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). 

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!).