New Year, New Semester (and it's my last!)

I've been BAD at keeping up with my virtual school notebook. I've been swamped with (full time) work and (full time) school this (past and now last) semester. Last week was our first week back. I can't believe how fast it's been since we started. My classmates (now friends) and I are working our a$$es off to get revisions done for our master's project class. Not only do we have to complete a full length master's thesis project (45-65 pages, probably more for the most of us), we have to create an abridged version for publication and participate in a public symposium. It should be fun though. Listening to everyone's presentations last week was amazing. I'm incredibly biased, but my cohort is brilliant. My classmates have some fascinating research. 

In the Visual and Critical Studies program, each grad is required to take an elective and I got lucky! The elective is titled Analogue to Digital with the incomparable Kim Anno. As you may have guessed from the course name, it's about the intersection or transition from analogue to digital technologies coupled with looking at specific artistic practices that explore both realms. After our initial class, we travelled down south to the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art to see Terry Berlier's exhibition, Erased Loop Random Walk, and listen in on her artist's talk. During the semester, we will be working with a student over at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa to produce a collaborative sound piece. It will be a pretty fast paced and exciting semester.

All right, I should get going. Back to thesis revisions, editing, and reading (and re-reading). 

Know your Public: Public versus Counterpublic

Exploring the many crevices of the Internet and found YET another place...

As a graduate student, I knew I would be reading, writing, eating, sleeping, and breathing my master’s thesis (in some instances produce an emesis reflux of words). But my seminar readings have naturally impacted my thinking, conversations with friends, and the way I engage with my online community and networks has taken me by (pleasant and welcomed) surprise. In one of our recent seminars, we discussed the differences between publics and counterpublics...read the rest here and "recommend."

10 Things I Learned in my First Year of Graduate School

Blogging during grad school was a lot harder than I thought! Now that it's summer, I finally had the opportunity to write down a list of 10 Things I Learned in my First Year of Grad School! Here it goes (by the way, I learned WAY many more things but listing out ten was plenty enough!). Please share, comment, and/or provide your own list of things you've learned. I would love to read about your experiences.

1. Whatever you need to remember, write it down. Make a list and enter it into your calendar. Even personal REMINDERS (i.e., connect with loved ones).  
2. Connect with classmates. The effort put forth into nurturing intellectual and personal relationships with my cohort has been a lifesaver. Grad school can be lonely especially when you talk to your friends, family, and/or co-workers. While they can sympathize, they don't really know that you were about to bash your head against the wall trying to understand Judith Butler's Gender Trouble!
3. Me Time. So, I suck at this particular thing called "Me Time" because when I'm not with my Mom, partner, family, or friends...I'm usually in a meeting. On top of having a full time job, balancing and nurturing my relationships counts on my re-energizing my mind and soul. This is a tough one but I definitely try getting in some "Me" time through meditation and I've even gone back to knitting. Important note: Surfing the Internet and/or checking all your social networks...DOES NOT qualify as "Me" time. Trust me on this one.
4. Take breaks! Whether it's taking a walk outside, playing with your pet, watching half an hour of mindless television (I don't really watch TV but still a good break activity), knitting, or making yourself a cup of your favorite tea, I've learned the importance of stepping away from the computer monitor. The French psychoanalytic theory you were trying to write about...it's not going anywhere!
5. If you're going to procrastinate, make it "productive procrastination." I can't take credit for this gem. I stole it from Austin Kleon's book, Steal Like an Artist. The entire book is such a fast read but you'll find yourself nodding all the way through it. In particular, his idea of "productive procrastination" totally resonated with me. It's actually true and great advice. If you're gonna stall on finishing up that paper, you might as well jot down your to-dos or list the problems you are having with your thesis! Important note: Again, "productive procrastination" is NOT updating any of your statuses on social networking sites. That sh*t ain't productive!
6. Take notes and write about what you read. It's just good practice! Unless you are reading strictly for pleasure, having a notebook (electronic or good ole paper and pen), note taking and writing your impressions of a text is imperative to understanding it. Yes, even if you write, "This was stupid as hell" over and over again. After the 50th time of writing the aforementioned statement, proceed to write down all the reasons why you think a text is stupid or doesn't make sense.
7. Support and be present for your cohort. Not only are they fellow classmates, they are potential partners and collaborators. You need them just like they need you. Support, challenge, and uplift one another. It will yield intellectual and emotional benefits. 
8. Locate the funniest stuff you can find! Humor makes grad school life bearable! Here are my favorites: PhD Stress, The Lisa Frankfurt School, PhD Comics, and Calamaties of Nature.
9. Have people read your work. This is important. If you have people interested in what you're doing, why not have them read through excerpts of your work. See if what you're saying makes sense and/or provides a level of accessibility to your reader. Writing is important to me. BUT it's because I possess the hope for a reader. While I write for myself, I have to constantly keep in mind that I want a dialogue. My work needs to resonate and make sense in order for this reader-writer relationship to develop.
10. Learn from constructive and productive criticism. I'd like to think that working in the corporate world for quite some time would come in handy. It did. After years of performance reviews, well, grad school is not that different. It's important to understand that when your cohort and/or professors don't understand you and provide a critique, it's in your best interest to take it in...EVEN if you don't agree. It's about partnering to produce great work. NOT about your ego. 

