PROJECT DEVELOPMENT SYMPOSIUM MA Creative Writing MA Critical Arts Management MA Cultural & Media Studies MA Digital Film MA Digital Photography MA Media Writing MA New Media MA Theatre Practice: Creative Producing

15—16 September 2011 Base Room: Studio 55 Keyworth Centre Keyworth Street SE1

CREATIVE MEDIA ARTS

MASTERS PROGRAMME

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Day One: Thursday 15 September

10.00—10.15

Introduction to the Day

Studio 55 Phil Hammond

10.15—12.30

Project Workshops This session will be run in three separate clusters, as follows: 7Writing Cluster (Studio 55)

Facilitators: Karlien Van Den Beukel / Anna Reading / Colin Harvey

Second Years: Marion Lakah, James Gbesan, Arti Dillon

First Years: Adebowale (Debo) Oriku, Christopher Jackson, Andrea Hamilton, Ruth Jones

Video and New Media Cluster (K204)

Facilitators: Chris Elliott / Patrick Tarrant / Tahera Aziz

Second Years: Andon Kamenarov, Vanessa Pellegrin

First Years: Andre Gomes, Gemma Whelan, Stanislaw Slupczynski, Daniel Fenton, Phillip Figueroa

Arts Management, Theatre and Arts Education Cluster (K205)

Facilitators: Philip Sanderson / Andrew Dewdney

Second Years: Natalie Campbell, Abisola Akinrele

First Years: Marina Saura, Hannah Smith, Maria Chiriac

Photography Cluster (K206)

Facilitators: Paula Roush / Katrina Sluis / Daniel Rubinstein

Second Years: Zoe Van-De-Velde

First Years: William Davis, Carrie Hancox, Bexy Cameron

This morning’s session is a chance to workshop your project research (first years) or dissertation (second years), beginning with a short presentation or overview (these should be no longer than 5—10 minutes each). You may wish to prepare a brief (one page) summary as a handout (please prepare copies before the session, not on the day). You may use other audio-visual material as appropriate, bearing in mind that the standard equipment

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you’ll find in the room is limited to a computer and data projector. If you have any other requirements, please arrange these in advance with Gordon Kerr and the Keyworth technical team.

First Years: Presentations for the proposal stage should include an outline of the aims and objectives, rationale, relationship to core dimensions of study, reading and theoretical material with some reflection on where you take the project next in terms of research and development. Presentations should demonstrate your progress during the self-directed study period of the past two months of the research and development work related to their project. You should have made some progress building on the feedback from your tutor(s) from your initial proposal. Presentations should include some critical discussion of reading and theoretical/research material: how can this help your project? You are also expected to relate your project to the four dimensions of study as suggested in the Unit Guide: Project Research. You are expected to outline how you have developed and experimented with prototype ideas and how you are keeping a record of these and a plan for the autumn term. You are asked to consider what project idea development problems would be helpful for your group to explore with you in the 10 minute question and answer workshop that could help give your project further direction. Second Years: Presentations should outline the idea(s) you have been developing over the summer for your dissertation. You should have made some progress since the June symposium and are reminded to look at the Unit Guide for guidance. You are asked to consider what dissertation idea development problems would be helpful for your group to explore with you in the 10 minute question and answer workshop that could help give your project further direction. There will be a follow-up session on this on Day Two.

12.30—1.30 Lunch for students and tutors A buffet lunch will be available

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1.30—3.00

Centre for Media & Culture Research Seminar Studio 55

Guest Speaker: Nicolette Barsdorf-Liebchen, Bournemouth University

Representation, Visualisation and the Military Sublime Global digital news media are awash with images of atrocity. The existing debates often focus on the invidious aestheticisation of violence in the imagery, irrespective of any journalistic/artistic intention. This paper seeks to go 'beyond' questions concerning complicity in violence in representations of war, to ask whether we should perhaps now be considering whether the very conditions of possibility of representation of the 'authors' of war ought to receive as much attention. Attendant upon this is the question as to the (im)possibility of representation of that which is sequestered, concealed and dissembled, and what the British photographer Simon Norfolk calls the Military Sublime: the notion of the sinister unrepresentability of the monstrous digital heart of darkness of modern military technology and global satellite surveillance capability, all jauntily deployed by asymmetrically powerful states to control, dominate and exterminate their 'enemies'.

