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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.

Branson's big idea for a little i-pad mag.

so richard branson and his brilliance in entrepreneurship have struck once again. branson is set to unveil plans for a new i-pad only magazine according to mashable.

when first leaked in july, the magazine was said to be about "new creative, business and technological ideas" but further speculation suggests that it could just be a digital in-flight magazine for branson to showcase on virgin flights.

nevertheless, i find the specified and sole use of the i-pad to publish a magazine to be quite intriguing and maybe a little bit strange...

to think that it wouldn't have a sister blog, website or even paper version seems to make the digital magazine appear almost isolated. if it is just a digital in-flight magazine i guess this wouldn't matter as much but if you had another device (similar to but not the same as the apple brand) would this mean that you'd miss out on reading the articles your smug i-pad equipped fellow passengers have access to?

bit of a strange one... not sure what i think at this point. comments and feedback welcomes as always.

Fashion Media Conference: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

whilst this is a little late, i did want to comment on it... so i am. last month, the london college of fashion held a fashion media conference that brought together leading experts to discuss the key issues that are facing fashion media and communications today and consider them in relation to historical and future media cultures.

sounds like something i should have been in the audience for doesn't it?

unfortunately i found out about it all too late and was unable to get myself a ticket in time. gosh and darn it quite frankly.

put together by penny martin, editor of the gentlewoman, and dr. djurdja bartlett, of the lcf, it involved presentations papers from many influential academic figures in fashion including dr. agnes rocamora of the lcf, who is currently putting together the first comprehensive study of fashion blogging.

so it all sounded very interesting and i obviously got very excited about it all due to it's fashion media content but there are lots of things about it that niggle me.

when one googles about the fashion media conference there are, of course, lots of references that pop up but at no point will you find an official blog or website dedicated to the conference. this boggles my brain considering that this conference is meant to be about contemporary fashion media... you'd think that they at least set up a blog about it?!

also... one month on and there doesn't seem to be any videos or recordings taken from the conference that can be accessed online. why not? you'd think that they would want to get the conversation out there. what is happening in the world of fashion media?

finally... and this seems to be the most telling of the lot... despite the obviously brilliant presentations that were on show on the day, i can't help but feel the majority of presentation topics had very tenuous links to the actual discussion at hand.

overall the fashion media conference seemed to offer an academic point of view of their own personal research all gathered up and labelled as a discussion of contemporary fashion media in relation to historical and future media cultures even if their research possessed the most tenuous of links. maybe i'm wrong? perhaps someone that was there could correct me?

however, in my opinion, perhaps a london edition of the future of fashion blogging conference by the Independent Fashion Bloggers network would have been a lot more useful, accessible and relevant. here's hoping they come to london next time.

can't get no satisfaction.

so my morning of searching and achieving was a little bit of anti-climax. my trip to hobby craft did not find me the wool i wanted... it was all sold out. then i thought, well i could always buy that crochet book i've been after. so for about ten minutes i took apart the book/magazine area trying in vain to find it. of course it wasn't there. the thought of asking some smug 18 year old sales assistant if it was out the back did not appeal to me but oh.... my dear mother, no she thought it was the best idea in the world. so the smug 18 year old sales assistant with uber floppy hair told us if it wasn't there on the shelf it wouldn't be out the back but insisted that if he went through the same ten minute search that i had just endured as he was more likely to find it (probably with the power of his floppy hair). ten minutes later and a very impatient me managed to get the smug floppy haired one to stop searching in vain for a book that had evidently been sold out and to stop holding me up from storming back to my car with steam fuming out my ears with frustration.

then i went to the university of southampton's lovely hartley library to get my sconul access card and also get out a book i have been searching high and low for all over the place. found the book... hallelujah! so then my only task was to go and see the nice lady at the desk for my sconul card. this was straight forward enough but then... shock horror... she informed me that i couldn't take out the book that i had so needed for sooooooooo long. it was a one week loan and sconul access only entitled me to three week loan books. cue a massive sigh and a shrug of the shoulders from me... then a a barrage of muttering to myself all the way from the snazzy library turnstiles back to the car.

then i had to take my mother to the range. if you have ever had the pleasure (and i use this word with much emphasised sarcasm) of doing this then you will know how the urge to rip out my own eyeballs was rather pressing. i like the range as much as the next person for about twenty minutes to half an hour tops but AN HOUR AND A HALF with an indecisive mother is enough to try anyone's patience. fortunately i am used to being exuding an air of patience as part of my part-time job is teaching 90 year olds how to control a mouse so my mother was blissfully unaware of my frustration. how lovely.

so back home, i get to eat some homemade soup for lunch and now i am working happily away on some bits and bobs. still need that book though... if anyone knows of any online source i can get the time of the tribes by michel maffesoli then please give me a heads up. i will be eternally grateful.

right... back to cv tweaking and singing along (badly) to roxy music.

the distractions of knitting.

so i know i have been quiet of late but i have been trying my very best to find three very interesting and very needed books for my dissertation. and also knitting...

