#intergrativepractice

Setup of final project was today. I chose to have my project displayed on the higher table so that when people looked down on the screen they wouldn’t have to bend over as mush and also provided a seat for people to sit at if they wish. I’m still a little worried about how clear it is for the audience to know that they need to mouse over each of the panels to display the source of the sounds.  After talking to Pete we also discussed the possibility of getting the program to play the sounds as you moussed over each of the images. I had initially tried to implement this idea but failed to do so after many hours of trying. His other suggestion was to have a video of the action in process in order to communicate the idea more clearly and produce the sound but with the lack of time available to me I don’t think that I will be able to produce that in time.

This Monday Laurent managed to give us all a heart attack by asking us to present our work without using our Tumblr blogs or and words explaining the purpose of our presentations. Although it may have been amusing to see us scramble it did have a point as we were given a week to have these presentations ready. For my presentation I decided to continue on with Petes idea of having the user interact with the work and allow them to see which sounds related to which part of the car. This extra time also meant I was able to further the interrogation of theses sounds a bit, I used a bit of photoshop and editing the text flies to create unique patterns and colours. Despite having the extra time it has come Monday and I still feel like there is much more I could do. In a similar way to the interrogation of movement this topic has proved to be more in-depth than I originally thought and there are many areas I must simply miss out due to a lack of time and planning.

Now I realise I haven’t had many blog posts relating to my interrogation of my inanimate object and the main reason for this was I was stuck on what to do for my interrogation. Initially I had misunderstood the brief and so have already done five different variations on a background created using the sound of my car engine but I thought that I would like to expand on this idea a bit further. Without much idea, I decided to talk to Pete and he said that it would be interesting if I could take even more sounds from my car and simplify it down. He suggested that I take the sounds of my wipers or the door closing and so I did this and was able to create 5 different sound images from these recorded sounds. These images were then edited using the text editor to further interrogate the object. Pete’s suggestion was to also show the parts that are being heard/seen in the sound image. That became my final project and therefore I created this image that shows each of the different sounds as images and their actual counterparts.

Only issue was I failed to remember how landscape and portrait works -_-

Link to my soundcloud with the original sound files:

Initially I found the position not necessarily out of my zone, but I would have preferably gone for literally any other role as I like to discuss and go into depth about the research regarding the topic, however due to the fact that I was designated the position of the practical member of the group I was unable to immerse myself in other desired areas. 

I thoroughly enjoyed discussing the topic of ‘instincts’ and the ideas surrounding with group members - more so engaging in discussions with Marlo and Sujay and partially with Kong. I was able to in a sense understand the knowledge of each group member with a perspective similar to that of an analytical member and therefore it made my job of the practical member easier. Essentially how I saw this process was the job roles Quantitative, Qualitative and Theoretical were all base parts of research and understandings to which were processed, synthesized and sorted to a cumulative point where it could be refined and expressed as an outcome by me.

As a result by understanding all domains of knowledge I was able to properly integrate different aspects of the philosophy behind the topic of instincts into the chosen medium of expression - poem. I guess this worked in my favor to a certain degree as my English skills have proven to be reasonable in the past, but usually directed towards Essay writing.   

It would be important to note that prior to the actual practical area, it was a bit frustrating/problematic waiting for others to decide and figure out a mutual agreement of what they wanted to show as an outcome that could appropriately reflect their work. It was intriguing challenge that at times seemed a little humorous as I was trying to make my poem rhyme while being meaningful but it ended up sounding cheesy as hell. At the end of the day I was focused on their being deeper meanings behind the poem some of which I actually did not deliberately integrate into the text. 

Some of the main points I felt resonated from my poem included relevance to nature- the fact that we are born with set instincts but also gain instincts through experience, whether this be forcibly or for beneficial purposes. It created new pillars of understanding for me personally helping me to immerse myself more in the topic of instincts. An idea of this new understanding could be through a minor example of evolution, though of course in the larger sense it takes millions of years for primates to evolve, but in the sense of developing to a more sophisticated level due to our surroundings. I attempted to show the idea of environmental influences through a rough atmosphere in wild (in the poem) and how these instincts ‘kicked in’ so to speak rather than were actively learnt - most probably for the point of survival. 

“His poem is about a person reacting to an unknown environment, the environment is hash; which emphasises the importance of instincts. In the beginning, a person is listing a few human instincts “Sweat, pain, fear” (Sue, 2015). These individual aspects all help us in surviving.”

REFERENCE: 

Reflective Statement

By Matthew Hart (http://thecaptainunderpantsconspiracy.tumblr.com/)

I found this project exciting as I had to do something which I had never done before and I ever thought i would do. Never in a million years did I think I was going to eat lamb brains or even brain for the matter.

I was placed in Group 6 with Amanda, Aaron, Matt V and Kento and was given the Practical role. I think our team worked well together as we all bought new and unique ideas to the table in an interdisciplinary way of what we were going to present for this assessment. We came up for the idea of the project being food based after one lesson where we were all hungry for the up and coming lunch. Then we listed food which we have not eaten or cooked before and brains were the lucky choice.

Being the practical person, I was originally nervous that I was going to cook everyone's meal as i cannot cook for the life of me but I was relieved when everyone in my group was going to cook their own dish. My research consisted of looking at the physical structure of the lamb brain and relating it to other meats to see what would be the best way of cooking it. The brain was quite crumbly so i boiled it to keep it together better for any further cooking. Frying seemed to be the most efficient way of making tasty brain nuggets so i went with that.

Being the Practical person, I felt obliged to edit and create the video presentation for the class this morning as it was a part of my role to the group. I'm really proud of my group for even tasting the brain monstrosities that we created and for having a little taste (even you Matt V). It was awesome to see the interdisciplinary methods and ideas from all of us when creating our meals.

i think I could have done a bit more research than I did but I found it quite difficult to find information online about eating brain (apart from the wide range of recipes). But I did find a bit of information about the overall structure of the lamb brain compared to other meats for the purpose of digestion.

Our end artefact was the performance itself, which resulted in a difference delivery as opposed to a purely contextual presentation. Having the qualitative role, I explored the underlying thoughts and ideas. I was the logical candidate for conveying the general idea of each of the two ideas we explored in the performance, being the double slit experiment and Schrodinger's cat. After which, qualitative explained the formulas, theory explained the wider implications and philosophical meanings, and analytical questioned some of the ideas. All awhile practical conducted the experiments.

I feel this was the best way for us to legitimise the intra-disciplinary topic of quantum superposition. This is a whole new realm of physics, one which questions everything we thought we know about the universe. It has staggering implications which is why it is a discipline which more people should familiarise themselves with, if just the qualitative knowledge. Those who wish to dive deeper can then explore the quantitative knowledge afterwards to understand the reasoning for the qualitative knowledge.

I found the qualitative role challenging as it was hard not to wonder off into other roles. The quantitative side was easy to stay away from, however I think that I crossed a bit into the analytical and theoretical side. Definitely not for the majority of the task, but some of the research component at least. I found that I wanted to put the pieces together and understand them, which is how I related to analytical, and I wanted to research some philosophical takes on quantum superposition, which of course relates to theory.

Furthermore, being the qualitative role during research caused for some strenuous times because the topic at hand was one which relied on quantitative data to provide proof to theories. This meant that there was not as many underlying thoughts or readings published, and those that were contained too much jargon for me to comprehend.

This is by far the most confusing project I have ever been given. The whole scenario is so cryptic and there are too many new big words. The way James and Clint assorted us into groups was very effective as it forced us to be with people who you probably haven't been with before along with being given a specific color which defines your role in the group.