Embeded videos just incase

end of module evaluation

 Throughout this project I have been continually wrestling with the topic I was most interested in. I think that the way I approach research led briefs like this is self destructive and idiotic, i was too indecisive for too long and this lead me to feeling like the project was just getting rolling with only a few weeks before the deadline. I did not formally agree with myself what the essay would be about until it was too late to really get stuck in with making the perfect practical responses. I found myself interested in so many different elements of the topics that I was researching that I quickly became ‘distracted’ from the specific line of enquiry required to write a focused essay. I have found it very difficult to stop myself from being interested in related but not relevant topics throughout my research. I would not say that there is clearly much evidence of synthesis between the work and the essay i am worried that essay feels like a jumbled mess of facts and i don't think i wrote about the most pertinent case studies after changing/evolving my essay title so many times. I feel let down by my lack of structured self imposed time management, I don't feel like I am done with this project and I will continue to explore making and performing within masks in the future. In particular i would have loved to explore more 3d materials to make masks from namely wood carving, latex moulds and more ceramic explorations. There is so much more I would love to try and so many more different avenues of this topic that this project could have taken. I would have liked to have explored. I feel like I would happily start the entire project again. Despite feeling slightly deflated and disappointed I have undoubtedly learnt a lot of new things. In particular i feel like my knowledge of Adobe after effects has come on leaps and bounds and i would now say that i am a confident user of the program. I feel like my interests within art and illustration has been shaped dramatically by this project. I am especially proud of the video work created in this project and a handful of the prints although i feel like i should have spent more development time planning specific aims and intentions for my work this year, the context is lacking so i feel like my work is potentially less interesting than it could have been had successfully emulated a real life ritual dance for example. I feel like i have not been organised enough to clearly display the extent of my journey throughout this project and i have a feeling of shame to do with my lack of focus and time management. I have had glimpses of success feeling like i am getting somewhere but then i lose focus and my worry overrides any positive feelings. I am very glad this topic is over and i am looking forward to starting a fresh in the new year.

gifs

Feedback from the mega crit

Feedback from this crit was supportive and mostly positive, it was slightly too close to the end to be able to make any changes to my project. I regret not bringing in the physical costumes to display alongside my 2d work. However i feel like the work was fairly self explanatory. Once again it was a fairly un-insightful crit in terms of knowing how to improve my work. Our peer group are all very kind and never seem to be brutally critical which i feel is what some of us would prefer/need. I appreciate that some people would not want harsh critical feedback and i imagine the tutors has been told to stay fairly impartial but i do not feel like this leads to the most effective useful outcomes after crits. It nice to have a clearly understanding of your shortcomings and where you need to shift your focus, rather than being told well done and keep going for example.

post after practical peer review 1

At this stage now my cop project has evolved and developed into an investigation into the mask and its relationship between music and art? Or the role and function of dancing masks within society? In my mind it seemed like a logical progression to go from dance to masks as i have always been drawing faces and i thought to make these characters come alive through performing within them would add a wonderful excitement to the faces i have drawn all my life. I am worried tho that i am not actually that interested in the historical accounts of all the different cultures masks, where they are beautiful i can't help but think of colonial collections and rich white people fetishising ‘primitive’ civilisation’s sacred artifacts. I have learnt about the black market of african artifacts and the unfair trades that take place, i dont want my project to become purely focused on masks. I don't look at a mask and think WOW.. what does really excite me is the animation of the mask through human performance and the awe inspiring visual spectacle that manifests in ceremonial ritual events. I am getting more lost the more i read. My initial desires in my practical work has been lost. I have made some masks but im not sure i am that proud of them, i liked the exhibit photos of them and i am excited by the footage i have taken of the masks being animated. I need to start to messing around with these films and manipulating them until i have some exciting bizzarre music videos or back projections?

At this stage my practical work is becoming further and further from the things that i am now researching. I am trying to look at comparative mythology and masquerades from around the world but there is such a vast amount of different masquerades out there it is seemingly impossible to draw many true cross evaluations. I think that human civilisations throughout history have been doing these complex formal rituals with masks costumes dance routines and rhythms. I want to find out why humans have done this, from an evolutionary perspective what is the point in all this extravagant aesthetic behaviours. It seems so theatrical and bizzarre i would like to understand the need for ritualized ceremonies in human survival. I want to try and learn a common theme amongst all these different but similar in essence ceremonies from across the world.  

