Tagged: learning

Interpreting the gaps – lecture notes

  • Documentary wants to engage with the world and change our understanding of something. It is never just art for art’s sake. Documentary changes how we notice and experience our place in the world.
  • Art can be for itself: eg, ballet for ballet, music for music: not every song has to be a political commentary, etc.
  • Adrian mentioned a bot sending a news story, and more information can be found here.

This morning, two minutes after the earthquake struck, the USGS Earthquake Notification Service sent out the details of the earthquake and its location and strength to anyone listening. At that same moment, Schwencke got an email: a story on the earthquake was ready to be published. Though Schwencke gets the official byline, the Quakebot does the dirty work. Indeed, the biggest delay in the story going live was the time taken for Schwencke to roll out of bed, turn on his computer, double check the Quakebot’s accuracy, and press publish.

  • Designs change. We used to think we’d always need journalists, but do we? Based on the bot, maybe not.
  • Learn by doing –> By trying things out, as Anna said, we learn what we like: we learn what kind of filmmakers we want to be by making films.
  • Media specific criticism matters. TV has been defined by advertising = four ad breaks = a very specific structure.
  • Experience design –> eg the wedding example from last year.

Thinking about learning

Learning by doing: making, reflecting, making again. We can only learn how to write essays by writing essays.

  1. Learning is individual
  2. Learning is contextual
  3. Learning is relational
  4. Learning is developmental

Reflection helps to:

  • Understanding what we already know
  • Identify what we need to know in order to advance understanding of the subject
  • Make sense of new information and feedback in the context of our own experience
  • Guide our choices for further learning
  • Reveal and make explicit tacit knowledge

Taking stock: what do I know  –> Reflection: what do I need to know –> Feedback and Evaluation: how much and how well do I now understand –> Planning: how can I take my learning further –> Repeat

The learning process is incremental.

 

 

The ways in which we are connected – various thoughts from the week

  • Relations – media as a relational thing, eg the components within the frame/
  • Tacit Knowledge – knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. Egs: facial recognition, the notion of language itself, riding a bike
    – We know more than we can tell
    – Tacit knowledge as ‘artful doing’
  • Process
  • Problem-based learning = learn research skills, critical thinking, content, contextualising
  • Cycle and Reflection = return to problem and think about it in what ways it is now different and from this make new decisions.
    – make, test, critique, make changes
  • Roland Barthes:
    – disenchantment with both established forms of writing and more experimental, avant garde forms which he felt alienate the reader
    – art should be critical and should interogate the world, rather than seek to explain it
    – search for individualistic meaning in art
    – attempts to dissect and expose the misleading mechanisms of bourgeois culture
    – limitations of signs and symbols, and Western culture’s dependency on beliefs of constancy and ultimate standards.
  • Constraint as liberation – frames 10, 40 and 70 minutes into a film
  • Multi-linearity
  • Entanglement
  • Sketches: suggest and explore, intentionally ambiguous
  • Specificities matter much more than generalisations
  • Juxtaposition
  • Multiplicity: being in two places/two things at once
  • Readerly Texts: classic texts presented in a familiar, linear, traditional manner. Meaning is fixed and predetermined. The reader merely receives information.
  • Writerly Texts: reader takes an active role in the construction of meaning. There is a proliferation of meanings and a disregard of narrative structure.

 

The question isn’t to be or not to be

The question is HOW to be.

I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake this week with my readings and lecture posts, but they are coming I swear! This subject has caused me to stew endlessly about topics I didn’t realise I was interested in but then ultimately just re-post interesting things I find online as my thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations. (Ie, I spend too much time on Tumblr.)

I’ve been looking back over the first couple of weeks of this course, and I’m struck at how simple but profound it is to make the content relevant. In one of my typical mid-semester uni meltdowns about the future and whyyyyy is life so hard, I was brought some kind of solace in Adrian’s words from week three (possibly not verbatim, please forgive my note-taking skills): We are invited to dance. We don’t know how the dance goes; we don’t even know the first steps. But this is not a reason not to dance.

So with these words and a constructivist perspective in mind, really all that is left to do, is do. We learn by doing, we learn by making. In making we show our thinking, and fwock all I do is think/overthink. The only way to learn to ride a bike is by riding a bike. <Insert more cliches that are actually insightful and helping me with my life here>

How am I supposed to know what I want to do or at least in what direction I want to take my life and career without experimenting and trying out different things? We considered in the first week why we are at university, and I think that might be a big factor: the opportunities for experimenting and playing with different fields are almost endless. RMIT definitely know what they are doing in that regard.

The last few weeks have also seen me ask myself ‘What if’ more times than I care to admit, and outside of a design framework this question is easily applied to life. What if I joined this club, or wrote this article, or posted this clip I’ve been sitting on for months, too embarrassed about what might come of it. Embarrassment is overrated. There’s no time like now to be brave, and what is the worst that could happen? Yes, publishing online is permanent and media professionals success and failure is largely based on reputation, but who is going to fault someone for trying something new, taking a risk. There’s nobody I admire more than those willing to put themselves out there, take the fall, laugh at themselves when it all goes wrong.

I’ve had a few projects on the back-burner for a while and I’ve been inspired to bring them out. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. What if we all just took the leap? Why shouldn’t we just do it?

Life is a mess. But I don’t think that’s necessarily, or even at all, a negative thing.

Here is a thing I did – from my current scrapbook/ideas/notebook: my original ‘blog’

Naming the boat

Here she is, the ‘CLAY KNOWLEDGE‘. (All capital letters, thank you very much. As Gaga would say, it’s about the details.)

I hope Adrian doesn’t mind as I’ve taken this concept directly from his own post about the knowledge of clay, and I think it’s a pretty accurate representation of what this blog will be: thickly messy.

Spin it, pound it, fire it, paint it. Use tools, fingers, hands, palms, fire, water, colour. It is thickly messy. That is knowledge. Information? That’s the clay, as a lump and not anything yet. The potter, well, there’s knowledge there, and in the hands, and in the clay.

Using a Wheel

  1. Smack your clay. Throw it firmly from hand to hand, smacking it into a ball shape.
  2. Dry your wheel. This will help the ball of clay adhere to the wheel once it starts spinning. The last thing you want is a ball of wet clay flying across the room.
  3. Have some water. Place a bucket of water where you can easily reach it to wet your hands while you work.
  4. Throw the clay. Throw down the ball of clay as close to the center of the wheel as you can, then press it down into a conical shape.
  5. Start spinning. As you build up speed, wet the clay, and with one hand on the side of the clay lump, and the other side on top of it, ease the clump towards the middle. Use the upper hand to keep the clay from flying out of control.
    • You can tell the clay is centered when it no longer looks like it’s wobbling, but sitting stationary in the center of the spinning wheel. Don’t stop spinning.
  6. Wet your hands. Then work the clay into a cone, then press it down into a thick disk. Repeat this step a couple times.
  7. Push a thumb into the middle of the spinning mass.
  8. Push 4 fingers into the hole, and work them around until the hole is as big as you would like. Continue working the hole, using a hand on the outside of the clay to shape your pot.
  9. Work slowly. Gradually pull the clay up with even pressure, until it’s the desired height.
  10. Spread the top. If you want it a bit wider at the neck, just pull back with your inside fingers. Don’t do it too hard.
  11. Remove the finished pot from the wheel. Wet the wheel (not the pot) and using a stiff wire or fishing line, and holding it with both hands, pull it from the back the pot towards you until the pot is separate from the wheel.
  12. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for finishing and firing your clay pot.

But will it ever be finished and fired?

Don’t stop spinning.