Ways 2 Interface was...

Ways 2 interface was a transdisciplinary research project, study log and personal journal I oversaw from 2014 to 2016.

I had planned to carry it over and expand it within the research focus of a traditional master’s degree in Creative Technologies and Enterprise, which I had originally signed up to undertake at the end of 2014.

Ways 2 Interface picked up where the research concerns of my BA (Hons) theoretical dissertation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, had left off.

Hence the name of Ways 2 Interface, a.k.a. Phase 2.

Ways 2 Interface reconsidered the study of the content and the consumer in relation to a wider spectrum of knowledge and holistic considerations.

The fundamental focus of the project was the idea of an interfacing process – the introspective and expressive capacity inherent to us all – that we have always interwoven throughout our day-to-day existences and that we continue to do so at a formidably greater capacity in our contemporary digital realities.

By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, Ways 2 Interface aimed to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process.

Ultimately, I decided against undertaking a traditional master’s degree and instead opted to build my own master's degree which I went on to call my MTA Portfolio.

As my MTA Portfolio grew, the drive to pursue a research project to suit the requirements of a traditional master’s degree became less relevant and Ways 2 Interface transitioned away from being a research project in its own right.

It then morphed into a study log for my MTA Portfolio and then became a more general personal journal of mass communications and media studies 2.0.

With all its focuses, Ways 2 Interface accompanied and influences the construction of my MTA concentration in Multimedia Studies and Creative Technologies.

I stopped updating Ways 2 Interface in 2016.

I have since published all the unfinished and unpublished posts I originally wrote back in 2014 and 2015 in conjunction with presenting Ways 2 Interface as a component of my Creative Technologies Sandbox (which is one of the final projects for my MTA Portfolio).

I have also re-posted most of the content of Ways 2 Interface on my MTA Portfolio blog.

The Master's Degree Behind Ways 2 Interface

Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, the theoretical dissertation I completed for my BA (Hons), was a big deal.

It was a big deal for me personally because it was a breakthrough in terms of my skill as a researcher and writer.

But it was a big deal academically too because it was a 30,000 word thesis that received the highest mark of my graduating year and was also bestowed with a research excellence award.

I had put a lot of work into and had planned to achieve a solid first from it, but I had never envisioned attaining the result I ultimately did achieve with it.

The success I achieved with Ways of Being came as a huge surprise and it opened a lot of doors; particularly regarding the undertaking of a master’s degree, which was something I had not previously given serious thought towards.

Ways of Being was a consideration of the epistemological, ontological and metaphysical downfalls of film theory’s understandings of the spectator and the spectacle; with particular emphasis directed towards the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body.

The research focus of Ways of Being was something that I was passionately interested in and which I had only scratched the surface of within the submitted thesis paper.

There were a great deal of loose ends, both in the main body of the work and also in the appendices, that I really wanted to continue further.

In particular, Appendices A, F and I (which had once been the basis of another chapter in the main body) were two of the key sources of continuation.

I couldn't squeeze Chapter 3 into the limited word count of the main body, so it ended up becoming Appendices F and I

Ultimately, Ways of Being and its success ended up becoming the main driving for behind undertaking a master’s degree; with the potential of undertaking a PhD further down the line.

But deciding what master’s degree I wanted to pursue and how I was going to fund it took a very long time for me to figure out.

In the meantime, I decided to keep my research focus active and created the Ways 2 Interface blog where I could record my latest findings and theorizations.

As much as Ways 2 Interface was a continuation of my theoretical dissertation, it was also a continuation of my practical dissertation, EYES.

EYES was a web series concept proposal package that was a reflexive expression of contemporary networking attitudes and their implications on our ways of being.

The proposal package included a produced pilot episode, a series bible and a producer’s planning portfolio document.

The package also included a blog, EYES of a Storyteller, that I used to chronical the development of the project and Ways 2 Interface very continues in the same vein of its loose and transdisciplinary blogging style.

Ultimately, while I didn’t end up continuing my research in a traditional master’s degree, Ways 2 Interface did serve much the same bridging purpose between my BA (Hons) and the creation of my MTA Portfolio.

The curriculum of the traditional master’s degree I had planned on undertaking, Creative Technologies and Enterprise, but ultimately abandoned was also absorbed into the makeup of my MTA Portfolio.

Ways 2 Interface had a huge part to play in to create of my MTA concentration in Multimedia Studies and Creative Technologies and, for a time, very much serves as an adjunct blog to it.

When Ways 2 Interface became a Study Log and Personal Journal

The focus of the Ways 2 Interface blog naturally shifted as my time and attention gradually moved more towards the building of my MTA Portfolio.

For me, I had a deep and keen interest in researching how we interface with reality (I still do now) but it all boiled down to being able to perform legitimate research to explore those concepts.

In my mind, legitimate research requires the backing of a fully accredited master’s degree which I didn’t have and wasn’t likely to have anytime soon because I elected to construct my own master’s degree.

Therefore, if I was not going to pursue a fully accredited degree, preparing the research for one was largely a waste of my time, which was already being eaten up with the task of building my own master’s degree from scratch.

For a time, Ways 2 Interface served much the same role as ibuiltmyown.education, it held the identity and progress of my MTA Portfolio (or Postgraduate 2.0 Studies, as it was then known).

Ways 2 Interface studies progress page

The studies page is no longer present as a page on the Ways 2 Interface blog, but I have re-posted it as a blog post.

I also used Ways 2 Interface to blog about the MOOCs I was studying (something I have not really done on ibuiltmyown.education as I implemented its blog after I had completed the majority of the study component).

Parallel to this, and partly because many of the MOOCs I was studying delved into this, I was continuing to dabble with post about my interest in mass communications and media studies.

So, in addition to it being my study log, I also increasing viewed Ways 2 Interface as being the wider media focused blog space to cover anything that Something to do with Film could not cover because of its film-centric focus.

But eventually even its more general media focus fizzled out.

In hindsight, I wish I had kept Ways 2 Interface going a bit longer because I could have used the blog to document the further development of my MTA Portfolio and the building of ibuiltmyown.education and then handed over the duties when ibuiltmyown.education.

I’ve properly tied up the blog now that I have written up this component page as part of my Creative Technologies Sandbox.

But will I ever pick up the research I started first in my Ways of Being dissertation and then in my Ways 2 Interface blog?

Possibly.

It all really depends if I ever do get around to studying a fully accredited master’s degree.

Posting the Unfinished Posts and No Longer Used Pages

I'm adding Ways 2 Interface as a component to my Creative Technologies Sandbox, which is one of the final projects of my MTA Portfolio, 

As part of this wrap up process, I have posted all the unfinished/unutilized posts I originally wrote in 2014 and 2015 that I never got around to exhibiting.

Just note, I haven't bothered to polish the unfinished posts, I have just be posted then up in their original unfinished and unproofread forms.

I have also posted up some of the information pages of Ways 2 Interface which are no longer available via the page tab bar under the blog banner.

Unfinished/unutilized posts...

Welcome to Ways 2 Interface: My Credentials and Reasoning for Orchestrating this Project

Something #2dowithfilm: My Story, My Path and My Research Web

The Interface of Reality: Spontaneous philosophizing about the nature of what is real in the 21st century

The Interface: Reconsidering the Terminology and the Perspective of Understanding

The Network-Narrative: The World Wide Interface

Unfinished Business: The Story of the Interface

Film and Media Studies Redux

An Ambitious Project: Understanding the Interface of the Spectator and the Spectacle

No longer used pages...

My Postgraduate 2.0 Studies Page

My Research Interests Page

My Coaching Page