- Please read each description carefully.
- Check the studio times against your other commitments (these are subject to change, but this is unlikely)
- Also CHECK whether it is an ON-CAMPUS or ONLINE-ONLY studio.
The Power of the Cut: Film editing and the soul of cinema
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 2:30-4:30pm Tuesday
Session 2: 9:30am-12:30pm Friday
It is the very eloquence of the cinema that is constructed in the editing room.
Orson Welles (Director, Citizen Kane, A Touch of Evil)
You have to cut with your gut.
Dede Allen (Editor, Serpico, The Breakfast Club)
Studio prompt
What lies hidden in the cut between clips? Does the soul of a film exist in what we don’t see? How can the simple action of cutting images together be one of the most profound techniques in modern storytelling?
Studio description
The history of screen editing is inexorably interwoven with the development and growth of the medium of cinema itself. Editing is storytelling with a razor.
In this studio we will be exploring screen editing as a storytelling tool through iterative activities both in, and outside, of our workshops. We will be examining editing from both philosophical and process-driven perspectives.
The goal of our explorations will be to cultivate the students’ instincts through practice and provocation.
We will be investigating comprehensive systems and processes, through a deep and thorough understanding of the practicalities of editing preparation. Only from a secure foundation built on rigorous preliminary work, can a screen editor allow their instincts to truly flow freely.
Throughout the semester, we will work through different processes and styles used in scripted, improvised, documentary, genre and commercial content.
Students will learn to shape footage in service of The Story, to edit intentionally and intuitively. They will learn to reshape and refine their editing work, responding to external feedback and to their own reflection on their work.
Towards the end of the course, students will build a series of edited works that will serve as a portfolio of the work undertaken throughout the semester.
Studio leader
Sebastian Bertoli is a director, editor and actor. As a screen editor he has edited both commercial and narrative screen content. He will begin editing feature film Disconnected in the next few months. The first narrative work he edited, award-winning short Blue (2017), has had over 4 million views on YouTube. He has directed a dozen shorts across genres as diverse as erotic thriller, absurdist comedy and psychological horror. As an actor he has appeared on screen in productions from HBO, DreamWorks, Bad Robot, Warner Bros Television, ABC and Fremantle Media. Sebastian holds a 2017 Masters (Film & Television) from the Victorian College of the Arts.
People and Places: Character and location in non-fiction media making
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 12:30-2:30pm Wednesday
Session 2: 2:30-5:30pm Friday
Studio prompt
What are some of the technical and ethical considerations when we turn the camera towards characters and locations and describe our work as documentary?
Studio description
In People + Places, students will engage in a variety of studio activities (including screenings, discussion, practical exercises, reflective tasks and media production) to explore the various ways in which nonfiction materials can be arranged for different outcomes and audiences. The first half of the semester finds students researching and reflecting on various approaches to capturing the real world. In class, students will respond to the work of practitioners such as filmmakers Frederick Wiseman and Molly Dineen and photographers Eve Arnold and Martin Parr in a series of in class exercises. Along the way, students will evaluate and improve their media production skills. The second half of the semester finds students working in small groups to devise, pitch and produce a major work. This major work is usually a short documentary of 5 minutes duration but there is also scope to create a print or transmedia artefact.
Studio leader
Rohan Spong is a writer / director / cinematographer whose feature length documentary films ALL THE WAY THROUGH EVENING (2012) and WINTER AT WESTBETH (2016) have been released in cinemas (Australia, New Zealand & US), broadcast on television (ABC, SBS, FOXTEL, 7PLUS and PBS/WORLD) and programmed at numerous film festivals (including MIFF, Sydney Film Festival, DOC NYC). His work has also been programmed at cultural institutions including ACMI, MONA, Boston Museum of Art, Lincoln Center (NYC) and the US Library of Congress. You can read more about his work at www.rohanspong.com.
Speculative Sound Design: Sonic imaginings and worlding with sound
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 12:30-2:30pm Tuesday
Session 2: 12:30-3:30pm Thursday
Studio prompt
What are the possibilities for sound design and speculative thinking to open toward multispecies understandings and alternative worlds? How can sound design allow us to build speculative worlds that communicate alternative possibilities?
