Project Reflections

Reflective Tool

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/reflective-tool.html

1. Describe / What happened / What did I do / What were the significant factors

2. What was I trying to achieve / What were my thoughts and feelings / What are the consequences

3. What things like internal/external/knowledge affected my decision making / What other choices did I have and what were those consequences

4. Analyse / Evaluate / Judgements / Different people's experience / What worked / What didn't work

5.  Conclusions / What can be concluded about the work or media / What can be concluded about myself / practice / thinking

6. Research / Is there any research that might deepen my understanding / Are there ideas from outside

7. Learning / What will change because of this / What will I do / What have I learned about art, myself, other

1st May 2013

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Reflections February to April 2013

I have started working on various aspects of the 24 Hour Sibelius idea - sound trials, image and aesthetic trials, collating ideas and initial research. Also initial research into appropriate references to consider. I have not kept the sound trials so far apart from small snatches on my computer, as I can easily access my discoveries through note taking. I have worked on the mechanics and logistics of the arithmetic of the piece - how long the music pieces last, and how they can fit together into 24 hours.

I am trying to build a framework for the piece and to consider the technical elements which will make the piece possible. I am searching for initial signposts in the project - large areas to eliminate or incorporate, eg whether simply to slow down the music to fit. My thoughts are still expanding outwards into this project, and I don't want as yet to formulate it too specifically. There is still plenty of thinking and pondering to do while I get on with the more basic parts. The consequences are that I know this piece is complex, and has many decisions to be made. I realise that it might benefit from some time frames rather than endless research.

My internal feeling is that once I think up an idea, there is a way to realise it, and that it is then my work to figure out ways to accomplish that. In my mind, it is already a fully formed piece of work and in the making, I grasp those ideas. I am aware that I have given myself something of a closed end, rather than starting with an idea and seeing where it leads me, I am also starting with a conclusion in mind to get to - the 24 Hour Sibelius sound and moving image piece - which also has an element of installation.

I have already discussed my project in a tutorial and a group crit. Certainly there is initially enough to talk about. The underlying principles and codification of ideas is fruitful for understanding it myself, and giving it a matrix to develop. While the idea is still expanding, new elements can still come in. There was an idea about allowing interviewed voices to become part of the piece (I am interviewing classical musicians about Sibelius). Weekly reflections will allow me to evaluate specific elements better.

I am happy in having a big project to work on. I like all the thinking through and imagining, and the research so far is gathering together of favoured information. Recent MA crits and seminars have emphasised the growing structure in all our work, which both generates and informs the work, and I want to become very aware of this in myself, as I believe is it almost the key to my practice.

Well, there is certainly research to be done, and at this stage it is still easy to come up with obvious lists. But other things occur - a recent trade show brought in the idea of utilising the internet in mechanisms in ways I hadn't thought of before. So the process of research is still in the stage of being rather open and allowing.
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/internet-of-things.html

In the group crit I was lead to my own conclusion about this project, that I need to feel I am exploring meaning, and that what I am really looking for in a work is its philosophy. I am still pondering that as I think it is yet another key concept I need to explore in understanding my own practice and what I am aiming for.

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I have a more or less complete picture of how the finished piece might work. I have a sense of how all the elements might fit together and be applied, and more significantly for me, a sense of the reason and connective constructs of the piece. After thinking through many parts of the project, I feel I have come up with a unifying theory.
Two pieces I have made before came into my mind as constructs containing practical solutions. Suddenly it all made sense and I could see it working.

I was trying to find enough inner control of the piece in order to really make a start. I am aware that such a big and multilayered project could become burdened with entropy if I have too much material drawing me in extra directions and distractions. I have a great sense of happiness and fit, and feel energised with the focus to work through the project.

