Outdoor Library

I think I've found a great place to do some writing.

My local library has this beautiful outdoor section that combines the best things for writing - sunshine, fresh air and the ambiance of 50-100 people doing the same thing I am.

It also is surrounded by a few coffee shops and a couple of nice parks, so when a break is necessary there are places to sit and enjoy the coffee.

It's really important for me to get up and move around, and a lot of my best ideas come in transit. But it's quite hard to write them down as I'm walking so to have a variety of pleasant places to sit and watch the world go by is great, because I sit and put paragraphs of thought into Evernote, then prop my Evernotes up next to me when I get back to writing.

I used to just walk around and repeat the ideas to myself in my head in the hope they would become -ingrained, but because so many ideas come flooding through at once it's important for me to get them all down.

For instance, I was writing the 'Immediacy' section in the first chapter yesterday, and realised that immediacy itself is a cultural theory, more focussed on the transfer of the content and the general desire of the people, but as soon as the focus lands on the media object, hypermediacy presents.

It seems like a pretty straightforward realisation but I've been treating the two ideas as distinct entities. However, when I read some McLuhan and Foucault, I got a better understanding of why I saw them as separate - and how they fit together.

This also had a great effect on my actual chapter, as I pulled a whole bunch out of the initial 'Remediation' section and stuffed it into where it should be - Immediacy and Hypermediacy.

The chapter now resembles this a little more:

New Media

Understanding New Media

Immediacy

Hypermediacy

Remediation

- New Media sets up the context, explaining what new media is (participatory interactive digital stuff), and a series (well, three) approaches - leading to Genealogy as (to quote Ed) the horse I'll back.

- Understanding is the introduction of Bolter and Grusin and how their theory is derived from the multiple NM approaches, functioning as cyclical rather than linear.

- Immediacy explains transparency and the cultural/linear desire that operates from then until now.

- Hypermediacy explains opacity, and the object based perspective that functions more from now until then.

- Remediation explains the overall theory as a genealogical concept, based on the archaeology of the object (THE INTERFACE). In this way, Remediation can be seen as a somewhat unified approach to both archaeology and cultural theory. It also sets up my interface for investigation (theatre's fourth-wall) as well as offering terminology with which to do so.

So Chapter One works as a mini-essay, but also a stepping stone into Chapter Two.

The thing about the next two chapters is that I'm thinking Two is Arch-focused and Three is Gene-focused. This means that chapter two will tell a linear story from the point of the fourth-wall, from inception to rise and to fall. Basically, it will be the tale of immediacy in theatre.

Three will work backwards, but not exactly in linear fashion as Hypermediacy exists both prior to and after the Wall. It is a fractured tale but that's what genealogy is all about.

Still undecided exactly which way to handle the last two chapters but I'll knock out Numero Uno and go from there.

Off to the Library!

Nuances

Alright, so I've been offline for a few days because I'm actually writing.

Anyway, the big thing for me has been twisting things into shape, inserting paragraphs into other places and all that sort of thing.

Tonight I finally stumbled across the idea that finally brings my whole essay full circle. What it requires is a return to my old essay with the ideas from my new essay. It looks a little like this:

New media
remediation
immediacy - lot
hypermediacy - little

the wall history and archeology (working forward from the rupture)
immediacy - realism
hypermediacy - non realism

the contemporary wall genealogy (working backward)
immediacy - little
hypermediacy - lot
new media

It has that nice feel of circularity, which instead of just being a device I like lines up neatly with the genealogical approach. It also gives the ol' Remediation a context, the (intangible) wall an archaeological standpoint and the contemporary wall a link to both the archaeological and the new media angles.

It lets me visit what I've already written but combine it in new ways - and makes for very sporadic writing. I can rip 500 words out of nowhere, then spend two days staring at an ancient paragraph, wondering where I should put it - or if I should keep it at all.

I've been pretty ruthless too, as ruthless as someone can be that keeps almost every version of everything ever written.

The point is that I've made a little more progress and I'm trying as hard as I can to keep it up. I've adjusted my methods, my sleep, my eating and my work all in order to make it happen, and the best I can do is a little shift.

