Tag: reflection

Final Project Plan Draft

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Draft of Final Project Plan

Rationale:

-a rationale for your chosen topic (including reflection on how the taught elements of your programme have helped you develop it)

Literature Review:

-Brief overview

Methods:

-an overview of the methods you plan to use in developing and writing up the project (including reflection on how any methods training you have taken has helped inform these)

-how gather info, lit review

-Methodology – what are u gonna look at?

Timeline:

End of May- Completed Research, Collected quotes, working on literature review and intro

June 15th- Chapter 1 / first section written

End of June- Chapter 2 / second section written

July 15th- Chapter 3 / third section written

End of July- Conclusion, writing completed

1st – 10th of August – Edit

Potential Ethical Challenges:

  • my perspective, bias & bias in academic lit used – acknowledge and outline my perspective and examine research in lit review

Mode of Representation:

a statement of the intended mode of representation you will use in the final project report

Appendix:

an appendix listing the dates of significant blog posts building to the project plan with direct links, or inline citations and a references – this will be used to make a judgement on whether you have actively engaged with the blog and made meaningful, consistent posts (in other words to assess whether you pass or fail the course; it is not included in the final word count and should include around 10 posts, although it is the quality of the posts and your integration of them into the plan which is most important)

Economic Narratives

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Economic Narratives Reflection

I was interested in economic narrative because I wanted to look at the way the two elements interact in different ways, particularly how economics and economic systems are depicted and effect a fictional narrative (Jane Austen’s works are a great example of this!) and how people (e.g. politicians) tell or spin certain narratives in real life.

In the course, both in the reading an in the intensive we explored the blending of literature and economics, looking at many different forms of this combination. The reading was largely focused on various economic crises and all of the elements which these entail. I was worried at first as some of it was quite complex economics and numbers which was hard to understand, however the intensive was great and as it was largely in a seminar format anything we were confused about was explained well and we got to have complex, in depth discussions about the material and other related things, exploring the historical, economic, and literature perspectives/ different blends of economic narratives.

We also did group work where we explored one topic and how economic narratives were conveyed. Our group looked at greenwashing and how companies often lie in advertising.

Some notes:

-many different ways to tell a narrative – e.g. visual economic narrative e.g. fashion

-economic systems, companies, corruption, financial crashes

-echo from World as Story – brought up again what makes certain narratives contagious/ sticky – very interesting, important

-really good course!

-Made me think of economic systems in fiction – specifically Snow Crash and, much more subtly, What you are looking for is in the library, which I read most recently, amongst other examples such as depictions of economic systems in dystopias (e.g. 1984).

For my essay I wrote about how Jane Austen depicts the economics of the time in her texts, especially in relation to character, how this interacts with other themes such as class and gender, and how important it is to her texts.

Potentially Relevant Texts:

-Imagined futures : fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics / Jens Beckert. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.4159/9780674545878
–Economic Science Fictions by William Davies. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=5382570
–Speculative time : American literature in an age of crisis / Paul Crosthwaite. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198891796.001.0001

Building Near Futures

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Building Near Futures - reflection so far

Building Near Futures has been very fruitful so far. We are in groups for a big project and my group is a very good mix of people from different disciplines who are all great workers with lots of ideas and are keen to work on our project. We are looking at sustainable cities and green architecture and design and are potentially looking at creating a future design of EFI centered around green technology, community, and a sustainable approach. This has been very interesting and rewarding so far and we have already learned a lot, looking at various case studies of sustainable and green cities (and smart cities) as well as green design, architecture, and elements (like urban farming) which we might want to include.

The course has largely been centered around this project and I am glad we are doing something so meaningful, that I find so interesting, and that we work together so well. It is also great to bring in some narrative and literature knowledge for some aspects and even some knowledge from my A-level Geography. My passion for art has also come in use, especially as we are looking at architecture and design elements and even have a meeting with the architecture firm for EFI. It has already been extremely eye opening and a real learning process to find out more about EFI, the building, and the limitations that we may face in our design.

The theory has been interesting and certainly relates to creating narratives futures as a whole and may be useful to integrate into the theory of my futures project, specifically the theory on futures projection, the futures cone, and more. Texts such as Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby would certainly come into play – especially as it talks about the envisioning of real futures and how fiction comes into play with technology and design – and possibly other texts on the course like Technology and Sustainable Development : The Promise and Pitfalls of Techno-Solutionism by Henrik Skaug Sætra or even Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities which was suggested by a lecturer. Theory such as discussion about wicked problems and how to approach them may be very relevant to use.

Furthermore, there are many ways that this form of envisioning and designing the future may blend with art and literature as although it focuses on the near future and the real and tangible, this is an important aspect to add to the imaginative speculative fictions of authors such as Ursula e Guin and the artist Solomon Enos. There is also a lot of overlap topic wise, which is no surprise, looking at green and sustainable solutions to climate change and its intertwining issues.

Most of all, I have learnt about how important it is to think in the near future or the short term, as well as the long term, in order to blend speculative fiction into reality, and so that people can’t deem solutions too far away/ into the future and offload responsibility.

Week 9

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Text Remix

In text remix, I have learned a lot of new skills, such as the basics of learning how to code. and more about AI, which I also want to integrate elements of into my futures project. We also learned about different and new ways to play with text and literature, such as using chat GPT and black out poetry. It is quite relevant to the ideas I want to explore in my futures project, especially the elements to do with AI!

Doing the group project and all the notebooks has developed my skills significantly and I now feel much more confident with basic coding. It was also useful to use the texts on Project Gutenberg, and practice literary analysis, as well as experiment with different ways to both write and analyse text with the help of AI and coding.