Archive | August 2013

Symposium 0.1

Aug13

This blog is being written (in my notes, because my wireless is off), sitting in todays lecture/unlecture/symposium (whichever term you wan’t to use really..).

Some ideas I took away from this:

. Science fiction IS a good example of Design Fiction 
. Design fiction more interested with the broader – opposed to Science Fiction which can be viewed as having a great interest in the actual technology. 
. As a society, we have to think through the complexity and future problems the world may encounter. 
. Media industries are experiencing disruption due to the internet, so we have to have the ability to think through scenarios 
Adrian put forward the question – ‘what do you think your job will be in 2015 when you graduate uni?‘ and suggested that thinking about Design Fiction in relation to the answer to this question is a good idea. This is one of the main ideas that stuck in my mind from todays discussion. And it does scare me a bit to think that in 2 and a half years, when I graduate, the jobs I was interested in now, will have significant changes to the way they operate and function. Especially with the way the world is constantly evolving with new technology and new programs, and even more so, especially because I’m still not 100% with what I want my career to be when I do finish this course. 
I guess todays symposium made me think about the future in a way I wasn’t really considering before hand, and it made me realise that Design Fiction is useful for more than just designing new things, but it is a helpful tool to use when simply  thinking of and contemplating the future as a world where we will be living.
So yeah, overall, today’s discussions were insightful, and I think I liked the way the session was run, a lot more than the previous weeks. I think the variety of opinions and thoughts made it slightly more engaging for me, and helped broaden my own thoughts on the subject matters.

Operation Positivity – let’s get deep and meaningful for a minute..

Aug12

Bullying happens everywhere, everyday & so many young people these days are resorting to suicide because of it. So many people think that no one cares and that they are all alone. but the truth is, there are SO MANY people who do care, and who do want to help.

Back in mid 2012, I decided to put together a short video that would help spread some Positive vibes out to anyone who needed it. As I run a twitter account with over 6,000 followers, I thought it would be cool to ask them to send me images of themselves holding signs with positive messages, and then put them together with my favourite song in the world, ‘We Believe’ by American Pop/Rock band Good Charlotte. This video idea came about after so many young people were resorting to suicide because of bullying. The whole idea that the hurtful words someone says to another could force that victim to want to leave this world forever hurt my heart, and made me want to do something about it. Something small, but something meaningful. That’s what this video right here is. Everyone who sent me pictures wanted to help reach out and hopefully make some people smile, make some people feel like they are worth more than any bully can tell them otherwise, and that they are cared about more than they know. This project was really fun to do, and after posting it on my twitter and tumblr sites, the feedback was really great. Some people messaged me confessing that it made them cry, others thanked me for putting it together, and others just said it made them smile. To be honest, I just wanted to make something that would make people smile and help them see that they are not alone when thing’s get tough, and I was very pleased with how this whole project turned out.

More Thoughts on Design Fiction

Aug10

‘For a minute, stop and think about the amount of consultancy work that has been presented to clients but never made it off the production line.’

This sentence is so completely true. And when you really think about it, it’s crazy to think of ALL the numerous amounts of ideas people have come up with and created, to only be shut down by clients and bosses worldwide. The fact that people are always designing something for an environment that doesn’t yet exist, in order to impress their clients and the people they work for, makes you think hard about all the ideas that have ever been thought of and considered for this world in an attempt at trying to construct the future.

An example of design fiction ideas that have had a huge impact on the world are by the corporation Apple. Apple designed a whole new world of technology, going beyond the social norms of the time and pushing limits to create products that revolutionised the world. The designers and creators at Apple must engage in design fiction on a daily basis.

 

 

This entry was posted on August 10, 2013, in Readings.

ifttt.com

Aug9

so I just created my first ifttt.com recipe. My personal Instagram and my personal Tumblr are now in sync! Thanks for the tip Elliot.