Studio description
Whether it be a warning signal, the policing of bodies, the perception of cosmic worlds or the Jurassic period, sound design has a powerful impact on how we speculate about futures, perceive the past and how we arrive at a sonic present.
Through themes of extinction, ecology, deep time and futures, this studio offers an opportunity to explore the process of designing sounds and the creation of speculative sonic worlds. In this studio you will develop practical skills in recording, arranging and manipulating audio and gain hands-on experience in designing sound for a variety of contexts such as screens, browsers, cinema, walking, performance and three-dimensional spaces.
In the first half of the semester you will be introduced to a series of speculative scenarios and provocations, which will be investigated through crafting and designing your own sonic responses. In the second half of the semester you will work collaboratively and individually with world-building through sound. This stage will provide a chance to construct your own speculative sound worlds with the aim of imagining new environments, social structures and possible futures.
To do this, we will engage in experiments in thinking, writing, listening, acoustic communication and draw on a host of disciplines, from the principles of critical design, literary studies, ecological criticism, music, field recording, literary studies and audio cultures. Our workshops will look to examples across speculative fiction, independent video games, screenplays, soundwalking and sound arts to consider the function of sound within the popular imaginary and alternative futures.
This studio will suit students that value playfulness, experimentation and critical thinking.
Studio leader
Amias Hanley is an artist working with sound and media to explore relations among bodies, technology and contemporary ecologies. Engaging in speculative and site-responsive approaches, they make performances, installations and experimental compositions for multichannel environments, galleries, festivals and screens. www.amiashanley.com
Deconstructing Fed Square: A multimedia showcase in celebration of Federation Square’s 20th anniversary
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 12:30-2:30pm Tuesday
Session 2: 9:30am-12:30pm Thursday
Studio prompt
How can we creatively reflect on and celebrate an iconic public space through documentary and poetic productions?
Studio description
This year, Melbourne’s iconic public space, Federation Square, will celebrate its 20th anniversary through the theme of Deconstruction with a range of immersive experiences. In Deconstructing Fed Square, you will craft documentary and poetic multimedia works which consider the past, present and future of this public space. To deconstruct, you will creatively explore the meanings of the public space from its Indigenous location to cultural experience, to architecture, to identity, and to its transition into Melbourne’s Arts precinct. How can we reflect on Fed Square’s past and present to offer visions of its future?
In this studio you will work with our partners at Fed Square to create short films, audio experiences and digital content to be displayed as part of their 20th anniversary showcase. As part of this process, you will develop sketch works which explore documentary and poetic modes of expressing public space and explore what it means to create immersive experiences for such audiences. The Deconstructing Fed Square studio offers an exciting opportunity to work within a professional partnership and to screen your work at a globally iconic destination.
Studio leader
Dr. Hannah Brasier is a research-practitioner interested in how ways of noticing can be used to engage with the world ecologically. She makes experimental interactive documentaries which combine the everyday, landscape and environment to craft ecologically conscious media. Hannah teaches studios and cinema studies, and has been doing so for the past seven years.
Like That Video: Designing the creative brief and production of video content for socials
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 9:30am-12:30pm Tuesday
Session 2: 9:30-11:30am Thursday
There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.
Milton Glaser
Studio prompt
What factors need to be considered in the design of social video content for a client?
Studio description
Who would have thought a social media platform like Instagram would shift its content focus from photos to videos. Such is the growth of online video on the World Wide Web and Instagram scrambling to compete with the mega-success of Tik Tok. The evolution of video content and its diverse applications across social media platforms is pushing the development of a broad range of conceptual, production and technical skills. This skillset includes design skills for roles like ‘Visual Content Producers’ in current job advertisements.
This hands-on partnered project studio with a not-for-profit art gallery focuses on the design process involved in producing video content for social media. This creative work includes formulating with the client a project brief, the style and tone, sketching and brainstorming ideas, and delivering a social video work. Studio participants will work with an experienced Marketing and Communications Manager at the art gallery to design the video and respond to ongoing creative feedback.
The media studio will cover all facets of social video production, including post-production processes such as media asset preparation, the resizing of video frames, text graphics, colour grading, audio techniques, subtitling, and making publication thumbnails and exporting. Final studio outcomes include a reference acknowledging your work experience, documentation of job-ready skills and potential published video works for your portfolio.
