The Second term started off with a fizzle as we’d all struggled hard to get projects submitted before deadlines and then had a week left to record our projection mapping projects.

The pre-week ended with a visit to Iklektic for a refreshing view of visual effects and contemporary experimental music.

Theory began the term and focussed on the idea of Material Semiotics as a research methodology. The readings and lecture looked at Donna Haraway’s idea of situated knowledges and the aspect that there is no reality that exists in a purely objective space.

Actor-Network theory as it is otherwise known, is a sensibility based on case studies and doesn’t have a singular out-the box methodology that can be applied universally. It challenges to ask how our practices colonise or are colonised when interacting with other webs of ideas and what agendas are inbuilt into a practice or a network. ANT implies non-human actors, providing the assertion that things can act, not simply be acted upon, removing the exceptionality of the human within the methodological framework.

These critical practices are metastatic, meaning they require continuous participation and engagement. It is important to consider how we approach our practice and which mythologies we engage with in their creation. Haraway suggests it is important to note what stories we tell to tell other stories with. Within this framework, creativity becomes a critical action as much as it is an aesthetic one.

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