My feedback from the practical peer review has been very supportive of my drawings of dancers and recommend animating those; they suggest that my subject is too broad, which i agree with. The more i research the more i realise i am researching anthrolopology sociology evolutionary biology  masquerades ancient history costume design tribal cultures religion and mythology music and dance etcetcetc its TOO MUCH ! I HAVE DONE IT AGAIN! I NEED TO NARROW IT DOWN!?!? I dont want to narrow into something that then removes the excitement of discovery, i feel like the project as a whole could easily be made boring if i those one small component to research in depth… BUT I NEED TO! Grrrrrrrrrr I dont like reading academic texts, its not something i gain any pleasure from. At all.

1st blog post after group crit and ideas pitch

Over summer i re-realised my mains interests are music and performance. i felt like i wasn't actively researching enough but i realise now it was just that it didn't take the traditional formal approach of reading journals essays and books but manifested in a more holistic absorbing of information through allowing my interests to drive deep searches online without worrying about going off on tangents. I respond a lot better to listening and watching information rather than trying to extract it from an angry word heavy text document. Podcasts and documentary's about humanity history science and creativity are what seemed to be exciting me when its kind of talking about everything through the lens of mini investigations.

I really enjoyed letting myself relax into small voyages of discovery ; looking back i cant really put my finger on the exact turn around eureka moment but i think it was discovering Weirdcore. Through a ted talk from a pixelated man that turned out to be the visual artist under the alias of weirdcore i learnt about music concert back projection mapping and saw how amazingly it added to the normal music concert experience. I had been going to a lot of live music shows over summer and was left thinking they were good but i noticed they lacked any exciting visual accompaniment to the auditory experience.

Wierdcore was aphex twins tour artist every show they put on they had a different setup of multiple large screens all working together and lots and lots of lasers. His work is terrifying but beautiful and tailor made to the specific city in which they were performing.  I wanted to expand on my knowledge of after effects gained in level 5 and create moving image sequences that could be projected onto performers and enhance the viewing experience.
Also I was asked to create some moving image animated music videos by a friend of a friend for some hip hop tracks that he had been sitting on. I have been collecting footage for a number of years now on a little digital camcorder and that allowed me to have an arsenal of interesting videos to start messing around with and manipulating. The process of layer layer layering up different arty bits of footage was very exciting watching new shapes and colours emerge from combining the pieces of video. I loved the freedom of it really looking into doing whatever i possibly could to these videos to make them further and further away from recognisable footage.
I learnt a lot about after effects but i also started worrying that i was spending to long with the screen so for my traditional hand drawn illustration practice i decided to explore drawing pictures that capture a lot of movement; maybe with a view to potentially scanning and manipulating into moving on after effects. I wanted to do my COP project on the connection between music and art therefore in my head the purest connection between those two it DANCE. I proceeded to draw dancers in different medium and styles all focusing on expressing the speed of movement or the multiple utterances of an arm speeding through space. I want to extend these drawings into different print process maybe layering up the same image through screenprint to imply quick movement; i want to be very experimental and loose really make the most of this final year to explore and create. Insofar as a question after the project proposal and first group discussion i think i am investigating the relationship between music and visual art how they connect, the social impact of dance? How illustration can most effectively accompany music?
I am very worried about this question being too massive and the potential avenues too vast because then I will have a repeat of last year where I ended up getting lost and bogged down then ended up writing a poor essay about not much at all but a little bit of everything at the same time.

avenues

My research project this year was very vast in its potential avenues I think this is good and bad. It was good for me, exciting to allow myself to be carried away by different trains of interest and I learnt alot more than is evidenced in the essay but also very bad for me in knowing how to write anything precise/concise.  Looked into a lot of more abstract expressionist paintings that ever before, with a particular emphasis on Mark Rothko whose work I had not previously explored. My interests in making art often seems to be nearing abstraction. I love the idea of the observer being able to make any conclusions they like about what an artwork is about or why I made it. I think an artwork is most interesting when it needs to be worked out, its not easy to understand. Often in the case of fine art, there is no need to work it out the painting speaks for itself and is purely aesthetically pleasing. is this the same for illustration? I think not as conceptual ideas are key to communicating ideas. 
I believe that once I have made something and it exists without me having any influence over it further than being its creator. I could have done an essay on that on how abstraction can communicate ideas-maybe level 6?
improvisation as a theme is a good one in my opinion because it encompasses the style of art making I do and what seems to inspire art that I enjoy. Jazz music has played a very big role in my life and I ended up listening to lots of classic jazz music like John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Keith Jarret to name afew, as part of my research but I went off too deep in a musical tangent so this lead to being quite unproductive for writing the essay about improvisation in the world of visual arts. Musical improvisational skill is matched by the skills of those in the realms of standup comedy and improve theatre; another avenue this could have taken. (but also a very distracting tangent when researching)
A freedom to express yourself without worrying about trying to make the piece decipherable, digestible or comfortable for the eyes. The ideas discussed in my COP essay lead me into learning more about my hero Kieth Haring and then into about Jean Micheal Basquait and new York in the 1980's. I find basquait's life and work very exciting but couldn't find an angle to included my new discovery's in the essay. I really admire Basquaits drive to make art and his work looks quite similar to some of the stuff I have been making throughout some of my cop sketchbooks.

