The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.

Tag: academia

  • What makes good academic writing?

    Photo by Pixabay from Pexels, 21 December 2016.

    I’m often asked by students for samples of writing that align with what’s required for assessment tasks. This semester is no different, so I actually spent some time digging through old courses and studios I’ve run, finding a few good examples that I can share with the students.

    Very often my feedback on student reflections tends towards hoping they’ll integrate or synthesise research, ideas, and thoughts on their making. I usually find myself saying ‘take a position and argue it’, by which I mean that reflective writing — at least in an academic context — shouldn’t be about a summary of everything achieved, every decision made. Rather, choose a single point — be it a creative choice, or a quote from a journal article, or something watched — and then unpack that single point to make connections to other researchers and scholars, other makers, other reflections/insights the student generated in the class.

    This is difficult to achieve, even for seasoned researchers. Add to this that the accepted conventions of academic writing — the vast majority of it in many fields — are so restrictive in terms of expression as to be incomprehensible. This means that students become terrified of approaching any academic writing. It’s seen as boring, or dense, or difficult. This greatly stifles their curiosity, or their interest in finding the connections I try to encourage.

    If only, I hear them say or imply, academic writing was easier to engage with. Which reminds me that there are some truly wonderful, writerly, scholars out there. You just have to look. This is far from an exhaustive bibliography, but here are a handful of scholars that I read for the joy of experiencing good writing as much as for research.

    • Ingold, Tim. 2011. “The Textility of Making.” In Being Alive, 219–28. Milton Park: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818336-28.
    • Jagoda, Patrick. 2016. Network Aesthetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=4427890.
    • Miles, Adrian, Bruno Lessard, Hannah Brasier, and Franziska Weidle. 2018. “From Critical Distance to Critical Intimacy: Interactive Documentary and Relational Media.” In Critical Distance in Documentary Media, edited by Gerda Cammaer, Blake Fitzpatrick, and Bruno Lessard, 301–19. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
    • Murray, Janet Horowitz. 2017. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Updated edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
    • Peters, John Durham. 2015. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226253978.001.0001.
    • Pomerance, Murray. 2008. The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience beyond Narrative and Theory. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
    • Stewart, Kathleen. 2011. “Atmospheric Attunements.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (3): 445–53. https://doi.org/10.1068/d9109.

  • New research published: Inscribing and encoding

    A long-gestating piece of research has just been published in the Global Media Journal — Australian Edition. This piece emerged from a day of field-work conducted with the Posthumanities Reading Group from RMIT, under the stewardship of the late and much-missed Adrian Miles. The day was held in February 2017 at Pound Bend on the Yarra River, about 45 minutes north-east of the Melbourne CBD. Almost exactly a year later, on 5 February 2018, Adrian passed away while riding his beloved bike in the bush near Kinglake.

    This piece is dedicated to Adrian, and his short but enormous influence on my thinking and approach to academic life.

    You can read the piece here.

    Abstract

    How does it feel to make media? What goes through the filmmaker’s head right at the moment they hit ‘record’? What are the processes – mechanical, digital, physical, psychological – that occur before, during, and after the recording of sound or vision? Building on the recent embodied turn in screen production research and taking inspiration from core ideas of the new materialists, this experimental piece unfolds in two parts.

    Part one takes the form of stream of consciousness writing in retort to quotes or ideas from new materialist thinkers like Andrew Pickering and Kathleen Stewart, and a reflection on one’s own media practice. The result of this is two recipes for a kind of embodied making, which were then put into practice with two pieces of media, The Yarra & I and Pieces of Pound Bend. An extended second part connects reflections on this practice to writing on cinema and time, primarily Gilles Deleuze and Jean Epstein.

    This work examines where the maker fits in the nebula of media texts, tools, and technologies. What is the point of making media or – perhaps more aptly – when?

    Here’s the reading list I put together to remember Adrian, and my colleague Adrian Danks’ touching tribute.

  • one day more

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    I shared on the weekend that I had been working, and how rare that was (working on the weekend, not working full stop!). I’m now further into that particular grind, working through Day 8 of a nine-day stretch.

    I’m very much feeling it now. At times through a stretch like this you’re in the zone, you find your flow. But then there are times like now, when you feel like there’s nothing left.

    It’s like a day after a rough night’s sleep; but just lengthened over a period of days.

    One more day tomorrow – a full day, but away from the office. A time to discuss, to reflect, to plan.

    Then two perfectly-planned research days, to get my head back into reading and thinking mode.

    Then a long weekend.

    I can do this.

  • Come sail away

    It’s been over a year since I worked on the weekend. Since some pretty severe burnout I’ve had to make sure that weekends and most weeknights are kept free, though sometimes the latter is unavoidable.

    But this weekend, between a full and crazy week last week, and an equally insane three days from tomorrow (Monday), I literally ran out of time to get everything done.

    I would now never advocate for weekend work, but occasionally – very occasionally – the grind can have its satisfactions. Particularly if it’s a typically grey and awful Melbourne day outside.

    The task I ran out of time to complete was a paper I’m delivering at a symposium tomorrow. To be fair, I think I’d be forgiven for running out of time, given I organised the symposium, but I really did want something semi-decent to present.

    I’ve basically kicked off conference season myself; after this talk, I have another 2-3 to prepare for late November/early December. But I think I’m being strategic here: with 4ish papers done, I can then work to convert one or two into full articles/chapters next year.

    The RMS Publish or Perish sails on…

  • Yes we POPCAANZ

    Lambton Harbour and Oriental Bay as seen from the summit of Mount Victoria (pic by me).
    Lambton Harbour and Oriental Bay as seen from the summit of Mount Victoria (pic by me).

    I’m sitting in an apartment, outside which the manic Wellington weather swirls and swishes. After a glorious week, with crisp, sunny days (see above), the clouds have rolled in, and it’s bucketing down.

    However, today’s disposition is not dampening mine, with the memories of a second, successful POPCAANZ fresh in my mind. My paper on the cinematic frame was received well, with lots of excitement that I’m developing more research and teaching on the same topic. But that was out of the way early on, and I was able to settle in and see a bunch of other, vastly more intelligent people talk about their passions.

    There was a Baudrillardian deconstruction of Wes Anderson which was so thorough that by the end he did not exist. Another highlight was a refiguring of the narrative of Toy Story according to an object-oriented ontology, and a materiality of trash. Not to mention a textual analysis of Agony Aunt columns in the New Zealand Women’s Weekly. And then an introduction to the Leathermen culture of rural New Zealand.

    And that’s barely scratching the surface (and I only mentioned two papers in a very strong film stream). Food was great, the location (Massey University) very cosy and accommodating, and the company a lively combination of old friends and new contacts.

    There was very exciting news, too, that POPCAANZ will now be opening up to our Asian neighbours, and revamping the associated journal accordingly.

    Bring on Sydney next year!