Presentations

Over the last couple of nights we've been having seminars wherein speakers who are doing their doctorates come in and talk to us lowly postgrad monkeys about what they're currently up to. It's a combination of seeing research-practice in action, as well as helping some of the denser theoretical essays come to life in ways that aren't going to happen when you're wading through material that has the consistency of treacle and contains words with the same syllable count usually associated with either long dead fossilised reptiles or extremely intimate parts of your anatomy.

The presentation most relevant to my discipline was titled 'Letter-space: Typographic Translations of Urban Space' and was part of an ongoing doctorate that positioned ye olde letterpress printing as a spatial and structural visual medium through which the candidate's own students then explored the meanings and experiences of their local urban design, ie Wellington. Seeing how the students translated their own reflections on their chosen locations (including Midland Park, the rather striking block of flats on Webb street and the Bank arcade) was really fascinating, especially watching them build the metaphorical framework that mirrored that of the city... letterpress printing is very tactile, blocky and shares the same sense of limited working space and ordered hierarchy as a typical urban environment.

...oh and the next guy talked to us about studying Aikido and incorporating the co-creative context of the martial art into a qualitative design research project. Awesome, huh?