Thursday, September 28

 

 

I began by cycling through a definitely autumnal morning where, for the first time since summer, I felt like a man in need of gloves.

I started my working day by running through my slides for tonight and realising that I had made several embarrassing spelling mistakes and accidentally left in two guide slides. I remade the deck and sent off a revised copy.

I then made a three minute video about my research interests that Nathalie will show the fourth year students this afternoon. I had intended to use the studio but, through impatience, I used my iPad instead. After fifteen minutes of experiment I had the sound and lighting looking better than expected and I recorded it live in two run throughs. The quality of the result impressed Mirko, who quickly top and tailed it and uploaded it for Nathalie.

After that I had a long Skype chat with Oliver in which we laid out our ideas for what to do next. Oliver will write up the festival experiment with a view to doing it again sometime soon, possibly in Sheffield if we can conjure up the resources. I will map out a two year plan for short seasons of practical action interspersed with mini-conferences. We will talk at the end of next week when Oliver returns from Germany.

After lunch I had an hour-long Skype chat with Luke, who now lives in Leeds with Alice, who also talked with me. They talked about their wedding plans, and their decision to abandon travelling the globe in favour of becoming northerners.

After lunch I wrote my judgement on yesterday’s MA thesis presentation. Nathalie accepted it and printed it out, and we both signed it.

I then did one run-through of my speech in which I discovered that the Stan Lee method actually works. In talking while watching the slides I found a story I could tell. I wished I had finished the slides with a full screen image of Beyoncé, since her album Lemonade provided the perfect punchline to the question of where design and visual communication goes in the digital age. I went and added it in case I ever use these slides again.

At 17:30 Jutta, Liisa and I find the secret entrance to the new Prakticum studios and walk up the stairs to find ourselves amazed. The place looks like a very trendy start-up and not at all like a school department. I wander around taking photographs and at one point I like at a statue next to a broken scooter. The building seems full of juxtapositions like this.

I will have some snacks and then the show will begin. I will give the second speech and, armed with my new punchline, it will go down well. Afterwards, I will get to play with an Oculus Rift and find it as interesting as I thought I would.