I have been continuing to read and to think about what I have read and how these ideas might relate to my own work. One thing which is starting to take form in my mind, is the progression of my original idea. Originally I had broad idea that I could investigate medical scan images looking for a way to try and bring back something of the person who that scan represents. I am now wondering about the medical scan as a photograph and how it relates to Barthes idea that a photograph is a precursor to death. The scan is a type of photograph which strips away recognisable features of the individual and of time and place. It even misses out vitality as the viewer has no idea if image shows a deceased person or not. This idea expands and alters my original concept and how I think of life, pain, death and loss have shifted. I was on a call the other day and someone used the word ‘bereft’. I wrote this down as I thought it is a word that can be applied to the living when thinking about the dead. The dead have no voice.

I have been working on a wide range of ideas this month, from a re-examination of Barthes and his idea of photography being a harbinger for death, research into how the death of a child might be seen differently to the death of a parent, reading a tutor recommended book by Geoffrey Batchen, arts-based research practice and a new piece looking at how I go about making a creative work which gives me space to explore my creative process. All this in addition to tutor and student meetings.

One thing I want to write here is a repeat of a point from previous feedback. I feel that this is crucial so I repeat this for my own benefit in an attempt to re-enforce the point. I have also copied this paragraph into my notebook.

How do I feel about my work? How do the different concepts and areas of research and creative works I review or create make me feel and react? Looking beyond initial feelings, how do I react and stop and think and revisit a chosen topic and how does reflection and time shape my responses and perhaps change or extend my perspective? 

I am working towards Project 4 where I will produce a test creative work based on my research to date. This will lead into Project 5 which is defined as a mid-point review.

My feedback was again very positive and took the form of a video chat. The feedback was more a sharing of ideas rather than a review of previous works.

I started with come comments on what I regard as the administration side of course; so, course notes, online resources, course layout and where to find things. I gave the example of the unit recommended reading list which was hidden away at the bottom of the unit descriptor which in itself was hidden. Am reminded of a Douglas Adam quote from his book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display …”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.” (Adams, 1979, p12)

I have added an outline of the information on course layout and assessment criteria to my blog in my introduction section of my coursework because this seems like the logical place such information should sit. Such fundamental things should be front and central and listed in coursework and not hidden in a word document. While this is frustrating, am sure for tutors as well as students, I did comment that I didn’t feel that I wanted to focus too much on such admin tasks and would rather focus on my research and creative journey. So, while I can poke a little fun with the Douglas Adams quote, this is just me putting this admin side in its correct place in my head. In grand scheme of my learning journey, this is not a big thing.

Continuing with some practical/admin points was a reminder to submit my notes following feedback meeting in a suitable format to allow for editing and a pointer that some of my submissions where I had re-used an old form and these still mentioned previous DIC unit.

There was brief chat on aims of unit; production of learning logs to show progress, production of creative works based around research, a reflective presentation with in video form or written form, a critical review or dissertation proposal and how this relates to my practice and finally a literature review.

I made comment on the project plan which I feel is just a means to an end. The plan is not an end in itself. I therefore didn’t spend too much time thinking about my plan at this stage of unit. The two parts of the course descriptor which my tutor brought to my attention were the reflection presentation and the critical essay or dissertation. I think am going to go down the path of the dissertation as I feel this gives more change to explore my work in depth. For the dissertation from the perspective of this 3.1 unit, a proposal and literature review of 2,500 words is required. We talked over the literature review as I wondered how I could supply a list of crucial texts before I had started writing the dissertation. It felt to me that this was putting the cart before the horse. Answer was that this list of texts was not intended to be a complete or unchanging list that is fixed in stone. The list provides an outline of the most important sources for the written work helping with direction and thought process. I think of this in a way as a kind of anchor. My tutor described this as the foundation of the theoretical framework and is about basic knowledge and building blocks for future study.

I was worried that my research and coursework was very different to what has gone before in the degree. Was I doing enough? How would assessment work and what could I show them when my work in a month might all be theoretical research? This was at forefront of my mind as I got back some positive feedback from Photography 2 Digital Image and Culture. This sent me down path of worrying I might not be able to reproduce such work and in turn led to doubts about myself which seems to be a natural part of my process that comes into my head fairly regularly. My tutor thought that the change from Level 1 to 2 and then to 3 was substantial and that level 3 left the student without a fixed list of tasks or a sense of reference.

