Academics Material Digital Culture Politics & Economics Real Life
by Justin
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Goldsmiths: Autumn’s Final Fortnight
Really need to get this post finished before heading back up to London for the ice-encrusted start of Spring Term. So, here’s a compressed summary of Weeks Eleven (30/11 – 4/12) and Twelve (7/12 – 11/12).
Notes, as ever, under the cut.
Goldsmiths: The Ninth Week
In the real world, it’s January 2010, and I really need to finish typing these up before I go back – allowed a massive backlog to build up over the last few weeks of term, so forgive the multi-week delay.
In the Ninth Week (23/11 – 27/11), I ventured out into London, with events at the RSA and Hackney’s SPACE. As the week drew to a close, attempts to pull myself back into some kind of life structure & emotion balance were destabilised by a (as it turned out, relatively minor) health issue … which I dramatically overanalysed, sending my mind spiralling inwards … leading to my abandonment of Friday’s classes in favour of a flight back to rural Sussex & the solace of family.
From before then, though, a photo of the most enjoyable part of the week – the epic quest to Hackney for Usman Haque & Adam Greenfield (on which, more below), and the surreal return via Canary Wharf. It’s always good to get out of New Cross, and check out different bits of London – keeps me sane!
This week’s notes follow, under the cut.
Goldsmiths: The … uh, Eighth Week?
Rapidly losing grip on reality. Reading week disrupted normal time and space, propelling me into a whole world of messed-up circadian rythmns and academic guilt. I’ve was told the week after (the week before the one that’s just gone – confused yet?) was the Eighth Week (16/11 – 20/11), but I’m not so sure …
This week, one of my friends from undergrad was down in London. She’s studying for a PhD on the mating behaviour of massive scary ants, and was learning how to radio-tag insects as a guest of ZSL. Having been woken by the fire alarm test an hour after the start of my Wednesday morning American Lit seminar, I needed exciting animals and zoological facts to cheer me up – so legged it across town to meet her at London Zoo. Hence the photo, which is sufficiently odd to stand as an illustration of Week 8:
Course notes follow, below the cut.
Backchat, some thoughts
Having penned a short definition of ‘the backchannel’ for December’s Wired UK (see subsequent celebratory arm-flailing), it was with a tightening stomach that I read this blog post from web researcher danah boyd:
“… I walked off stage and immediately went to Brady and asked what on earth was happening. And he gave me a brief rundown. The Twitter stream was initially upset that I was talking too fast. My first response to this was: OMG, seriously? That was it? Cuz that’s not how I read the situation on stage. So rather than getting through to me that I should slow down, I was hearing the audience as saying that I sucked. And responding the exact opposite way the audience wanted me to. This pushed the audience to actually start critiquing me in the way that I was imagining it was …”
An interesting discussion of the way an audience can rapidly become a mob, in all it’s pitchfork-waving, windmill-burning glory – full kudos to danah for being so open and honest about the whole thing. There’s also something interesting (and faintly disturbing) about the journalistic/political side of this.
Goldsmiths: The Sixth & Seventh Weeks
What’s up internets? It’s been a while …
Week Six (2/11 – 6/11) was a reading week, so no timetabled classes. Instead, a bit of frolicking in London, a trip back to the Sussex countryside to see the parents, the peculiar voyeurism of watching novels being penned (keyboarded?) in real-time on Google Wave, and a concerted effort to finish the bulk of a diagnostic essay for my Digital Media course.
M&M at the Tate Modern, with Joseph Beuys‘ installation, (The Pack):
Goldsmiths: The Fifth Week
Fifth Week (26/10 – 30/10)
I’ve fallen a bit behind with these, but this week is reading week (half-term), which gives me a bit of a window to catch up. In retrospect, I seemed to spend a significant chunk of week five in pubs and flat kitchens, hanging out with other MA students. Great fun, but – outside of timetabled workshops & seminars – not particularly conducive to productivity. Also managed to fit in a couple of trips to London town, and an aborted attempt at research training.
Ooh, look – it’s Canary Wharf:
Goldsmiths: The Fourth Week
Fourth Week (19/10 – 23/10)
First tentative forays in student radio. 15 minutes of cheese. Nic Clear (of The Bartlett) talking about his ‘Architectures of the Near Future‘ project. Insomnia. Successful NHS registration. Mouse in the Matrix. My continuing inability to buy a winter jacket. How Like a Leaf, an excellent book-length interview with Donna Haraway.
Photo of the Richard Hoggart Quad:
Goldsmiths: The Third Week
So, I’m shifting these MA updates from a fortnightly to a weekly format. The ideas and theories are coming thick and fast, and – frankly – I’m struggling to hold them in my mind. Here, blogging & note-taking are tools to pin down the vague and the evasive … forcing permanence, turning thought-processes into texts …
There’s a need to trace the trajectories of meaning, the superimposition of ideas, as you can mark the trail of a star in long exposure photography. Highlighting the unexpected links and parallels, I can hope to trace the genealogies of resonance // the ideas I find myself returning to (unconsciously), time after time … invariably, the things in which I’m most interested.
Strong with the photography metaphors, this week. As a loosely linked aside, here’s a photo of Deptford Town Hall, from my increasingly temperamental Nikon camera:
Ace. So, what happened in this, the third week (12/10 – 16/10)?
Goldsmiths: The First Fortnight
At the end of September, I left rural Sussex for the bright lights and concrete decay of southeast London – where I’ve just finished my first fortnight at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I’m studying for an awesome Masters degree in new technologies and digital-type-things. To balance the relatively hardcore heart of the programme, I’ve also picked some contrasting (slightly “lighter”?) option modules, which I’m hoping will help me slant the degree towards something a bit more engaged with issues of representation, narrative and political economy …
Assuming I’m not distracted by something shinier along the way.
Here’s some spiel about the courses I’m taking this term, and what we’ve looked at so far. I hope it’s of some interest …
Film & Multimedia Games & Play Politics & Economics Real Life Speculations
by Justin
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Stateside Superstructing, Some Notes
I return from the mirror world with a surnburnt nose/forehead combo; a bag bulging with books, papers and wallcharts; and a brain almost literally humming with new inputs. Along with @mathpunk, @rtgarden, @stevepuma and @genebecker, I was representing the Superstruct game community at the Institute For The Future’s 2009 Ten-Year Forecast in Sausalito, California.
Through communicating & mediating my experiences of the game to the other conference attendees (representatives of some of the big organizations in the economy and public sphere), in an environment heavy and humid with ambient information, I was able to link up some ideas that have been floating in the recesses of my consciousness, assembling and superstructing them in interesting ways.
Before the event in question, I was in San Francisco for a good 6-7 days – immersing myself in the city, and scoping out the lay of the land. At once strange and familiar (embodied above and beyond my experience of the city through film and the media), the real San Francisco threw my mediated experiences into focus – the American sitcoms syndicated endlessly on British TV are now five, ten years out of date. This, then, is an emerging social imaginary; a land of corporate bail-outs, green-collar jobs and (as @mathpunk was later to tell me) hybrid hypermiling – in which we can see the overwhelming drive of the competitive, of the concrete challenge … even when it risks endangering the self.
