My feedback was 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 found it very useful to use my tutor as a kind of soundboard (no disrespect intended) to share ideas with, to get feedback, to formulate new ideas and possible directions for future works and to think of things differently.
On a practical level I asked about structure of this unit and whether I could go completely off-piste and whether the coursework and assignments in the notes was optional. Answer was that the coursework should be shaped to help inform my areas of interest and that if I do this, the coursework will seem more relevant and will help to inform my subject and will become an intrinsic aspect of my development and progression.
I mentioned that as part of my research I had approached some medical professionals to ask how they thought of medical scans, whether a tool of their job, whether they saw the person behind each scan and how they managed the technical and emotional sides of their work. As an aside I also wondered whether such an approach could even be considered as research. One answer which came back was that a doctor told me he compartmentalised these things, putting different feelings in separate boxes. This idea kicked off our discussion as I had said that the idea of boxes immediately filled me with different ideas both as physical items and as a way of managing potential collections. My tutor added to these thoughts with the idea of death itself, the boxes within boxes of coffins, graves, shrouds, ossuary, tombs and so on. We moved on and discussed the symbolism of death and using abstract motifs to convey deep and emotionally fraught emotions. We even strayed onto different plants associated with death which might commonly be seen in graveyards and spoke of these plants in mythology. The plants are another abstract symbol.
Specifically, my tutor suggested I make space to record how some of the concepts am working on make me feel and how they make me think about specific topics and work. 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.
An interesting start to the course.
In coming month, I have some online chats with other 3.1 students, some explanation of how the course been put together and based on what comes out of this I might start to reshape my blog layout a little as it feels a little scatter-brained to me. In addition to that my tutor suggested I read Barthes – Camera Lucida. My review of that will be in the same section of my blog as this post.