The question is: are nuances enough? We'll wait and see

The Hangover

One thing that's good about hangovers is that for some reason I seem to do all the little things that've been building up, like washing or cancelling my internet contract.

Sure I feel like an echidna had a restless sleep in my throat, but I also have the residual sugar from too much beer which gives me the energy to do the neglected tasks.

I'm at the place where writing should start to come a little better, but because the little things have built up they've turned into a big thing, a stumbling block, and if you're going to feel like shit you might as well do something productive to pass the hours.

So today's mission is to fix the little stuff and get everything ready for some serious writing. I feel as if the writing is something I can do daily now, which is a real bonus, like each day I can put aside a few hours here and there and get some words out.

Neal said something about printing it all out, cutting it up and moving the paper into new arrangements before taking a photo and restarting. Sounds very much like a Foucaultian genealogy exercise.

Now I'm just rambling. See? Not so great for constructive work, but the hangover still works for getting things done.

Wedding

Preface: trashed.

I united two of my disparate groups today (undergrad and work). The most humorous thing was that both myself and the 'groom' (lesbian wedding) had a lot of the same friends.

I drank with both sides and spent a good hour just myself and Thom, talking about Honours and such. I also spent the same time with Fiona (currently a PhD candidate) in conversation.

We are all the same. I tried to pick up some girl, but she didn't get my ideas.

I wrote to my super, but she never replied.

Us 'academics' are ostracised. We think we're okay but we automatically move into each other's spheres. Thom's doing ancient Greek theatre and Fiona's doing hoarding in ADHD children, but we're all the same. We find it hard to relate to the rest.

I'm finally in a good place for writing, but in general I feel like an interface between everything. 

I'm tired, lonely and disconnected, but I've never felt more attuned with connecting others. At the same time I personally couldn't feel worse, seeing the clicks between everyone and seeing my own personal gap.

This is so alienating, especially for a performer (absolute team player) in experience, but it is also strangely illuminating and empowering.

But I'm cold, the girls have left and I'm tired sit his is a good time to call it.

Enter the Jewish forms of 'good luck' and 'congratulations' and we're done.

Much love to Krissy and Illana -

- Josh 

Write when you can

Twofold.

When you have spare time, write and; when you have ideas, write.

When you can't do either, read, but write as you read wherever possible, even if it isn't in the traditionally academic way.

I said earlier I've had writer's block, but that isn't strictly true. I've actually written thousands of words over the last fortnight - it's just that they don't quite work at the necessary level of current quality control.

However, as I've noted previously, editing is my bane. As such, the more I have to edit, the better the product.

I've been on a serious bender of theory writing but this has bred ideas, and while they're certainly lacking the required expansion, the fact that they are (digitally) tangible words in the same vicinity as my reasonable work makes them all the more likely to be used - and used fruitfully. 

I look at these half formed sentences and sketches of ideas and while I lack the time to address them in full presently, I can see where they might lead both in terms of my current writing and potential future research.

It is frustrating as all hell, but if they weren't there they'd be in my head and consequently depriving me of even more sleep than my present capacity entails.

Long story short: write when you can and don't beat yourself up when you can't - it'll come when it/you're ready.

G'night.

Ethics - approved!

As the title states.

Win! Now I can sort interviews proper.

On another note, I wrote some cohesive words today, basically looking at the differences between media archaeology, media genealogy and cultural theory.

I read a great article in the realm of psychology that clearly drew lines between archaeology and genealogy, specifically in terms of Foucault, which finally made the distinction clear for me.

MA is the qualitative. MG is the qualitative drawn from the MA. Sounds simple, but man it took a while to figure out.

Almost punched a customer at work today, but in the bright side, if I do get fired I'll have more time to write.

And on that note, time to eat, sleep and hopefully have a productive day tomorrow.

But just before I go: Ethics - approved!!!!!

The Wall

I have hit it in a big way.

Not the wall I've been writing about, but the wall the general populace speak of in regards to not being able to go anywhere.

Yeah, I've been sick. Yeah, I have writer's block. But the thing that got me the most was the fact I had the same dream as my oldest friend on the same night.

