What might happen after you finish your degree?

• post-graduate education
  • two related but different pathways
    • masters by coursework
      • very similar to undergrad, do subjects, 1. teaching how to research, 2. coursework
      • do not do masters of communication
      • supercharged undergrad
    • higher degree by research
      • pathway – 1 year honours following undergrad as evidence you area able to do phd, free to do phd

• non-artefact-centred practice
• services, service-orientated practice
• ‘hyperobject’ – something we area all in but it is out of our scale, eg. global warming. touches everything, can’t go outside it.
• hard to step outside narrative – homo faber blogpost
• re-emphasising verbs over nouns. the doing, the process, recording the process, rather than the artefact.
• need to realise how to learn after your leave a learning institution – your job to take on readings, skills, ideas.
• 3 years digital media time = 21 years old media time
• quantified self
• noticing concreteness and weirdness through repetition (of a sound of a word, etc.)

“Why you are not the ‘star student’ (and how to become one)“

I discovered I am a Ronald. Reading this in class today had me sink into a hole. I like to write my essays in solitary, without feedback, without reaching out for comments. I realised I do this because some part of my brain thinks that if the teacher hasn’t read my work before submission, and gets this slab of words fresh on their (hypothetical, digital) desk, then they’ll have no preconceived notions, no prejudices against what they’ve already read. And I have no idea whether this works (regardless, it’s probably not great for my practice – collaboration, feedback, adapting the work to new ideas, can all breed positive outcomes, as we have noticed). I’m by no means a ‘good’ public speaker (no thanks!). When I have work to due, every single loudly ticking second that I am not dedicating to the project eats away at my mind, rotting it with guilt (no better feeling than being halfway through a movie and being brought back to reality by your brain shouting “this is not the best use of your time dude!!!!!!!!”). I like networking, talking to other people about projects and things but I find it hard to do without exhausting a great deal of energy – it’s just not a thing I’m naturally good at. My hobbies are very much ‘solitary’, and ‘team based computer gaming’ with friends does seem to be how I conduct a fair portion of my time.

Mewburn doesn’t let this stop us though. She proposes several unpackings of superstar Anna’s behaviours, a makeshift step-by-step guide on how to improve your doing, your showing, your successes. University so far has improved my confidence tenfold, in speaking, conducting myself and in my abilities and with a continued chipping away at the wall that stands glaringly in front of me I’m sure I’ll turn this Ronald into an Anna. Or an An, for a start.

Adrian opened with a dissection of our (possible) futures at higher education study. I, someone who doesn’t have a solid idea of the path he wants to take in the future, found this a refreshing (and at the same time, anxious) conversation. As Adrian has repeated, the landscape is in constant flux (“3 years digital media time = 21 years old media time”) and getting more of a feel of what’s to come, what these changes could look like, while developing a greater skill set for the future etc. etc., definitely sounds like something I can do. I’m enjoying the uni lifestyle (writing and feeling good about it!) despite the 4 hour daily commutes and general anxiety of it all. It feels like something I can get used to. It’s comfortable. And of course within this comfort I would very much like to push myself, and this Honours business sounds like a promising start.

This is relevant.

My brain is static. Something about the lights in the classroom turns my vision into noise. Maybe it’s got something to do with the caffeine too, rendering my memory dust.

Adrian opened class with another talk; he says computers down but I feel like I need to take notes because my brain is turning to shreds. By the time he’s spitting out points I feel are important and want to take down, they dissolve from memory. I need more sleep. I need to see a chiropractor.

I tried to remember key sentences but they went away. I tried to think of impressive blog post titles but they went away. Thursdays are usually the day when I channel my blog writing but today ain’t that day. Brain fried. Memory……. fading. Things about romanticised individual ideas, the notion that all ideas are already taken and our job is to find the relations between them, marry them to form something that’s your own.

Something about risks. Take them. An answer to the mind-numbing question that your girlfriend’s parents are always asking: what are you gonna be when you grow up? Where does your course lead? What are your options? The answer really is “I don’t know” – keep your prejudices at bay. You don’t know where you’ll end up. You don’t know how this landscape is going to look in 5 years.

“The important things that you will do will be a mix of things that happen to you and things where you act without the certainty of knowing what might happen next.”

Note: sleep more, take more notes, learn a thing or two.

“What is it to make a film from the cat’s point of view?” — Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren did it 70 years ago. Watch.

It’s been a while my friend.

