Summary Explication of Unit 2
Unit 2 Learning Outcomes
1. Present a resolved body of original creative practice that has evidenced the systematic enhancement of your knowledge and understanding.
Resolved body of work does not mean ‘complete’ or ‘finished’ or ‘ended’… it is a subtle but important difference… and it is more than simply ‘work in progress’. Resolved means you have worked through your ideas and this is the body of work that has resulted from your research and practice. Most likely, your ongoing work will build on what you have done in the MA course, so the body of work cannot be ‘final’ or ‘complete’.
Jonathan, do you mean it points towards the future rather than represent a final resting point?
Alexis – it has that possibility at least – but ‘resting point’ is quite a nice phrase, the resolved body of work and the show is a pause – it does mark a completion of two years but you don’t need to fear it being the ‘end’ and therefore the work needs to be perfect and complete in some way.
I think that is clear – the final show demonstrates what you have worked out during the two years; it is not essential for the work to look finished, although that does help, but it must show cohesion and clarity. It needs also to show that there is room for it to grow further or into something else – coherently
and learning outcome 2 uses exactly the word – coherent…
2. Analyse and critically reflect coherently upon your own practice and its context.
This is your ongoing blog posts, the reflective process – keep doing the blog and you will meet this learning outcome.
3. Summarise and evaluate your overall progress and formulate a constructive plan for continuing Personal and Professional Development.
Again this is covered in the blog but there is one short written post that I will address specifically in a minute.
Unit Components
1. Symposium II
In May you will all make a 5 minute video summarising your research and practice and we will have one of those long days of watching and discussing your work and ideas. The Symposium is not a silent crit, you will be able to speak.
2. Critical Evaluation
This is the only extra specific written work you now need to do, it is a simple blog post – about 500 words that does 2 things:
a. critically reflects on the 2 years on the course,
b. describes your future plans post the MA course.
3. Reflective Journal
It says word count of 2000 – you can ignore that – it is more for MA illustration students who generally just have sketch books but often not much reflective writing – for you, you will all have done more than 2000 words easily on your blogs.
4. Practical work
This is your art – your work – resolved and presented on your blog and in the show.
Hopefully you can see that if you continue making work and reflecting – then you will meet the learning outcomes.
Pav – Is the work assessed against the project proposal? I meant, do I need to keep updating my proposal in the light of new developments and changes?
Jonathan – The proposal is still the start point but of course things continue to develop and change – so the story has a beginning but you may and probably will have wandered in many different directions! so yes updating the proposal is useful.
5. Research Discussions
We will be running these over 5 weeks of next term. You will all have half of a chat session to lead a discussion about some of the ideas in your research paper – so you will have 45 minutes to 1 hour and you will be responsible for facilitating the discussion – then the other weeks taking part in the discussions.
I suggest that you focus on something from your paper (you wont have time to cover everything) — you then think through some material that will help us discuss the ideas and move towards a better understanding of your ideas. For example, you might want to write 3 or 4 short blog posts that we read then discuss, or make 2 or 3 minute videos that introduce the ideas and raise questions that take us step by step through your thinking. You can include the link to your own practice if you want to and we can discuss that as well.
For some people like Pav and Matt and Alexis, who have done some teaching or like Pav who does loads of it! – then this is more familiar territory but for everyone it is great practice at summarising your ideas and research and thinking through how best to give access to these ideas for other people. The London based students will be doing the same thing — we will keep these as two separate sessions: London based 10.00-12.00 UK time and online 13.00-15.00 UK time.
I think we will try live streaming the discussion in the studio for anyone who has time and wants to join in and also I will invite all the students to the typed chat sessions in skype. Not everyone will be able to attend everything but you do need to attend one lot of sessions, ie for most of you it is the online sessions. You all have some important material in your papers, it is important to share it and gain more from the process of research.
My research paper has led me from considering an artwork as a living entity as an analogue for a biological organism, to a living entity in a social sense. i.e social agent. Could this be the centre of the discussion rather than dwelling on the research paper which forms the foundation for this transition but is only part of the story?
Alexis yes, that could work. We know that there is too much to cover in such a short period of time so a focus is important.
Sessions will start in week 4 of next term on Tuesday 28 Jan – I will put a timetable on the wiki soon.