Had a late feedback session as was away this month so been a bit of a mad rush to catch up with quite a lot on.

This month as well as this update, feedback, a student meeting and plan update,  I attended second workshop on learning outcomes using the recorded session. Based on this I updated my learning outcomes to date. The major work this month was on a further draft of my literature review and the reading upon which this review is built and on producing revised creative test pieces.

I feel that this month, similar to when I first started working on my literature review, that the logic of the course pulled together for me. It is as if in writing my literature review helps me to crystalise my learning and pull together the different strands from my creative enterprises and my research. Maybe it just because my reading is more focussed on a specific argument for my literature review but my work this month felt very joined up. My understanding and interest in the theory been improved by my creative work and my creative work is developing nicely in part because of my research. My research based on my literature review been heavily focused on Barthes and Batchen but am supplementing my understanding of these works with  Sontag, On Photography, Hirsch, Family Frames and have just come across Martha Langford, Suspended Conversations which is very interesting as she deals with photographs contained within albums and specifically pictures where the original meaning, context and story been lost and how these images act on memory. Very relevant to my studies.

One aside I wanted to mention that I was struck by a quotation I came across from Oscar Wilde in a letter he wrote while in prison. “A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing.” (Wilde, 1999) This caught my eye as the emotional side of my project seems difficult to set aside from any other part of my learning or creative processes. At same time I believe this is a two-way process; just as emotion is intertwined with my project, I cannot allow myself to get too sentimental or exaggerate this emotion or treat it in a false or mawkish manner.

On the subject of sentimentality, this month I was down in Manchester taking part in a panel trying to improve cancer outcomes. Allied with fact that some of my creative test pieces this month have used images of children I have felt the emotional impact of working on my chosen field.

In Project 9 next month I will continue my creative work and work some more on my literature review. I will also think about a draft of my proposal for my dissertation for next year.