Thursday 20 October 2011

camera, action and supervisory session

good day today (well kind of) but will come back to that later, I dont wont to spoil things now i am on a writing flow..........this morning online session with SE ref. IPR was informative, I think im getting there and now we have requested more time is a relief. Im going to make some notes from that session to help myself think...here goes:
Intrtoduction (50-100)
Summary of rights (organisations) (300)

what I do & why IP is important to me? (100)

discussion of critical issues in your practice...evidence from  (1000)
1.case studies from your practice
2. case studies from your lit review

summary of findings (with focus on relevance in your practice) 300   (total 1800).

I think im going to look at copyright, seems to be the most relevant to me, in particular to research (papers) and virtual application (i.e. blogs, educational tools to enhance and inform leaning etc etc) Ive looked at an article on the Guardian ref live chats (June 2012) 'Live Chat: intellectual Property Rights' I hoped there would be something to watch on youtube, but unfortunatly only a blog showing highlights (dull)! why have a live chat and not post it up as a recording event for all to see??? anyway through that article I have found 'Web2right' focuses on cultural and practical technologies (web 2,0) that are being deployed to engage and communicate with staff and students across HE and FE education...this is a grey area and is still unfolding, Ive printed lots off but it is only the foundations, I need to locate something more gritty that is cutting edge and what is interesting case study...this is as far as Ive got other than buying yet another book 'Waterstones guide 2008 guide' and yes its all about Intellectual Property Rights..!!

....moving on to grander things and what I have based todays picture on (show studio) is my online supervisory session with SE (2:30-3:45) I have to say wasn't expecting it to go on too long as I did not have much to report since our last meeting 2 weeks ago. (although I have made contact with Ian Truelove ' Leedsmet Wednesday am to discuss Cagd website) but thats it...so busy all the time! oh and there was London visit.
...right I need to write the conversation down whilist still fresh in my head and get it typed up onto doc supervisory form to send to SE. SE mentioned from last meeting about bringing back his online 'portfolio' as a vechicle for me to use for ddp, this is still not confirmed...SE also mentioned talking to Eric Bohemian about his work with design studios...to question what he has done, outcomes and direction...(so shall email)

now comes the hard bit...I must get into the habit of recording conversations, I have a dictaphone and I don't use it?? whats the point...so I make life hard for myself and scribble frantically and then it doesn't make sense...
...ok here goes, what properly started the conversation is I guess is the IP module and the fact that I dont want my focus to be a 'Virtual' one, (so should I scrap the Virtual research, hell leave it for a minute) so only in the sense that it will used as a tool for students to perform their creative journey through, evidenicing creative sitiuations. A window if you like to the wider audience.
so the Aim is then to capture and communicate the dynamics of the design process through some form of time based media. The process should be seen as a living outcome, the raw product. SE relates time to music as being part of it, in terms of the rhythm, where as the design process works on lots of different speeds...but doesnt music conform in the same way, working also to different speeds particulary when creating a sound the same issues are still there, I wounder if SE is suggesting in time and space, that it stays where it is and the design process can allow itself to be interpreted, no what rubbish, that isn't right?? i will have to ask him again..
questions to ask myself: 1. could the 'design process' be a part of time flexable condensed down (showing key parts) or not? ; 2. how can I show the performance of the design process in a way that is engaging and lends itself to an immdediate appreciation as a process but also a product?; 3. could the design process be a step through journey with the designer?; 4. how do I see design process as a conceptual narrative in education.
what is the purpose; firstly using showstudio as point of inspiration, could I employ the effectiveness of their website and put it in an educational one, to focus on the process, as the final product, SE said something rather interesting in that when seeing an exhibition of final works is easy to read and understand, however a room full of design processes takes more time to digest and will need time to think over; just had a thought there about music, who would want to see the process of making music?? wouldn't you rather see the end result is that the difference SE was referring too(perhaps not). finally to show the process as product through the use of time base media; to use as assessment, peer learning, e-Portfolio and industry etc etc. did I get it all, need to over.  laslty I discuss with SE that I would be learning myself how to film and edit as part of my portfolio. SE suggested that this could contribute to capturing timebased creative work, recording the creative narrative..think about what is important and what isnt. A CHAllenge...not about the recording but about the making, the collaboration, the individual journey...signing off 

