Research & Development 310MC

Over the Christmas Break

Thanks to all of you who presented on Thursday the feedback from tutors is generally good with some impressive work and also impressive research on your blogs, well done.

If you haven’t yet presented and haven’t been in touch you need to e-mail your tutor so that we can see you straight away in the new term.

Research over the Christmas Break : Download project proposal form 310mc

We want you to think carefully over the Christmas break about your ideas and solid proposals for your final project.

You will be asked to pitch your proposal in the second week back after the holiday, so some time in the week beginning 12th January 2009.

We have provided a form that you need to follow to structure your pitch. We have based this on a real life example of a pitching process required by Channel 4 for their new 4ip initiative.

The structure is just the same. It is short and to the point the idea being if you cannot communicate your idea in a few sentences then the idea is probably not clear enough for them to back or get excited about. Think simplicity, creativity and clarity.

Download the pitching pdf: Download project proposal form 310mc

E-on Protest Work

Lots of students produced good work around the E-on protest against new coal fired powerstations. I would like to show some of this work and link to it on Covmedia

If you have produced some work that I can link to please send an e-mail to nicholasmid@googlemail.com and I will place it on Covmedia.

Presentations Thursday 11 December

The presentations need to be kept to three minutes and to be structured around the questions in the previous post

• Paul Smith’s Group will be in ETB04 From 9.30am to 12

• Karen Arrand’s Group will be in ET130 from 10am

• Jonathan Lee’s Group will be in ETBO4 from 10.30am

If you have any problems in being able to make the presentation then please get in touch with your tutor.

Towards the end of the week I will place a pdf on the blog that will give you guidance on how to begin to structure your ideas for your final project. You will present these ideas at the beginning of next term.

Have a good break.

Friday 5 Dec No Lecture

There is no lecture this morning but Jonathan Lee wil be meeting with his group at around 11am or soon afterwards.

Mez will be running her wordpress surgeries in the afternoon on Friday.

Use the time between now and next week to prepare your presentations and finish off the documentation of the process on your blog and or in your workbook.

It would be sensible to use your blog as the tool for the presentation that you make next week.

Times for the Tutor groups for presentations will be posted on the blog early next week.

Visiting Artist 2pm GSG22

Alicia Paz is talking about her work in the Graham Sutherland buildingat 2pm. Definetly worth a listen described by Time Out her work is “disarmingly entertaining comic style paintings of women”. Her work combines imagery from different genres and sources from fashion magazines, sci fi and mass culture sources.

E-on Protest Nov 28th

Thanks to all that turned up to the E-on protest at Westwood Business Park. Although not a huge demonstration it was interesting to see how it was organised and how many police were in attendance.

Below are some links to news sites with images and some links to video material that you can use if you weren’t able to get along to any protests. The idea is to edit a response to this protest or the issues in an experimental form. These artefacts can been shown in your tutor groups when you next meet either this Thursday or Friday.

Archive Links:

Links discussed in the lecture on Thursday 4th December:

George Monbiot on the Climate change committee report:

Climate Change Committee recommendations

Links to E on protest material:

Some images can be found on the links below:

http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/

http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21821

http://marcvallee.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/eon-greenwash-guerillas-protest-281108/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7754157.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7535389.stm

Videos of other climate protests:

http://www.mefeedia.com/tags/eon/

You Tube Video

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQDazA80jA

Friday 28th Nov

I will be at the Westwood E-ON site from 11am onwards.

Steve Dawkins will be speaking about pdp at the friday session first thing and I will also put this info up on the blog.

Links for E-ON Mini Project Friday 28 Nov

Here are some of the links from the Thursday Morning Session collected by Jonathan. The idea for the mini project is to create a response, and an experimental response is encouraged, to the 48 hour protest against the power company E-ON. Protests will be going on during 28th and 29th of November and the one in Coventry is focused on the UK headquarters for E-ON which is situated on the Westwood Business Park. 

The idea for the mini project is to create a media response that is no more than 3mins in length, this is to be done in small groups, within the small groups you can work on individual elements and then bring the elements together. The work produced in the small groups can be added to the work of others within the larger groups to be shown next Friday the 5th of December.

Cape Farewell

http://www.capefarewell.com

 

Video portrait

http://www.dalzielscullion.com

 

 

Ravi

http://www.surely.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/patriot/patriot.htm

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy Snowballs

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/greenpeace-backs-wonderful-giant-snowball-art

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2007/jun/19/canarthelpclimatechange

 

Here are some of the ideas generated by you in this mornings session.

 

Jonathan asked you to think about producing different responses and the headings are below together with the ideas.

 

Create Work

 

 

Three Minute Wonder

 

Whats your problem with the world?

If you don’t say – we don’t know.

 

Space around you moments of passion

 

Follow the tidy up

 

Follow the Eon cleaner

 

Follow onlookers – others involved kids apathy.

