AMBIGUITY

The ceiling is on the floor. There’s 180-degree approaches coming at me from all sides. My military ways are being tested, and it’s a bit hard. All this radical revolution is a bit taxing, really.

In Film-TV2 my documentary group is hypothesising that a narrative will form through the organic experience of ‘focused exploration’ in our collective seeking out of footage. I was good at producing that short-film-with-blue-print-thing, then WHOAH: there’s a film. Like baking a scone.

I’m also organising a sizable RMIT party to celebrate and showcase student work – the first rave of its kind – and there’s murky role guidelines there. I’m The Promo Team? But I did PR two years ago*. (*Model I behaviour noted, face slap planted. See below).

Journalism, normally defined by its strict hard news Inverted Pyramid, all of a sudden requires me to win a Walkley Award for my investigative feature. Which underbelly hasn’t Channel 9 butchered yet?

And when I think I can settle into a lecture, Adrian Miles denies me just that, in fact I must contribute to it’s precise ‘unlectureness’.  To be fair, I’m absolutely enjoying the process of Networked.

That’s my whinge, which would be pointless without some insights.

I figure that this transition is the kind of essential discomfort that accompanies getting a tooth pulled: it’s for the best, I’ll get through it. Oh, and get over it. I have to admit that the lack of clarity I’m experiencing in the thick of ruminative approaches to work is my equivalent of disorganised. It’s muddy, undefined, formless and unsure. My job isn’t bullet-point clear at this moment, which makes my KPI’s difficult to measure. I’m 100% interested and keen to engage but feel as though I’m shuffling on the spot because inspiration hasn’t struck my feet yet. The ugly closed-mindedness of Model I behaviour has reared its head as I move away from its influence toward Model II; I am currently Double-loop learning. I am publicly testing my assumptions and beliefs.

And now in a glass-half-full kind of way, I submit myself to the shady (read sun dappled) ambiguity of a feeling-out process. Actually, I think a head first dive is in order.

RMIT CREATIVE INDUSTRIES PANEL

That Building 100, Photo: By author

Last week I attended the RMIT Creative Industries Panel. I got an e-mail, and RSVP’d. I don’t study design, nor have I ever considered myself a designer (until taking this course). So I popped over to that Building 100 to see what I may glean.

A number of interesting people broadly associated with the design industry gave short talks on their practice, and pathways after graduation – many were ex-RMIT. I was probably the youngest person in the room, definitely not many Undergrads there. The lady running the show made some interesting comments in her introduction that somewhat echo what our teachers have been banging on about:

Design will drive Australia into the 22nd century…design is a driver – we have a different view.

This is certainly a reference to the ‘designer toolkit’ that employers are so keen to harness. Yes, design is definitely forward-thinking; I can see that this shift in approach to practice, problems and work will be essential for media industry practitioners. It is so easy at university to submit the assignment and get your HD, which is a worryingly entrenched approach to study (of media and otherwise). I’ve definitely been one of those students who loves to marinate in research, and then basque in the satisfaction of placing one cogent sentence after another. This subject is a 180 for me, and I like the challenge.

Interestingly almost all of the speakers, who ranged from Creative Recruitment Agency chick, Design/Advertising ‘Facilitator’ to Designer of King Kong (the giant beast in that spectacular musical), agreed that being honest about your skills but being keen to learn is valued highly. Googling a ‘how to’ for five minutes is totally acceptable, nobody has to know. This also goes back to one of our early lessons. Anyone can learn what (write a screenplay, Final Cut effect, do x on my computer), our job is to know how to be something, a media practitioner; and that is to be ignited by ideas. Preferably in a ludic fashion; playful, experimental, throwing ideas forward. T-shaped.

One guy, Greg More from the RMIT Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, appeared to premise his whole practice on a Design Fiction method.  His work in data visualisation uses cameras to capture time and motion, and organise data in virtual environments or ‘digital space’. The result are these wacky, interactive, virtual representations of what would be very dry data. For example, an evolving visualisation of ten years’ worth of Melbourne’s water data as a real-time installation. The point is, when Greg spoke of his practice, he said he couldn’t possibly know what form these visualisations may take until the process begins – data visualisations are a kind of design future that he’s making up as he goes. I loved it when he showed us how he designs video game environments as a way to think about architecture. He also provided my take away idea for the evening, from John Maeda:

Making something simpler isn’t as important as making something clearer.

HOW TO: WRITE AND POST A BLOG ENTRY FROM YOUR PHONE

Q. How do I write and post a blog entry from my phone?

A. It’s all in the app.

Presumably, seeing as you’re a media student and of a certain generation, you own a smart phone. If not, you’re screwed.

1. Download the ‘Wordpress’ app.

2. Once downloaded, open it, and sign in using your media factory username and password. It’ll ask you for your www.mediafactory.org.au/your–name URL too. This is a good sign:

3. You will now see a list of your most recent posts. Up the top where it says ‘Posts’, slide to the right to reveal a menu.

4. In this menu there is a drop pin next to the word ‘Posts’. Tap the ‘ + ’ here, and a new page will pop open that looks a lot like this:

5. Give your new post a title, separate tags with commas, and when you tap the ‘Categories’ box you can (click to) select from your current list of categories which one this post will fit under.

