When I applied for level 3 and explained my areas of interest and potential project, I had no real idea of what was involved at level 3 study. I think level 3 feels radically different from previous levels. Every student comes to the start of level 3 having been taught certain skills in level 2 and before in level 1. These skills include critical essay writing, research for essays, reading skills as well as skills specific to the subject of photography, capturing images, seeing and imagining the image and the craft of photography as well as selection and presentation of your work. The difference in level 3, I think, is that at its core I think it is about teach self-reliance. There is no strict brief nor is there coursework which builds towards a series of assignments and then an assessment. Instead, there is a broad outline setting out a framework based around a project plan, a literature review, a proposal for a piece of written work all based around my own choices of research and creative works.
I started on the journey towards level 3 in my final level 2 unit on Digital Image & Culture. Here I used my final 2 assignments to start to build towards where I am right now, creating test pieces and thinking about potential outcomes. In level 2 and at the start of level 3, I had a vague, less than solid idea about using medical scan images and putting back a sense of the individual shown in these photographs yet unrecognisable as a medical subject. My research in level 3 has looked at many things and I know that if I write these down will seem like a random collection of thoughts even though there is meaning and purpose behind my choices, and given that a meaning and purpose might not be immediately obvious even to me at the time I studies these themes. I looked at abstract forms and symbolism surrounding death along with metonymy looking at the written work by Geoffrey Batchen, on why there seems to be a human need to capture images of those about to die, about the medical view of death and of life flashing before our eyes, related to this I thought of the words of a medical professional I spoke with who told me that the emotional and scientific aspects of their job were compartmentalised, this led to the idea of boxes. The boxes surrounding death, graves, coffins, gravestones and more. In turn this led backwards to death symbolism. As part of this I looked at ancient stories about plants and flowers associated with death. I looked at memories and the past, history, melancholy. I researched the difference between the death of a child and the death of a parent and I looked at Barthes idea that a photograph is a prelude to a death. My most recent research has built upon my earlier work looking at Barthes and has been on how death is portrayed within visual art.
In all of this at times I felt lost, that my ideas were pushing me in random directions as with the wind. It felt out of control and random and I worried about losing sight of where I had come from and with no certain destination in view. Should my research feel so random? I wonder if what I have in my mind isn’t a single idea of how my creative and written works will pan out further into my journey at level 3, but is actually more than one work around which I can spend many years working either as part of future studies or outwith the realm of academia. Why should a theme as vast as that of our own mortality be expressed by a single project? I am aware here that the idea of a visual art projects with a defined start and sudden end provides an echo of the move from life to death.
My key themes and big questions will coalesce more as the unit progresses but at this point in time, I have the beginnings of some useful thoughts.
At this stage in my learning journey, I think a key idea is of the idea of a memory box. That is a box or container of ideas, mementos and memories designed to give an experience of life after we are dead. The box does not contain the dead person, it is a gift from the person about to die to the living. The box in itself and what it contains is a symbol or series of symbols. I am interested in whether this box should be open or closed. Should the visual art of the contents be on full display or as is case with human thoughts, hidden? As some of my thoughts in this course come from a physics perspective, a corruption from an idea in quantum mechanics sense might be that the contents of the box can be different things as long as the box remains closed and we do not know what lies within and what state those things might be in. It is a space of multiple possibilities which only coalesces into a single meaning should the box be opened. Does this idea start to bridge idea of how death is experienced by the dead person which the live person can never know? I was struck in my studies on Batchen that he explored a dressing mirror which had an image of a dead person in one panel. I wonder on this idea of the mirror as it allows me to introduce the audience to be a part of that memory box and so to question their own mortality. I can vaguely envisage a work where the audience looks into a box where different images are shown and the viewer looks through one image to the next with final frame in box being a mirror designed to place that person into the death/memory box. I do not know yet how this might work, I could perhaps print on perspex so each image is see-through and forms part of the next image. I could also do this digitally so that each image switched on and off in sequence.
A different idea I am attracted to is the idea of a graveyard as a stage. I recently went to see an exhibition on van Gogh and while the exhibition itself did not interest me; I was intrigued by some of the ways the artworks were displayed. One of these was a top-down projection onto the floor. I immediately thought of a grave. The idea links to idea of constructing a virtual graveyard. Could I create a digital walkthrough graveyard or bring a kind of pop-up graveyard to a gallery space?
A third idea is about fragmentation. I explored this in a test piece but was unhappy with result and more importantly for me, how this work made me feel. So, I might revisit this but try and understand better why I didn’t like this work and what I can change.
Although these ideas have a 3-dimensional real tactile element, I still wonder about my original medical scan images and whether I use these as symbols of death like skeletons as seen on gravestones. In next few months I would like to further explore and produce some test pieces looking at the ideas of a memory container and of a stage. I would also like to search for other practitioners to see if anyone else worked in a similar way.
This review asks for key sources and to list 2 which are most important to my understanding of my project so far. I think the Geoffrey Batchen work, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. Even the title of this is so interesting with idea of hat we leave behind hoping to be remembered in some way yet at same time the idea of remembrance being for the living and not the dead. My second key text is Barthes and his work Camera Lucida. I have chosen this in part for second part of book which is about Barthes trying to find and keep a hold of a perfect image of his recently deceased mother. This work is immensely helpful to me for another reason which is that so many other academics and key thinkers reference Barthes which creates a gateway for me in my research to access multiple other linked resources.
For the next 6 months of this unit, I can see that my plan will have much more detail, drilling down to show more specific tasks and activities. More development of my ideas as they shift from being abstract towards more of a tightly controlled and indicative of my direction of travel. There is specific learning I need to do for example to prepare me for the literature review which is something new to me and looking at proposal for my written work.