22-3-17 (LECTURE) To be a Media Practitioner

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To be a Media Practitioner

 

Remember: Your studio visit is with Stayci Taylor, in Week 5 on Thursday, 30th of March. It’s in building 9, floor 3, room 12.

 

Common Features of Studio Learning

  • Relatively student centred
  • Reflective practice
  • Problem framing and solutions
  • Emergent curriculum activity-centric, many big projects.

 

Figure out the particular learning mode that you operate best in. We should practice reflecting, and responding to feedback. A book that relates to this is “The reflective Practitioner”

We use blogs as a means of reflective practice. It means we can document our practice as leaners and show how we’ve grown. It allows us to record our achievements & progress. We can see and understand arrange of various voices in humour of different statuses.

Figure out the difference between writing a reflective piece, and a professional piece. Don’t rely on description. You need analysis and reflection

  1. Choose something to reflect on
  2. Brainstorm
  3. Plan a Structure
  4. Conduct extra research
  5. Write
  6. Edit
  7. Post the link on your blog

 

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…

You’ve got to be careful telling people to follow their passion. Very few students had a passion that led to a career choice.  Steve Jobs himself did not follow his passion, in the period leading up to apple, he did not have a passion for apple entrepreneur-ship, he stumbled into it. Though he eventually became passionate.

Portrait of Bill McKibben, author and activist. photo ©Nancie Battaglia

Bill Mckibben has a working life that he loved, and the reason he loves his career is through skill. He became particularly passionate after he published his first book. He quit his job at a magazine company, and he’d become the most talented of environmental writers.

Bill McKibben had a great work ethic, he wrote and wrote and wrote, and through brute practice he had become fantastic.

People systematically built up a particular skill and used it as leverage.

Snowball Effect: As you improve at a skill, you become more and more passionate about it

(Very much like myself with Piano)

 

Deep thinking, cognitive strain, that is really uncomfortable, is the state you improve at a particular skill. Time planning can prove to be really important for this.

Steve Jobs may have stumbled into Apple, but he became quickly obsessive in what he was doing, and quickly very passionate.

 

Blood in the Gutter (Brief notes)

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Blood in the Gutter

Brief notes

 

Reoccurring dream that the world disappears when you don’t see it. “our perception of reality is an act of faith, based on mere fragments.”

Babies don’t understand the concept of faith yet, so when their mother disappears behind their hand in a game of “Peekaboo”, the baby truly thinks their mother has disappeared.

We rely on “closure”, something to piece the gaps together to make things make sense, even when most of the closure is based on nothing seen. Closure is based on knowledge and experience.

Media communicates closure, pixels or blobs which our mind constructs as an image of a person or reality

Our brain constructs ideas based on our experience, such as a space between two cartoon panels in a comic, called commonly as “the gutter”

Here’s a few techniques that are comic book writers use:

  1. Moment to moment, played out as it happens,
  2. Action to action, beginning and end of action, quick, lots of story
  3. Subject to Subject, change of subject, advancement of story.
  4. Scene to scene, transporting ideas to an entirely different area or time.
  5. Aspect to aspect, evaluates the scene picture by picture showing a range of views within the scene.
  6. Non sequitur- no logical relationship between the two images/resources

The vast majority of comics use an overabundance of action to action, and some of subject to subject and scene to scene. But not much else.

Looking into the difference between western culture (American) and eastern culture (Asian) we notice that western comics are very goal orientated, but this isn’t the case in Eastern culture, as they often take the time to establish the scene with long drawn out moment to moment and aspect to aspect shots.

This can also be seen in other arts, like painting, the use of negative space, and music, the use of silence.

Discusses a kind of ying and yang, and about having not too much of a story, but not too little.

“Comics are a mono-sensory medium, it relies on only one of the senses”

The comic finishes exclaiming that much of life is based off assumptions, and how so much of life is dependent on faith.

Lecture 8-3-17 (What is Media?)

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Media 1 (Lecture notes)

 

 

 

You’ll have to choose a class to jump into and learn about, the list of classes that you can choose will come available sometime today on what I assume is either the blackboard or google drive. It’ll be up today. 8/03/2017

 

What is Media?

  1. Information presented through film, sound, or written language
  2. Triggers for experience
  3. Creativity, how the information is told and expressed
  4. Shaping/Manipulating, thought provoking
  5. Mass Communication

 

mass communications tradition:

  • -assumes a fairly linear one directional flow
  • -behavioural or effects model (influence of psychology/ marketing)
  • -technology/institutions more important to study than reception and content of message
  • -content analysis was main extent of ‘textual’ interest

“Our lives are, to more extensive degree than we care to think, infused with a process of inscription…”

 

Pre-modern society, the social world was experimented through just face to face interactions or direct experience, as with modern society, it’s mostly indirectly, photo movie etc. It creates an “Imagined communities”

http://mediastudies2point0.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/

 

Blurb (Who am I?)

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In summary, to go with my video, audio and visual uploads, a little about myself.