Studio leader
Dr Seth Keen is a practice-led educator, researcher and consultant in the Media program at RMIT University and a core member of the Digital Ethnographic Research Centre. Seth’s teaching focuses on photo and video practices and technologies within interactive, mobile, and social media. He uses his research practice to engage with design and information technology specialists on the co-design of media platforms. Seth has decades of experience producing audio-visual media content, including primetime television documentaries, short films, experimental videos, video art installations, music videos, corporate videos, interactive documentaries, social videos, and bespoke videos for research projects and media platforms.
Translating Observation: Experiments in actuality, subjectivity & film form
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 1:30-4:30pm Monday
Session 2: 11:30am-1:30pm Thursday
You must always write when you want to make a film.
Chantal Akerman, “Bordering On Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s D’est” Exhibition, 1995
Studio prompt
How can personal observation and experience be translated to the screen in ways not strictly reliant on conventional fiction or documentary approaches?
Studio description
This studio is dedicated to experimentation in the development and realisation of film content that sits somewhere between documentary and fiction. A very specific procedure, with writing at its centre, will be applied in the development stage, and the result is likely to lead to idiosyncratic production methods, and highly individual short film pieces.
The idea is that an experience or observation is expressed in writing without any need to contextualise or narrate. The emphasis should be on the subjective essence of the observation. The text then becomes a working document that needs to be further translated into a film scene. The scene, or scenes, can take any form, or combination of forms. The objective is to explore cinematic expression free, not of structure and discipline, but of the conventions of “complete” storytelling, and of the demands typical of much documentary production.
The studio will acknowledge and explore the critical function of writing in the development of a film work (but not necessarily that of normal scriptwriting, or the expression of “objective” research) and offer the opportunity to learn and practise film craft and production methods in the service of a potentially unfamiliar and unpredictable outcome.
Studio leader
Robin Plunkett is a cinematographer. He has worked in all capacities in camera departments for more than 35 years. He also has experience as a producer, director (of non-fiction) and editor. For the last several years he has been teaching elements of cinematography, and film production in general, at the VCA and RMIT.
Automated Decision Making + Society: Exploring automation in everyday life
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 2:30-5:30pm Monday
Session 2: 1:30-3:30pm Thursday
Studio prompt
What are the uses and challenges of automated decision-making in our everyday lives?
Studio description
The word ‘automation’ conjures up images of giant machines or production lines, but automated decision-making (ADM) now shapes and informs a large part of our everyday lives. ADM plays a role in many aspects of society, including but not limited to health, transport, social services, and news and media.
In this partnered studio with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), you will explore the impact of ADM on the everyday. You will gain an understanding of exactly what it is that ADM entails, the ways it intersects with the above aspects of society, its uses, and its challenges. We will ask questions such as, ‘What are the productive uses of automated decision-making?’, or ‘What are some of the ethical implications of automated decision-making in health care or news media?’
You will have the opportunity to hear from leading academics in the field as you investigate these questions. Possible projects include the development of short video essays that engage with an area of research of the Centre and participating in ADM+S led events.
Studio leader
Dr Ruth Richards is a sessional tutor and lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her thesis explored the intersections of feminist materialist philosophy and animated bodies, and her research interests include histories of women in animation, feminist film and television studies, and dis-/misinformation in contemporary media. She has previously run studios in multi-camera production, news satire, and in collaboration with RMIT ABC Fact Check.
Canon Fodder: Creating media manifestos that interrogate cinema canons
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 1:30-3:30pm Wednesday
Session 2: 10:30am-1:30pm Friday
Studio prompt
Who are the great filmmakers and which are the great films? What even is greatness, and how is it recognised – how are canons (lists of the classic works exemplifying the form) made, what are their purposes and can or should we resist them? And, in 2022, what even is a film, anyway…?
Studio description
There is something peculiar about cinema (b.1895, Lyon), the still relatively youthful Seventh Art; its most ardent admirers are regularly commissioned or otherwise compelled to write up lists which reliably exalt only a small, aged pool of canonical artworks. How can this be – has there truly never been a “greater” film made since Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo premiered in 1958, per Sight & Sound’s most recent, ten-yearly poll of the “Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time” in 2012?