I had trusted myself to desist really starting the drawings, etc, before I had figured out the underlying structure, but I was beginning to wonder if I was telling myself something else - that I was simply putting off getting on with work. Although the simple solution of just making an actual start, putting pencil to paper and draw, is usually advisable, I do feel an inner sense or mechanism was working away, and did put everything together just as I was beginning to doubt the process. It just takes proper time to think through a big project, and I'm glad I haven't been previous in producing drawings just to feel productive

Before last night, every angle I looked at this project at ended up in unresolved byways, but after the moment of connection, everything fits together, slots into its place. I can examine them in relation to each other, and although I have a realistic understanding of the complications that will inevitably come along, I have a sense of grasping this piece in its entirety, and the steps I need to take to make it.
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/group-crit-april-2013.html

The recent group crit was significant in my thinking, as for myself and the other students, the sense of work emanating from underlying structure was paramount, both in developing and allowing the structure or codification, and then in further allowing or following through work according to that code.

I understand about moving image - my moving image, that whatever logic I set up to make a piece, I will always have to subvert that within the piece, and improvise - I will decide a piece will be made according to certain criteria, perhaps pace, or direction, or movement, but in the making there will always occur so many natural variations, aesthetic decisions and individual solutions to particular frames or passages, that, although seeming simple, it can never be recreated exactly. It can't be programmed to its natural conclusion, and will always have the handmade human element. Of course, this is the fun part for me - making all those artistic decisions based on years of looking and thinking and making, and also based on trusting the moment of choice. It's also the messy problem-making problem-solving part, walking out into new territory, trusting my decisions.

At this stage I am still considering my initial list of research.

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/reflective-practice-project-research.html
Everything feeds in however, and it is the things I come across now which are drawn in to relevance. An underlying thought which underpins my research, as well as my list, is a quest to define my moving image.

This was like a big test of nerve for me. In some ways I had not been as productive as I might expect myself, but I truly have even more reason to trust my thinking-through process. This has been productive, as I now have what 24 Hour Sibelius will be and how it works in my mind and noted down on paper.

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I have viewed the space for the Art Fair at Slaughter and May, and am about to absolutely prioritise preparing work for that. I have also had other life interventions this week, at the emergency dentist, and have largely had to content myself in thinking about and further imagining work. Each time I do, I feel I solve another little piece of the puzzle. Also this week was the MA lecture by Les Bicknell:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/les-bicknell-artist-lecture.html

This was interesting in many ways, but significantly in being an ideal example and insight into how an artist sees all of the world through the prism of their practice - in Les' case it is bookness, but I recognise that tendency. He also collects images and categories of images to lead him into work.

Also attended a dyslexic writers meeting at the University of Roehampton. Although it was worthwhile, I will not be going back - I'm not that interested in dyslexia as the subject of creative writing, but again, an example of the prism of creativity.

This week I reviewed photographer Christopher Williams at David Zwirner Gallery:
http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2013/05/18/christopher-williams-at-david-zwirner-gallery-exhibition-review/
Williams was there giving a talk round the gallery - a great privilege, especially since there was little in the exhibition itself to explain the work which was actually highly dependent upon understanding its generation and context. The significant thought for me, however, and relevant to my own pursuit, is when he said: Sometimes you can only appreciate beauty by cutting something in half.

What I am trying to achieve is getting on with things, but sometimes, despite the best will for continuation and consistency, life intervenes, and one must be content with remaining in the thinking and planning stage. Although I feel a little frustrated that I do not have time and a studio where I can close the door to the rest of the world, that is a familiar complaint of most artists I know.


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Reflections May 2013

An extremely busy time punctuated with emergency dental visits, urgent travel to Scotland to move my Mum into a home and deal with the house,other family things, and work-wise, preparing Myriad for the art fair:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/myriad-paradoxical-objects.html
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/slaughter-and-may-art-fair.html

While I was occupied in completing a body of work and all the accompanying tasks for that, I thought a lot about why I was making each decision, and all the considerations which drive me.

Again and again I test and then prove to myself about believing in the inner mechanism which meets deadlines. If I can imagine a thing, I can make it happen. I just believe it, and sometimes I look back at previous times to keep the belief and encouragement going.

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Reflections June 2013

It's only now that I am in the midst of it all that I recognise that I will, after all, be using the Street Compositions and Bricks images in this unit's final piece. Although I have been collecting and processing these images like a maniac, researching cultural references relating to them, and although thinking deeply and writing  about what meaning they truly have, I still did not know where they were leading me.

