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Exhibition

today at university i shall be exhibiting my research and work that i have done to date towards my personal project. i feel that an appropriate introduction to the form my research and work has taken needs to be communicated with external examiners, my lecturers and my regular blog readers who are going to be visiting today and tomorrow.

i would like to point out that my research has been submitted entirely through this blog. there are several reasons for this; 1) my initial plans for this blog is to enable an interactivity with my work from others that i would not have had otherwise, 2) i liked the idea of using entirely digital methods of recording my research and it fits in very well with the purpose of my personal project, 3) i feel the use is a good form of visual representation for my usual wordy muses in terms of chronicle and alphabetical organisation. the use of the blog for research will carry on throughout my continued research but i plan to use sketchbooks next semester to extend my research beyond the ephemeral and into the physical to examine what happens between each medium in a bid to continually test the relationship between digital and analogue.

alongside my blog, i have submitted a research paper which stems from the middle part of my dissertation. this has been presented printed and bound but can also be found as a link in the "fashion ma work so far" list to the right-hand side of this entry.

i hope that you enjoy looking through my research and paper today and i look forward to your feedback with great anticipation.

thank you,

tamsyn

bad apple.

being distracted by facebook whilst trying to write your postgrad dissertation sometimes has it advantages. whilst browsing through my friends' pages i came across a link to a wonderful french site called fubiz. this particular article on the site showcased the collaborative work of michael tompert and paul fairchild where they've taken iconic apple products and destroyed them. the site describes the work as a tribute but the destruction of the product, although rather exciting aesthetically, would suggest otherwise! makes me want to take my boyfriend's lighter to my i-pod... if i wasn't in love with it and rely on it's daily presence.

the other side.

sorry for the lack of posts over the weekend but i was rather a busy bee doing lots of reading for my dissertation and writing my first post for a blog i've been asked to contribute to. the blog is for the other side magazine and it's all really rather fab. after you've had a sneaky peek at my post i recommend stopping and browsing through the rest that's there.

my post is all about my good friend, camilla seckin, who has been doing rather well for herself over the last few months. the image at the top is taken from the latest exhibition that she's been working on. of course, my post at the other side magazine blog will tell you more... (hint: go there and read it please)

so besides my shameless self-promotion there is of course a MA related reason why i've been so keen to get involved with the other side magazine. all content is contributor driven. you contribute to the blog and your work could be in the magazine which is printed and distributed right across london. it's described as being london's only "blogzine" giving the chance to aspiring writers and fellow creatives to get their work out there in the big wide world. it's a really fabulous, contemporary way to deliver magazine content and i am completely fascinated by it.

being brave enough to allow contributors to post what about what they want whether that be art, photography, culture, fashion, illustration or.... anything keeps a daily updated blog ticking away whilst enabling a beautifully crafted magazine to be created for an audience of publication lovers (i.e. fashion publication obsessives like me) and, all the while, providing a forum for creativity to be presented outside the artist's diary/ sketchbook/ canvas/ memory stick.

the lovely people at the other side magazine are really making a strong attempt to capture the imagination of it's potential readers and contributors in an ever changing media landscape. i haven't seen anything quite exactly like this before and i love it. (and i'm very excited that i'm involved in it too.)

the i-pad saga continues...

another team i-pad update it would seem. and i like this one very much. econsultancy's article is spot on with one very wonderful and very apt observation...

"...by focusing on creating publications solely for a particular type of device, Murdoch and Branson are ignoring the fact that we live in a multi-channel, multi-platform world..."

exactly. my. point.

why on earth produce an "i-newspaper" or a digital magazine exclusive to one type of e-reader/ tablet computer device?! you are effectively alienating a mass potential audience. not everyone is an apple user, like not everyone uses a nokia phone or a dell computer, for example.

whilst i am sure murdoch and branson are confident enough that their high profile names and big business assets will draw the flock to the i-pad and their exclusive i-pad applications, it is naive of them to ignore the importance of user centred/ friendly design in terms of how they present their publication.

consumers demand choice and flexibility... with this venture it seems they'll have to deal with limitations. and i'm pretty sure they won't deal with them for too long.

the royal "we".

i hate bringing up the topic of the royal wedding, as i am sick to death of it as i'm sure you all are, but through my sleepy-dust caked peepers this morning a little snippet caught my eye on the bbc news.

ten days following the announcement of their engagement, a book about kate and wills is to be sold in bookshops, supermarkets and other such retail outlets across the land. this is the very first one apparently with seven more currently in the making and more on the way nearer the time of the wedding.

talk on the news this morning focused on how this book would kind of sit alongside the good old cups, plates and tea towel ensemble in terms of commemorative use. the most interesting thing spoken about between the bbc journalist and the very eager publisher was the fact that a book was considered over any sort of commemorative electronic publication straight away.

the publisher cited the reason for this being that people want something physical to own. they crave the book as a collector's item, something that they can leaf through at their own leisure, maybe not even immediately, but perhaps a few years after the event has passed. an electronic resource would not cut it at this point.

to me it seems the kind of people that demand this type of commemorative book would be part of that patriotic, monarchy-obsessed section of society. like having the book, despite the inevitable poor quality of content (no book put together in ten days is going to be a literary masterpiece), is a status symbol that allows one to be part of their exclusive tribe. this is the most fascinating part of the whole thing.

i know i won't be buying this book... but i like the idea of tribes and books.

well... this just changes everything.

with big thanks to the lovely band thomas tantrum for pointing this out to me, i have been alerted that the big b isn't the only one delving into an ipad only publication...

rupert murdoch has teamed up with steve jobs, aka mr.apple himself, to create the world's first "iNewspaper" exclusive to the ipad. the guardian article confirms that this digital newspaper will not be available in a print or web edition. apparently it was mr. murdoch that came up with the idea after reading a study that showed that, compararitively, people spent longer immersed in their ipads than they did on the internet (where "unfocused surfing" is more typical).

it's thought that ipad users can subscribe to the iNewspaper in a similar way to how music is purchased on itunes. given the fact that itunes monopolises music prices in the music industry, it's doubtful that publishers will want to see the same thing happen with this type of digital publishing and have every right to remain cautious at this point.

unless there some serious competition comes along with something very special indeed, it seems inevitable that the ipad will do for tablet computing/ publishing the same as the ipod did for digital music. with a projected 40 million ipads in circulation by the end of 2011, it seems that another apple revolution is on it's way.

can anyone stop them?! answers on a ipad app please.