Tutor Feedback Assignment 5

Overall Comments

The project really came together, well done. As hoped, it is insightful, interesting and very topical. The sheer scale of it is impressive, allied to a good presentation and pertinent reflection and research, you will have come so far over this last year. I’ve really enjoyed looking through this work and feel that the subject matter will be appealing to a mass audience – before putting it out there, work through your presentation, ultimately you want to show work as professionally as possible.

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

Notes from, and in addition to, our Skype tutorial -

You have the project! Its a real achievement in scale and scope. Presentation is key now.

The time you have left is best utilised to work on this.

We noted your concerns about the quality of  iPhone photos – this leads directly to your thoughts on how the work will be shown/viewed/disseminated. We discussed some prints – these would be exemplars, I mentioned that a recent student submitted prints of video stills (his final work were photo-films), but if we think about how work might first be encountered it could be as a flyer or magazine write-up – but your work should be engaged with the screen, its about the screen, initially captured via screens and should therefore, I feel, be mediated through screens. That said the black border harks back to prints, purist f64 group practice etc, I’d suggest removing this and keeping the work in the context of today. Perhaps research more on blogging/vlogging/contemporary diary practices.

We discussed this dissemination, really the work needs to be held in your hand, whilst the viewer is remote, the expectation of immediacy – the feeling that you are in their home – is what drives the project. It engages with voyeurism, the domestic, family and the familiar.

You are going to look at a website for the project, perhaps even an app, as it is likely to be viewed through the same device as it was made (and is about!).

I mentioned Fred Ritchin’s Bending the Frame, the BJP/Time articles, iPhone photos from Afghanistan and their dissemination.

Cite references of work made and displayed using iphones, gallery exhibits. We discussed that often the display of mobile phone based work is an afterthought – phones on walls etc, in your next module think carefully about the ways viewers will experience your work, start from want you want them to experience.

You have seven months worth of work, what reasons can you find to condense or edit? Part of the work’s appeal is its consistency.

We discussed your title, something along the lines of Family/Time/Volume, potentially a play on Sally Mann’s Immediate Family. Nan Goldin is a good reference for works made and shown in volume. You’ve since selected Family Moments which has a slight cynical edge. Play critically with other works, see if you can refer to the work of others through the title.

You confound us every now again with some of the insights, the narrative loosens and tightens as we go through the days.

For assessment, the concern of having to have prints. I will speak to Jesse and Eddie at assessment. This is surely an online project. The initial encounter is really important.

Look at Joachim Schmid, Andreas Schmid, Eric Kessells, printing out the internet.

Contact learning support re pregnancy. My best advice is to get plenty done now!

In terms of highlights, you have many pics to choose from, the irony of 659 and 703, the triple device shot, phone+shopping trolley, phones in car, son’s haircut, all the breakfasts, the hotel breakfast shot,

As noted previously your 'diary' writing is warm and immediate. Its a tricky balance that I think really works – cite any literary influences, particularly any that correlate with the visual – many artists keep, or have kept, diaries.

Coursework

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

Decent and relevant reflections on your work and others. Good to see you following up on previous references, and even producing experiments in response to Martha Rosler.

Research

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis  

Signpost wherever you can what you have been reading and how its affected the work you are making.

Learning Log

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis  

Good to see the work presented here. Look again at the black borders. Wordpress do have some excellent templates, a shift from Google may be in order. A designer recently used Wordpress to produce what is effectively a website rather than a blog for my www.relativepoverty.org

Suggested reading/viewing

Context

Please look at any extra practitioners above.

Pointers for the next assignment / assessment

Good luck moving on to next parts of Level 3. You now have a solid piece of practical work to contextualise and bring to the world! Well done.

Reflection.
That's it. I've completed my project and it would seem that my tutor is satisfied with it also. There is still some concern about how I will be submitting this project for assessment, as it really needs to be submitted online as that is how is it meant to be viewed so I think I will take my tutors advice and create a blog/webpage specifically for this project. This, as long as there is no issue, is how I will submit it for assessment. But I will check with my tutor nearer to the assessment date to confirm whether I am ok to print and submit only certain images as prints with their corresponding text so that the assessors have something physical to look at.
I have taken on board the comments regarding the black background on my prints on my blog and have changed that accordingly.
The main focus now is getting the project onto a webpage and then getting the sample prints done asap.

Overall, this has been a challenging module. But now that the project is completed, I am extremely happy with it and this feedback confirms that it has been successful.