3 in1

fndMEDIA2014

(Film, Photography & Animation)

Assessment Week 6th-11th Oct. 2014

WHAT

Choose ONE of the of the three options set out below in the next section.

Spend the first week during which you will be assessed researching and developing ideas.

Bring all the work produced into college on Monday 13th October because you will use this as part of what you will do that week.

HOW

Read through all the sections below carefully. Give yourself time to unpack the ideas, time to choose the best option and time to change your mind if necessary.

Consider how you work best; by thinking, by researching or by starting practical work first. All these and more are equally effective ways of starting; it depends on the individual.

Use the blog (link in myUCA and at the end of this) to ask questions; remember there is no such thing as a stupid question. Do not suffer in silence ; that is what the blog is for.

WHY

These briefs are intended to encourage divergent thinking; they set out a theme or subject to start from but don’t prescribe the outcome; you can determine what direction to take and what technologies and formats to use.

This will allow you to begin the process of building an individualised portfolio of work

WHEN

Having spent a week off- campus you will have a week, working as an individual but supported by technical demonstrations and tutorial discussion, to develop a piece of work media-related work, that might or might not be described as photographic, filmic or animated.

1. RITUAL

• Document daily routines and identify a simple ritual that you, a family member or close friend perform daily, habitually or regularly.

• Research other more public or larger scale rituals, ceremonies and rites that it reminds you of.

• Explore the relationship between ‘ritual’ (the actions) and ‘sequence’ (the order of successive actions) using any suitable medium or format.

2. CREATURE

• Research the idea of a mythological creature, starting with this online list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures
• Document its appearance, behaviour, psychology, motivation and capabilities.

• Develop or evolve the creature using any available medium or format.

3. LIMINAL

• Explore the concept of the liminal or liminality in as many ways as possible.

• Reflect on your own experience, environment or conduct, or that of others, that could be characterised as liminal.

• Document these subjective or personalised speculations using any suitable medium or format.

Overall Suggestions for Unpacking the Brief

• Get as many definitions of any keywords* contained in the brief that you have chosen as you can; this is always a good idea even if you think you know all there is to know about any word or concept. You might also want to explore synonyms, or words that mean the same or similar things; try a thesaurus as well as a dictionary and don’t ignore antonyms because they will help map out the territory.

• Ask questions about everything because habit and complacency are the enemy of creativity. Remember; even the most obvious question, if asked from a genuine desire to find out or discover, often leads to an unexpected answer or outcome.

• You are asked to document which is a key concept in media practices. So again think about it as making a documentary of something. Is a documentary an objective record, a speculative account or even a very personal impression?  The answer of course is that it is likely to have aspects of all of this and more. See also the section on Researching

• There is nothing wrong with using other people’s ideas or work as long as you acknowledge your sources. At this stage just make sure you have have a record of who made it and/ or where you found it, we will get to bibliographies later in the pathway. See also the section on Researching

• However, far more important than other peoples ideas are your own; trust your instincts, intuitions and interests. Don’t be put off when either you, or someone else notices a resemblance between what you are doing and the work of others; it may be something that has been done thousands of times before but it is a first for you; that is where the value lies.
• If in doubt, keep it simple. Go back through your thinking and through the briefs until you find something jumps off the page as making sense and then start work; the other stuff will soon follow along.
• Use the comments section of this blog to post a question.        

Specific Questions

1. When does a habit become a RITUAL? Or, is it that to ask such a question, is to confuse socialised ritual with personalised obsession?

2. Why are there so many paintings, books, films and games that include CREATURES that are both more and less than human, and more or less than animal. Whose creatures and monsters are they, yours… or… mine? Let’s agree they belong to them, not us, for we are good and well balanced individuals, aren’t we? Well, aren’t we?

3. Can we be literal about the LIMINAL? Or should we be caught between two minds, two worlds or two places? If I become sub-liminally aware of something what am I on the edge of?

General Questions

• What are photography, film and animation?

• What are the differences and similarities between them?

• What is a story, a fact or a game? What is a drama, a documentary an info-graphic?

• If beauty is, to an extent, in the eye of the beholder, then are all forms of art, media and design interactive at least in terms of how we experience and judge them?

• Does technology control us, or serve us? Do we hanker after a more powerful camera/programme, a bigger or more expensive paint brush (made from the best sable hair) because we truly believe we can exploit the extra range it offers, or is it because we think that somehow it will compensate for our lack of knowledge or ability? Or because its there?

• What are Media, Art and Design for? Are they to solve problems or meet needs? Are they for our benefit or for the edification, amusement or benefit of others?

Notes On research methods in practice-based subjects

• There was a time when artists drew, painted or sculpted and craftsmen (sic) copied from pattern books or the boss. Since then things have got a little more interesting and/or complicated. However it is, and always was, about having a variety of experiences to inspire and in so doing, getting a range of information to work with and from.

• Historians make a relatively useful distinction between primary sources and secondary sources. According to Princeton University, USA, "A primary source is a document or physical object which was written or created (drawn, filmed, photographed etc. my addition) during the time under study". Whereas a “A secondary source interprets and analyzes (re-edits,re-uses,mashes-up my addition) primary sources” This kind of works for us but not if you try to use it too literally.

• For instance, if you go to a gallery and draw from a sculpture of a monkey is the drawing a primary or secondary source? If you go to a Zoo and the animals are behind glass does the glass work like a vitrine and was the original or primary event only created by the designer of the Zoo? Just go for the broadest range or type of sources or experiences.

• Make notes; the relation between words and images is a productive one. If you find that a picture is worth a thousand words, then run that backwards, and you might find that a word is capable of invoking a million other pictures.

• Keep the flow going, so use ideas like primary and secondary to stimulate your thinking about what to look at and how to capture it, don’t use them as rules, boundaries or decorated borders to limit your investigations, or impose a pre-determined structure. Creativity is often inchoate, or in-coherent, literally it often doesn’t all hold together, at first. The art often comprises finding ways to make things that don’t normally go together ‘work’ together.

• Use weapons of choice; sketchbook/notebook/camera-phone/ipod etc. - whatever works for you ; it’s about ideas not pro-formas. A good rule of thumb might be get as much as you can because nothing exceeds like excess. If it ain’t there you can’t edit it out. The mind has a remarkable ability to process a very large amount of information intuitively when looking for that missing link in the mix.

NOW ASK A QUESTION