Knowledgable

Aug6

In todays Unlecture, some pretty great ideas and thoughts were thrown out into the open, for us to either catch and run with, or for us to let slip by and forget about as soon as we walk out of the lecture theatre. I like to think that I caught some of the ideas, and carried them out with me. One topic that stuck with me from listening today, is that knowledge is constructed, and we construct it in the way we want to. We are all individuals, who all learn differently, and who all hold certain things in life to be important. We all know a lot about some things, and less about others. The notion that we all produce knowledge is intriguing, and this makes me even more excited to be able to have this blog and update it with information that I myself know and information that I can construct in a way that let’s other people learn and be slightly more knowledgable about certain topics, events or people.

The explanation from Elliot on Design Fiction also helped me understand more about the reading than I did at first when I read it. The concept of working on something with an idea of how the future is going to function, wanting to create something that is futuristic and yet somewhat helpful/useful in the world of today.

This unecture also gave me a few more ideas on what I can blog about in future posts. So on the topic of the unlecture being considered irrelevant by some, for me, I disagree, as I find it interesting and helpful to attend.

Design Fiction. Yep, I read about it!

Aug5

 

‘One useful definition calls design fiction “an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.”’

Bruce Sterling’s explanation of Design Fiction at first kind of confused me, but then when he brought up the whole ‘iPad in the 2001 film ‘A Space Odyssey” being a successful example of Design Fiction the idea seemed to make a bit more sense. So, after reading both Bruce Sterling and Matthew Ward’s pieces, I guess I feel like I now know a new term – Design Fiction. I’d never heard of it before, nor ever really thought about the concept of it. But I like it. I don’t really know how to explain much about what I learnt from this reading, but as I was browsing through some other students blogs (..trying to see how they were running theirs, trying to get some more ideas for my own,) I came across Arthur’s post about Design Fiction, and I really like how he explained the concept and made it slightly more simple to understand. After reading his thoughts on this, my mind is more at ease with the idea of Design Fiction and what it entails. So Thanks Arthur!

This entry was posted on August 5, 2013, in Readings.

I’d just like to say..

Aug4

The whole Essendon ‘drugs scandal’ thing going on in the AFL for the past few months is really getting old. I’m a proud Bombers supporter, and will continue to be no matter what, but the entire situation is starting to get annoying. Especially after watching Channel 7’s special that they named ‘The Inside Man: A Special Report’,  interview with Dean Robertson, ex employee of the club. This interview was just again blaming people and giving us one side of the story, and it kind of pissed me off a little.  I just really hope that ASADA (Australian Sports Anti-doping Authority) release all of their findings from this inquisition soon, so everyone can stop playing the blaming and naming game, and actually know the truth of what has happened and who has been in the wrong here. To be honest, it will definitely upset me if Essendon are striped of all their previous premiership points, and current seasonal points, over this. It will hurt the club, and the players, past and present. But I think it’s better for all of this to come to an end with the release of the results, whatever they are. I’m just really hopeing  that they are in Essendon’s favour!

A Public Diary..

Aug2

I finally just got around to reading through Blogs in Media Education by Adrian Miles. Better late than never hey!

This reading was interesting, I like how it explained why we choose to use blogs to display our thoughts and our work, especially on a public platform where we can share our ideas with other people who may be in the same learning space as we are. Adrian explains how our work on our blog can ‘make a contribution to a larger community,’ and I think this is a really cool thing. If what I post on my blog today can be read by someone else tomorrow and it can in some way contribute to how they think about something in life, that’s pretty rad.

Using our blogs ‘to document and explore changes in our lives’ is also a good statement I took away from this reading. The idea that my blog is like my diary of thoughts, out for the public to see, slightly scares me, but it also inspires me to want to write about things that I love and things that I have something worthy to say about – so when people do read through my blog, it will represent me and my interests, passions and dreams. I feel like this reading helped me gain more of an appreciation for this blog process and it gave me a better insight into what kind of blog I want to run.