Weekly Wrap Up
November 18, 2009
Besides making Christmas lists amid the usual chaotic routine of studying, freelancing and managing the schedule of two small boys, this week has been interspersed with some other rather interesting bits and pieces. Last week saw the MADMA students learning processing with Ollie Glass. “Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions”. I was pretty excited about learning processing and the amazing results that can be achieved – if you know what you’re doing that is. However my lack of studying for 10 years and perhaps my age (!) became quite apparent as I tried to get the creative and logical parts of my brain to work in tandem. Let’s say that this part of the course is a work in progress and I’m hopeful my confidence levels will rise enough to post some of my creations at some point. One day I might be producing work like this Flock of Birds.
Friday night was spent at the Glug Brighton Meetup at The Basement for designer ‘notworking’ fun, hosted by Crush and Agency Rush. A free drink, live artwork, animation and a dj set kept the bold and the beautiful of Brighton entertained for a few hours. Live painting feels simply terrifying to someone like me who can spend an hour debating a brush stroke so I thoroughly enjoyed watching the creations take place. The Basement is a pretty good space for an event too. You can view the Glug Brighton photos from the night on their Flickr page.
Yesterday we were introduced to Semiotics and Memetics with Micheál at the Lighthouse. Thanks to Marie and Matt for the info and well done for making the presentations! Your wise words have kick-started my brain which is now working away on some new ideas for a piece.
Finally, eight weeks of teaching my new group of students at the Sussex Downs College has really motivated me as a teacher. A shaky start and initial struggles have been replaced by sparks of innovation and some really wonderful results. I feel a real sense of achievement for them and plan to keep a journal of their efforts via a Flickr group. I’m hoping to see some of their work adorning a gallery wall sometime soon…I might actually get around to posting some of tutorials at some point too.