6. Type away in the big, white space. Click ‘Done’ when you’ve finished with text.

 

To publish:

Tap the ‘Publish’ button at the top far right.

To add a link:

Hold to select the word you’d like to hyperlink. Click the little ‘link’ button and a window will allow you to paste the URL of a website into the dialogue box. You can name it in the box below (the description people will see if they hover over the link on your blog).

To quote:

Highlight the text you’d like to quote and click the ‘quote’ button. You will see some weird code on either side of the person’s words, don’t touch it. Move on.

To add a photo:

Tap the picture of the ‘landscape’ at the bottom far right. Take a photo or chose from your phone library.

To preview:

Tap the picture of the ‘eye’ at the bottom left.

To alter publishing settings:

Tap the picture of ‘cog’ at the bottom left.

To resume writing: 

Tap the picture of the ‘pencil’ at the bottom far left.

BETA SYMPOSIUM 0.1

The week’s ‘nothing like a lecture’ Symposium was a welcome gear change. Student devised questions posed as prompts for tutors, who then unpacked important ideas from readings and made them relevant. I took many notes. It was productive.

Once again, the question of Design Fiction and how it relates to us at university, popped up. Brian Morris made it clear that Design Fiction is more about the broader ways of making stuff. Design Fiction is an approach to making stuff with motivation and a sense of play:

Design Fiction doesn’t rely on being evidence-based, but makes you re-think what counts as evidence (material you can make use of to speculate about the future but also as much about contemporary worlds we inhabit).

Adrian chimed in saying that large corporations are paying people lots of money to think like designers, like a kind of Speculative Play Time. Currently, it is thought that designers have the right kind of forward-thinking toolkit for dealing with ‘wicked problems’ – the kinds of problems that only create more with every solution, if there is even a solution. Problems facing me, in this context include the rapidly changing nature of media industries, the disruptive nature of the internet and consequently, the continually fragmented engagement with media texts of consumers and audiences. Design Fiction with it’s playful approach to speculation as a practice, provides:

…a robust, simple way to start to think through complexity and those sorts of probelms. Tools to confront the nature of the world we’re going into.

And further on this point, I liked the term imagined futures that came up. It’s almost a better description for Design Fiction. It’s a way to think through possible futures I may be going into. Adrian practices this thinking often in classes – he possesses that ability to think through complex scenarios in an agile (quick and light) way. It’s creative hypothesising. It’s speculative practice.

It was also encouraged in the Symposium to think of ourselves not as content producers, but as knowledge creators. To be an experience designer; to make interactions between users as an experience different to other services. I know this is an important note, and I’m sure the gravity of it will settle on me soon enough.

On the blog, Adrian posed this question:

Simple. What do you think you want to do. (Direct, run a media company, design web sites, invent a reality TV franchise, write screenplays). Got something? Now, it is 2020. Write a design fiction. What do you do in your job in 2020? how do you get paid? what stuff do you make? for what/who? where?…That’s a design fiction question.

Our Wicked Problem

The thought that we as students do not have the agency to pick a DSLR and create content of a decent standard is a lie. Uncle George can do this for free. Why would I put myself in debt to end up on par with Uncle George? It’s our wicked problem. But it also means I should stop being all, “I’m not arty enough to walk around this cool campus with a DSLR around my neck,” and put on a  fucking beret…and that DSLR.

A ‘TAKE AWAY’ QUOTE

Science  has  provided  the  swiftest  communication  between  individuals;;  it  has provided  a  record  of  ideas  and  has  enabled  man  to  manipulate  and  to  make extracts  from  that  record  so  that  knowledge  evolves  and  endures  throughout the  life  of  a  race  rather  than  that  of  an  individual.

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013

I find this quote quite relevant for a snippet out of 1945. Last weekend The Weekend Australian published a feature story in their glossy about a team of historians chipping away at the records of over 70, 000 Tasmanian convicts. Prisoners shipped over from the UK in the 1800’s were incredibly well documented – down to the scars on their bodies and lurgies suffered in transit by boat, to their movements within the gaol system and sometimes beyond. These records are being digitised. The story also pointed out that MIT in the USA are compiling the largest international database of human records ever, in their attempt to digitise/prolong/maintain/get buried under history.

WHAT IF EARTH WAS INVADED BY MARTIANS?

Photo: By author

Well, it almost was. Sort of. As good as.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, Central Time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the Earth with enormous velocity…”

It was the day before Halloween, October 30, 1938. The CBS radio network, armed with actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre group, unleashed a broadcast that announced a huge meteorite had smashed into a New Jersey farm. New York was under attack by Martians.

The radio play, narrated by Orson Welles, was written and performed to sound like a real news broadcast about an invasion from Mars.

It was not, but people were convinced it was the end of the world. At one point in the broadcast, one of the actors playing a journalist in the field, dramatically described the emergence of one of the aliens from a spacecraft:

“Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a grey snake.”

The show aired as a series of simulated news bulletins that suggested a verisimilitude to listeners, who believed that an alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Mass hysteria ensued. The program, The Mercury Theatre on the Air was a series of live radio dramas that always ran without ads which historians say, helped the broadcast authentically simulate how radio worked in an emergency.

The ultimate moral panic:

In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners, who had believed the events described in the program were real.

It made Orson Welles (more) famous. Listen to the broadcast here.