.

Then, I went through some of the specifics of task three. Some things to note…

  • You need to do three iterative cycles of prompt > making > reflecting
  • These cycles need to be documented on your blog and become the portfolio of posts for task three
  • In these posts you should be making connections between your own making and the course’s content (readings, discussion, lectures)
  • A good structure for your week eight pitch is then, now, next:
    • then – what I did in my experiments
    • now – what I have learnt about noticing through these experiments
    • next – how I am going to develop these experiments into a large-scale project about noticing
  • Week seven’s Thursday class will be for individual group consultations. You’ll need to book into a time here.

On Thursday, I talked to you all individually about the development of your recipes. The main thing now is to do your experiments giving yourself enough time to reflect and move iteratively towards ideas for your final project.

We then discussed MacDonald’s Avant-doc reading. We discussed how there is very little difference between what is documentary and what is avant-garde and that this distinction mainly happens in the edit. For instance, H20 becomes a more contemplative exploration of the patterns water makes as opposed to a documentary that might make water its subject matter.

Finally, we did this study of movement exercised based off Ivens’s The Camera and I reading, where he obsessively captures the movements of things.

1 2 3 4
Skip to toolbar