The beginning of the end
I have handed in my final essay of my degree. It was about ‘reflexivity in visual media’ and was completed according to the schedule above. The time line starts at midnight, and ends at the deadline of noon. Some notable points are the finish with an easy 20 minutes to spare for printing and handing in. This turned into a slight panic when I forgot to print the references page, and then the university computers wouldn’t read my USB stick to print it again. But the paper copy was accepted at 11:57 - three minutes clear. Easy does it.
I wasn’t hardcore enough to manage an all-nighter on it, and as such it never quite got to the word limit of 2500, stopping dead on 2000. The large flat line at 3-7am was when I was asleep due to feeling like a rather un-intellectual lumpen mass. Then there was a smaller flat-line at 10am when I walked up the hill from my house to campus so that I could finish it and print it without having to run up the hill.
What mark it gets, I will have to wait and see. But I can tell you now that it included the phrase: “so perhaps it could be turtles going out in every direction.”, a reference to the wonderfully obtuse Slavoj Žižek and the quote “My Dad went to New York and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”.
Just three exams (sadly all mundanely computer science ones) and my degree will be complete!
Yay, I like graphs, especially ones about visual media. How appropriate. But what is reflexivity?
Reflexivity is a wonderful thing. In this context (visual semiotics - the scope of this module of study) it is about imagery where the ‘code’ or frame of understanding is made noticable - a classic example is M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_Hands - they traverse the conceptual distinction between ‘reality’ and the artistic representation of it.
It is where a ‘fictional’ medium becomes aware of it’s own context - an actor talking to the camera, an author writing about the process of writing a book (in the book), an artist painting about painting…
Also, pretty much anything by Banksy is. This means I got to buy a Banksy picture book as part of my degree study!
Googling for [reflexivity “visual semiotics”] brings Aber up as the top website result, which suggests to me that they’re either the leading source of information, or that making it up. ;) (It’s not in my mac’s Oxford American Dictionary.) Based on your charming description, I would associate the concept with theatre & film’s ‘fourth wall’.