Next meeting date is scheduled for thursday 17th November 2:30-3:30 

Tuesday 18 October 2011

London visit

London visit: Tuesday 11th- Friday14th October 2011










Highlights from the London trip:
Tacita Dean at Tate Modern, The Unilever Series her response entitiled 'FILM' is a slient 35mm looped film projected onto a monolith standing 13 metres tall. pretty impressive as a visual output, however I did feel abit dissappointed that 1 you could not see it from walking into the Turbine hall and 2 I guess I was expecting something different??..Deans 'The Sea, with a Ship; afterwards an Island 1999' Blackboard drawings Three parts, each 244 x 488 cm, were breathtaking, and innovative
I came away totally inspired and in awe of these large scaled, memorising works...here is an artists talk from 2006 http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/26649826001

from the show:
Tacita Dean is a British artist now based in Berlin, best known for her use of film. Dean’s films act as portraits or depictions rather than conventional cinematic storytelling, capturing fleeting natural light or subtle shifts in movement. Her static camera positions and long takes allow events to unfold unhurriedly. Other works have attempted to reconstruct events from memory, such as an infamous thwarted attempt to circumnavigate the world.
Dean’s interest in the cinematic also extends to her work in other media. The Russian Ending 2001 borrows its title from the early Danish cinema tradition of making two alternate endings for a film: one happy for the American market and one tragic for the Russian market. In this work, Dean annotated postcards of catastrophes with director's notes.
Many of Dean’s works show the ways in which architecture can be transformed by the camera's lens. Craneway Event 2009 follows the choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) and his dance company rehearsing in a former Ford assembly plant, built of glass and steel and overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Dean’s film allows the ever-changing light of this environment to fall in rhythm with the dancers’ movements.
Dean will be making a new commission especially designed to respond to the architecture of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The Unilever Series has become renowned as one of the most exciting and impressive contemporary art exhibitions in London each year and will be free to view.
Video Link http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/1211868281001


From the show: Grayson Perry The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum
Video link http://bri.mu/r0v6jH
Grayson Perry curates an installation of his new works alongside objects made by unknown men and women throughout history from the British Museum’s collection.
He’ll take you to an afterlife conjured from his imaginary world, exploring a range of themes connected with notions of craftsmanship and sacred journeys – from shamanism, magic and holy relics to motorbikes, identity and contemporary culture.
Vases covered in witty captions, elaborate tapestries and the centrepiece, a richly decorated cast iron coffin-ship, will be displayed alongside objects from the past two million years of culture and civilisation. From the first great invention, the hand axe, to a Hello Kitty pilgrim hand-towel, you will discover a reality that is old and new, poetic and factual, and funny as well as grim.
‘This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the manmade wonders of the world…
The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.’
Grayson Perry RA, Turner Prize winner

Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings

Im saving the best till last and what a great find... 'the Wellcome Collection' 108 Euston rd showing a wounderful exhibition made up of Mexican votives, small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. The votives displayed in 'Infinitas Gracias' date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life - lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment - in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.

Sunday 16 October 2011

how to waste time researching by heidi donohoe






                    







yesterday and today I have spent time (and lots of it) researching, i have caught up on blogs, lastest news i.e. art, e-learning etc...which as always leads to one thing or another if the focus is not there (that is if im not too sure what i am researching and just hoping that some sort of 'ha ha' moment will occur) you can spend an awful lot of wasted time, going off in tangents and ending up nowhere! which I do often and is something i tell students not to do. anyway this is what I spent time looking at..going off on lots of different strands, but interesting ones all the same..


Bradford W. Mott et al. argue, in "Towards Narrative-Centered Learning Environments", that, by enabling learners to be co-constructors of narratives, narrative-centred learning environments can promote the deep, connection-building meaning-making activities that define constructivist learning. They do so by providing engaging worlds in which learners are involved in story-centred problem-solving activities.

One of the central tenets of constructivism, Mott et al. remind us, is that "learners should be engaged in active exploration and develop an understanding of a domain through challenging and enjoyable problem-solving activities." By exploiting the familiar structures of story and the practices of story-telling, narrative-centred learning environments enable this active engagement explicitly.

