Lecture one with Hugh Davies

LECTURE ONE WAS REALLY REALLY INTERESTING AND BECAUSE OF IT, I WAS HOOKED FOR THE REST OF THE SEMESTRE.. GREAT JOB HUGH.. THANKYOU!!

Week one with Hugh.. in the Agora theatre..July 30, 2013..

Hugh welcomed us to exploring media arts, so for those of you who have had Hugh before, you would understand Hugh’s methodology of delivery. He will go through this in class and the content too. As of today, all the class material will appear by the blog.. exploringmediaarts.wordpress.com and you can get information about lectures, tutorials and assessment. Hugh went through the website and urged us all to go in and the homepage is where all the latest information and material will come up. All the lectures are outlined here and the way this is structured, there are a range of themes, image, space, sound and atmosphere, in particular, spatial and temporal is woven through all the subject headings and there are three weeks for each subject heading, this week and in the following two weeks. The aim of this lecture is to think critically and analytically and the point is to develop skills theoretically and practically and in the tutorials with Hugh, Shannon , Felicity or Joel. There will be a range of tutors and it will change a lot as well and in the first few weeks there will be several changes as people are working to expert areas and there are eight tutorial groups. The headings are fairly solid but they may change and in terms of themes; image, space, sound and atmosphere… There were a whole eight tutorials, one was started on Thursday afternoon and if you struggle, then 2pm to 4 pm on Thursday and well the conspiracy theories are not true, tutes begin in week 1. The purpose of the tutorials is to digest lecture information and put in practice your own making of work, talking about media and art, so exploratory process needs to be articulated back.. The methodology is not through handouts and exams but it is from getting in there and playing. If you have an academic blog keep it, if you have wordpress, set up a blogger one or if you have blogger then set up wordpress.

Hugh discouraged people from using TUMBLR, he finds it locked in as far as what it can do, not enough flexibility, it is for finding images on the internet and posting them, not really something that is all that necessary for this course. Perspective within a context of media  arts. Media arts within a context of history, so basic engaging with perspective and next week, collage.

He skipped through a lot of content, as it was hard to read  and you can check on your own computers.. Today and this week is about perspective. Perspective within a context of  Media arts, people think is, contemporary within a context of history. Today, basic engaging with perspective, next week is collage and then the following week is emulation and the first assignment is due in three weeks. Through projects and tutes build to submission in three weeks. Some people may be more experienced so there are different levels.. He intends to do this with all assignments, if you feel challenged, there is scope to address that. Copy one of these images.. I took the first image and these projects are scaled for different levels of difficulty. Some may be more experienced.  This is something he intends to do with all assignments, people are coming in with different skill sets. In terms of support, lots of tools here, blogging engines, sound editing, video editing, so go in and get a basic understanding, once you understand the principles it is applicable everywhere. This goes for sound and video imaging. Every year there are updates, so each year in terms of skills, they will need to be updated, understand and use all the interfaces, we are using adobe premiere for example. That is what employers want to see, don’t think, oh no, I need to do a course, you can learn it all yourself. Today set up your blog, set up URL to it and send the link to Hugh and whichever tutorial you are in. He will put all the links to this page.. First name and first letter of second name will be there. Sometimes readings and lectures don’t always link up, sometimes they are more tangential…This week the reading is a video.

This looks like a Wes Anderson movie, in terms of the font. Apart from looking like say Moonrise Kingdom or Royal Tennenbaums, if you watch the whole film, it is two hours, we can watch today or alternatively read the book which takes about two hours but he recommends the film over the book. A2, always black and white, it is important in terms of the images, be seen in color.  John Berger said that a large part of seeing depends on habit and convention, perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder. With the invention of the camera, we did not see everything travel to a single centre, I approach and pull away , this is I, the machine, recording one movement after the other, I coordinate all points of the universe, he explains a new way of the world unknown to me. These words come from the movie in 1928, The Man with the Movie Camera. The camera can only be in one place at one time. The camera is based on your eye, when images hit your retina they are upside down, your brain flips reality so you see things, it can be reversed, scientists hand out mirrored glasses so it flips your vision, so switching two times, it is part of what the brain does; physiological perception, volume, mass and texture correspond to the eye. What the brain does with the images, how we fit them within a constellation is explained in John Berger's book, Ways of seeing!!!!