I mentioned that in DIC I submitted a reflective presentation to my tutor who suggested I do this in video format as a way of including more of my personal reflective processes which am not always best at remembering to write down. My submission to assessment therefore consisted of my original written reflection piece as well as a video piece. We never get detailed feedback on what we submit for assessment but was interesting for me to try something different and wonder about how assessment tutors viewed by submission. We chatted over the literature review as I worried that how would I know which sources I might use until I had started writing dissertation? I suggested that this might be putting the cart before the horse. My tutor suggested idea to me of building blocks. The basic idea behind my dissertation proposal would be based upon some pieces which I regarded as being the most important to my work. The list of sources would be in no way complete at such an early stage.

We had wide ranging discussion (this idea of wide ranging seems to mirror my research which feels very broad) covering various ideas

• of the paradox of remembering yet at same time forgetting. I think of the ritual of death and the funeral as an end to a life. Do we keep thoughts of the dead with us after this? Well yes in the form of grief. Yet memories fade and graves and the dead are forgotten. Maybe the rituals around death are about shifting that person from like into a different space as much as a thought process rather than a physical move to a grave.
• We went on to discuss that the death ritual and commemoration are not the same thing.
• Of the symbols associated with death and that many of these appear in tattoo culture.
• Of the differences between death and remembrance in western cultures and in other cultures.

I have been making bigger effort to record my thoughts and feelings but this is still something I need to give conscious thought to. These ideas and feelings can shape and even alter perspective and might lead to a different approach or an extension to an existing way of thinking. I have adjusted my blog space to accommodate and reflect my (hoped for) clearer way of working.

In coming month, in addition to continuation of research, I been taking some photographs in graveyards and might consider how to present these. I have more online chats with other students planned, one of which Dan is coming along to provide some explanation of how the course been put together and laid out. In addition to that my tutor suggested I read Geoffrey Batchen’s book, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. I have had a quick look and this book is very expensive to buy. Luckily, I see that is available online via the UCA Library. I will also look again at last month’s text, Barthes – Camera Lucida and specifically Barthes idea that photographs are harbingers of death. My review of these written works will be posted in the same section of my blog as this post.

Reference

Adams, Douglas, (1979). The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. London, Pan Macmillan p12

My plan for my project is broadly as it was last month and the month before. I am still fairly comfortable with my dates and producing a project each month. There is nothing in my project plan I feel compelled to change at this stage.

As I said last month, I will look to produce a task for the literature review which I will fit into plan but at this stage there is no rush so will do this when I next provide a plan update.

I have some tutor led student chats in my diary and these might provide me with more insight to a tentative articulion of my thoughts about the literature review and a dissertation proposal. If so, then I can build such insights into my planning.