I was with my girlfriend. We were absolutely in love, the way that comes around once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. There were no pretenses. There were no walls. Leah was there every now and then and we were all happy, celebrating something. I think it was my birthday. Leah had a friend but I couldn't see her very well. It didn't matter. It was the perfect day.

Leah sent me a text this morning. The friend was Brooke (a good friend and an ex-housemate) but otherwise the details were near identical. The thing is, Leah (and Brooke) lives twelve-hundred kilometres from me and we see each other roughly annually. My girlfriend isn't real (I'm single), but we had dream-perfect descriptions of her, as good as a dream can be considering the shifting nature of dreamstuffs.

I woke up at 2:30am and as I gained consciousness I lost the glow of the dream. I entered the harsh reality, the headache, heartache and malaise of someone who has been in a once-in-a-lifetime love and is currently isolated due to Honours.

I didn't blame my choices. I thought about them. I couldn't stop thinking about them, and I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't cry either. That's not a new thing, but it might have been useful considering the circumstance.

Instead, I turned to my research for solace. I put on a fairly thoughtless, immediate program and watched it until I fell asleep.

You know what? That shit works. 'Realism', even in cartoon (anime) format, is a great way to ignore what is actually happening, or bypass it in the interim of being absorbed into the representation of something else.

The sleep I had was shithouse, but it was sleep I wouldn't have had otherwise.

When I crawled out of bed I read. Then I wrote a little. The reading was wide and the writing slim, but it was in a reasonable direction, kind of laying the groundwork for things to come.

I went to work and I told a couple of my friends about my shared dream. They were as surprised as I, but took the whole thing pretty well.

Then a girl walked in. We talked a bit. I didn't do my usual customer service jokes either. Instead I was me. She was she.

I'm not saying she was the girl from the dream either, but she had a fair bit in common. What was best was that she seemed to be pretty okay with me, no bullshit. It's hard to tell a dream in person, especially with the nature of dreams, but if two people can have the same dream then maybe dreams can bend into reality. Who knows?

I got busy and couldn't direct attention to anything non-work because my boss was around, but we caught eyes on the way out and hers reminded me of another dream I had years back.

They were the exact same shade as my son's, the one who most certainly doesn't exist. Not yet anyway.

I hope she comes back. I have nothing to go on other than a shared dream, a hunch and a chance encounter.

So the wall is here. Its more than writer's block, more than loneliness and more than a whole host of other things that get in the way.

But maybe there's a way to climb it. And maybe I'll figure it out. And maybe a hunch, a shared dream and a chance encounter is enough for more than just this wall.

Woodchopping

Writing little bits did nothing, so I wrote a lot.

I just wrote freely, and pushed out over 1K words in about an hour (in segments of course). It was halfway between and introduction and a plan, but really addressed what I was/am thinking and where it might go.

One thing that struck me was that my thesis is still changing. I thought I'd found where it was going and that I could write to that, edit a thousand times and be done, but my Super has thrown a spanner in the works which is moving it ever elsewhere, not just in terms of this thesis but in terms of my overall research arc.

I used to think this kind of thing was a problem (in a big way), but it turns out it is only a mild inconvenience (regarding temporary block). So long as I write when I can and don't when I can't, it isn't too much hassle.

What becomes tough is when I don't write/read/think for more than about two days, or if I do for more than five at a stretch. There is the need for a balance in there and I just can't seem to hit the nail, or when I do the balance shifts. Maybe I can't find it, because there isn't actually a balance at all.

Whatever.

What I do know is that there is a difference between media archaeology, media genealogy and new materialism and that the train of thought I'm following is somewhere between the three.

On a side note, I kind of invented an idea regarding insistent, persistent and resistant media (maybe I'll chuck in consistent while I'm at it - I typed it and sometimes mistakes work out for the best), but that was a little more related to my pursuit for after Honours, like my "Rockstar Barista" thesis, or my "Connected v2.0" project.

Anyway, the main point is that I broke my drought. 

Goodnight.

Writer's Block

I was sick all of yesterday so I stayed in bed, watched anime and did nothing Uni related.

What happened when I woke up today? I was still sick, but I read a few things and started to write.

By that, I mean I sat at my computer and rewrote a single paragraph about 400 times.

