Reworking the Sshhh presentation

I'm rewriting my Sshhh presentation for Friday's panel. I'm drawing a little from the research I'm doing for my dissertation project with observations on how kids observe silence. That has given me the chance to contrast John Cage's philosophy with that of Dizzee Rascal. I'm also trying not to be too rigid with the layout so that it feels a bit more informal.

SPARC

SPARC [the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference] was interesting.

Due to previously being rather prolific via email, I finally got the opportunity to put some faces to names/addresses including one of the people that has been intrinsic to getting all the elements together for my AHRC funding application. Then I met my PhD personal tutor too. In fact the latter was in the audience when I did my 60 second "pitch" and caught up with me afterwards - having not noticed my name - as he was interested in what I'd outlined. Which is handy. Especially as he's one of the organisers of the Bigger Than Words, Wider Than Pictures conference. And what I was outlining was what I'll be revising for that.

Additionally I spoke to the coordinator of the Graduate Trainee Assistantships who will be in touch ahead of my post in October. And she was really nice too. Also amazing was the further contact who expressed genuine interest in the development of the ideas within Sshhh and mentioned another proposed conference that they will be organising. And also asked if I would be interested in speaking at that.

I did feel a bit out of my depth at times. As mentioned, most of the research work displayed was hard science rather than the kind of visceral work that I have a habit of developing. In fact, work from the school of Art & Design appears to be under-represented within programmes like SPARC [I was the only one - although there was a contributor from the school of Music, Media & Performance]. And some of the panels were very much outside of my comfort zone. Plus a woman asked if my work was for my Masters. When I said yes, she pointed out that SPARC is a post-graduate research conference. I replied that I was a postgraduate student presenting a research project and she insisted that it was for PhD research. I disagreed [because, like, I was there and had therefore met the criteria to contribute to the conference] and she commented that I was the only Masters student there. I've just had another glance at the section clarifying eligibility and it doesn't mention MAs. Just that it includes MRes, MPhils and MSCs by research [in addition to all PhDs] so she might have had a point. But then I wasn't completely wrong either.

Meantime my new blog - which will be used for my dissertation project (given that this one is still ongoing) - is now live at http://musicecology.blogspot.com.

Hand-in and presentation

I reached the end of this project today with a presentation and hand-in. I was satisfied with the deliverables (apart from how rubbish my wonky boards looked next to those slick ones submitted by Nicky, Dave and Amy) but I could have fine-tuned the Powerpoint quite a lot were there more time. Still, it's over.

Except it isn't really. I now have to rework the presentation for the Bigger Than Words conference in July. For that I'll be wanting to take out a lot of the content that was intrinsic to the work's development as part of my MA and elaborate further on the theoretical stuff that informed my design decisions. Before this, I also need to rework everything into a research poster to be exhibited at SPARC. I've got a recordable card on order for the latter. This will be embedded into the graphic and will make the poster more interactive. That's needed for the second week in June by the way.

Digital back-up disk cover

Powerpoint slides

Even I'm getting a bit bored of this now.

Presentation board #6

That's the last one. Phew.

Presentation board #5

Presentation board #4

Presentation board #3

Another presentation board

Only the other four to complete now.

Bigger Than Words programme

There has been a rough draft of the programme for the Bigger Than Words conference drifting around. My contribution is pencilled in under a section titled 'Noise, Politics and Everday Life'. The other two submissions within this grouping appear to be music-related and I'm assuming that my subject very much represents the 'Everyday Life' within that title. Only I'm not sure that what I'm looking at is really that political. (Unfortunately it will clash with another session based around audiovisual noise aesthetics which I'd liked to have checked out.)

I do still need details through on the venue so that I can think through exactly what I'll be completing. I think my stint takes place on the afternoon of July 2nd but I had mentioned to both Dave and Amy about doing something as an installation to run for the duration of the event.

[The above is one of the internal images I've been playing around with, by the way.]