I had to decide and recognise that this is the work of the unit, and use them as material to create work. In themselves, images are not necessarily arwork - I feel the need to transform them, to extract and remake the whatness of them - the quiddity of the quotidian.

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Reflections July 2013


I have started looking at the imagery to find the right versions and aesthetic to convey the ideas I am seeking. 

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I am experimenting with the flavour of the images, and trialling linking them together. I hadn't thought about them yet in this way before, I am still collecting and looking, but want to find the thread underneath them which will emphasise the qualities I see in them. Just now I see it, I see how they might be used in moving image in a controlled and exploratory way - there's no use just linking them together.

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Reflections August 2013

I had a great conversation with Bernadette, my Dyslexia tutor.
http://www.dyslexia-idc.org/

We talked about the Unit and the whole MA, and how things I had found initially difficult such as being explicit about aspects of my process, I now almost think of as second nature. I described to her the muddle I have got in with these reflections, how I had spent so much time in trying to devise a reflective tool which would be a catch-all, which I would then simply fill in as I went along. Although this is more formulaic and structured than reflections I would normally do, the point of the unit is to be systematic about it and to develop mechanisms of reflection.

I am now considering how to actualise all this unit's work into one piece. Everything has been going along at a pace - the images of bricks and street compositions, the reading and thinking, the processing, the sound work and ideas, and so on. But there comes a point to resist the endless gathering and pull it all together. I made various decisions - that I probably had enough brick and street images for now - I have recently taken and processed about 300 of each. That's plenty to make work. But it's really hard to make myself walk past interesting walls without taking photographs. Actually quite painful. I have to wean myself off it and allow my mind to obsess about the next thing. That's the way it is.

Brainwaves are sometimes very hard one, through uncomfortable pressures of thinking.

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There has been so much going on in making the moving image piece that it has been very hard to even think of recording and reflecting upon the decisions made and the work produced. It feels like pausing to itemise the processing would halt and hinder it, when I am at the stage of making and trialling. It's been a week of many hours trying out various ways of using the images to get the feel I want. That's very time consuming as each idea requires a fair amount of processing within the film programme to see if it really works.

It is also a process and balancing between working through and imagining. I begin to get an idea of what I am after, and that suggests the images. When I have those images or small film clip as best as I can make it, that in turn will be not exactly how I imagined it, or will suggest further options. Always, I must try to figure out how to make the clip, then forget that and try to see stronger into my own imagination. Both are ways towards the solution, and the further I get with each, the nearer they match, and the more they strengthen each other.

Now, through much trial and error, I have a system which will be effective.
To do:
choose 60 of the brick images. since I am aiming for an hour piece it makes sense to decide this way. Again these choices can be counter-intuitive and must be trialled.
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I am most definitely at that point where I must stop gathering more information, casting thoughts further out, and must keep to what I already have in front of me, if I am going to pull everything together for assessment. The trouble is, I keep getting more ideas, realising more connections, thinking up more meanings and research and work I could do. I am at that point, but feel it is difficult to maintain the control. there is so much discipline and concentration involved in making this moving image - so many tiny parts to fit together, and parts of me are fascinated and other parts want to rebel.

I've just been able to watch for the first time the trial using the actual footage I will use all together. So much to do to tidy and edit everything, but I'm amazed, really. I'm hopeful. Somehow I found the piece unexpectedly sad. I do feel emotional. It's been intense to get the work this far, and there is a mountain of editing to do, but for me it is worthwhile - I have to see that finished piece now. Everything in it is so elusive - the lights, the destabilised structure. I have been thinking all day as I make it how it is a metaphor of a mind - that structure with the illusive spark of light or life, and the sadness of some situations we can't see our way out of. Partly the state of living. And yes, it does have to be the full hour. The impact of the brick and street photos were something to do with sheer volume, and so with this.

I have so many internal art rules that I must discover and apply while making work. I wrote about this last year in my Art Manifesto:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/art-manifesto.html

Contraption has brought out all my tendencies about collecting many shades and variations of a thing. I have built up the sound in a similar way to the visual imagery, and it was constructed completely from the visuals.

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Reflections on Reflective Unit



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