A4: Feedback

See PDF here: oca field 2dic04 18 jan 19

I have responded in green. 

 

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

 

There are many ideas happening in the various videos on the blog at the moment.
The list of words at the end of the blog post are a good indication of how the work (and your creative mind) is developing. The words have much in common and share a sense of work on the edge.

I should have mentioned where these words come from – I did in the original post but not in the assignment submission which was an error. I took them from Turin’s Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis. It strikes me that in order for life to exist at all we have to have displacement, disturbances, deviations etc. Without those, life cannot form at all – at the genesis of all complex life there is deviation; according to journalist Micheal Marshall in New Scientist, Jan 2012 (The First 3.5 Billion Years) “eukaryotes [the first complex cells] arouse not through competition but by cooperation” (31) and this was a freak event as organisms had not done this before. Had they never found a way to do this, none of us would be here. It is believed, for now, that this divergent behaviour led to all complex, and increasingly complex life thereafter. In Turing’s paper, he describes how divergent behaviour leads to the patterns we see on animal skins for instance. And we know that if the cells which we all begin life with simply kept splitting rather than deviating and disturbing the behaviour which has come before, we would not be anything. I’m not sure where or how this comes into the work yet, but I would like to quote Adam Curtis in a recent interview: “I just think it’s incredibly risky to show stuff early on when you’re trying to combine, say, two or three different narratives together to make a bigger point. It’s so easy to get it wrong. Because you can see it in your brain, but they don’t know your brain.” (2018) 

I would undertake some more work on these words, thinking about them, defining them and then seeing what it is that set them apart as well as what they have in common. It could be that it is in the cracks between the words that you find the essence of your project. – see above

There is much on social media this year on having a ‘word of the year’ and the tactics used for people to find their word may be useful to you, to explore these words in a non-academic way. A friend rates Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word very highly. OK but I think it is ‘deviation’ 

In terms of the videos:
1 The sound is good on this one as it breaks the tension of silence. For me the colour of the wheat against the other half of the frame jars. I could play around with the colour – I guess accepting that the colour of the wheat isn’t true anyway is something to think about, and also about the use of filters and digital techniques to make everything ‘pop’ – taking it to extremes as I did in S&O A5. The found footage of sperm was as is, incidentally. I also like the sound here and another sketch I made later has the same sort of unstructured sound which ends up being so by being slowed down. I watched All That Jazz recently, (Fosse, 1979) and really appreciated the way he used sound – disassociating it from the scene, and will play around that. He lowered the ambient sound and we were taken inside his body as he started having his heart-attack which emerged far more slowly than we might imagine, and that contrasted when the scene broke to the panicky scenes as his family arrives at the hospital. It was powerful. 

2 In this video, I wondered on the split of screen – on a small scale the eye struggles with the 2/3 – 1/3 split. This would be different on a larger scale. I am generally thinking about how these films will be shown and assuming they will be projected. I totally agree that much of it tends to struggle on a small screen. I am playing for now and am wondering about showing different fragments on different walls (immersive like A2 which I plan to return to – showing the film as is (more or less) on a wall while footage of the coloured blocks play on another adjacent wall. Perhaps these will switch from time to time further disorientating the viewer.) It is something to keep in mind and perhaps settle on in A6. 

3 The shock value of birth dominates over the left hand footage. The use of the audio provides a disconnect which offsets the viewer. There is potential in this play of contrast. See notes about sound and screen split or use of projection space above. I joked that part of me would like to simply show the baby being born and call it After Gustave Courbet. Or else The Origin of Man as Courbet’s work was titled. But I have other ideas too about using the footage on its own, if at all – unless I just put it to one side and title it –  as described in point 2. 

The use of found footage is an area that gives so many potentials. Assignment 5 gives the opportunity to present a realised finished piece. With assignment 6 there is the potential to rework it even further.

Coursework

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

The coursework continues to be well explored. The 10 year olds critique of the memes was interesting on how they perceive this style of visual imagery. There are many ideas coming though in your work and where you have engaged fully with the coursework material, has enabled to produce a very rich tableaux from which to develop your own ideas.

Research

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

You research continues to develop and certain key themes and authors are emerging. Flusser would be one and maybe Irigaray is. Think about who the key influences are and pulling these together these threads in a concise(!) blog post. [I will try!] Are they agreeing with each other or do they have some contradictions? Or it may be that they are all talking along separate divergent lines.

It is really good to see the links to the work from other courses.

Learning Log

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

The discussion from the hangout is well documented and you are reflecting well on the thought of others. With regard to the conversation regarding Digital Gaze – I wonder how the furore regarding the recent Gillette advert plays into this? John and I have a hangout scheduled to discuss this further. I’ll pop that Gillette advert on the list of things to cover. 

This area of your blog is forever expanding and is testament to your diligence as a student. You are taking in a wide range of sources and this will only help to further develop your work at Level 3 by having a breadth as well as a depth to your investigations.

Suggested reading/viewing

Context

In response to Regina Dugan (who is possibly the scariest person I have ever heard speak! She’s pretty hardcore!) – there is a Wim Wenders film from the 1990s – Until the End of the World – which focussed on capturing/recording dreams. [Had a great soundtrack if you like that type of music which is why I remember it so well]. I will watch it

Just as I was completing the feedback, I spotted this link to a Bill Viola exhibition at the end of this month. If you have never seen Viola’s work in the flesh it is well worth visiting. There is a Thames and Hudson book on his work which is worth reading as well – “The Art of Bill Viola’.

http://www.rps.org/news/2018/october/bill-viola-michelangelo-exhibition?utm_content=plus- emails.com&utm_source=Royal+Photographic+Society&utm_medium=email&utm_campaig n=January+2019+eRPS Thank you! I look forward to going along 

You are probably familiar with the work of Jo Spence, but it may be worth looking at again. Her images lack the contrived sense that Sherman’s now have (I absolutely agree with this). Spence is sometimes picturing herself as what some may view as grotesque (Kristeva’s adjection springs to mind but it is our discomfort with frailty, sickness, the body’s failure to remain ‘ideal’, the knowledge of death) (images from her illness) but not because she was deliberately doing so, but that was how it was. (Thinking about your video with the footage of the birth happening here.) For me there is honest simplicity to her images which is worth contrasting with our now every Instagram ready lifestyles. I agree and perhaps I need to think about contrasting honest simplicity with filtered images as I did when I showed S&OA5 after submitting it. 

One last reference source is the Ian McEwan book ‘Nutshell’ – the narrator is an unborn foetus. If you can get past the whole how does it understand and have the language to tell the story, it is an interesting switch on how a story is told and the effect of the other characters decisions have on a life about to begin.

Pointers for the next assignment / assessment

Please inform me of how you would like your feedback for the next assignment: written or video/audio.

 

Strengths	Areas for development
Strong ideas being developed which show influences of a range of sources	Solidifying the ideas for the final piece
Clear evidence of research and how it is incorporated in to idea development and generation of work.	See if you can comprehend and distil the key sources.
A/V films show further exploration and understanding of how to work with found footage	Work on producing final piece based on feedback and own exploration of various editing methods