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transit point
The weather turned cooler this morning: autumn is finally here. Thank you, god. Every year, this transition works on me like the beginning of spring does on normal people – it’s the moment when fogginess and torpor give way to bright clarity. This time last year I was doing my PhD confirmation and getting ready…
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update from abroad
After a lovely, wintry European break, I’m now into the fieldwork I’m doing in the UK as part of my PhD. Spent an interesting day with the capture wales team at BBC Wales, as well as meeting some participants from canllaw online, who will be participating in the train-the-trainers digital storytelling workshop that I’m observing…
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Activating the research ‘subject’
I’ve been aware of David Gauntlett’s ArtLab project at Bournemouth Media School’s Centre for Creative Media Research for a while, and keep meaning to post briefly on it. The ArtLab studies represent a new type of research in which media consumers’ own creativity, reflexivity and knowingness is harnessed, rather than ignored. In these studies, individuals…
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I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas
Well, the white christmas may not work out, because it doesn’t always snow in Dec/Jan, I know that. But the fact remains that I am going to be in the UK from just before Christmas until the end of January, so all my UK co-conspirators, colleagues and cronies, look out because I may lob on…
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I’m confirmed!
So, today I fronted up and performed my PhD project in front of a whole bunch of friendly and informed interlocutors from the faculty. All went well, even my impromptu comedic voiceover to the video which mysteriously lost its soundtrack. All good. More photos at my flickr page – click on this one to get…
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mapping vernacular creativity v. 0.1
[updated: see here] Axel has asked me to provide a more concise definition of vernacular creativity so he can link to it, so here is a chunk from my recently submitted confirmation document that deals with what I mean by the phrase, and what I think it can do: The Idea of Vernacular Creativity This…
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Hypercreativity and Techno-Utopianism
So, the puzzle my Phd tries to solve (how creativity, cultural participation and the ‘democratization’ of technologies fit together) comes out of the hype around two converging ideas: the increased availability and production power of digital technologies for content creation and distribution (see Anne’s pointed mini-critique of some of this) and ‘creativity’ as life-fulfilling, as…
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Creativity, play and communication
Thinking aloud here about some stuff that occurred to me while continuing to read Speaking into the Air this morning. You probably won’t want to read this unless you live inside my PhD with me (messy in there, isn’t it?). These thoughts also go some way to explaining what I was getting at with my…
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Real thesis thoughts
Late in the day, two readings from my own field helped me to place some bricks in the hole where my sanity and my conviction about the political importance of “ordinary” grassroots cultural production used to be: Jim McGuigan’s The Cultural Public Sphere (MS Word), and Chris Atton’s The Mundane and Its Reproduction in Alternative…
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a picture of the inside of my head
As if anyone needed further proof that the pathway to a complete PhD is far from smooth… Here’s a mindmap of the current conceptual state of my thesis, made in a fit of OII-stimulated inspiration on the train to Brighton while sleep-deprived a couple of weeks ago. It’s been sitting crumpled at the bottom of…