Massive writer's block.

I know what I want to say, I just can't shrink it down into English.

I asked The Boss for tips and she said to just write in subheadings, picking concepts or big readings and writing about them. I tried that for a bit but I'd been too long in the blockage so I wrote out a revised plan of attack and started looking up potential supervisors for PhD (which is looking slimmer by the day - especially if I keep writing like this) roles.

I like the look of one guy, but he may or may not be marking my Honours paper so I'm not certain about the rules. On the plus side, if he did take me on at least he'd have an idea how I write.

I'm really hoping a good sleep and an early rise will assist in my block. Kind of have a few thousand words I need to rip out...

Mediating/Mediatising

And there's the rub.

Mediating - semantically and in general usage - is a great thing for me, but Mediatising is where it gets hairy, and where I may need to go.

Theatre is the birth of mediation as we know it (so says my argument) but in order to rejoin the debate I might have to expand on the mediatising of theatre.

It sounds like a cute reworking, but the difference is monstrous. Zemmels puts it quite neatly in one paper, but this again needs to be pulled out of the greater whole.

Kim was spot on when she wrote about a 12000 word paper consisting of a series of definitions to be used in context and nothing more. 

M & M? Oh dear...

Re: Mediating Theatre

It's so simple.

The first chapter is still Remediating, but focuses on where the concept emerges specifically in terms of interfaces. New Media is interface based, and more specific to participation and interaction in terms of users and producers.

The second chapter is still centered on the fourth-wall, but explains the New Media argument in theatrical terms, offering The Wall as an interface, but consults theatre as a participatory/interactive media with users (audience) and producers (makers). The possibility here is to highlight theatre as the media form current media in all of its forms aims to remediate.

The final chapter still offers case studies - the same ones (Gob Squad and Punchdrunk) - but becomes far more useful in terms of both proposed staging and actual effect. GS stage in the most contemporary way possible to both New Media and theatre, while PD almost remove New Media entirely, but offer the experience New Media crave, itself almost a direct throwback to pre-fourth-wall theatre.

And all of this combines into the single argument that in terms of B&G, theatre is absolutely hypermediate, both today and in antiquity.

It also creates a more engaging read, highlights the fact that my own reading is further abroad, and makes a springboard to launch my future research.

Re: Mediating.. Possibly Re: Mediatising?

Or maybe I'm looking at the next step early (Cyberformance, Digital Theatre).

Props to Jason for reading too much, Ed to actually asking me questions, Larissa for knowing everything but feeding me only as much as I can chew and Daniel for writing in the way I can only hope to.

Workout

Short one because I'm at work.

Did my usual physical training sessions the other way around this week - with great results overall.

Spent much more time reading this week too, and I'm formulating ideas to be written proper (still jotting down words as I read) next week.

Hoping to see it work out the same way my workouts have.

New Media Uprising

Read a lot more than usual today, which had a pretty big impact on the words I wrote.

I read about Marshall McLuhan (specifically Understanding Media) and how his theories directly effected B&G, to the point where their book title is a remediation/pun on McLuhan's text.

I really like puns so I was more satisfied with my choice of theorist.

One thing that really struck me was the lack of theatrical discourse in B&G when compared to McLuhan. The Daddy Mc gives theatre a lot of air time, comparing it to film, television and newspapers, as well as giving it a bit of a look as a standalone.

B&G give it pretty much zero, except to comment in passing - or refer to theatre in terms of place (cinema and home movie).

This led me onto the train of thought that theatre is not new media, but much new media evolved from theatre.

Theatre clearly remediates other media, employing practically anything in pursuit of a show, but also remains resistant to new media in a few important ways - ephemerality, immediacy and locality.

Theatre disappears. Theatre is local. Theatre is not immediate - at least in B&G's terms.

What becomes my two fold problem is applying an interface to theatre (the fourth-wall) by which it may be viewed in terms of new media, then refuting the claim to immediacy that this media appears to warrant.

This is going to be fun....

Strange Day(s)

Today was a funny one.

'Strange Days' is a film that opens Bolter and Grusin's discussion of Remediation and sums up my day nicely.

