task four | Seeing the Unseen

some things to think about when writing your final reflection…

As part of your submission for task four you need to write a final reflection which is:

A substantial blog post which considers and reflects on what you’ve learnt throughout the semester. You should critically assesses your studio experience, your own performance and, the success of your final project in relation to the noticing process(es) you employed. This post should make connections between research, project and practice.

This reflection is substantial because you need to combine a reflection on your experience of the studio as a whole and your final task four project. So, really it should be at least double the length of the reflections you have written so far throughout the semester.

In today’s Wednesday workshop we will return to the questions we posed at the beginning of the semester about noticing to see how far we have come, and this might provide a starting point for you to start drafting your reflection on your experience throughout the semester. These questions were posed in response to the John Mason reading:

How do you develop the skill of purposefully noticing?
Is noticing a negative thing?
Different people notice different things, so what influences people to be selective of different things?
Can noticing be personal and circumstantial?

The first question should be something you can all answer now through your projects, where your final reflection will really be about articulating, and answering –

How do the ways of making media you have developed throughout the semester allow you to see the unseen?

A nice thing to come out of this studio and semester is a way of making media which allows you and those viewing your work to see the unseen. So, how well does your work allow this to happen?

Please remember that a reflection allows you to be critical of your work and if you know there are things not quite working it’s great to reflect on that – we rarely make perfect work. So, what does your work not do so well? Why? How could you improve it, or think about it differently?

In response to the studio’s aims you might want to ask yourself –

How well have I grasped noticing as an experimental approach to making nonfiction?
How well have I explored the creative possibilities of making media outside of traditional linear production methods?
How do the media artefacts I have made (particularly task four) come close to performing the complexity of the changing world around me?

And lastly in terms of reflecting on task four return to your “biggest thing” that you wanted to know or learn through doing this task. Has making this project allowed you to know what you wanted to know? How? What else did you learn through the process?

week 11: some questions to reflect on

In last week’s Thursday class I introduced some ideas from some theorists who think about the world as precarious, changing and indeterminate. What I would like you to think about as you draw closer to the end of task four is how your way of noticing might allow you to see some of the complexities of the world. This is the final aim of the studio so it’s important for you to reflect on this on your blogs.

Here are some questions which we’ll talk about in today’s class that might give you some direction:

How might your project evolve in concert with the dynamic environment around you? (Gibson, Changescapes)

What do you think “patchy landscapes,” “multiple temporalities” and “shifting assemblages of humans and nonhumans” might mean? (Tsing, Mushroom at the End of the World)

Does what you’re doing for task four allow you to look around rather than ahead? (Tsing, Mushroom at the End of the World)

Will your task four allow you notice neglected things? What do you think they might be? (Tsing, Mushroom at the End of the World)

If your task four, is about inhabiting a space or noticing in a particular environment, what are the particular qualities of that environment you come to be aware of through simply being there? (Stewart, Atmospheric Attunements)

What will you be tuning into through the making of your project? (Pickering, The Mangle of Practice)

If you tune into something unexpected does your project have the flexibility to adjust? (Pickering, The Mangle of Practice)

your portfolio of blog posts

There were lots of questions in Wednesday’s studio class on what the portfolio of blog posts should be and how much it should contain.

For one, your first post should document the exercise we did in last Thursday’s workshop, as you will need to come back to your biggest thing in your end of studio reflection.

Following this post, think of using your timeline as a guide to writing your blog posts. Every time you do one of your smaller things reflect on it by describing what you did, what you learnt through doing this and how this will lead you on to your next thing smaller thing. Treat last Thursday’s exercise as your guide which leads you to finishing your project.

Use your blog to document and reflect on the decisions you’ve made and any shifts in your project – what led you from one idea to another? You need to show that you’re thinking about your making and there shouldn’t be any complete changes in your project that aren’t justified.

Along the way find research which relates to what your doing, embed your media in your blog and include any screenshots of your progress.

