I slept for a pittyful hour or so this morning, with birds tweeting and the light endlessly seeping into my room. I wasn't working, rather my head was looping various thoughts, some about WikiPedia - I spent a lot of time reading it yesterday - and also Nena's 99 Red Balloons came back to haunt me again. So I'm not the freshest daisy today!
Today is the day to hand in my journal. This, I think, will be the last entry for the adjuged 1st year journal. I thought it maybe useful to reflect on how I've developed through writing it. Also I want to state its omissions.
I hope that I'll continue to write this journal, writing has proved to be a valuable thinking tool as well as delivering gratification simply to try and articulate my thoughts. Writing is something I used to hate, but the older I get the more enticed I am by the beauty of it. Also, as I'm slowly becoming desolved into a world dominated by Google and the Blogosphere, I should make a stand. Take the fight to them.
Incidental- I asked one of the IT guys in Chatham if there would be any mice lying around, for me to dismantle, for my Autotalk button. He's a nice guy, we ended up chatting about Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org/) - just another facet of the dawn of Web 2.0 and the internet's constancy of innovation.
I'm not sure if its evident, but I certainly feel like my writing has progressed through the practice I've had here. Maybe it's just a confidence thing, either way, a good feeling.
Incidental 2- For Autotalk, paint the floor black and invite the audience to write something down if they'd prefer that to leaving a recording of their voice? Maybe getting too wishy-washy.
I've tried to be referential to other artists, as I believe that's an area where I generally falls down, in terms of being assessed for University, but I still don't think I've fixed the problem. I guess its because I've only been exposed to the art world (and actually looked at it, in anything other than a casual sense) since September last year and the majority of the time I've been relatively self-obsessed. Mainly looking at other artists' work as it relates to my own progress. Also I harbour a strong belief that if I like something, for no particular reason, there is no need to spoil it by over-analysis and being overly critical. Or indeed critical at all. So maybe that will be a weak spot of my journal.
Another thing that I know I haven't done "to specification" is reviews. I have written only two reviews, I think, as a result of sitting down after having come to the decision to write a review. I do, however, have significant other review-type-text that hopefully will fill the void, if it can be distinguishsed from general musings.
Lastly; a bibliography.
The one text that I'll mention (again) is Brian Eno's A Year with Swollen Appendicies. I don't think I've used any material directly from it, but as I previously stated it has been a useful tool for generating confidence and, to an extent, has probabl been the largest influence on my style of writing.
Otherwise I haven't looked at any literature to find out about things or gather inspiration. As you may have correctly presumed, WikiPedia is generally my first port of call regarding pretty much anything (particularly anything that, should be, factual). If WikiPedia itself doesn't satisfy my curiosity I would then revert to traditional web searching using Google (althought depending on the subject this is sometimes my starting point). To catalog my browsing throughout the writing of this journal would result in a list of thousands of unconnected websites, and not really mean anything useful.
Incidental 3- my good friend David, from my hometown/school classes is having an interview for Interactive Arts today. It would be so good to do some collaborative work, were he to get on.
Other sources are the television and the Guardian. I've never previously got into reading a news paper (apart from the Metro, but does that count?), but with a little practice I've learnt my way around this particular one and enjoyed reading it a lot, as well as doing the "quick" crossword whenever I can - normally being shamed by my wiki-saboteur friend Matthew.
Breakfast time now I think, then after David's interview I can go home, relax and catch up on yesterday's missed sleep.
