Framework Questions

1. What would you like to learn about “Writing in the Digital Age”?

I would like to grow to be as confident and fearless to explore and experiment with the newly emerging digital tools as I am with the physical tactile sheer messy joy of traditional mediums like oil paint and charcoal. I remember being amazed when I was first show how to measure the figure using nothing but an out stretched thumbs-up grasping a pencil. It’s fair to say that this way of measuring is about as scientific as alchemy but it felt like the best way to size up the world around me, I’d like to be able to stake out a piece of land for that form viewing the world, in the new digital frontier and see how the imperfect and subjective and forgivingly messy viewpoint I’ve grown up with survives in a digital realm where cold hard code is king.

2. What do you already know about “Writing in the Digital Age”?

I have to describe myself as an enthusiastic amateur. I worked hard, trying for years, struggling, to get what’s in my head down the relatively simple meander down to the hand and on to a page. Rarely was the end product created without a degree of compromise, I feel quite daunted honestly about how little I know about navigating the far more labyrinthine path from brain to hand to hardware to software to screen.

3. What are your strengths/abilities/past experiences with the digital media industry?

My biggest strength and probably hindrance is my dogged refusal to leave behind my love for the gritty, messy look of more traditional mediums of art. I don’t like the cleanliness and sterilisation that some computer generated works often display. I hate being able to look at an animation or picture created on a computer and known instantly what software was used, there’s no ounce of fun in that. It feels like someone pointing out the trap door halfway through a magic act. So when I create work on the computer I do my best to disguise my tracks, adding hopefully to the impact of the final piece. My abilities are rough around the edges and come from a background in animation. My greatest enjoyment in the Digital realm has been found in what the animation world refer to as the “Frankenstein effect”. The Frankenstein effect is what you feel when you see your work move on screen. I say my abilities are rough around the edges because like Doctor Frankenstein I’m able to create “life”. However I’m not proficient enough to always see past the initial excitement of that and see the more monstrous inaccuracies and flaws in the results.

4. What are your strengths/ abilities/past experiences with creative writing?

I’m not incredibly sure what my strength and abilities are with creative writing. I suppose if pushed I’d say a strength I may possess comes from writing for my stand up set. This I background in writing for performance and public speaking and punch leads me to concentrate on the flow and stream of words more than I would have prior to taking the stage. Time restrains of stage time on open mike nights and sometimes getting the desired comic effect has also taught me to be economical with words.

5. Where would you like this module to take you? What would you like to achieve through this course as a whole?

I would like to use this module to develop on my understanding of common threads between pixel and pencil, and how to bridge the gap that separates them. I want to expand my ability to brainstorm and develop new and ever more innovative concepts for work that gradually improves in camouflaging there digital foundations.

6. What is your favourite song? Piece of writing? Piece of Visual art? Taste? Smell? Texture? How would you communicate it to someone who couldn’t experience that particular sense?

Favourite song “Dublin”- Thin Lizzy, an incredibly moving melancholic song about leaving a loved one, set to a subplot of economic recession and desperation. Written back Ireland when was making the cover of “The Economist” as the poorest of the Western societies the song captures the subtleties of the generational Irish tragedy of emigration, and the dilemma and conflict between loving your homeland and knowing it will fail to support and nourish you.

Favourite piece of writing, Ernest Hemingway’s shortest story, only 6 words, but it hits you like a bullet.

Baby shoes

For Sale

Never Worn

In those six short words is captured everything, the pre birth excitement of preparing for the babies arrival to the crushing reality of a miscarriage and tragedy of a life that never got to experience the most common things we all take for granted.

Favourite piece of visual art, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes comic series. These books have everything. They’re composed in great solid simple comic layouts that allow the full humour to flow effortlessly out of the stories. The line quality is erratic but conveys a sense of youthful exuberance rather than out right hectic madness. The narrative and visuals are married perfectly together and the end result explodes with charm and humour.

Favourite Taste? Tough question, I’ve always loved Satsuma oranges they have a great mixture juicy and sour, also whenever I eat them I’m reminded of Halloween and Christmas which sandwich the time of year that Satsuma’s are ripe so my first of the season would normally have been gotten trick or treating and the last one would come in my Christmas sock, so even if I’m not entirely sure that if I tried harder I wouldn’t be able to find a taste I prefer but just down to the associations that Satsuma’s hold for me that makes them my favourite. I’d describe the taste like a very mild enjoyable little shock like the you got as a kid sticking your tongue on a battery.

Favourite Smell? I have three joint top smells, fresh cut grass, and the smell you get on a garage four court while filing up a car. Fresh grass is an interesting one though because even though I love the strong earthy smell of freshly cut grass in recent years it’s become something of a bad omen and harbinger of doom because once you smell the first cut of the year you know you have sweet little time to finish up your work for the summer end of term assessments. A good analogy for the rich depth and levels that the sense of smell experiences with wet grass would be somewhat similar to what the sense of touch experiences when touching a piece of bark covered in fine dew.

Favourite texture? Dried chunky oil paintings with the paint caked forming a little landscape of mountains and valleys on it, in the style of Jack B. Yeats. I don’t understand the point of a painting you don’t want to touch. It should call for you to run your fingers over it. I’m entirely sure how I’d describe this texture because it isn’t really an independent stand alone experience of touch a lot count’s on the aesthetic of the painting that combines with and enhances the tactile sensation. The same of course is true of relationship smell has on taste and seeing as I have already answered those two sections I shall give an attempt at explaining the feel of this texture. This texture on your fingers feels like they way the old internet dial up noise sounded, apparently random shills and dull noises when taken out of context but when seen together in their entirety they represent a figure far greater than the sum off their parts.

7. What’s up with the font on this page?

My guess is that you wanted to see whether the style of the typography would affect how we answered the questions. Would Edwardian Script ITC , cause us to take the question posed differently than the question typed in Lucida Handwriting , perhaps causing us to answer it in a more casual and less stuffy sense to suit the more casual characteristics of the second font.