Well, I finally was able to get online for my distance learning MA last week. So, today (and for quite a few more weeks to come) I have rised at 3:45 AM so I can log on to a virtual classroom at 4 AM for three hours. The virtual classroom really is just a pumped up Java chat app with a virtual whiteboard. But it is nice to have an immediate chat log on the site afterwards. But jeez, it sure is early! Suprisingly, my mental agility has been less sleepy than I had supposed it might have been. It will be nice being back in Thailand, if only for the time zone change. ;-)

I am still quite behind others, catching up from the delayed start - so I am stressing over what I have to do, and the fact that I feel like I have not been brought up to date as quickly or completely as should be… but so far it has been nice that there are some stimulating ideas being covered. I usually assume that higher education ends up being, for the most part, boring and irrelevant, ‘hoops to be jumped through’ as well (unless you’re at MIT perhaps ;-), but gladly I am finding some good moments of interest so far. :-)

The ‘Reflective Practice’ I will be doing in my MA needs actual practice to reflect upon, and I intend to do that with my personal professional practice. Now, without a job I have all the time in the world to work on those two things. But when I am thrown back into the workforce it will be interesting to see how I balance it all - a job, professional practice, as well as the reflection upon the practice. I can see how the program was probably built to complement and fit along side designers’ professional work practice, since the MADP program is a part-time program after all.

I have to do a ‘Learning Contract’ up really soon, which basically explains what design practice I plan to reflect upon and the aims/capabilities I hope to cultivate from that. I’ve whittled my list of four possible avenues of what to pursue for my professional practice down to two. But I will probably choose to work on the libretto and score, musical and visual, for a new operetta.

The biggest practical goal of this project is to produce a full source of material (printed and/or digital) that would be used to perform the work. Basically, anyone could pick up the score and have all the material necessary to put on or stage the operetta. I’ve long wanted to be able to plop something down in front of someone and say, ‘Here, look. This is what I do. Here is the proof.’ From most of my previous artistic ventures, I have had very little presentable material or documentation after the fact. I also want to produce a substantial (or hefty ;-) creative piece of work - something that leads into the ephemeral world of performance (which is hard to document) but which also can stand alone as its own body of work.

I had planned to do this with Homo genius, but it ended up being a bit too big and unweildly for a first attempt - and rather naive as well on my part. Especially since it was one of a series of four full performances! So, a smaller performance of about 30-40 minutes should be much more manageable.

That brings me to the big goal for the reflective side of the practice: to actually finish a full score; to watch and reflect upon my design practice as I am doing it; and after the fact, to see where I am strongest and where and when I fell off the tracks; so as to help me with any issues that arise the next time I end up working on such a big project.

Anyway, I will post more about that as I progress on it. Which actually does need to be rather sooner than later. ;-)

Oh, and a small note. All posts relevant to my MA Design Practice program will be listed in the same Category for ease of viewing, and to help me in archiving it for future purposes. So, if you want to watch my progress through my MA Design program, just click on the “MA Design” link in the Categories menu on the right.

Cheers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 2:00 am and is filed under MA Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.