Whose voices are privileged, their perspectives normalised and entrenched, in the formation and sustenance of the film canon – and why? Should canonical artworks perforce be respected? If the canon is to be challenged, however, won’t that just create more canons – and is this desirable? Can’t canonisation leach an artwork of vitality, rendering it unable to be viewed on its own merits, untarred by claims of its “greatness”?
Accordingly, this studio begins by interrogating the logics and uses of canons before crafting group manifestos in response using media forms chosen by students (e.g., video essays, podcasts, games, installations, happenings, expanded cinema, live streams) to further interrogate the process by which we value different media.
Note that, for the first time since this course’s inception in 2019, students will be able to contrast and compare their finished work’s revision of the canon and interrogation of what it stands for with the outcomes of a fresh instalment of the Sight & Sound poll, which will be published just after semester’s end!
Studio leader
Cerise Howard is a widely published New Zealand-born critic and co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque who co-founded the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia and was its Artistic Director from 2013-2018. An oft called-upon commentator on intersections of screen media, gender, sexuality and other matters, she is a regular broadcaster on 3RRR and has been a member of the International Jury Board of the East-West: Golden Arch Awards, celebrating Eurasian cinema, for its three editions to date.
Away from film, she plays bass for Queen Kong and The HOMOsapiens, a Melbourne-based punk, performance art, queer rock band.
Sounds Like A Story!: Telling true (and not so true) audio stories “artfully”
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 12:30-2:30pm Monday
Session 2: 10:30am-1:30pm Wednesday
Don’t be disembodied – radio can have a tendency to lean towards the cerebral. Don’t just tell a listener about a subject, let them understand an idea by feeling it in their body. Make radio that starts a listener’s heart beating faster; that whispers lovingly in their ears; that takes them out dancing, spins them around, gets drunk and throws up on their shoes.
Eleanor McDowall
Studio prompt
How can we harness the affective power of voice and sound to tell compelling audio stories in a range of styles and genres? What can we as producers learn from listening to storytellers with different lived experience?
Studio description
Radio scholar Michelle Hilmes (2013) coined the term ‘soundwork’ to describe “media forms that are primarily aural, employing the three basic elements of sonic expression – music, speech and noise.” In both radio and podcasting, voice comes to the fore with its powerful affective resonance. Stories are told and shared with a high degree of intimacy amplified further by listening through earbuds.
In this studio, you’ll hop inside what producer John Biewen refers to as “the big stretchy tent that is audio documentary”, and experiment with non-fiction and fiction storytelling, as well as that which lies between.
Following a process of listening, reading and reflective practice, you will learn how to produce compelling short feature stories that utilise all elements of soundwork. You’ll also be prompted to consider how listening to the work of ‘others’ might influence or enrich your own production practice.
In the first half of semester, you will conduct individual experiments in different audio styles and genres. For your major project you will produce a longer feature in a style and genre of your choice, working in a team or individually.
Studio leader
Heather Jarvis is a radio & podcast producer, journalist and lecturer in Media at RMIT. In her extensive career at the ABC and also in community radio, Heather produced
and presented programs spanning from music and magazine-style shows through to documentaries, features, current affairs and sport. Her radio documentary Fallen Angels, produced for the ABC with journalist and academic Margaret Simons, was a finalist in the 2017 Amnesty International Australia Media Awards, and the 2017 United Nations Media Awards. Heather’s practice-based PhD research takes a listening approach, examining podcasting as a decolonising practice and a way to advance social change agendas.
Augmented Cinema: Creating Immersive Media with Film and Video
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 9:30am-12:30pm Tuesday
Session 2: 12:30-2:30pm Friday
Reality is neurology and is not absolute.
David Cronenberg (2014)
I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you.
Tim Cook (2016)
Studio prompt
How might immersive media provide an orientation to the expanding mixed reality field, and assist in encouraging a wide range of theories regarding immersive tech?
Studio description
Immersive media has developed exponentially over the years and made corresponding leaps in the various technological components. From the long history and prehistory leading up to contemporary times; Virtual reality (VR) and its overlapping augmented and mixed reality domains appears to have reached critical mass. This course will be a comprehensive orientation to this expanding field, probing a wide range of theories, prehistories, and histories of immersive tech, while grounding students in an introduction to current tools and techniques.
