I have not written much about a project that myself and the VD collective have been working on for the last few months with an International NGO. Mainly because it involves the applied commercial development of the VD system. But with another School Graduate Research Conference (GRC) looming in a week, I think it is time to break the drought. Funnily enough, without reflection on my blog I have also been slipping behind in the documentation of this project.

Last semester my June, GRC panel provided the following feedback to consider for this GRC:

“…who is the audience of your research and what is the contribution you are making to them.”

“Your work touches on a lot of technology issues that are here or on the near horizon, yet this is only one aspect. You also engage with different forms of narrative construction, temporality and user experience as well. What is the priority and how will you work with all of these?”

These are key points that I am now considering amongst a busy time of marking and more project production within the next couple of weeks. This is a new project on top of the NGO gig. I have been reflecting on these pointers and recently revised the research summary as one step towards beginning the process of writing up this research towards submission. Taking into consideration the development of the projects, particulary VD the following evolved:

//non-video/new-video/net-video Online video is a growing phenomenon on the Internet that has predominately involved the distribution of televisual and cinematic content on this system. I would argue that this is an approach that fails to respond to the materialities of the Internet as a media form. A practice-led, poetic research model is used to determine how online video can be utilised to articulate and disseminate knowledge on the Internet. Design is used to invent online video systems that explore the affordances of the Internet and Social Media technologies. These systems are developed collaboratively through an iterative process of content production and evaluation. Situated within the field of Media, I examine both the formal and cultural issues that the Internet poses for independent online video practitioners.

I think this is moving in the right direction with another 1-2 steps to go to finalise this towards being an abstract for the exegesis. Supervision work with Labsome Honours students really helped me clarify more and more, the practice-led research process and introduced me to some of AM’s notes on poetic research. Nothing like thinking through a process when you are teaching it to others. The poetic research concept started for me with Terrance Rosenberg’s article. A concept I plan to tease out more in my exegesis for this research.

Another phase of re-writing this summary is also revising the research questions. It was interesting to work hard on the clarfication of some research questions with the Honours students this semester. In such a short timeframe this helped us both understand what was being undertaken, on the premise that they could be revised and tweaked towards the end of the research.

Picking up on the point of how I plan to work with all of the themes mentioned above I picked up on the need to locate a framework that brings all these themes together around one point of inquiry. Something I noted in an earlier post around an mcd presentation. It is not really an issues addressing all these themes as long as they are handled from one unifying perspective. I also picked up or reminded myself that the theory, this framework and the dominating themes being explored emerge from the practice. This is all about reflecting on projects which brings me back to the current NGO project. I have been thinking about what this project is bringing to the surface and what a number of blog posts would cover.

A quote form Rosneberg’s article on poetic research.

In the case of the “poetic” the focal territory is found through a process. It is iterative, working in the space between substantiation and deviation. Backgrounding and foregrounding happen in a dynamic process and this produces a research context. Poetic enquiry evolves its field of focus whereas conventional research sets in advance its focal channel. (See figures 3 and 4). The focal territory in poetic research is established in open water.