My interview with Johnathan Nix is up on Sleepy Brain. At the bottom of the page is a link to the video gallery of Nix's work - well worth looking at. Nix's work is gorgeous; rich, detailed artwork and appealing characters. His student film "Hello" stars a man with a tape deck head trying to win the affection of the CD-player head girl who lives across from him.
Lat night I re-read the new draft I wrote on the weekend for the blogosphere essay. I was feeling quite happy about it initially, thinking that I'd constructed a much tighter, more logical piece. But when I looked at it last night I realised that it wasn't better at all, in fact, it was considerably worse. Oh woe. How could this happen? It seemed to flow so well when I was re-writing it - the points seemed to flow logically into each other. But the re-reading revealed great jumps from one idea to the next with no connecting point. It was a bit of a shock. So now I'm back at the start, with time rapidly running out. I wondered this morning if I am secretly hoping that the time will run out all together, and then I'll be able to throw my hands up and say "I just couldn't get it finished."
My interview with Johnathan Nix is up on Sleepy Brain. Simon (editor of Sleepy Brain) has done a great job of laying it out. At the bottom of the page is a link to the video gallery of Nix's work - well worth looking at. Nix's work is gorgeous; rich, detailed artwork and appealing characters. His student film "Hello" stars a man with a tape deck head trying to win the affection of the CD-player head girl who lives across from him.
Lat night I re-read the new draft I wrote on the weekend for the blogosphere essay. I was feeling quite happy about it initially, thinking that I'd constructed a much tighter, more logical piece. But when I looked at it last night I realised that it wasn't better at all, in fact, it was considerably worse. Oh woe. How could this happen? It seemed to flow so well when I was re-writing it - the points seemed to flow logically into each other. But the re-reading revealed great jumps from one idea to the next with no connecting point. It was a bit of a shock. So now I'm back at the start, with time rapidly running out. I wondered this morning if I am secretly hoping that the time will run out all together, and then I'll be able to throw my hands up and say "I just couldn't get it finished."
It would appear that we have left behind personal training in the park season and are now well into rowing while a man cycles along the river bank beside you shouting instructions through a megaphone season. I miss the surreal morning sight of the cycling group on their exercise bikes, pedaling furiously in the Fawkner Park oval, but I am eagerly anticipating the day that two of the rowing coaches, approaching from opposite ends of the Yarra, collide and end up in the water.
The talk yesterday was fine, I guess. It's always hard to tell as most people stare vacantly at you and you suspect that they are thinking about what to have for lunch. That's what I'd be doing. And added to my woes of having to explain weblogs with a powerpoint demonstration, the data projecter bleached out all my images until they were virtually invisible. All in all the interpretive dance would probably have been a much better option. All I needed was someone to stand up and start playing cello and I would have done it.
Have to give a talk on setting up a research blog to fifty RMIT research students today. Fifty. Plus there is no internet connection so I have to do it all in Powerpoint. I think I'd do just as well presenting it as an interpretive dance.
I spent a lot of the weekend rewriting my blog essay. I was dreading it, as it was hard enough to write the first time around, let alone having to go over it all again. But once I actually started, the experience wasn't quite as hideous as I'd thought it would be. I mean, it wasn't fun or anything like that, but a new structure emerged and I think (hope...) it's a lot tighter than it was before. In some ways I'm almost glad to have had the opportunity to rework it and attempt to make it a stronger piece.
The other benefit has been that I haven't had time to panic about the workshop I'm supposed to be taking with the RMIT students this Wednesday. Sensei sent me the production blog from one of last year's students and I think I'll show it as part of the class. It's a good example of a blog created for a specific purpose and for a finite duration. He's included screengrabs from the animation he was working on, as well as quicktime movies, drafts of his scripts. It's also interesting to see the way his ideas change throughout the course of the production.
