I did a presentation with Chris Waugh and some boys from the London Nautical School in the Studio of the BFI on aspects of the Cent Ans de Jeunesse project (as per prompt cards below). Apart from the dozen participant / presenters there were only about half a dozen other people in the audience … although it might seem disappointing it’s almost to be expected that work such as this starts off with small audiences so that they might eventually build up a head of steam and become conventional practice.
John Potter convened the session recognising The Culture Capital Exchange’s aim to develop collaborations between cultural and educational institutions. There were 2 other projects being presented based at a school in Cambridge. They had used Machinima and Missionmaker in novel ways that widen and challenge our perception of the links between narrative, canonical texts and digital manipulation.
The young people commented on their work confidently and eloquently. One of the most interesting things to come out of this was the idea of using Lady Macbeth’s inner thoughts as the basis for a labyrinthine computer game involving such ‘economies’ as conscience and guilt to influence her actions. There’s a meshing here of cognitive and aesthetic thought which is going to become an unavoidable line of enquiry in my thesis. I say unavoidable because thus far gaming has been something of a white elephant in the room for me – no personal interest in it as a leisure pursuit has meant no investment in it as an academic object of study. This is where my parameters stopped – just short of the gaming domain. This is clearly unacceptable as a researcher involved in new literacies and moving image education, a situation I’ll start addressing.
Andrew Burn explains more about the Macbeth, Montage & Machinima project here on the DARE blog and how it fits into the original AHRC bid entitled Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities.
Making is Learning 