The promotional poster for the 1973 film Westworld sought to entice customers with the slogan, ‘Boy, have we got a vacation for you…’. We can’t promise that our Cyberculture Film Festival will match Westworld for adventure (or, hopefully, menace), however it should make for an enjoyable and thought-provoking event as part of our work this week.
You will have already read about how to contribute to our Cyberculture Film Festival, including a adding short film (or film excerpt) to your gallery space, and being prepared to explain how it relates to cyberculture. James and I will collect your contributions at the end of the day Tuesday (UK time) and load these to Watch2Gether ahead of the festival.
If you haven’t already booked your seat in either (or both) of the sessions, please fill out the signup sheet on the schedule page so that we can cue up the clips in advance. We might not be able to show everyone’s contribution due to sheer numbers but hopefully a good range of them. The link to the Watch2Gether spaces we’ll use on Wednesday is here. If you aren’t familiar with Watch2Gether, feel free to play around with it a bit.
We expect that with all of the cyberculture reading to become familiar with last week, you may or may not have had a chance to dip into the two visual methods readings. We would now like you to do this in order that this can inform your cyberculture visual artefact(s) at any point now or in Week 4. Bear in mind that all we are looking for you to do is to get a feel for the two readings, and that you are not expected to critique the chapters or reflect on them in your gallery space. After looking at the chapters by Gillian Rose and Natasha Lackovic it might be that you feel encouraged to seek out images or other visual content that have something to say about cyberculture or its relationship with educational practice. These can be included in your gallery space.
Speaking on the exhibition, please continue to add and arrange artefacts, with an accompanying rationale. Before the end of Week 4 the content should be presented in a clear and coherent way (just as in an everyday gallery, in fact) so that we can easily make sense of the work when it comes to marking (and our External Examiner can do likewise). Perhaps a good way of approaching this is to imagine that by the middle of Week 4, members of the public might stroll through your gallery. Bear in mind, then, that we are interested in curation and a critical examination of cyberculture and education, rather than filling every corner of your gallery with content. For those who haven’t been able to get started yet with their Miro galleries, this week is a good time to do so.
More generally, we have been really glad to see the collaborative and collegiate spirit of conversation within the Miro board. As you know, it is a conscious decision not to use a conventional discussion forum within the EDC course and to instead encourage shorter conversation around specific pieces of work and ideas: thanks so much for throwing yourself into the spirit of this activity.
See you at the Film Festival and in the exhibition.
Michael and James