First Group Session
The task for the first group session for I.P. was to create a personal ‘spell’ or ‘incantation’ through writing words of motivational power, for inspiration towards beginning a creative process for this project. For this project I want to create something different from what I’ve made recently and before, something mixed-media, perhaps model making – alternatively looking at costume design or maybe collage again. During this session we were also informed that the themes for this project would be ‘Listening’ and ‘Site Specific Art’.
Spell Writing Task:
I want to make something that I enjoy producing.
I want to be inspired and motivated, I don’t want to get stuck and lost in experimentation and development.
I will conduct research but not let it confine me into a certain way of working.
I need to remember that I must change something about my practise and development if I get demotivated.
I won’t force myself to work and I won’t need to because I am going to create in a way that’s beneficial and positive to me mentally and emotionally.
It’s important that at this point I focus on developing my production strategy in a way that is healthy and enjoyable for me to avoid becoming lost within a project.
Introductory Session
We started the introductory session with an active listening task; we split into pairs and took it in turns (one talking, one listening) to discuss our recent creative developments and artistic experiments. I partnered with Becky, and she spoke about her recent interest in painting and customizing different instruments such as ukuleles and guitars, alongside how she felt about the upcoming semester. I spoke in return about how I had been moving house during the week, and how this preoccupied most of my time in which I would usually be creative, developing ideas and making things.
The second task was another paired task, this time around drawing. I was paired with Naomi, and we took it in turns to draw one another without looking at our drawings. I feel like activities like this are always helpful in terms of group interaction and creating a comfortable atmosphere amongst everyone, alongside being open and vulnerable with artistic processes by taking away that control of seeing. Overall, the task was amusing and interesting, and I felt helped everyone become more comfortable around each other and within the session.
The last task of the Introductory session was adding to the I.P. skills share wall; the task was to write down your personal skills in the categories of research, creative ideation and production/making. Then, you would stick these skills to the wall under your name, and following this, use string to make skill connections. I used string to connect my name to people’s skills that I found interesting and wanted to know more about, skills I don’t personally have and would like to develop. It was really interesting to see how different everyone’s skill sets are, and how we all work differently, yet want to learn more from each other.
This week was very interesting and I am excited and motivated to begin with this project. I don’t feel like I have a great enough understanding of the themes to begin any experimentation yet, but I am ruminating ideas that I will mind-map or brainstorm in some format in next week’s post. I feel very inspired for this project and hopeful; I want to make something that I am proud of, which I wasn’t able to do last year. Moving house this week as an emergency has been extremely stressful, partnered with beginning the second year of university, and I am nervous that I will already fall behind. However, I want to remain positive and confident, as I wrote and explained in the ‘spell’ task, and having spent a lot of time over the summer developing my ways of working and focusing on myself and my well-being, I ultimately feel like I am in a much better place mentally, and now physically, to begin this project.
Hi Mason, great to see your first week post, and see you reflecting on your progress from last academic year. You write clearly and compellingly about the ways of working you want to employ this term, and they already read as an incantation, an invocation. I think lean into these flow and easy ways of working, and find ways of generating ideas, experimenting and doing research that feed and fuel you, that enliven you as a pose to feel like a pressure. It’s great to see you talk about changing position / approach if you get stuck. To develop, leave time to show your creative ideas development and experimentation outside of class. Be sure to do artistic and academic research into ideas and practices of interest and cite your sources to show where the information is coming from. Info on how to reference is here https://aber.ac.uk/en/aberskills/referencing/#referencing—the-basics. You show very good and lucid reflection on the classes so far. Leave time to show evaluating thinking, what worked well, what didn’t work so well, why? You can apply this to reflecting on classes, source material and your own thinking – making. Remember to give careful thought to your creative idea for IP, and choose an idea. We will be working on timelines and production plans in next week’s class. Be sure to post something for weeks 2 & 3, I know you’ve been ill, but play catch up where possible. Well done and keep up the good work!