The purpose of this final assignment is to help you review your work and decide how you’re going to submit it for assessment. Even if you’re studying for personal development alone, it could still be helpful to take stock of the work you’ve made during this course and think about how you might develop it further. Although this sounds like a relatively straightforward and quick exercise, students generally find it takes much longer than they anticipated! Tackle this task methodically and allow yourself plenty of time to do justice to the effort you’ve made throughout the course.
Following my feedback discussion with my tutor I agreed a set of headings for this assignment. The advice was that I had completed A5 as far as I needed to take it. The Internet is a vast subject but the fact that I had decided to do a 20 year snapshot meant that I could close the project here for the moment. Hence A6 will become a concluding phase to the entire Digital Image & Culture level 2 programme.
Course content:
When I started Digital Image and Culture I was enthusiastic after having completed Landscape. I wanted to push my practise further. I wanted to expand my technological knowledge. I felt on the cusp of something. After the first assignment, which I thoroughly enjoyed making, I embarked on assignment 2. Very soon I felt weighed down with research work. Although I am very accustomed to researching, I did not enjoy the research that was being asked of me. I felt I had seen much of it before. I found the work recommended to be repetitious of previous research. I missed new and exciting photographers like JR, here in France, true African photographers like Malik Sidebe and wonderful old Japanese photographers like Daido Moryama. I wanted to blow the dust off the research articles before I read them…… As I progressed on the course I began to loose momentum. My work was suffering. I tried to make personal work but could not work up any enthusiasm.
I feel it would have been more advantageous if we were asked to create work by looking at, and studying the work of other photographers, Hannah Hoch being a typical example, rather than write 500 words about their work. Students at Level2 can be trusted to do the research and the end product will give a clear indication of how well the student has studied the recommended work. I am sure most students read, listen or look at the links recommended by their tutors as these are always relevant.
I could not see the point of assignment 4. Why not suggest a face to face contact with the tutor to discuss the A5 project?
Once I got to working on my A5 project my motivation returned and I loved the whole exercise.
Assessing my own Assignments for Digital Image & Culture:
I started A1 by learning how to divide up a circular image. I finally got around to making political satirical circular images. This was real fun. The fourth image I made of the Russian Presidents eyes was not successful but my dissatisfaction with it and the changing political scene in the UK lead to the ‘Boric Johnings‘ idea.
A2 started as a total disaster. No one liked my idea to study the Chilean mining situation. I had to rethink the whole project and it all took a long time. Once I had settled on making it about my great grandmother I was happy and was able to proceed with the work. The object of the work was to tell Letitia Millet’s story to my children and grandchildren. Hence it had to be in commercially printed book form. But the material was so tactile I felt a handmade book was required as well. This was the highlight of the course for me. Being in the presence of a reputed bookbinder as we worked alongside one another, to produce my book, was a real privilege.
Writing essays is not difficult for me. I found A3 extremely useful in that I studied the digital self and used the opportunity to analyse my own digital self. This too is a huge topic and worthy of greater in depth study.
I will discuss A4 and A5 together as, for me, they are one and the same assignment. I so wanted to do this project. My husband never makes any issue of his participation in the beginnings of the Internet, nor do any of his colleagues. But these were the people who made it possible for Tim Berners-Lee to write his front end page which became the World Wide Web. Those who came before Berners-Lee are the forgotten people. They are all in or coming up to their eighties and their story needed to be told and heard. The subject is very technical and this posed a real challenge for me. I wanted the end result to be comprehensible to the least technical person I know. My tutor claims to be untechnical and she assured me the video held her interest until the end. I am very grateful to her for this reassurance.
My grandchildren have no idea their Grandpa played such a pivitol role in the beginning of the Internet. To them he is “Silly Goose”. So I wanted him to tell the story with his own voice.
Personal Technical Development:
I feel I advanced my technical skill very little in the early sections of this course. However the making of the video was a wonderful way to return to something I had scratched the surface of in Landscape. My technical skills were abysmal when I started, with iMovie, to make videos. I was advised during Landscape to move to Premier Pro. I was totally lost and had to climb a steep technical mountain. I feel this project helped me to hone my skills a little more. I have so much more to learn but I feel sufficiently confident now to take this further. I used a DSLR with an external mic but my cinematographer friend asked why I wanted to make a video with a stills camera when I would never use a video camera ot make a still image! Because I had no choice was my reply. I am saving for a video camera which I hope to be able to put to good use in Level 3.
The making of the book for assignment 5 required patience, a commodity in short supply with me. This was because the dot matrix paper was so lightweight and the print was much heavier. The length of the print, 2.4m also posed problems. I had to fold it first and then add the glue to sections and then attach it to the lightweight dot matrix paper. Then this had to be attached front and back to the covers. The reaction I got from fellow students, friends and my tutor would indicate that the end result justified the decisions made along the way.
I also enjoyed making layered images for one of the exercises.
Outcome
I have completed this level despite having lost momentum along the way. My completion is due, in great part, to my fellow students and tutor, Clive White, who gave me such helpful advice and encouragement during our Side Wide hangouts.
The outcome is that I am ready to present the work for assessment. I am relieved that I have managed to get this far. I am reasonably satisfied with the end result but I do not feel that I have found my own voice yet. I feel that I have ‘created’ a voice which does not sit very well on my shoulders. This is a documentary type voice when inside my head I am not a documentarist but want to produce more original creative work. I appreciate that I have stories to tell but I am still struggling with how to tell these stories.
Where to from here?
Onward and upward. I am impatient to get on with Level 3 but am terrified at the same time. I discussed with my tutor if it was odd that I want to work on something, at Level 3, that I have not even touched on so far in my studies. She assured me that this was not unusual. In the HE6 Hangout Ariadne outlined the process for deciding on a subject for our Body of Work at level 3. She advised that we must be passionate about what we want to work on. My tutor seconded this.
I have always been passionate about the environment. I am lucky enough to have a wonderful garden on my island home. I work biologically and recycle everything possible. My compost heap is the story of my life. It contains all my shredded paper, all my cardboard cartons, the contents of my hoover, my cats hair, my own hair and all the vegetable waste in the household and garden.
When I leave my own controlled environment I am shocked and appalled to find all sorts of rubbish and litter. I am especially upset by the indestructible plastic that washes up on our shores. Most of us, with some notable exceptions, are aware that we need to do more to protect our fragile world. I would like to increase awareness of the problems of plastic pollution by getting my local community involved in finding creative solutions. I am also interested, as a qualified chemist, in exploring replacement materials for plastic. A third line of interest is using recyclable plastics to create sculptures.
TUTOR REPORT
Digital Image & Culture 