In this studio students will research, develop, and produce video work and immersive art that explore the idea of Mixed Reality. In response to findings each week on key immersive media-focused texts, students will be asked to:
- explore the current state of mixed reality, its positives, negatives, and possible trajectory globally
- compare and contrast with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to look at a range of possible mixed realities
- experiment with the current tools and techniques of mixed reality
Students will create immersive film, video and audio work that explores mixed reality. This will potentially include an exploration of 360-degree cameras, VR, AR and Mixed Reality Applications such as Oculus Go, Assemblr, A-Frame, AR Synth and Infinite Drummer. The class will be a mixture of lecture, discussion, and practical experimentation. Guest speakers/judges in the mixed reality field may include Dr Bhautik Joshi and Dr Daniel Binns.
Studio leader
Cat Lew is a Video Artist, Sound Designer, Audio Engineer and Educator. She has a diverse creative practice, having produced video art and sound design for Melbourne Fringe Festival, West Projection Festival, Incinerator Gallery, Mesma Studio, Cinema Viscera, City of Melbourne and City of Maribyrnong. She currently teaches digital media, film & sound editing and design at VU Polytechnic, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and RMIT.
The Video Essay: Writing with images or, five methods for audiovisual criticism
THIS IS AN ON-CAMPUS STUDIO
Session 1: 3:30-5:30pm Wednesday
Session 2: 1:30-4:30pm Friday
Studio prompt
How can images function as a thinking tool? How can we use cinematic images to craft arguments about the self and the world?
Studio description
Cinema has a long history of using images as both creative and critical practice. As such, the theory of authorship has cultivated an appreciation of cinema built upon notions of self-expression and reflexivity: the filmmaker thinking through their images. Yet the advent and ubiquity of digital technology has transformed longstanding notions of authorship and reconfigured the role of the critic in our digital present. Looking to the critic as video essayist, we find an emergent critical practice – video essay-making – that rethinks images from screen media and the world.
In this studio we will encounter this practice by investigating five prevalent methods of audiovisual criticism: analytical, poetic, multi-modal, recontextualisation/reappropriation, and the desktop documentary. Weekly examination of these methods will reveal different modes of argumentation and essayistic aesthetics that will form the basis for your own video essay practice. As such, we will enter a dynamic conversation with a collection of films that will produce experimentations in subjective modes of written criticism and audiovisual thinking. Ultimately, the studio will conclude with the production of your own video essay with an eye towards online publication and/or film festival submission.
Studio leader
Dr Robert Letizi is a lecturer and researcher at Monash University. Robert’s research is focused on the audiovisual essay, progressive pedagogy, video game reception, the phenomenology of film music, and the ontology of the image. His teaching experience covers a wide range of film studies (the digital era of Hollywood, genre, ideology and representation, national cinemas, documentary and realism, television studies, film history, and film industries and technologies) and media studies (social media theory, online streaming, digital autoethnography).
The Proof of Concept: An exploration of proof of concept storytelling within media
THIS IS AN ONLINE-ONLY STUDIO
Session 1: 1:30-4:30pm Monday (AEST)
Session 2: 4:30-6:30pm Wednesday (AEST)
Not only did it [the proof of concept short film for Whiplash] arouse interest in the project that hadn’t existed before, it also allowed me to get my feet wet, to fine-tune what I really wanted this movie to be.
Damien Chazelle on the proof of concept for Whiplash (source)
Studio prompt
An exploration of proof of concept storytelling within media. How can this practice as a stand-alone model bolster long-form projects, and strengthen career pathways for emerging practitioners?
Studio description
The film and television industry can be a tough nut to crack and it’s often a challenge for emerging screen practitioners to break in, and build to producing long-form work (be it feature film or TV series). This studio aims to shed light on the practice of ‘proof of concept’ storytelling as a particular strategy for emerging and early career screen practitioners to break into the industry, with an eye on the project they ultimately wish to produce.
We’ll take a look at numerous successful case studies of ‘proof of concept’ filmmaking from Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), Jennifer Kent (The Babadook), Neill Blomkamp (District 9), and Saw by filmmakers Leigh Whannell and James Wan.
We’ll also explore the ‘proof of concept’ in forms beyond the short film and examine how it can expand to other storytelling mediums (interactive websites, podcasts) to achieve the same goal of acting as a both a showcase, pitch, and appetiser for what the long-form project could be.