My course is progressing well. I am trying to blend my time in looking through course notes, conducting research, reading (quite a lot of reading), reacting to feedback and using all of these strands to slowly build one upon the other to form my own sense of my developing practice which compliments my interests and will decide how my physical work develops.
One of my concerns as I write this report is that an assignment based around a review of a plan and a progress update does not always provide a huge amount, I can say which feels as if it might be relevant to tutor feedback nor to assessment. I will however, set down what I have been looking at in past month with links to my work.
I have spent a little time adjusting the layout of this website. I was conscious that time spent doing this is in a way “dead time” which does not contribute to my creative work but felt the need to make some changes to try and make it feel more logical to myself on how the layout flowed, what the menus were called and what they contained. My adjustments took into account early feedback from tutor regarding my approach to this unit and from spending time speaking to other students and reviewing their blog posts.
One thing which came from my last piece of tutor feedback/discussion was a suggestion that I record my feelings. How do I feel about my work? How do the different concepts and areas of research and creative works I review or create make me feel and react? Looking beyond initial feelings, how do I react and stop and think and revisit a chosen topic and how does reflection and time shape my responses and perhaps change or extend my perspective? This level of reflection isn’t something I have done before in a visible way. So, while putting all these thoughts down on paper doesn’t always feel natural to me, the idea of externalising my internal workings and thoughts and feelings and reactions feels like it could become an important strand in my work. I will use this as a strand to expand my practice and maybe allow me to think on things more clearly and at same time show other people my thought processes and my working.
I looked at two pieces of research based on discussion from last month’s feedback. I think I might change how I do such research and rather than doing this then not referring to it again, for the research areas which interest me the most, I might well revisit, perhaps many times. My first piece of research was on boxes. My initial thoughts on this related to the box as a way of containing artefacts and ideas and perhaps memories. This infers that the boxes are a means of exclusion and of keeping some things on the outside. I looked at some work by other artists and the idea of opening hidden spaces, I thought was a good match for the medical scan revealing hidden spaces within the body. I want to further expand on the work I have done here and look at some different materials for boxes and containers. In part this relates to work done in Photography 2: DIC where I produced haptic works. This week I received feedback from the assessment team on that work.
My next piece of research was about the symbolism and symbolic representation of death. I wondered why we deal with death in terms of symbolism and abstraction. I also expending my work here to think about tattoos which often feature some of the same symbols. The idea of bringing a different art form such as tattooing interests me. The idea of the lifelong permanence of the tattoo somehow feels close to the imagery surrounding death. In my mind’s eye, I had initially thought of displaying my work in a long hospital corridor but what about displaying it on the human body? Would this be an extension of people who choose to tattoo their children’s names on themselves? This work is very interesting to me and very broad in scope.
I do not know at this stage if death or the abstract symbols linked to death and loss will form part of my work or how I weave the different strands of my work together. I originally envisaged my project as being based around the medical scan and trying to find a way to put back the person that is missing in those medical images. One potential revelation is to consider what is missing in a photographic sense from a medical scan image. There is no sense of who the person is, so no sense of self. But there are other missing factors. The scan has no sense of place. It could have been taken in any bland medical room in any hospital in any city. The scan also has no sense of time. I can tell when certain scan images were invented but how do I know if the scan was taken last month or many years ago or in the morning or evening? These things hold true other than if medical notes are added to the scan giving a name, date, time, location. One other disturbing element is that the scans of my son and daughter come from their medical files so I associate these scans with them. In reality could scans represent any of us or perhaps all of us?
How then to think of the scan as the basis for a photographic project when it seems to represent so little other than to medical professionals? Maybe one way to think about my project, if I were to use boxes or collections as a basis for my thoughts, is that there are different aspects to the scan; the person, the place, the emotion, the circumstance that led to the scan. If these ideas are missing from the scan and I have to find a way to put these back, then is the scan ultimately about loss? Loss ties closely with the abstraction of skulls and bones and things we associate with death. I still don’t feel any sense of resolution as to where my project is heading but the idea of looking at the different things that are missing in a scan somehow feels very important so I must do more research and thinking about this area.
One other interesting thing I found in the graveyards was old graves where the stonework been broken or tumbled over or worn away, whether through the passage of time, pollution or just neglect as nobody cares for the grave. Some grave stones are covered in thick moss or plants. The words carved into the graves are often eroded down to nothing. This idea is something I want to work on. Is the person forgotten as family moved away? Are the family or friends themselves dead? Are these people not in any way famous and over the years have attracted no attention? This also ties to idea of unmarked graves which is something I spoke with my tutor about. I wondered about these gravestones which commemorate a hidden or unknown person and I wondered if I could repurpose such stones to display a piece of my own work. This would give the stones a new story and a new life? It seems to have a parallel between the anonymous or dehumanised nature of medical scans. As I look at this area more next month, I will use some of the photographs I took.

My plan for my project is broadly as it was last month. I am fairly comfortable with my dates at this stage and I do not intend to spend much time looking at the plan itself nor in changing my proposed dates nor the tasks within my plan. These tasks and dates might evolve as I work through my project but at this stage, I have nothing further to change about my plan.

I will look to produce a task for the literature review which I will fit into plan but at this stage there is no rush so will do this when I next review the plan.

I mentioned when I first setup the project plan that there are different approaches to this. Some people might plan every moment of their day, enjoy the minutiae of their plans, endlessly reviewing and tweaking and updating the plan. To others the plan was a broader document not to be considered a whole and complete version of the truth until later in the project. I was always at this more relaxed end of the spectrum when planning a project. As regards milestones, specific targets and interdependencies in a plan, I have often found that at the early stage such fine detail makes less sense than it does as a project nearing completion when it all seems to make more sense.

In broad terms, I am operating at an assignment per month, which seems to allow me to work at a good pace yet still allows me to go down the various rabbit holes of research.

The one part of my plan I am uncertain about is that I marked two practical projects in my plan. I do not know for sure at this early stage if I will build two test projects, or more or perhaps less. The answer depends on how my research goes and how I feel compelled to interpret my research through completed works.

I will check in will my tutor that my chosen approach to planning is acceptable.