Tagged: media education

AMBIGUITY

The ceiling is on the floor. There’s 180-degree approaches coming at me from all sides. My military ways are being tested, and it’s a bit hard. All this radical revolution is a bit taxing, really.

In Film-TV2 my documentary group is hypothesising that a narrative will form through the organic experience of ‘focused exploration’ in our collective seeking out of footage. I was good at producing that short-film-with-blue-print-thing, then WHOAH: there’s a film. Like baking a scone.

I’m also organising a sizable RMIT party to celebrate and showcase student work – the first rave of its kind – and there’s murky role guidelines there. I’m The Promo Team? But I did PR two years ago*. (*Model I behaviour noted, face slap planted. See below).

Journalism, normally defined by its strict hard news Inverted Pyramid, all of a sudden requires me to win a Walkley Award for my investigative feature. Which underbelly hasn’t Channel 9 butchered yet?

And when I think I can settle into a lecture, Adrian Miles denies me just that, in fact I must contribute to it’s precise ‘unlectureness’.  To be fair, I’m absolutely enjoying the process of Networked.

That’s my whinge, which would be pointless without some insights.

I figure that this transition is the kind of essential discomfort that accompanies getting a tooth pulled: it’s for the best, I’ll get through it. Oh, and get over it. I have to admit that the lack of clarity I’m experiencing in the thick of ruminative approaches to work is my equivalent of disorganised. It’s muddy, undefined, formless and unsure. My job isn’t bullet-point clear at this moment, which makes my KPI’s difficult to measure. I’m 100% interested and keen to engage but feel as though I’m shuffling on the spot because inspiration hasn’t struck my feet yet. The ugly closed-mindedness of Model I behaviour has reared its head as I move away from its influence toward Model II; I am currently Double-loop learning. I am publicly testing my assumptions and beliefs.

And now in a glass-half-full kind of way, I submit myself to the shady (read sun dappled) ambiguity of a feeling-out process. Actually, I think a head first dive is in order.

RMIT CREATIVE INDUSTRIES PANEL

That Building 100, Photo: By author

Last week I attended the RMIT Creative Industries Panel. I got an e-mail, and RSVP’d. I don’t study design, nor have I ever considered myself a designer (until taking this course). So I popped over to that Building 100 to see what I may glean.

A number of interesting people broadly associated with the design industry gave short talks on their practice, and pathways after graduation – many were ex-RMIT. I was probably the youngest person in the room, definitely not many Undergrads there. The lady running the show made some interesting comments in her introduction that somewhat echo what our teachers have been banging on about:

Design will drive Australia into the 22nd century…design is a driver – we have a different view.

This is certainly a reference to the ‘designer toolkit’ that employers are so keen to harness. Yes, design is definitely forward-thinking; I can see that this shift in approach to practice, problems and work will be essential for media industry practitioners. It is so easy at university to submit the assignment and get your HD, which is a worryingly entrenched approach to study (of media and otherwise). I’ve definitely been one of those students who loves to marinate in research, and then basque in the satisfaction of placing one cogent sentence after another. This subject is a 180 for me, and I like the challenge.

Interestingly almost all of the speakers, who ranged from Creative Recruitment Agency chick, Design/Advertising ‘Facilitator’ to Designer of King Kong (the giant beast in that spectacular musical), agreed that being honest about your skills but being keen to learn is valued highly. Googling a ‘how to’ for five minutes is totally acceptable, nobody has to know. This also goes back to one of our early lessons. Anyone can learn what (write a screenplay, Final Cut effect, do x on my computer), our job is to know how to be something, a media practitioner; and that is to be ignited by ideas. Preferably in a ludic fashion; playful, experimental, throwing ideas forward. T-shaped.

One guy, Greg More from the RMIT Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, appeared to premise his whole practice on a Design Fiction method.  His work in data visualisation uses cameras to capture time and motion, and organise data in virtual environments or ‘digital space’. The result are these wacky, interactive, virtual representations of what would be very dry data. For example, an evolving visualisation of ten years’ worth of Melbourne’s water data as a real-time installation. The point is, when Greg spoke of his practice, he said he couldn’t possibly know what form these visualisations may take until the process begins – data visualisations are a kind of design future that he’s making up as he goes. I loved it when he showed us how he designs video game environments as a way to think about architecture. He also provided my take away idea for the evening, from John Maeda:

Making something simpler isn’t as important as making something clearer.

SPECULATION!

The idea of ‘speculation’ in Networked Media has been mentioned many times. It’s a very different way of thinking about education and the weaving workflows of media articles on our blogs. It’s utterly counter-intuitiuve to any prior learning most students, and certainly I, have done. A la Adrian Miles:

Education is not consumerism.

Be a knowledge producer, not content consumer.

Here the focus is on looking forward, instead of reflecting away at what has been and past. Last week in the lecture, Adrain made it clear that we are the engineering students of the 1920’s, that is, we are situated for pioneering radical change because of the subject of our education and the times we are in. We are young, forward thinking, technologically savvy and in debt = let us soothe your inadequacy, old man, and propel your business into the new age of media communications.

This idea of speculation only sunk in for me this week, when a quote by legendry filmmaker Dziga Vertov came to mind. He wrote:

WE affirm the future of cinema art by rejecting its present.

To me, this is such a radical statement. I think this is the space of speculation in media education, and what Adrian Miles had in mind. When Vertov made this declaration, he made a comment not only on the revolutionary potential of the medium of cinema, but of the emancipatory potential of realism in art. Relevantly, the act of engaging in speculative media practices can be liberating, insightful and forward thinking while still remaining grounded in reality. Initially I had trouble understanding the emphasis on speculation, imagining I’d have to free write dystopic science-fiction…