my time has been taken up with finding books, reading them, making notes on them... and then knitting.

i have also been revamping my cv and will be attempting to contact people i would like to work for in this week to come. i'm looking for freelance work really, with publications that are pioneering the way in new and different ways of fashion publication. whether they are these wonderful style mags that i can normally be found salivating over in a corner of magma or even in mike's newsagents near my work... or the usual gossipy weeklies that i like to indulge myself in from time to time. whatever they may be... magazines are continually evolving at the moment in many different ways and i get so excited over it i can hardly contain myself. i just want to get stuck in.

before i get into that today... i will be visiting my local hobby craft. i need some wool to finish off a christmas project for one of my friends.

knitting can be so distracting.

i'll huff and i'll puff and i'll blow your house down!

for those of you who do not know, the huffington post is an american news website which describes itself as "the internet newspaper" and has been going since 2005. have a look, see what you think... then pick a side.

it's paper versus web once again.

according to a former washington post executive... sites like the huffpost are akin to the big bad wolf. a moron who leaches off others to tower over their much cleverer little pig prey. the little pigs in question being those who work in "real" journalism for "real" papers.

what's your opinion? leave your comments and discuss. whilst you're at it... here's a useful little guardian poll on the subject.

enjoy.

popped out to get some milk.

i've been dying to upload photos for so long now. thankfully i've eventually found my camera lead thus enabling to do so... hurrah!

so back in the summer, amongst all the drama, i managed to get away for a few days to cornwall and to wales. one of the highlights of my cornwall trip was the magnificent eden project. the biomes were fabulous of course but the thing that got me most excited was the eden project's education centre, also known as the core.

its a hub of all things sustainable and eco-friendliness, lots of things to play with and read about. the best thing being the massive wall of fridges complete with fridge magnets.

everyone was clambering to get to the wall of fridges to arrange a message of their choice whether is be a "so-so was ere" message or something jokingly derogatory about their friends. it was a fascinating sight to behold and really got me thinking about my MA project.

the action of arranging a message using the fridge magnets in the way the eden crowd were desperate to do is very much comparable to the way that people constantly update their facebook/twitter/myspace etc statuses. you can't obviously write a long message in either case but you can portray enough to get attention. but, whilst using fridge magnets to display a message on a fridge wall is much more of a physical act (in that it uses more of your body than just your fingers), it's still very much ephemeral in the same way that updating your status is. someone can come along and start rearranging your carefully placed letters as soon as you walk away, it's never permanent.

and so my thought process tumbles along (also very good example of design being used for something it wasn't originally intended to do!)... could i possibly use something inspired by this in my final project solution? hmm...

also got a quite nice pic of the centre piece of the core called the seed. it's one of the largest sculptures ever to be made from one single piece of rock.

very imposing and impressive up close.

Kate Moss in 3D

just when i thought that i had seen kate moss from every possible angle, pose and compromising position that she could possibly be seen in, here comes a film that made me exclaim in a granny- esque way, "i've seen it all now".

another magazine present a collaborative effort between moss and filmmaker, baillie walsh, (who previously worked together on a holographic film for Alexander McQueen's AW 06 show) hailed as the world's first 3D fashion film. cleverly enough, you can get the accompanying 3D glasses needed to view this vid in the latest issue of another. it's also a perfect opportunity to recycle your 3D specs from avatar. failing all of that, it still looks pretty ace without any specs at all.

click to see KM3D-1. is this the future of fashion publishing? let me know your thoughts.

don't panic.

in my undergraduate days i spent forever trudging around london collecting as many free fanzines and mags etc. that i could find/ lug back to chatham on the train. part of the many things i used to collect, and what predominantly adorned the walls of my modest student room, were the posters from the stuffed brown don't panic envelopes swiped from the boutiques of kingly court and carnaby street.

don't panic has been going to for a decade now and is being celebrated in the form of an exhibition at the old truman brewery. dazed digital features a short piece on it with some images to wet your appetite.

exhibition opens from tomorrow and runs until 3rd october.

***EDIT*** Go here for pics from the opening night.

unlike cinderella, i didn't get to go to london fashion week.

so obviously my invitations to the shows at london fashion week were lost in the post, there's no other explanation for it is there surely?! whilst the lure of the catwalk has always been laced with excitement for me (despite how cool i try to be about it) i always find what people are wearing on the streets much more exciting that what i'll ever see on the catwalk.

not being able to be in london hasn't stop me appreciating the weird and wonderful outfit concoctions of the industry insiders and hangers on due to the wealth of blogging dedicated to the parade. my favourite post featured on amelia's magazine blog. written and photographed by matt bramford, the post is beautifully witty, filled with street pics and made me chuckle muchly. susie lau also does great lfw coverage as per (i think everyone is now fully aware of how much i love her- it's a given).