Freytag's Pyramid

Such an understatement when I say "...a lot has happened in the past two weeks." An incredible amount of processing with school, family, freelance work, school, family, freelance work (wait, I'm feel redundant here). I'm trying to let everything soak and percolate in my mind while purge everything toxic out of the body, mind, and heart. It's tough. But I'm finding that practice and failure are two things I've grown accustomed to. Now, when I use the word failure, I mean it in a way that is productive. There are many instances where I feel as though I have failed miserably but choose to learn as much as I can. 

In any case, it's all about (what one of my professors would say) 'productive failure'. I wanted to share one of the gems this week - Freytag's Pyramid. Surprisingly, my professor is having us map and chart the tension, complexity, and/or rising action to our works. While it's proving to be a pretty awesome exercise, for my obsessive compulsive brain, it's going to be an exercise in teasing (and failing productively) out what is most important. Wish me luck. Above, you'll find a handy illustration. Enjoy! Feel free to drop a note if you've studied Freytag's Pyramid or want to share any thoughts about your writing process. :)

Creative Time Summit ~ Blog Posting on Arts Research Center UC Berkeley Muses Blog

It's been about a month since my last posting but I thought I would share something I wrote for the ARC Muses blog. The posting served as my registration and participation in the Creative Time Summit this Friday. I wrote, specifically, about 'making'. Please read the intro text to learn a bit more about the summit and feel free to share your thoughts.

----

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers -- including artists, critics, writers, and curators -- to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Dorothy Santos, New Media and PR Strategist for Art Practical.

Keyword: Making

Artists, writers, and technologists are expected to create with certain parameters before bending and breaking the rules. With new media art, programming, creative coding, and open source culture seem to be exploring new ways that are redefining contemporary art. The interactive and immersive works prevalent in new media works offer an entirely different experience of art. Yet, what happens when the body performs and serves as the catalyst for the production and creation of an artwork? How is the mind expected to reflect on the work when the body becomes a part of the work itself?

Since the idea of art making and creating is so vastly different with advancements in technology being made each day, it’s imperative to discuss how the body of both the artist and the the viewer are implicated in the works. Although an ambitious and arduous task, it’s extremely important to find ways to incorporate discussions in new media and digital arts and traditional art practices. Comparing and contrasting the art practices may lessen the gap between traditional artists and the artist-technologists. Having recently read philosophical text and theory on the body and disembodiment, I’m struck by how much the body plays a role in new media works that seems to cross over into actual functional use of everyday objects. Collectively, much of the public is so accustomed to the design and convenience of interactive products and commodities, it would be interesting to discuss how this revolutionizes or hinders the artist - any artist (not only new media artists but any artist). Is overuse of the body a hindrance or progressive when it comes to new media arts, specifically, or is it too reliant? What is new media addressing or not addressing in practice and in theory? Or, how it is working against traditional models?

