I genuinely feel like I’ve come a long way throughout this semester, both in understanding the way that the course operates and how I operate. I’ve learnt a lot about media and communication practices, theories and approaches just as much as I’ve learnt how to better conduct my personal approach to learning.

I have to admit that I experienced a somewhat clumsy beginning to the course, I wasn’t really engaging with the ideas as well as I should have been and was foolishly circumventing the tasks at hand, regardless of how simple or non-time-consuming they were. I feel like this was because I was so fixated on what I predicted the course to be and wasn’t allowing myself to accept a process of learning that didn’t strictly abide to that preconception. As time went on and as I was forced to put more and more work into the project briefs, however, I began to realise the value in the course.

I’ve learnt that being honest, open and communicative is absolutely essential to a course like this – there were too many instances where I should have bitten the bullet and asked for help as soon as possible to greaten my chances of better results. This became clear to me in the Project Brief #4 process, where through legitimate and rich collaboration I endured a totally comfortable and natural working process which resulted in a product that I am proud of and don’t feel as though it was a chore to produce.

I realised that I learn really effectively through consistent reflection on ideas, simply writing about something after experiencing it I find to be an awesome way to draw my own understanding from what has been presented to me and to clearly engage with the ideas at hand. As a result, I feel like I finally understand the value in the blog, and in hindsight wish that I had maintained it on a consistent, regular basis, as a lot of the key concepts within the course would have resonated with me far more effectively.

So I suppose I would say that I found understanding this way of approaching learning to be the most challenging aspect of the course, it took me pretty much the whole semester to really grasp. Typically I learn from practice, and I initially felt that I was robbed of enough hands-on content. I really do feel now though that I can accept this newfound approach to learning and benefit from it greatly.

I am proud of the majority of material that I have produced this semester, although I can’t say I was reaching my full potential in producing it. I compromised my creative ability by delaying the effort out of laziness, and in reflecting on the work that I did end up putting together, it is generally of a great quality, but I really do have a lot more potential that I’m going to explore as the course continues.

I’ve met some great people, have had some great experiences, and have learnt a lot more about myself than I particularly thought I would. Keen to see what the rest of the course brings!

Bless, Timp out. xx

PS: See below – Learning Graph, a visual representation of what I was saying above however I think since doing it I’ve begun to understand some things better than I did even in week 12 (I would suggest that the blog curve would take a much more positive incline at the end than is depicted).

Aaaaand here it is folks, proud to present Yield’s Tin Llama’s debut podcasting endeavour! Laughs were had. Some serious thoughts sometimes as well.

I have to say that I was damn near blessed with my assigned group for the task. Matched with the great, keen minds of Daniel Bowden and Sally Lewis, the three of us delved into introductory discussion and uncovered a like fascination with sound and film, making it extremely breezy to gel into a group dynamic. We were assigned the topic of ‘mediums’, which admittedly was puzzling at first, but nevertheless we chiseled away at what we thought this could be prompting us to explore. Quite early in the collaboration we decided that our shared interest in audio could make for a neat podcast – I admittedly had not had any prior experience in the production of podcasts nor had I particularly lent my ear to many at all but I was nevertheless intrigued and excited at the prospect of putting one together.

After a chat over a drink with Dan running off the work of the great Marshall McLuhan surrounding the “message” that exists within the medium, we began to develop a premise revolving around the idea of mediums changing over time, the effects this has had on society and the necessity for us to adapt to these changes, which ultimately guided our entire creative process. Establishing such a strong premise so early in the process proved to be extremely useful as we each knew what to steer ideas towards. I began to get quite excited about the project and took to putting pen to paper and roughly conceptualising some ideas in the form of streams of consciousness, which would later take shape as a decent whack of content in the final piece.

Praise be to Sal, who well and truly got the ball rolling and smashed out a great deal of initial content that came together as the opening content to the podcast. Once this had been produced, I think we all began to really see the direction the project it was taking and all began heavily contributing. What I’m particularly appreciative of is the fact that each meeting we had were genuinely exceptionally interesting – I looked forward to each one and was always inspired to produce something immediately afterwards. At no point did this assignment feel like a chore or a dull necessity, it was seriously awesome collaboration at its finest.

While we did work efficiently and cooperatively throughout the process, our avid eagerness did lead to some minor issues. Many of the ideas and references we intended to include in the podcast proved to push the project too far over the rough 15 minute restriction that we put to it with Jasmine and the class. This led to us unfortunately excluding mention of the likes of Trevor Cox and Rupert Till, who offered wonderful insight into ancient communicative mediums, which we intended to reference at the beginning of the timeline of our podcast. Equally disappointing was the fact that, due to necessary omissions and time constraints, we made no mention of the great Marshall McLuhan himself, yet did refer to his theories regarding “the medium is the message”. While the inclusion of these references would have been more than worthy content, the decisions to leave them out allowed us to make more time for the exploration of key ideas and rich discussion, which in considering that we were shooting for an engaging and varied podcast I think proved to be the right idea.

The time we spent in Dan’s seriously cool studio producing the narration and conversation for the podcast was a really great experience as well – while I’ve had prior experience in recording studios along with my own sound engineering pursuits, this was largely a new experience for me as I’d not recorded material anything like that before. It was a fluid and enjoyable session that, again, felt natural and not even close to being tedious. I did learn some techniques from Dan’s wise wizardry with audio that I will definitely take with me into future sound endeavours.

So this all brought us to the final product, which I have to say I’m pretty damn proud of. We aimed to achieve professional quality not dissimilar to what you might hear in a RadioLab podcast, and I feel that we marked pretty close territory. While we may not have been able to integrate every aspect we initially had hoped for, I reflect totally fondly on the process – could not have asked for a more energetic, passionate and thoughtful group, so bless the both of youse Dan and Sal. I have a newfound obsession with podcasts after doing this and a whole new perspective on the way in which mediums inform and dictate the progression of society, and what more can you ask for really.

Allow me to take you on a journey through what I think are five blog posts that pretty accurately depict the highlights of my experience in the course this semester.

Week 1 Connections — The Nature of Blogging
In this connections post I think I articulate my introduction to the world of blogging pretty damn well. I consider not only what blogging means to me, but where it slots into the world of media and how it is significant in its own right as a very human-based medium.

Week 2 Connections — Noticing Media
Here I apply the art of noticing media to my own petty, material-ridden existence. What I find interesting about this post is the fact that as I wrote it I genuinely became increasingly aware of my media consumption, which I feel is translated through the post.

Week 5 Lectorial — Introduction to PB#3
I felt it was important to include this post as it most accurately reflects an initial idea I stuck to and feel that I executed to a fairly successful degree. I began to conceptualise how I could go about producing the third project brief and it’s interesting to see how much of the initial concept was, in fact, reflected in the final piece.

Week 4 Lectorial — Editing / Blood in the Gutter
This was a great lectorial that communicated ideas really well to me and that I think I responded strongly to. The discussion surrounding the nature of the edit was really clearly expressed and, as a result, I felt the need to really clearly reflect on these ideas. Not to mention the reading was awesome.

Week 8 Practical — PB#4 Brainstorming
I feel that this post depicts the excitement and buzz surrounding this assignment that I began to experience from the early stages of putting it together. I really enjoyed the whole process of the fourth project brief and this was one of the highlight creative and collaborative moments for me.