Participation for this studio has definitely gone up. From the painfully lacklustre last few weeks of minimal contribution (and maximum time wasting) I find myself back in the routine again. The pre-assignment submission rush is an exhilarating time (and of course, stressful – controlled stress this time, schedules have been figured out and sleep is a little more wholesome) but the flurry of collaboration is a refreshing change from the usual self-submission rush. Pats on the back do nicely, and a completed piece that everyone is happy with is even better. The scraps I do remember from my initial participation criteria are fairly basic scraps and probably need reworking (is it too late at this point? can I ramp up my participation to compensate?). Let’s see:

• Make notes on the readings

Zzz. Boring. You’re meant to do this regardless, ya idiot. How about: read the reading twice, and make notes only on the second time (unless it’s really really long and impractical to get around to, or, you’re really confident you know what’s important in the reading and the only way to make the highlighter in your hand stop trembling is to let it take its course on the page). Ah: much better, though probably a few weeks late. The new ’20 things you don’t know’ method has worked wonders for my participation in this. I don’t know anything!

• Socialise – make an effort to talk to others

This has worked in part. Considering groups were made and that’s where most of our/my time is concentrated, I’ll give this a tick. I feel more comfortable in class now than in the first few weeks. Thanks, group. Effort made.

• Start assignments earlier

Sigh. “I swear I’ll do better next time!” — time flies, huh?

• Familiarise myself with content, definitions, concepts

Ok, I like this. This can definitely be extended to: gain a better understand of the world: how we operate as humans, which systems are at work, what does what, who is who, how selfish really are we, and how can I make real the learning I do in this class? I’ll admit, this studio really threw a spanner in the works (cool blog title, huh). But in 9 weeks, I’ve learned not only what a spanner is, but learned how to properly bend down, pick it up, and to use it for purposes beyond being thrown. This studio changed my life, all cliches aside.

•  Refine documenting/filmmaking skills

Less refine, more understand how to properly use the formal elements of the screen or of the sound and use these in the creation of small scale media used to represent an idea, or place, or thing, and of course, it’s relations. And hey, stories! you suck! (alright, you don’t suck, but you’ve had your time to shine. Time to pass the baton).

Who gave Paul WS Anderson $40 million to create an avant-garde blockbuster? All I’m saying. 

How’s this for a low effort post?

• Actor-network theory – Latour – way of thinking about meshes, interconnectedness
• Internet is a network, has no command and control, no hierarchy
• Latour
  • ‘matters of concern’ – when somebody, through their practice, says this matters
  • Anthropocene – “relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.”
  • matter of concern – moral panics?
  • all these trails that have to come to for something to matter – safe schools only became a matter of concern when conservative politicians brought it to the fore
  • remindmebot – 15 years when this is dominant teaching in high schools
  • learning = trying to achieve a qualitative change in your understanding – not knowing more, it’s knowing differently 

matters of concern

• learned how to see things from other perspectives, from the perspective of things (non-anthropocentric)
• realised that story isn’t everything, that the formal elements of something may be much more interesting than the narrative these elements are telling
• learning to be open to new things/theories

crit feedback:

• ripple effect gives impression of looking through water
• colour across 4 panels – red, blue
• “searching” description of audio
• video – relation between images of human bodies, audio – relation between voice and non-human aspects

general feedback/notes:

• different analysis when viewing your work with others
• process – video influencing audio, audio influencing video? – order of creation
• limitations of our technology – inability to hear sound accurately/wholly through class speakers
• idea: extract small clip of Offenberg audio and make sounds with that
• confidence with ‘banal’ imagery noted
• contextualising practice – different opinion/interpretation from creator to viewer
• reassurance that what we are doing is interesting

• once upon a time, what you knew helped you get a job. Adrian believes that what you don’t know and how you negotiate that matters more.
  • rapid and continual change – your ability to identify and ask about what you don’t know that is fundamental to your success in that environment. The stuff you’re sure about will be wrong in the space of 3 years.
• iPhone invented an entire new area of media practice that we’re still trying to figure out. Vine (let it rest in piece), Instagram.
• what you don’t know is what matters.
• you need to be able to evidence your work. blogs! keep going! it’s a portfolio, evidence of your capacity/capability. document.
• extra-curricular-y stuff
• T-shaped people – breadth x depth.
• the more you know about something, the bigger it gets. Thanks, Bogost.
• there’s a joy in surrendering mastery.
• you need trails. the thicker the trail, the stronger your narrative will be.
• materiality, actors, relationality.
  • everything has a material form – including ideas, ideas don’t come to matter until they become things.

other scribbled notes on the margins of Ingold:

• media trail follows lived experience:
  • 1. photo
  • 2. Instagram
    • the photo is taken first, and the idea to upload comes later
• what are we but “provisional constellation of DNA + some other stuff”. perfect.
• hormones/flu influence us to do things, eg. be more sociable in order to spread the virus
• language: a dance between writer and words.
• what is it to move from ‘occupying’ it to becoming part of the habitat

all good blog post starting points methinks.

PS. song recommendation for the day.