Missed Marks

August 7, 2013August 7, 2013 Adrian Miles

Yes, my diatribe was only aimed at those wondering why. It was using a very broad channel to talk to very few people. The joy, expression, and use of institutional power.

James notes that the question wasn’t answered. Fair enough. Edward ready to move on. James wants more involvement (always good, let’s see if we can get it happening), Arthur’s essentially a thumbs down (and to be fair, I could have let the question slide, it was one question only, but it is a question that if left unattended can grow virus like legs), Daniel is I think on the fence but I like that the expectations and differences from before to now are becoming clearer, Danielle liked some ideas but is unconvinced by the format (trust me, I really share that concern), Blaire sees possibilities but remains a no

Louisa sees the challenge, for Anna it was preaching for the converted. Laura pulled out some good points. Another Anna find some useful bits, Shannen liked Elliot’s outline of the importance of future thinking (which I also thought was an excellent explanation of why being able to think the future was so important for media graduates). Kevin generally a plus, misses Brian (we all do). Alexandra joins the lecture with a job advertisement with curatorial thinking (a term recently coined about what we now do online, a term that will turn up in coming weeks) with networked media. Patrick sort of yes, sort of let’s get on with it. Miguel, aprés-ski, likes the idea of boogie, and what it might bring, Lauren’s a plus but frustrated, and prefers typing to writing,

The takeaway? Simple, your view, my view, is one view of the experience and it is a mistake to think that my joy, or disappointment, is every body’s.

Dreaming

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013 Adrian Miles

Returning to some of the various things touched in the first unlecture. Speculative writing. This is the fancy term given to things like science fiction, but it includes lots of other things too. What I glossed over are the qualities about speculative writing that I think matter. This isn’t about fandom Trekkie whatever, so if you’re a Trekkie, sorry. Like design fiction, or at least some of the claims made for design fiction, what I like about speculative fiction is the way that it offers writing as a way to think with and through things.

The example I used was China Miéville’s Embassytown. The point I made (lightly) in the unlecture was that you need to move from your own position of knowing towards it for it to work. It is then an invitation, and a demand. It has an imperative. If I don’t suspend my demand (“tell me, NOW, what a voidcraft is”) then the work won’t do its job, which is to describe and propose a possible world where I need to learn its terms. Not the other way round – I am supplicant, not master. This is, I think, a useful model to think about my relationship to knowledge and learning broadly.

The second point, which I didn’t raise, was that speculative fiction is a deeply epistemological way of writing. Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge, so it is about how we know things. In Embassytown, for example, the main location is home to a species that has a very specific and literal method of speaking. So the novel actually becomes a long meditation on semiotics and linguistics, without actually saying so. But that’s just being clever. What I really mean is that on this planet there is something called “biorigging” which means the indigenous species grows its technology. Guns are living things. As are houses. There are farms that produce them. None are described in any great detail, they don’t really need to be. Now, let me be very clear. It is not the science fiction that matters deeply. It is the speculative thought. So, in the novel, without needing to justify it, it takes the terms of technology as biological literally, and just simply thinks with it. So you get a phrase like “He fired and the gun-animal opened its throat and howled.” Or the houses grow, which means they produce an atmosphere (since living things all breathe), but also they might listen since they as living things why wouldn’t they have ears. Later, they watch, because of course if they have ears they could as easily have eyes.

This is also why design fiction is a useful methodology. It establishes terms and then thinks with them. Not about them, which would get bogged down in why (“why can a light sabre cut through anything?” “why can a jedi do mind tricks?” “why is there a force?”) but takes them as givens and then develops ideas and propositions on this basis. It is speculative, imaginative, creative, playful, and serious.

01 unlecture

July 29, 2013July 29, 2013 Adrian Miles

A weekend and now there is quite a busy flow coming out of the media factory!

Arthur slides from liking the opportunity to experiment to a political slogan. I’m not sure what the connection is, but yes, we support valid experimentation. Chantelle’s take away idea revolves around the difference between knowing what and know how, or in her case know what and ‘being’. Being is a very big word in philosophy, and some of that resonance matters here. Know what is now solved by our digital tools, know how isn’t. And being is a question of, let’s call it cool. There’s no manual there, you know that to be ‘cool’ in whatever you do outside of uni (footy, your band, ballet, poetry, getting in to clubs) is not about ticking clear explicit boxes. It’s trickier than that, isn’t it? Lina also picked up on the distinction between know what versus know how. Glad to see that this has started plant some brain worms out there.

Alexandra comments on self directed learning, and the proliferation of new technologies. Let’s be clear. There have always been new technologies, and always been moral panics about new media, the rub for us right now is that the new technologies are fundamentally changing the DNA of what the media is. Well, they’ve already changed it, its just that some institutions are very wealthy and so, like large dinosaurs, get to hold out for longer than others.

Denham’s takeaways? T shaped people (here’s an explanation from a business management perspective, and a local ad specifically asking for T shaped people).

Finally, Jake, unknowingly, launches into Mode II learning by acknowledging not so much failure but not quite success, and then thinking through why he wants to be at university. Questions about why usually are much more apparent to those who were told ‘no’ first.