Nicolette Barsdorf-Liebchen practised as a lawyer for several years before returning to academia to undertake PhD research at Bournemouth University. This paper, drawing on research presented a international conferences, is part of a larger project which explores and interrogates issues of visuality and representation, digital communications, surveillance technologies and the geopolitical conditions of their intersection.

3.00—3.30 Coffee Break

3.30—5.00

New Media Technology Workshop Studio 55

Katrina Sluis

To Google or not to Google? Making, thinking, writing and code

It is becoming increasingly impossible to make things, to write about things or to think about things without engaging in some sort of software performance. The web, the database and the network are all paradigms which influence arts and media practice and frame the contemporary production of knowledge. On one hand, software is kind of boring: it powers traffic lights, elevators, ATMs and iPads. Software and its algorithms are functional and largely invisible; the software interface makes the world of the computer intelligible and navigable. But is the brave new world of social software and Web 2.0 really making us more creative, connected and reflexive? In what ways do Google’s PageRank algorithm, Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and Yahoo’s Interestingness algorithm frame our encounter with images, sounds and texts? In this session, I hope to explore these issues from a practitioner’s perspective and help you to critically evaluate your relationship to the digital tools you use from word processor, to graphics editor, to search engine.

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Day Two: Friday 16 September

10.00—10.15

Introduction to the Day

Studio 55 Phil Hammond

10.15—12.30

Parallel sessions

First Years Research Methods Workshop

Studio 55 Daniel Rubinstein

This session concludes the series of research methods seminars by suggesting a number of new perspectives on the relationship between technology, power and knowledge. We opened this series by looking at Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology, in which he put forward the idea that technology has nothing to do with machines, equipment or rational thinking, and has everything to do with the way people who live in the age of technology see themselves, and others as means to an end. We later moved onto reading Michael Foucault’s work on panopticism, exploring the ways that power, control and discipline manifest themselves through such innocuous systems as a classroom, a children’s TV programme or a pop song. In the last session of this cycle we will be reading ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ by Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze broadly agrees with Foucault’s analysis of power, but he feels that digital communications, the Internet and globalisation shift the focus of power from systems to networks. In preparation please read Postscript on the Societies of Control’ (available on the MA Blackboard site) and review the two previous texts by Heidegger and Foucault. Key text:

Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, October, Vol. 59 (Winter, 1992), pp. 3-7.

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Second Years Dissertation Development Workshop

K204 Phil Hammond

Following on from the workshops on your work on day one, you should come to this session prepared with a one page outline for the MA dissertation that you would like to develop over the coming two terms. This is normally a written dissertation of between 12-15,000 words. Exceptionally, students may do a dissertation in another form, in agreement with their tutor and the course director. The outline should include: the theme, a rationale for the study, the overall research question, a brief literature review, suggested methodologies or forms of analysis. You will further clarify your idea in terms of aims, objectives, rationale, methods, research design and articulation. We will discuss your idea and help you develop it. MA Dissertation deadline: Friday 4 May 2012 (60 credits).

12.30—1.30 Lunch for students and tutors A buffet lunch will be available

1.30—3.30

Parallel sessions

First Years Progressing Unit 2: Project Research

Studio 55 Chris Elliott

Reminder of core elements of the unit that you were introduced to in June.

Exploring various and appropriate forms of research for different kinds of projects, including practice as research.

Extending and developing your project work through wider reading and contexts.

The criteria for assessment and discussion of the form(s) your project would best be assessed (e.g. it might include some practical prototypes or experiments, along with some written work).

Project Research deadline: Friday 9 December (30 credits).

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Second Years

Progressing Unit 4: Project Evaluation K204

Hillegonda Rietveld

Reminder of criteria for the unit (aims, forms of assessment etc.).

Reminder of the principles of critical evaluation at PG level: How have you found this applies to your own project?

How are you relating your project through the four dimensions of study?

What additional reading have you done over the summer? Project Evaluation deadline: Friday 9 December (15 credits).

3.30—4.00 Coffee Break Break for informal student discussion in preparation for the Course Board

4.00—5.00

Course Board, Evaluation and Feedback Studio 55

Chair: Andrew Dewdney

5.00—7.00

Anna & Colin’s Leaving Do Edric Theatre, Borough Road

As most of you will know, Anna Reading and Colin Harvey are soon leaving

LSBU to start a new life in Australia. Today will be their last day at the university. Please join us for farewell drinks!