 

Pro coal stuff.  Only one side of the argument.  Try and make them look silly.

 

Follow a new eon employee push the whole credit crunch thing.

 

 

 

Photography

 

Knee level shots, shoes.  Lower regions

 

6 or 7 disposable cameras collection of different viewpoints

 

Go dressed up – as elvis  “Am I in the wrong place?”

 

Comparison to football crowd, escapism like minded could the common cause miss the point.

 

Regimented non-punk 

 

Shots from inside eon

 

Look at the space – not just same old demo shots

 

Photoshop the protest shots – change the slogans on the banners

 

Dress up as an eon employees

 

Free burgers – COAL COOKED

 

 

 

TV Advert

 

Fill a truck with coal dump it in the sea

 

Eon ad accidentally get protest – day today style

 

Eco dam – cost of building an eco friendly power station compared to the black stuff

 

Black screen – didn’t have the power to make this ad

 

Candle light – the power of the future

 

Stereotype of Hippies – ‘Hello I’m a hippy’

 

Comedy sketch – protest department

 

What’s the point of coal unless we burn it?  Are we wasting a natural resource. Human fragility rather the global.

 

 

 

Music Video

Bono please bring your sunglasses

 

Bono & Al Gore  Goreno

 

Cartoon music looney tunes,  juxtapose anger with comedy

 

Found footage of famouse march

 

Gallery Instalation

Record sound of protest – plus banners

 

Audio – slow it down

 

Space changing – people getting board.  Mirror feeling of a protest

 

Interactive screens person choice room, three choices.

 

Beijing – photos of people click and hear opinions

 

Tangible coal – piles of –

 

Subway – for and against wall personal opinions.

 

 

 

4 stages

Pre-Production                  Production                    Post-Production                   Exhibition     

 

 

 

 

 

Protesting advice

http://www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/defendantsguidetoarrest.htm

 

Photographers rights

http://www.urban75.org/photos/photographers-rights-and-the-law.html

 

 

 

http://www.dalzielscullion.com/works_page/film/another_video.html

Thursday 27th Nov Mini Media Event

IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU ALL COME ALONG THIS THURSDAY FOR THE 11AM START.

Jonathan Lee is going to be talking about the possible ways of responding to the event as media producers. The event itself lends itself to creative responses both in terms of spectacle and power.  

In following up from Ewa’s visit she mentioned an event and demo happening two miles from Coventry City Centre at Westwood Business Park at the enregy company E on’s UK Headquarters. As a media event it will be interesting to see how it works and the detail of why people are bringing attention to the company and issues.  A link to the geographical location is here : http://www.eon-uk.com/maps/Westwood.aspx

The event which is part of a national action day against climate change, called 48 HOURS OF ACTION AGAINST E.ON AND NEW COAL  can be checked up on at : http://www.e-onf-off.org.uk/home.html

A local group organising something at Westwood has a facebook page at : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34220633837&ref=ts

The 48 hours of action happen on the Friday 28th Nov and the Saturday 29th of Nov

Have a look at the website before Thursday and look at the info on the site, links to other campaigns, support information, banner templates etc. How is the technology being used to support the purpose of the demo?

Friday 21 Nov Links

Here are some of the links to the sites and videos that I showed today in the lecture. There are some extra ones as well that I didn’t have time to mention or show.

One of the links was to the Bert is Evil website that was initially set up by a young boy who photoshopped Bert from Sesame Street into various compromising situations. One of which was Bert and Osama Bin Laden.

A guy that has talked a lot about this new form of convergence and participation is Henry Jenkins from MIT. Below is a video of one of his lectures, its long but worth sitting through.

The image circulated from the boys internet site was copied by protestors who montaged together a protest poster and then was picked up by CNN and finally the Sesame Street Lawyers for infringement of copyright.

We looked at how such distribution technologies are currently producing new and interesting phenomena like the viral spread of videos like Charlie Bit my finger and how this spawns newly produced content.

I posed the question what this torrent of data and content and our access to it might me. How might it impact on our perceptions and preconceptions about the world.

An interesting guy who has been asking similar questions is Hans Rosling whose site Gapminder tries to liberate and make visually understandable complex data collected by the United Nations. His software that is able to visualise data is online to experiment with at www.gapminder.org On this site there are also links to many of the lectures that he has given such as the www.ted.com lecture series.

His 2006 lecture is a good starting point.

Jonathan mentioned to me another group that is doing work on the visualisation of data in interesting ways called Stans Cafe which can be found at : http://www.stanscafe.co.uk/ofallthepeople/index.html

Finally I showed a video called A vision of Students Today by Micheal Wesch and his students studying Anthropology.

Another film that he and his students produced was on web2.0 technologies and their impact particularly on education.