missing out on the lfw shows doesn't mean i've missed them altogether though. and neither have you thanks to the wonders of technology. the official lfw website has a wonderful digital schedule where you can click a button and be magically transported to the front row... well... you get to see the video of the show at least. i'm currently loving hannah marshall, who i think every other industry insider is getting excited about right now. her show this year may have stuck to the dark side of the colour spectrum but showcased exquisite uses of clashing textures (leather, fur, velvet) and fantastic geometric, body-con design features.

and yes, whilst i didn't want to make a big deal of it, i realise that i can't just sneak back to blog without some explanation of my prolonged absence. let's just say that the summer was eaten up by too many family health problems and situations that i needed to be present for. pretty much everything stole me away. now that everything's calmed down and i've constructed a suitable timetable to organise my (sometimes too many) goings on, you'll see more of me.

writer's block.

i have had writer's block for what seems to have been a considerable amount of time now. i know what i've wanted to write, i know what i've been researching and what i want to research... and i know that i should keep doing it. however. sit me down in front of my laptop and my mind turns to jelly. every single thought and idea i had about five minutes before literally disappears in a puff of smoke. there have been times that i've been sat there with my cup of tea and literally stared at my blog editing screen for what seems like forever.

i've tried to figure out what it is and i think i've hit on several things. 1) stressing about other annoying life matters, 2) my nomadism, 3) having too much clutter and 4) lack of inspiration.

and my problem with these has been that i have let them become problems. now, i've decided to head at things straight on and just get on and deal. oh yes, oh yay.

i also feel that sometimes a blank screen on a laptop can be rather daunting. so i'm thinking that i could do with some blank pages of sketchbook. i have desire for something more visual at the moment and i think that the visual could kickstart my enthusiasm and motivation for the wordy.

i'm going back to the drawing board.

never thought i'd hear myself say this.

whilst i will admit to looking at it everyday for a brief 15 minutes in morning or at lunch time it's very rare that you would find me actually talking about or even reflecting upon what i've read on the MSN homepage. today a little article caught my eye and started the cogs of my mind whirring away. MSN has presented a short picture article of current everyday gadgets that could soon be extinct to honour the inevitable demise of the humble floppy disk. this comes as sony have announced that production of the floppy disk is due to cease by march 2011.

the image of the floppy disk reminds me of the excitement i felt as my family got our first PC in 1996 (pre social networking, blogging etc. 1996 was definitely all about the AOL teen chatrooms). we used to have hundreds of the things cluttering up the place with numerous saved bits and bobs on them...who knows what and where because they were very rarely labelled. but they definitely came in handy for when i need to transfer my regular music reviews for the school paper (that would be "Tamsyn's CD Corner" as part of the "Pupil's Eye" newspaper... i kid you not) from home to school. and do you remember the sound they used to make when you'd pop one into the PC and they'd whirr into life? oh yes. those were the days.

but now back to the present day where it's rare to even see a computer with a floppy disk slot. nowadays, it's all about the USB memory stick. i remember getting my first memory stick in my first year of uni... a 2MB stick that cost forty british pounds. nowadays you can get about ten of those sticks for the same price (with undoubtably much more memory capacity). that's in just 6 years. a small example of how digital technology is becoming cheaper and more readily available for a wider audience. the USB memory stick has gone from being an investment buy that i had to ask for as part of my christmas present to being something that i can pick up in poundland (and yes i have seen them) with my toiletries and domestic cleaning products. in a little technology timeline one would see the USB memory stick replace the recordable CD replacing the floppy disk effectively replacing printed information and so on and so forth. i know it's not exact... or maybe even true. it's just me attempting to apply mcluhan theory to my mind's rambles.

going back to the MSN article, out of the list of gadgets soon to be extinct there was one that particularly caught my attention. the alarm clock. despite manufacturer's attempts to jazz it up.. people no longer want or need, what one would assume to be, the essential alarm clock. and what instead is one using on an everyday basis to get up for work/uni/school etc? the mobile phone.

the multimedia/multifunctional capabilities of the latest mobile phones, or "smart" phones, enables an individual to access a plethora of everyday modern necessities. even helping them to wake up in the morning. this use of one central item to control your whole life be it your job, social life or personal leisure time is a trend which looks likely to continue. i wonder maybe if in a hundred years time our destiny will be one similar to the human population of wall-e?

fat, anti-social slaves to technology hmmm? what do you think?

and i think i'll stop that blog there before i go off on another trail of thought.

excuses excuses.

an expensive broken down car, lack of internet and other personal difficulties have equaled a serious lack of motivation for research over the last 6 weeks. these are the reasons why i haven't updated my blog but i don't want to use them as an excuse or in fact keep using these reasons as an excuse. so its time to break the unmotivated cycle and embrace a highly motivated one. please keep a look out for a blog update later today. as usual, i would appreciate any feedback.

dis magazine.

just a short, sharp, sneaky post whilst at work today. my work colleague emailed me a great link to an interview with dis magazine. from my very quick browse it looks just up my street but i will need to read properly and dissect another time.

enjoy for now and leave me your thoughts.