I did a few of the more mundane things - another application of my ethics, a session at the gym and a quick meet with a friend back from Germany.

Following this I pored over a PhD thesis my Supervisor sent me from one of my potential markers. Larissa sent it my way for the obvious reasons (he's likely to mark me so become familiar with his work and quote him positively), but also for slightly more opaque reasoning (he writes in a similar fashion to me, structurally and in terms of how he uses and addresses content).

I got out my new media pen and paper (stylus and iPad) and attacked his opening chapter. There is some stuff to mine in there, but also a few things to potentially rebut, or at least recycle in a different fashion.

With some reading done and an ever-shifting perspective in hand, I sat down to write. I ended up writing more of an introduction than anything else, which then turned into an amusing ramble about why people don't go to the theatre anymore, which according to my ramble was because it is common courtesy to turn off your mobile phone during a performance.

THERE IS SOMETHING IN THIS, but probably not for now. It felt very good to get it off my chest however and the combination of new direction, alternate reading (that cites many of my sources by happenstance) and a little venting has me in better spirits about not only this project, but the future of my research/career.

I also revisited an earlier paper and found that there is specific reference to the theorist (Denis Diderot) behind the construct (the fourth-wall) I'm investigating. A good find.

All told an oddly productive day, but I'm left feeling the same way I do when learning lines. I know they're in my head somewhere, but for the life of me I can't bring them out. Only writing (time) will tell.

Redundant

What a horrible word.

All the same, it looks as if much of my writing so far hits the mark.

Why? Not because it doesn't function, but because it doesn't fit.

I read a bit more (lot more) archaeology today and a bit more (little more) intermediality too. My carefully crafted usage of remediation/remediating pretty much align with the A/I strains.

At first I was a bit bummed, but the truth is this train situates and specifies exactly why my choice of theory matters.

Rather than spend/waste my time/words coming up with clever usages (flowery) of slippage-heavy terms, it makes my selection clearer and more relevant.

I'm basically trying to argue that immediacy is the wrong way to talk about theatre, so instead of being cheeky, I need to expose (as directly as possible) why this is so. I say expose, because explore is the wrong way.

Exploration is in the reading, but becomes redundant in the writing.

Get it? Hopefully you will when you read it.

Le Fin.

Archaeology

Met the Boss and she liked what I'd put down. Said I was in a good space too.

She gave me absolutely spot on feedback. I write like a funny guy - but not like an academic, not exactly.

We had a laugh because she said the same thing about herself. We both get caught up in cool metaphors or cheeky descriptions, which in turn obscures some of the content.

The thing becomes to strip it back and dry it out. Big time.

Rolling from there, the Boss sent me on a mission to dig up some Media Archaeology (there's a cheeky pun for you) and gave me a few names, all unpronounceable, but full of good things.

Erkki Huhtamo was the first hit, and aside from being a media archaeologist, he has a few things about screens, panoramas and the like that coincide theoretically and historically with my line.

I'm going to spend a bit of reading time this week and re-work my chapters, so I won't go too heavily into the theory until the reading gets done.

Ed, Jason and I met up today too and Ed pointed out a few flaws in my writing that Larissa hit without highlighting - but it was nice to have them made properly open.

The main points of contention were the dual uses of remediation/remediating (which can be remedied through a more thorough analysis of the archaeological material) and there was something else but I don't have it on hand so I'll have to get back to that later too.

For now I really need to dig into something else entirely - food, then sleep.

Compilations, Comics and Weaving

With a little rest under the belt, I spent some time putting together a draft (3K) for Larissa to read/destroy.

My original plan was to have a Chapter One down, but instead I had half of Chapters One and Two.

I was a little worried about it, but Jason said I should just roll with it anyway - writing is writing, and better than no writing after all.

So I chucked it together and it reads like a comic strip in progress. Some bits are sketches, others inked and a few places have a splash of colour.

Looking over it, I can see good and bad spots, connections arising, overworked ideas, things that helped me arrive at certain places now proving useless, but the places providing stimulation for new writing.

I don't know what Larissa will say but I'm glad it happened this way, because the threads are the important part. Some weave together to make rope, others unravel, but even as they unravel the material is there to recombine into new weaves.