Despite the availability of interdisciplinary studies, the way in which things are made is extremely important to the overall discourse of how the arts have changed alongside the emergence and popularity of other new media modes of art making (including crowd sourcing and interaction design). In particular, being situated in the Bay Area, how is it that there are not very many galleries exhibiting new media works? Although there are valiant efforts being made to showcase and foster the discussion and exhibition of new media and digital arts, it is important to learn the history and methods of how these works have been deemed art, by whom, and the models that may hinder or enhance progression in the arts. 

The Write Way to Exercise the (Writer's Block) Demons

Fortunately, we did not have to re-construct and instruct our "reader" to re-create the above structure!

After the first official day of school, I learned a lot about my writing style, practice, and overall process. When I write, I have a tendency to be madly in love with the free writing. No editing. No re-reading and re-writing. Just sheer, don't give a fack and throw all the words to the wind and let them land wherever and however they get onto the page. Typically, I type my free-writes and initial drafts, which may come as a surprise to some of my classmates because I write profusely in my notebook during class. But that's in large part due to me being a kinesthetic learner. I need to do something with my hands while listening to a lecture or sitting through a meeting. If I'm forbidden to write during class or work meetings, I would go mad. My attention span would be shorter than a gnat.

My writing seminar is titled, Voices (for obvious reasons I don't think I need to explain but let me know if you need me to elaborate, more than happy to do so). Our professor, writer Eric Olson, led writer-reader exercises. One individual was the writer while the other participant was the reader. The writer had to construct building blocks and instruct the reader to re-construct the writer's design. Both writer and reader were facing opposite directions and the writer was the only one that could speak and provide instruction. It was fun watching the writer describe how they organized the building blocks to the reader. Seeing the reader re-build, in most if not all cases, something very similar was exciting.

What did it teach me?

To be mindful of what I am trying to communicate to my reader since the reader may interpret what is being communicated differently. Want to learn a variation of this exercise? Check out Casey Reas artist talk earlier this year at The Creators Project here. Lots of fun AND I had the opportunity to meet Reas (nice guy!).

Advanced Degrees Do Not = Prosperity

Please view at GOOD.IS here 

In most professions, salaries below the poverty line would be cause for alarm. In academia, they are treated as a source of gratitude. Volunteerism is par for the course - literally. Teaching is touted as a "calling", with compensation an afterthought. One American research university offers its PhD students a salary of $1000 per semester for the "opportunity" to design and teach a course for undergraduates, who are each paying about $50,000 in tuition. The university calls this position "Senior Teaching Assistant" because paying an instructor so far below minimum wage is probably illegal". ~ Sarah Kendzior

After finishing up a two day graduate orientation, I'm still not wavering on my decision to return to school. Although Sarah Kendzior's article, The Closing of American Academia: The Plight of Adjunct Professors highlights the end of higher education as a means to prosperity was published over a week ago, it's certainly not garnering the same kind of attention as the beast Jesus restoration. Too bad. I find it extremely relevant and timely considering my career transition into writing, criticism, and education. Reading Kendzior's piece reminded me of how models and modes of education must evolve with society and culture. But with technology and globalization, it's difficult to keep up. I provided the graphic above, which is in no way related to the article, to provide a visual schematic for those who enjoy that type of thing. So yeah...

Returning to school for an advanced arts degree seems foolish to many people. In thinking of existing and future debt, the political climate (with the 2012 elections fast approaching), and the trajectory of my research, it was not an easy choice to make. But I knew it was something I needed to do (even if I have to work and pay for it out of my pocket). Sustaining a passion is difficult but you keep at it and it is imperative to know your passion going into such a commitment (especially since grad school is so dependent on pecuniary matters). Longevity of the topic is another aspect to consider. Now, I'm not pontificating but merely stating a few things I'm learning along the way. Kendzior points out something crucial in the end of her article regarding culture and generational differences when it comes to how we perceive and value higher education. Please read the piece and share your thoughts.

Also, I'm curious to hear answers and thoughts regarding a few questions. Do you have an advanced degree? What has been your experience with finding work in your designated field? How have you defined success (for yourself)?