The significance of narratives is two-fold. First, by means of narrative experience learners are transported to other worlds in a manner that is compelling and real-seeming. Second, learners perform the narrative: they are active in drawing inferences and experiencing emotions, again in a real-seeming way. As such, according to Mott et al., narrative is an effective tool for exploring the structures and processes of meaning making.

They cite Bruner (1990), who defines narrative as "[a] unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors". The meaning of these constituents of narrative "is given by their place in the overall configuration of the sequence as a whole - its plot or fabula."

Allan Parsons...

In terms of the schema being developed through this blog, some slight vocabulary changes may be necessary. The first involves the performative dimension of narrative, noted by Mott et al.. The kind of environment being constructed could more precisely be defined as "narrative-performative learning environments", implying a constructivist approach to learning, as Mott et al. state. In this approach, we would argue that both museums and libraries potentially are "narrative-performative learning environments".

The second shift is to move from the use of the phrase "meaning making" to that of "sense-making", in which insights from ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism and Goffman's presentation of the self are incorporated.

In this way, narrative is taken as an aid to sense-making, by means of which the world and other people are made intelligible to oneself; and by means of which self-and-other make the world mutually intelligible for one another. This engenders a cycle of embodied interaction whereby worlds are brought into being and into play. Such worlds exhibit regimes of sense and order, which are performatively maintained and sustained, materially, in terms of the environment, and behaviourally, in terms of the body.

In short, the vocabulary of "meaning making" is shifted onto that of "sense-making" and "order-making", along with a vocabulary employing such notions as intelligibility, mutual intelligibility and world making, under a performative (constructivist, non-foundational) ontology and epistemology. The goal of this shift of vocabulary is to develop a clear understanding of what a performative approach to constructivist learning implies.

John Seely Brown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-MczVpkUA&feature=player_detailpage discusses 'tinkering as a mode of knowledge' heres what I remember from 'you tube' link. Create knowledge by experimentation..look at ways of fostering imagination...create, reflect and share based on a culture that usues peer learning! (Peer based learning communities). new types of learning environments where the teacher is seen more as the mentor, orchastrator etc. He mentions 'Tinkering' does the thing I have built work? and concrete things...ground truths ie why? 'Authority' is it as good as I think it should be? this is all about tinkering with ideas around us and being open to critism, ask good questions, find things we dont know..he uses as a metaphor 'architectural studio' to describe all working progress made public...



Isobel knowles You were in my dreams..


I though this was interesting concept by Isobel knowles... The germ of the idea for 'You Were In My Dream' began with the idea of putting a viewer's head onto an animated character via a live video feed. We were struck by the strange feeling you get from watching your disembodied head transformed into another universe. http://vimeo.com/isobelknowles/youwereinmydream although it looks strange...I like idea as a different approach to learning...you could become anything, a no. a letter, a character in history etc...

Thursday 6 October 2011

IP research and chocolate

umm chocolate, topic of Intellectual Property online session this morning with Stuart...I think Im starting to understand it, however not enough to realise where it fits into my practice! although saying this I have started some research looking into 'research papers' (who owns them??) covered in a live debate in The Guardian, 8th June 2011, interestingly enough Steve Wheeler covered the topic in his blog last week..so I may go down this route?? t has to be interested as it does prove to be dull reading! I had a skype session with Stuart today (at last...) I was worried about what exactly I was going to discuss with Stuart, but should not have been as all flowed well. We discussed development of research, in terms of more reading (ie literature review) theories relating  to finding new knowledge..where are those 'missing holes and opportunities', I own up to not doing much of this in awhile, so need to get on with it.
I talked to Stuart about making contact with Ian Truelove at Leedsmet, ref: CAGD. I want to look at the mechanisim of the website (does it do what it says on the package?)..this I shall do tomorrow...Stuart is also keen to look at setting up again 'Openfolio' perhpas to work on together, not sure? and perhaps to do some work with the MA students potentially next Jan to May or October to December 2012...we shall see.

 

Research

Today has been better..online with Stuart (9:30am) discussing IP starting to get it now...I have done some research but still considering what to relate to my practice which means i need to read more to really good a good understanding, however I must admit I am finding it incredibly dull!