It’s the end of the semester. The final studio of ecologies of noticing. I have, to my surprise considering how confused and flustered i was at the beginning, enjoyed this course. I have found not only the content to be incredibly interesting, but I was opened to a whole new window of ideas, creations and theories in which I haven’t been exposed to before.

My whole interpretation of life itself has broadened, and I am now finding myself noticing things in everyday life that I would have completely ignored and wouldn’t have taken any interesting in prior to the course.

Although I only just felt confident in the content and why we were looking into such confusing and heterogeneous theories and ideas more towards the end of the course, I am now still able to reflect back on previous learning activities and put them into the whole perspective of the course.

My overall participation has been good. I have been able to realise what I’m continuing to do well in the course, and then am aware of what areas need improving. While the readings, in particular the Bogost’s, were our predominate source of learning and our main point of focus, my participation was great. I was engaged with the content and looking for ways to expand my understanding of it in terms of the course as a whole, and I was able to question what I was doing well and could be improving on. I was writing questions and annotating the reading well, however I could have improved on making sure I remained focused for the rest of the semester, each week being equally engaged.

Reading 20 pages of the reading each week was one of my initial goals in which I believe I did well.

I was able to stick to my goal in completing at least 6 blog posts a week which I am proud of. They vary in terms of content, length and my overall passion for that particular content (sometimes I was vague and brief in the discussion, and other times I put in a lot of real thought and effort).

Unfortunately, I had a lot of work that clashed with class so I wasn’t always able to attend, but when I did attend I was switched on and ready to learn and participate.

Overall, the grade for participation I give myself is 75% in terms of engagement, class attendance, readings, blog posts.

It was my birthday yesterday and one of my gifts from my friends was a Vinyl of the trio ‘The XX’. Such a cool gift, and I love their electronic music.

While the vinyl was effortlessly turning around on the turn table, I was watching it in complete awe. How does it work? How does this weird little needle gently placed upon this big plastic disc produce that music? It blew my mind. I couldn’t get over it. So I did a bit of researching. Here’s a cool video I found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw4YmbAKocM

 

 

Get Out is probably one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I absolutely cannot stand the horror/thriller/scary genre, but this was an exception. It was so extremely clever. It was definitely more of a thriller than anything. It’s interesting too because it was directed by Jordan Peele, who is known for his work in comedy, his sketches with Michael Key “Key and Peele”. He is one talented and smart dude!

 

The whole film come together so well in the end with such a twist. The attention to detail is insane, with everything included done so for a reason; to portray or suggest a certain message.

 

There’s a segment where one of the characters is eating fruit loops, carefully placing only a few in her mouth at a time, followed by a sip of milk. This is meant to be a representation of her separating coloured from the white.

How clever is that?!

 

Definitely a must watch, and at the cinema to experience the film at it’s incredible full potential

Saw this on Facebook.

Yep.

Today we decided to meet up to complete our next video and audio pieces as a group. Our group does its best work when we’re all together; bouncing ideas off each other, recording footage efficiently and editing. The audio piece we were responding to is predominately about water. It has a description of water including its functions and purpose, accompanied with droplets and tap sounds in the background. From this, we decided to follow the theme and record footage of different sources of water. At RMIT there is a fountain which has lots of different compartments where water streams out of, so we headed straight there, set our phone cameras to slow motion and recorded. Lucas had an empty boost juice cup, so we decided to keep it and use it in the footage. I stood on it and water went everywhere including up the entire left side of my jeans. Lydia was in charge of the audio, in which we recorded different ways of us saying water, and anything else to do with water including ocean, waves and drip. Pat was able to merge his footage of coloured food dye in a fish bowl into the video piece, and the main techniques used were fading transitions and layering of different footage making the opacity on 50%.

The tap at the end of the video is meant to represent bringing things back to life and using an object even when it’s broken. It shows a broken tap with a non-existent handle, and by pouring water of the top of it, we were able to give it back it’s purpose, showing how objects can still be in use when broken.

 

I was lying in bed this morning checking my phone, as I do every morning. I came across a Mamamia article about Amy Schumer, with an embedded podcast. Being such an Amy Schumer fan, I clicked on it, curious as to what it was going to be about.

Now, those who know Amy Schumer know that she is very comfortable, almost too comfortable, with everything in her life. The way she openly and explicitly discusses her sex life and drinking habits in comedic ways is essentially what she is known for. I can understand why people don’t think she is funny. Her content is very cringe worthy and at times it’s hard to know whether to laugh, cry or just stare at the computer screen not knowing what to do.

Her new 1 hour stand up show “The Leather Special” is now on Netflix. I watched it a while ago and thought it was funny, but extremely predictable in terms of the content.

In the podcast, the girls review and criticise The Leather Special, and despite being an Amy fan, I definitely agree with them.

Especially when discussing the fact that her ‘Trainwreck’ movie character, whose name is actually Amy, often overrides her persona in her stand up shows rather than being the real Amy. It’s very predictable, and a bit repetitive. Having said this, of course she’s going to put on her persona. Her on stage persona is still a character. Whenever she’s performing, whether that be on screen or live, she’s always acting.

I personally think the only reason she’s funny is not the stories she tells, but how she actually tells those stories. Her confident yet hesitant way of describing the details is what makes her stories funny. The little shrugs and sarcastic comments during her stories is what makes her funny. I also admire her for being so open about topics that people often find uncomfortable and difficult to talk about. She generates conversation. She creates an environment where people can be happy about themselves. This is where she becomes a great role model.

Anyway, I love Amy Schumer and I think she is incredibly fierce, strong and of course funny.

Buses replaced trains this morning coming out of the city from Clifton Hill onwards, so I had to get off the train at Clifton Hill and catch a bus to Ivanhoe. As the bus stopped at one of the stations along the way, I was looking out the window listening to my music. I watched a few people hop off the bus and walk along the street. I thought to myself, how weird that I am never going to see those people again. That man with the blue scarf and black coat who just hopped off now walking down the side street is literally gone from my life, never to be seen or heard from again. I wonder what he does. I wonder where he’s off to. It’s so funny to think that I am one of those ordinary people. When I hop off the bus, people still sitting on the bus thinking the same thing will never know what I’m up to. They don’t know anything about me, yet I am so familiar with my life. Oh it’s so weird. So interesting. So fun to get deep into.

In class today we had a discussion of how this studio will benefit in the future. Brainstorming ideas consisted of:

• Documentary making (interviewing skills, note taking, research)
• Appreciating things more and becoming less selfish.
• Being aware of media that surrounds everyday life (advertisements, buildings, webpages, designs, promotions etc.)

Overall, being able to adapt within the tough and ever-changing industry is a vital skill to have and by doing this studio, we have greater potential to achieve this in our futures in the field

I don’t think our mark was an accurate representation and reflection of our ideas in terms of creating the bedroom into something other than itself, however I do understand Adrian’s feedback points.

I don’t think the structure we decided upon worked in our favour very well as it wasn’t clear enough. In the essay description it said that the structure shouldn’t be an ordinary essay structure, hence why we took a completely different approach, but it mustn’t have been clear enough. Maybe our essay needed a sentence of pre-introduction explaining the structure of it before reading.

There’s a café near RMIT that a friend and I go to all the time to catch up, and it wasn’t until today that I realised there is a surcharge for using card. I use card every time and not once have I heard of this sneaky little additional cost.

I was thinking, it was probably because I’m hardly ever concentrating after coffee because I’m thinking of what to do after or what work I have to do when I get home. Who knows, but I now know to take more notice of these types of things and to make sure I’m not nodding and agreeing unless I’ve fully heard, processed, understood and made a decision on that matter.