Remember that your blogs are yours to think through what you’re doing and what you’re making – make them useful to you!

week 11 consultations

For the week 11 consultations you should bring in a “rough cut” of your task four assessment. As noted your projects might take various forms so bring what you consider to be a “rough cut” of what you’re making.

You will also need to show where you’re up to on your timeline and how your work is responding to the biggest, big, and small things you wrote out in week 9.

You will need to show where your portfolio of blog posts is up to and what research is informing your making.

Like our week 7 consultations these will be done in small groups.

Please book into a consultation time via this form.

what we did: week nine

Week nine was all about task four. If you haven’t read through the task please do so now.

Some things to note about task four –

Your portfolio of blog posts should document the development of your project and refer to other media, readings and materials which help you think about what you’re doing.
Your final project does not need to be one media piece it can be a collection of smaller media pieces, an interactive work or something else. The important thing is that you can justify why your work is in the particular form it is.
You will be marked on the creative and technical quality of your project in relation to content (what the work shows) and form (how you’ve assembled your media together).
The form of your project can evolve iteratively in response to the media you collect (just make sure you leave yourself enough time to think through this)
Make sure you give yourself enough time at the end (after you’ve completed your task) to write a comprehensive reflection on the task and your progression through the studio.

After going through task four we discussed some different creative possibilities for the form of your task. We looked and listened to a series of forms including: video art, sound collage, new media art, installation art and mobile media works. Our discussion revolved around considering what natural and unnatural might mean, how our works might create sensory experiences as opposed to meaning and how showing your work as a mobile media piece might create a more intimate experience with noticing media.

You can find the slides and examples of these different creative possibilities on these slides, as well as a timeline for the rest of the semester.

Thursday’s workshop was all about planning your task four through the following exercise (which everyone is required to do):

BIGGEST THING – What do I want to know through doing task four?
BIG THINGS – What do I need to do to know what I want to know?
SMALL THINGS – How can I break these things I need to do into doable tasks?
Locate the risks in these doable tasks by marking them in someway and then prioritise these in your head (what don’t I know how to do already – these tasks will probably take the most time)
In your list of “small things” number these in the order you need to do them
From your numbered list of “small things” create a timeline which clearly indicates what you need to do each week leading up to submission on the 20th of October
Write a list or brainstorm of all the things which matter to your project (think of this as hash-tagging your project)
Use a combination of some of these terms to do some initial research: what readings/artworks will youlook at over the following weeks to help you think about the making of your project?
As this is a large scale project you will need to incorporate research into your portfolio of blog posts, where you might want to set yourself a set amount of readings and/or media pieces to look at over the next four weeks. Add this to your timeline.
A guideline for talking about this research might be:
- What was the research about?
- What did you find interesting?
- How might you use ideas in this research to think about your project?

For an example of what to do see Mia’s post on planning.

Everyone made themselves accountable for next week by telling me what they will bring to next Thursday’s workshop to show and get feedback on. For those that didn’t attend please add what you will bring as a comment.

Next week reminders:

Wednesday’s class will be a practical workshop in using a piece of software that allows you to make interactive media work. Make sure you bring your laptop along with some pieces of media to work with.
I will talk about the Tsing reading next week to get you thinking about the last aim of the studio which is “to create media artefacts which come closer to performing the complexity of the changing world around us”

for next Thursday’s workshop…

Kris will bring her test shooting material

Zane will bring his list of objects (end of week 10 will have the photos from friends)

Vivian will bring four or five sounds of different objects

Rico will bring locations and items to film

Molly will bring rhythm and sound of water tests

Lizzie will bring location & first run of photos in colour and black & white

Sarah will have gone to the first location by yourself, so will have media from that location

Mia will have written two blog posts, a method for each place + shotlist + meditation + check-in with housemates

Jemma will have finalised areas and locations

Chloe will have the starting media item