I feel like I should have honed into one more refined line of inquiry that would have made my research a lot simpler. Because I wasn't sure exactly what I was investigating a lot of the time I would find myself getting further and further away from illustration and I had to take steps back and consider how this could be applied to my essay.

hitsuzendō

Some of my most exciting drawings were made after learning about 'the way of the brush' or hitsuzendō, allowing the brush to lead, following your intuitive understanding of balance and composition. speed and energy, this zen Buddhist brushwork was a discovery quite far into my project but has become one of the most interesting inspirations for my personal artistic expression. I found it liberating the use my whole body to create marks and allowing my hand to lead without my brain questioning it. 

The idea of letting the brush lead is something that really resonated with me. Its almost like relinquishing control and after a while of focus it feels almost as though I am channelling some sort of higher creative power? IS THIS TRUE? IS THIS POSSIBLE? Am I merely a mortal vessel that some eternal transcendent artistic energy uses to create artworks ?! or am I just a moron making shit art? a stupid young boy making bullshit marks that mean nothing? Whats the point? why am I like this? why cant I just work systematically and ordered like everyone else? maybe because I AM JACK WILFRED GRIEVE..... ?

I learnt that Ralph Steadman uses a large energetic black splat brush stroke to start his drawings and decided from that mark how to turn it into the final drawing. I found this very interesting and this lead to me working back into drawings to turn the seemingly random marks into more figurative depictions usually of people. The element of chance is a very interesting component to drawings that I would like to explore further...

I think that following the brush, allowing it to lead the black mark around the paper is a nice way to start an image that gives it an exciting spontaneous exuberant feel but it is then important to take a step back and evaluate what shape it has created and how you can turn it into something that has more value than a scribbly mess.

learn more!

learning from mistakes is an interesting idea, you can learn in other ways but its commonly understood we must fail in order to grow. can you be wrong in art? I suppose the only way you can be wrong is if you are trying to draw something precisely, it is wrong if it doesn't look like the subject matter. (or within illustration it is wrong if it doesn't answer the brief)
I need to draw more from life otherwise I cannot fail, I cant be wrong if I'm not trying to be right. I need to try to be right in order to be wrong in order to learn and grow. I need to push my traditional drawing skills, life drawing/still life etc etc. this will allow more room to fail and thus more room to succeed.

My mistakes this year make me realise my ability to learn from my mistakes is non existent... i always seem to leave things to the last minute then panic and stress more than i need to when it would have been easier if i were to just do it steadily and continually throughout the year. I am growing out of my laziness slowly but i think that my priorities were focusing on making art and thinking about things rather than blogging individual study tasks when they were set. It will be different with 601. 

symbols

the Enso circle is a Zen Buddhist symbol of which there are many highly conceptual symbols throughout eastern historical theology. This lead me into research around the idea of symbols and I discovered that the western world throughout history hasn't had any all encompassing symbols representing life on earth in any profound way like the symbols of the east. Nationalist Flags Adverts and coats of arms are about as far as commonplace artistic symbols in the west.
Hinduism in particular is filled with beautifully coherent elegant symbols that represent the entire material world from birth to death. I learnt about The Dancing Shiva the Hindu god who has four arms with one foot raised. one arm holding a small drum, with which he summons things into creation; one holding fire with which he destroys things, one pointing up reminding us everything is alright and the last arm he points down to his raised foot which symbolises spiritual contemplation. his other foot is on the ground that is standing on the back of an all-powerful hideous dwarf that represents the ego, thus highlighting the importance of squashing/breaking the back of your ego. The Shiva is often depicted within a massive circle ring of fire representing the entire cosmos universe and shiva is everywhere dancing amongst it. I just thought this was a beautifully poetic cosmic symbol that discusses every aspect of human life but it was a tangent that i couldn't channel into my essay.
It made me want to consider the use of symbols more in my work, to use shape not literally but suggestively. to use commonplace known visual symbols as an aid to discussing my ideas. could i create a set of symbols? maybe a new alphabet? Assign a set of new shapes meaning and add a glossary key before a series of artworks? something for level 6 maybe.