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I have since published all the unfinished and unpublished posts I originally wrote back in 2014 and 2015 in conjunction with presenting Ways 2 Interface as a component of my Creative Technologies Sandbox (which is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