The Everyday Project Review
The theme of this module has been engaging for me, I could repeat this module many times and end up with completely different work. It has definitely influenced me a lot to affect my upcoming projects.
In our weekly classes I always felt challenged by questions and ideas and left with a new perspective each week. They were helpful to contextualise the theme of the module and to encourage my engagement with my self-directed project. The tutorials similarly encouraged me to keep going with my experimentation and helped me to clarify my conceptual ideas when I was stuck.
In the beginning of my project, I started generating ideas from researching 20th century artists like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, reflecting on my summer and looking at my personal everyday life in the context of things that had happened to me recently, and combining these starting points in a mind map. I have a favoured method of beginning a project; to gather visual information through research and through my own making through sketching, tracing, taking rubbings, and manipulating/editing, then reflecting on these ideas. I used this process in my Everyday project, just not in the same order, and found it effective again.
Throughout the project I had several challenges which were different week to week. Sometimes I struggled with the conceptual side of my project and other weeks it was a hesitation to create work. I found it helpful to work on another area of the project to resolve the creative block.
Intentions
My first intention for this semester was to focus on my practice and experiment as much as I research and reflect. However, I experimented more than I researched and reflected, the opposite of what I found in the past, and I should have been doing more active reflection to help solve problems and generate more ideas this semester. Because of this, I believe there are many ideas I missed out on that I would have thought of if I had written out my thought processes.
My second intention was to try three dimensional work. I almost started three dimensional works in this module but it always stayed 2D, mostly because I couldn’t find a right pathway into it, there were no smooth transitions that I was aware of. I did make sculptural work in my painting module though, and that made me eager to make more. I think it was the right decision not to force my project in a direction to meet one of my goals.
My third intention was to become more comfortable collaborating with other people. The ways in which we collaborated in this module were very different to my past experiences, the most notable being how relaxed it was in the Rirkrit Tiravanija workshop and the Worry Doll workshop. In the past there were clashes of ideas and the pressure of creating something ‘worthy’ of presenting to a group of people, whereas in this semester, we weren’t brainstorming together we were performing together an idea we already agreed on, and this was more enjoyable for me.
Experimentation, Research and Reflection
Experimentation was somewhat difficult, navigating three practical modules at once which had similarities and differences. I may have felt pressure to create finished pieces or felt conscious of the notebook posting, but having the deadline there made me create work every week.
Research started well and thinned out towards the second half of the semester. I think this is partly due to the high level of energy I have at the start of every project that seems to decrease after a few weeks and I became demotivated by the short daylight hours and becoming ill at the start of December.
Reflection was difficult throughout. I think again because I was torn between the three projects. In the past I have been able to write large amounts of reflection on shorter projects because I can dedicate my attention to that project. By the fourth week of the semester, my Interdisciplinary, Photography and Painting modules had taken different routes, each project had an individual investigation that could have taken up more of my time. I did write a couple of double pages each week and these were useful to my practical work.
At the start of the project I separated these three areas into their own sketchbooks. I still think this works best for me as it keeps everything organised and clear to read through, as well as being useful to highlight areas I am not engaging with enough.
This semester I came across new mediums and new artists. I had never used a projector as a means of creating art before or experimented with the projection itself. I used photoshop in a new way, to create repeating patterns from everyday material. I have never made a video for a project before and view my final video in this project as a simple starting point for potential future ideas, as no editing was done, and I have a lot more to learn about the techniques. The proposal form and style of presenting at the end of the module is also new to me. The proposal form felt difficult but a valuable exercise for the future. Having multiple presentations allowed me to become more comfortable giving them and appreciate the importance of presenting as a skill and made me realise that I need to give a lot more presentations before I can be confident about them.