Tagged: media practice

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.

BETA SYMPOSIUM 0.1

The week’s ‘nothing like a lecture’ Symposium was a welcome gear change. Student devised questions posed as prompts for tutors, who then unpacked important ideas from readings and made them relevant. I took many notes. It was productive.

Once again, the question of Design Fiction and how it relates to us at university, popped up. Brian Morris made it clear that Design Fiction is more about the broader ways of making stuff. Design Fiction is an approach to making stuff with motivation and a sense of play:

Design Fiction doesn’t rely on being evidence-based, but makes you re-think what counts as evidence (material you can make use of to speculate about the future but also as much about contemporary worlds we inhabit).

Adrian chimed in saying that large corporations are paying people lots of money to think like designers, like a kind of Speculative Play Time. Currently, it is thought that designers have the right kind of forward-thinking toolkit for dealing with ‘wicked problems’ – the kinds of problems that only create more with every solution, if there is even a solution. Problems facing me, in this context include the rapidly changing nature of media industries, the disruptive nature of the internet and consequently, the continually fragmented engagement with media texts of consumers and audiences. Design Fiction with it’s playful approach to speculation as a practice, provides:

…a robust, simple way to start to think through complexity and those sorts of probelms. Tools to confront the nature of the world we’re going into.

And further on this point, I liked the term imagined futures that came up. It’s almost a better description for Design Fiction. It’s a way to think through possible futures I may be going into. Adrian practices this thinking often in classes – he possesses that ability to think through complex scenarios in an agile (quick and light) way. It’s creative hypothesising. It’s speculative practice.

It was also encouraged in the Symposium to think of ourselves not as content producers, but as knowledge creators. To be an experience designer; to make interactions between users as an experience different to other services. I know this is an important note, and I’m sure the gravity of it will settle on me soon enough.

On the blog, Adrian posed this question:

Simple. What do you think you want to do. (Direct, run a media company, design web sites, invent a reality TV franchise, write screenplays). Got something? Now, it is 2020. Write a design fiction. What do you do in your job in 2020? how do you get paid? what stuff do you make? for what/who? where?…That’s a design fiction question.

Our Wicked Problem

The thought that we as students do not have the agency to pick a DSLR and create content of a decent standard is a lie. Uncle George can do this for free. Why would I put myself in debt to end up on par with Uncle George? It’s our wicked problem. But it also means I should stop being all, “I’m not arty enough to walk around this cool campus with a DSLR around my neck,” and put on a  fucking beret…and that DSLR.

WHY WE’RE HERE

Without giving the impression that I know the answer to the BIG questions, I came across something today that put into greater context why we’re here in Networked Media.

The always-up-to-date birds over at Nieman Lab put me in touch with a great article, ‘The Art and Science of Hiring For Media Startups’ at Idea Lab. One of the highest values sought after when hiring people for media startups is the adaptive, inspired, varied skill and knowledge set to mix content types:

Curation thinking: This is another critical hiring and company culture parameter. No media startup can survive doing just original content, it has to be a mix, of original, of curated or aggregated, of licensed if that is an option. It means hiring people who have the ability to mix content types, and not be moral about it. You’ll be surprised at how many journalists look down upon curation. In a small team, curation thinking also means learning to do a lot more with a lot less…

We are the engineering students of the 20’s! Adaptivity, ideas, innovation, vision, creativity, care, curation – this is the attempt of Networked Media. I say attempt, because  I’m still not totally convinced of the unlecture format (Brian Morris: where are you?). It’s week three and the open forum lecture format is still being ‘worked out’. Also, Jasmine The Tutor felt she had to qualify her very valid opinions with “I’m not sure if that’s right”. Command authority girl! This disclaimer was a whole lot more contradictory to Adrian’s rant than Elliot’s commercial / structuralist breakdown of education exchange. Thank God I don’t have a student tutor.

We are not empty vessels to be filled.

The lecture today also addressed the theme of being, after a student challenged Adrian as to the point of attending lectures if they aren’t relevant.

Without directly answering the question but ‘speaking to it’, Adrain mused that university is not a place of commodity consumption or of a service provider/customer dynamic. Ultimately there is a transact-ory exchange at play, I do have to pay for my degree eventually and would hope I have been elevated by the experience in terms of knowledge acquirement and career prospects. How one chooses to approach their university education is an entirely subjective attitude, which I’m sure favours those who actively engage with content. I care and try really hard at university. Knowledge and awareness are perhaps my greatest values. I am a voracious autodidact. Know, universe and teachers, that I care.

Adrian is gunning for a new communication strategy that involves producing students who are independant thinkers – I can’t not appreciate that. I am therefore grateful to have stumbled across Adrian’s methods in Networked Media (even if the subject is a bit wonky) to wisen me to the importance of speculative media practice. I suspect it is possibly the only safeguard against a complex, diversified, ever-evolving industry (and which warrants a learning curriculum to match).

On ‘The Network’

The unique recipe combinations of ifttt.com from today’s tutorial are testament to the intertwined, evolving nature of content sharing on The Network – it’s boundaryless. Weaving information together, like in curation, is seamlessly managed by clean interfaces optimised for only essential viewing (RSS). In the same way I might find myself speculating a solution on the job, Adrian asked us to think of our ideal ‘What if…’ if I could do anything on my blog imaginable. Then he systematically demonstrated how each speculative request could for the most part, be achieved (such as, automatically post my Instagram pictures to my blog when I share them on Instragram). The exercise demonstrated Model II behaviour by changing the question being asked instead of the method used to solve the problem: why begin at the start? Why not begin with a speculative ‘What if?’ no matter how far away in the future-y future its likelihood may appear? To use an example from the lecture, these processes are rewiring our brains from planning exceedingly logical essays to learning through practice in the most non-linear of ways.