Material Synthesis: Negotiating experience with digital media
"Given the accessibility of media devices available to us today and utilising van Leeuwen's concept of inscription and synthesis as a guide, this thesis explores the practice of re-presenting a domestic material object, the Croxley Recipe Book, into digital media. Driven by a creative practice research method, but also utilising materiality, digital storytelling practices and modality as important conceptual frames, this project was fundamentally experimental in nature. A materiality-framed content analysis, interpreted through cultural analysis, initially unraveled some of the cookbook's significance and contextualised it within a particular time of New Zealand's cultural history. Through the expressive and anecdotal practice of digital storytelling the cookbook's significance was further negotiated, especially as the material book was engaged with through the affective and experiential digital medium of moving-image. A total of six digital film works were created on an accompanying DVD, each of which represents some of the cookbook's significance but approached through different representational strategies. The Croxley Recipe Book Archive Film and Pav. Bakin' with Mark are archival documentaries, while Pav is more expressive and aligned with the digital storytelling form. Spinning Yarns and Tall Tales, a film essay, engages and reflects with the multiple processes and trajectories of the project, while Extras and The Creative Process Journal demonstrate the emergent nature of the research. The written thesis discusses the emergent nature of the research process and justifies the conceptual underpinning of the research."
(Sasha McLaren, 2008)
McLaren, Sasha (2008). "Material Synthesis: Negotiating experience with digital media", MA thesis, The University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Parsons' Masters in Design Studies Programme
"Design studies (like design) is a multifarious enterprise. A branch of the humanities, it comprises a wide range of critical perspectives on the meanings and values embodied in objects and places. It examines the forces that design exerts in, and on, the world - forces design sets in motion but does not control. Parsons' Masters in Design Studies program places particular emphasis on four points: the role of the designer and the design studio in redefining the scope of practice in the 21st century; design as an iteration of aesthetic and intellectual histories that continue to inform the present; the social, political and environmental behaviors and consequences of designing objects, places, situations, and systems today; design as the projection of different futures.
Above all, the MA Design Studies program focuses on the development of articulate, critical voices that can speak to these issues. Students will be prepared to write for the academic context, the design community, and the larger public realm. Working in close proximity to MFA studio programs at Parsons, they also have the opportunity to integrate film, video, and other media into their work."
(Susan Yelavich)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Examination of Theses in the Creative Arts: The Exegesis
"4.2 The main purpose of the exegesis is to support and complement the creative work by providing the context and background of the creative work. The Degree Rules state that the exegesis must ‘provide a rationale for the techniques and strategies adopted in the creative work and must situate them in relation to a theoretical and/or historical cultural context. Where appropriate, it may include a sustained account of the creative process.
4.5 In communication, the exegesis will provide an analytical documentation of the creative work. The exegesis will provide, for example, an analytical documentation of the creative production, a parallel critical support to the body of work produced, or a contextual, polemic extension to the broadcast work.
4.6 In design/illustration, the exegesis may take a number of forms, for example, an analytical documentation of design/illustration process and/or field research, a parallel critical support to the project or body of work produced or a contextual critical review of the project.
5.0 Word Length
5.1 Although there is no prescribed word length for the accompanying exegesis it is recommended that this should normally comprise 12,000 - 25,000 words for a Masters and 20,000 - 35,000 words for a Doctoral submission and should not normally exceed 40,000 words excluding appendices, tables and illustrative matter."
(The University of Newcastle, Australia, 28 August 2009)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
MA taught courses at NTU School of Art and Design
"The School of Art and Design's dynamic and exciting postgraduate courses place a strong emphasis on creative approaches to contemporary practice, research questions, practical outcomes and theories.
We offer a comprehensive, vibrant and inspirational range of taught MA courses, providing the opportunity for students to truly specialise and develop their individual skills."
(Nottingham Trent University)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Sister Midnight: metamorphosis, alienation and collapse played out in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
The ongoing femicides in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, a real and socially relevant and current, ongoing news story is something that I will attempt to present using comic art, adapting Kafka's story to use as a foundation for visual treatments of real horror. The themes of metamorphosis, alienation and the collapse of a family unit are shared in Kafka's text and the news coverage of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The comics medium will be used to communicate with the audience and have them interact with the issue.
I first heard of the situation in Juarez from my Spanish teacher while in Guadalajara, Mexico and the story stayed with me. A very different Mexico was depicted closer to the border than what I had seen in my experiences of travelling around the country. The ugliness of the murders is heightened by the ongoing corruption that surrounds them. I feel confident that I can now give the story a worthy visual treatment, something that has been lacking in recent film treatments of the situation. For years, young women have been preyed on by rapists and murderers while commuting to factories on the outskirts of the city. The killings continue and, to use imagery from Kafka, the men who commit these crimes are like vermin or cockroaches.
Fig.1 David Valente (2010). "Sister Midnight". Nottingham, Issuu.
Fig.2 Screen-shots from the music video for The Drive In (2001). 'Invalid Litter Dept'. USA, Grand Royal / Virgin: 6:07.
['Sister Midnight' is a comic book created by David Valente as part of his MA in Illustration at Nottingham Trent University (UK). The comic book was developed through a process of experimentation and discovery where Franz Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' was used as a study for exposing contemporary social issues in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.]
CONTRIBUTOR
David ValenteSHARE