We’ll develop ideas for a long form idea, then workshop and refine scripts or story materials for a standalone ‘proof of concept’ project that aims to showcase the genre, tone, characters or story world of our long form idea. We’ll also research the idea of the ‘proof of concept’ and apply our learnings of various proof of concept pathways to our own projects, specifically examining a ‘pathway to audience’ plan to strategise how the ‘proof of concept’ project will realistically help the realisation of the final long form idea.
The aim is that students leave this studio with a new understanding of how they might approach their early career projects with a focus on better achieving the long-form ideas and dreams they ultimately desire.
Studio leader
Tim Marshall is an award-winning filmmaker from Brisbane, Queensland. In 2013, his short film Gorilla won the Iris Prize in the UK, awarding him £25K for his next short. The outcome of this, Followers, screened at Sundance Film, SXSW, and MIFF in 2015 and is a proof of concept for his upcoming feature film Saviour.
At the start of 2021, Tim shot his first feature film as writer/director, queer horror Closing Night. The film stars award-winning queer actor Daniel Monks, with executive producers Dan Lake and Kurt Royan from Orange Entertainment Co. The film will be released in 2022.
In 2017, he won the WeScreeplay TV Pilot Script contest judged by Comedy Central, and placed as a semi-finalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2014. As a screenwriter, Tim has learned from the very best – having developed his scripts with the assistance of script consultants including Meg LeFauve (writer, Inside Out), Andrew Ellard (writer, IT Crowd, Red Dwarf), Lynne Vincent McCarthy (script editor, The Babadook, The Nightingale), Ruth Atkinson (Sundance Screenwriting Lab script consultant), and Guinevere Turner (writer, American Psycho).
Fix The App: Understanding platforms with social theories; designing apps to make them better to live with
THIS IS AN ONLINE-ONLY STUDIO
Session 1: 2:30-4:30pm Tuesday (AEST)
Session 2: 1:30-4:30pm Thursday (AEST)
Facebook defines who we are;
Amazon defines what we want;
Google defines what we think;
George Dyson in Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.
Finance defines what we have (materially, at least);
And reputation increasing defines our opportunities.
Frank Pasquale in The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information.
Studio prompt
When we celebrate all the convenience and liberty brought by platform technologies, have you ever experienced one of these funny but ‘eyerolling’ moments? It could be an unfitting advertising recommendation, a misspelling from the keyboard autocorrection, mis-censored content, voice recognition’s disregard of gendered or accented voices, or simply just a meme with some bad sense of humour going viral. Let’s use these frustrating moments as our point of departure. This studio will further poke into the wrongness of platform technologies and propose strategies to make positive changes.
Studio description
This studio combines the sociological understanding of technologies and the experimentation of techno-entrepreneurship. Throughout the semester, this studio will assist you to learn and utilise critical thinking, social theories, research methods, and entrepreneurial practice.
Three parts comprise the studio – theory, methods, and experimental entrepreneurship. In the first part of the studio, you should be prepared to query many aspects of platform technologies that we have long been taking for granted. These questions include but are (definitely) not limited to:
- What are social media? Are they different from media?
- Why do we call a social medium ‘platform’? What does a ‘platform’ mean?
- Can memes be more political than entertaining?
- Why are technologies not new but historical?
- Do we define what are science and technologies and what are not? On what basis exactly?
- What makes platforms good, bad, and ugly?
You might feel a bit uncomfortable with what you learn. You might feel challenged or interrogated as some of the content can be outside your knowledge comfort zone. This is what learning and gaining feel like.
The second part of the studio is about ‘perspectives’ and ‘methods’. Who are we and what is our relationship with technologies? What about people with different experiences to us and what are their relationships with technologies? To address these questions, you will need to ‘go out to the field’ and interview people.
With a great deal of knowledge about platform technologies and some empirical research on people’s relationships with technologies, the third part of the studio will facilitate your techno-entrepreneurship. Let’s think about platforms beyond the much visible interface, the layout, and the policy. What behind a platform are the much more complicated, intertwining political and economic powers and interests. How can we design a better and more inclusive platform, as an organisation and technology?
Studio leader
Fan Yang researches and teaches in the intersectoral areas of technology, postcolonialism, and ethnic media. She’s currently finalising her PhD thesis on the internal operation of the WeChat-based Chinese-language media in Australia through the lens of human-technology mediation.