There's a great thread I found that moves through remediation into remediating, and does so from stage to screen via liveness and immediacy. I haven't played with the fibres yet, but I can tell it'll be a rope by the end.

And it all happens in the writing - and the space in between. If I write until an idea falls out, I write the idea down and go off to think about it for a while. Then I jot down the thoughts and write them back into the writing, and the process repeats.

Weaving the ropes and making the comics aren't too different.

Rest Day

Like exercise, if you never rest you don't get a chance to heal.

I'd been burning several candles all along their lengths and yesterday, I was properly burnt out.

Sure I went to work, but Uni work was out of the question.

Note to self: make more time for rest.

Not Enough Hours In A Day

I wrote more today, focussing on Immediacy, unpacking it further and I came across this great idea from Lahman about looking through vs looking at.

The two ideas respectively align with immediacy and hypermediacy, but offer another way of explaining them, which is really useful when you're sick of manipulating the same words repeatedly.

I haven't finished Chapter One's draft, but I'm plodding along. I have however started Chapter Two, and between them both I'm over my word count.

I also got the meeting set up for ethics, and provided that goes through this time I'm on track for interviews at the end of this month. I've got two pretty sure bets and depending on what comes out that might be enough.

On a note far more related to the theme of this post, I did some extra work on the INXS movie today. For those who know anything about Australian music history, I had a cup of tea with Tim Farriss while we were killing time between shots - and we talked about world politics and the nature of contemporary film and theatre.

I bumped into another lad (Steve Lopez) who I'd done a shoot with a while back and we had a great talk about acting styles and in particular the merits of non-acting - something I'm pretty keen to pursue as a line of enquiry further down the track.  

After the shoot I ran over to see non-acting in action via 'Einstein On The Beach'. The shoot finished early which means I only missed the first hour of the show, but I caught the last three-and-a-half. 

Yeah, it's a long piece. It absolutely lines up with what I'm writing about (it's a hypermediate epic), and it is a beautiful nightmare to watch.

At times I was totally rapt in the smallest things. A light hitting the side of a clock looked exactly like a crescent moon, and I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Other times I was taken with the spectacle, like the penultimate 'scene' when lights met machinery and floating boxes glided past one another as the bomb dropped in the form of a huge semi-transparent screen.

Einstein played beautiful violin. A tiny Asian girl sang 'Bed' all alone. The sheet music was clearly visible - and enormous.

I thought a girl was a dummy - until she moved.

And so much more.

And it was also madness/sleep inducing, but speaking of sleep inducing I'll have to get to that later.

Not enough hours, remember?

A lot is going on

I'm very tired.

I woke up early and wrote.

I went to the dentist. My teeth are very clean.

I came home and wrote.

I wrote more.

I went to the PhD workshop.

I got a gig on the INXS movie.

I went to work.

I wrote more.

I pulled three pomodoros in the morning and one in the evening.

I finished the words for 'Remediation' and started work on 'Immediacy'.

I got my paper back from Shae.

I learned the difference between co-authored and individual publication.

I realised I have a whole host of publishable work.

I realised I have a whole host of work that is really hard to publish.

I practiced my British accents.

I ate, showered and I need some sleep.

There is a lot happening.

PhD Workshop Round 2

- In September, someone (Cleo?) will rock up to the meet to discuss further details

- Scholarships: check websites

- If your project is funded, often a scholarship will be attached

- fee waive

- If you look like getting a scholarship, look around. If you're a good candidate, likelihood is greater

- Applying is big: 1500 words, bibliography, etc. Start with what you know (i.e. extend what you're working on)

- Applications (at least for RMIT) are not yet open

- Everything counts (written work, creative work - plays, photographs) in the way of publication.

- Potential journals: Screen Education Australia, Metro, 

- H1 MUST for Scholarship - as well as publication history

- publications must be relevant to your area of study

- co-authoring vs individual publication

- Endeavour scholarships (Commonwealth based)

- JASON (scholarship database)

- Your Supervisor needs to be your advocate 

- Academic publication is easier to deal with, but all of it counts

- Application to Universities vs application to schools within Universities