  • I’m an ambivert. And no, that’s not some made up word to classify my gender or something, it just means I’m extroverted and introverted. I’m really shy in big crowds but could easily deliver a speech to them.
  • I’m stubborn. I often find it difficult to let go of ideas and opinions, and I’ve got a real problem with people that demand authority.
  • I’m a kiwi, I play the piano, I enjoy acting and theater, and I’m a fan of technology and video games.

 

Look forward to working with each of you.

6 Pictures relating to myself.

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  1. Few Resources.

Since I came to Melbourne with just a suitcase and about $1000, the things I was able to buy were pretty rubbish. My bike is how I get to everywhere, including Uni from Preston carrying my dinosaur of a laptop in the back basket.

Few Resources

2. What I stand for

I’m pretty stubborn on the opinions I have. I think that freedom of speech is really important and should be exercised. and I’m not a big fan of most conformity.

What I stand for.

3. Up against the Big Dogs

Coming to University in Melbourne made me feel very much like a small fish in a big pond. Everyone seems to really know what they’re doing, particularly in the later years.

Up against the big dogs

4. Bit of a Rebel

This is just the kind of shit I get up to make the boys laugh.

Bit of a rebel

5. Huge Melbourne, Little Joshua

Just a bit more background of how massive Melbourne is compared to my home town.

Big Melbourne, Little Joshua

6. Expanding Roots

I just thought this was sort of an interesting photo biking through the city. I saw this small tree and cracks in the concrete surrounding it. It occurred to be that it was actually the trees roots, and they were continuing to grow  and spread to the point that they were actually breaking through the concrete. Bit of an interesting wee metaphor there huh.

Expanding Roots

3 Video Files

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Just what I get up to on average with my flatmates in Melbourne.

Melbourne is much bigger and busier than any place I’ve ever lived, and often the RMIT campus can seem huge and daunting.

Walking through RMIT, noticing all the already pre-made groups. It’s difficult to jam yourself into groups that are already formed.

3 Audio files, Music & Sound

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Written Music: This is a song I produced on Sibelius this week for a little video game I made. It communicates my love for music and it’s theory.

This is a snippet of a song I wrote as well, but it’s just a song recorded straight from the piano.

This is the sound of the crowds that gather at RMIT, it just really communicates how loud and big everything is at the moment.

Media 1 Workshop/Lecture

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What I’ve personally established over the course of Media 1 in the first Tutorial and Practical. 

I’ve now been through my first lecture in Media at RMIT. We discussed a course outline, what we wanted to take away from the course and the degree, and discussed a extract from N. Katherine Hayles, regarding the modern day society shift from Deep Attention studying and learning to Hyper Attention.

The Extract discussed different ways that people think, Deep attention being focused on one particular topic at a time, and hyper attention focusing on multiple stimuli simultaneously. Hyper Attention Study is recently.

The course outline is predominantly found here But the synopsis of each week is located below.

  • Week 1 (1 Mar) – ‘media’: a home for your practice
  • Week 2 (8 Mar) – what is ‘media’?
  • Week 3 (15 Mar) – the edit
  • Week 4 (22 Mar) – how do we learn to become media practitioners?
  • Week 5 (29 Mar) – interviewing and documentary form
  • Week 6 (5 Apr) – being a media operator – ethics and privacy
  • Week 7 (12 Apr) – why, where and how do we look? (textual attention)
  • Week 8 (26 Apr) – considering fandom – too much attention?
  • Week 9 (3 May) – doing research and collaboration
  • Week 10 (10 May) – paying attention to sound
  • Week 11 (17 May) – the attention industries
  • Week 12 (24 May) – the wrap: looking ahead to the media studios
  • Week 13 Non-teaching period (aka ‘SWOT vac’ week)
  • Week 14 (Thurs. 8 Jun.) – media program studio presentations + sem 2, 2017 pitch +ballot session

I’ve also been given a piece of paper which outlines the Learning Blog, which can also be found on the workshop. It’s a pretty good outline of everything that needs to be done, and I’m not going to just copy the whole thing onto this blog, so here’s the link: Learning Blog. But most importantly from the blog is the three posts per week listed below.

Over the course of the semester you need to be blogging every week. -We expect THREE posts per week that cover the following bases:

  1. At least one post relating to the lectorial and any reading/s set for that week (it must directly comment on core issues discussed in that class and reading)
  2. At least one post documenting and reflecting upon a key activity/exercise undertaken in the workshop for that week
  3.  At least one ‘initiative’ post connecting an idea encountered in this week’s classes with a media text/production exercise/event/experience of specific interest to you but that hasn’t been specifically mentioned in the course.

Our teacher or lecturer or whatever you call them in University insisted that we make small posts about very particular topics, rather than large posts covering a lot.

 

Lastly, following up on when we were asked what we’d like to take from this course and this degree overall, here are the notes I took on the day.

5 things I’d like to learn and take away from this course and by the the end of the degree

 

  1. I’d like to know how to edit videos efficiently and effectively.
  2. I’d like to produce videos regarding topics I’m interested in, telling interesting information and a story.
  3. I want to learn the influence the media has in everyday life, and the control the people actually have over the media
  4. I would like to practice skills of discussing ideas in an interesting way
  5. I want to be prepared for the careers and opportunities that Communication and Media can bestow onto me

 

 

Looking forward to making some more blog submissions. 🙂