Monday, 5 June 2017

Assignment 1, Response to Tutor Comments

Tutor Comments

I was very pleased with the comments provided by my tutor in his feedback.
:-

Feedback on Assignment

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity.

In my artist statement it was suggested that I no longer needed page numbering as I wasn't writing an essay and the header and title Assignment 1 were not necessary.  Neither did the artist statement need a reference list and citations as the idea was to promote myself and my own personal voice, although it was fine to mention other artists by name as key influences.  I have changed these aspects accordingly.

One or two suggestions were suggested for tweaking the text and these I have followed as I feel that they do make the statement read better.  As suggested I have condensed the images to two columns per page in the interests of space and brevity.

I was impressed that Rob had researched the people I intend to send my PDF out to for comment and made suggestions as to how to tweak my work to appeal to them.

Research

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

It was good to see that I was active, by which I take it to mean that it had been notied that I was busy not only networking but also experimenting with a new project to extend my work beyond BOW.

The question was asked whether my blog theme supported block text, subheading etc to layout the written posts a little better.  I have experimented with that in this post.

Learning Log

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking analysis

It was felt that I had plenty of tweaking still to do with the learning log.  The tab list at the top of the page was received positively, although he was not keen on the drop shadow around the images.  It was also suggested that the blog has a static front page rather than beginning at the last post.  At the moment I am not sure how to realize these two points, but will look into it.  I will experiment with removing the archive list in the right hand column as suggested.

Suggested reading/viewing

Context

It was suggested that I might look at Paul Virilhio's 'Negative Horizon.

Response to Comments

Some of my responses I have included above and now include below my revised artist statement in the light of the feedback.

I am a photographer living in the east of England and am currently completing my BA in photography with the Open College of the Arts.  My background is in traditional photographic representations of wildlife and landscape, but as I have progressed through my studies I have begun to question the ways I represent the world.  My current work is inspired by wilderness and the natural world which I explore by walking.  Wilderness or wildness can mean anything from an untidy garden through to desert; or, according to the Oxford dictionary, anywhere in its natural state and not civilised, domesticated, tamed, cultivated or populated.  My inspiration is not the wilderness of wide-open spaces but wilderness on a much smaller scale.  Robert MacFarlane writes 'I had started to refocus.  I was becoming interested in this understanding of wildness not as something which was hived off from human life, but which existed unexpectedly around and within it: in cities, backyards, roadsides, hedges, field boundaries or spinnies.'  The mountaineer, W.H. Murray, also wrote of the same experience as long ago as 1951.  'Through the very uncertainties of our climb my mind became unusually observant, embracing many simple things that commonly pass unregarded.  While searching for a handhold the eye would alight on a blade of grass peeping from a crack, and see the amazing grace of its fluting, the fresh brightness of its green against the rock; and although the joy was that of one second the memory lived on.'   My work is now beginning to focus on wilderness on a smaller scale: woodland footpaths or the way an old brick wall is reclaimed by the wild.  It is informed by photographers and artists such as Eliot Porter, Paul Gaffney, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long all of whom portray wilderness, often by walking.


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