Pre-reading for lecture, The Cautious Anthropologist
Freire, P. (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, UK, pp. 87-96
Word mutually includes Reflection + Action = Praxis: practice, as distinguished from theory
Remove Action = word becomes verbalism: concentration on forms, rather than content of expression, e.g. idle chat, ‘blah’, empty word. No transformation without Action
Remove Reflection = word becomes activism: vigourous action, e.g. action for action’s sake, dialogue impossible. No dialogue without Reflection
True words ‘transform the world’ i.e. reality = process, transformation, not static entity
Words are not the privilege of few, but the right of many. Cannot be reduced to the act of one pers. “depositing” ideas. Not a situ. where some name on behalf of others.
Dialogue: encounter, mediated by the world in order to name the world. “Existential necessity”.
LOVE
Dialogue foundation & dialogue itself. Task of responsible Subjects. Cannot exist in relation of domination, which reveals pathology of love, sadistic dominator/masochistic dominated. Bravery: love cannot be sentimental Freedom: love cannot be pretext for manipulation.
HUMILITY
Self-sufficiency is incompatible with dialogue.
FAITH
Without faith in people, dialogue is a farce which inevitably degenerates into paternalistic manipulation; an a priori/theoretically deductive requirement for dialogue.
TRUST
Established by dialogue. Mutual trust, horizontal relationship is logical consequence. False love, humanity & faith does not create trust.
HOPE
Fighting with hope entitles waiting. Waiting without trying is despair.
CRITICAL THINKING
Indivisible solidarity = no dichotomy. To Naive Thinker, important thing is accommodation in normalised ‘today’; for the Critic, importance in the transformation of reality
Only dialogue which generates Critical Thinking is capable of generating critical thinking. Without it there is no communication, no education.
Educator/Politician lang. cannot exist without thought. Neither lang. or thought exist without structure. Effective comms. understand struct’l conditions in which people’s thought / lang. are dialectically framed.
How does typography alone influence how we interact with visual communication? And how do I personally approach/identify/seek to solve a visual problem using typography (segmented autoethnography), for example, concerning a client brief or personal project? Are there different rules in different situations?
Perhaps I should have tackled this one first, or maybe this one make more sense now with the base-level comprehension of analytical Vs evocative autoethnography.
Notes from:
Ellis, C., Adams, T.E. & Bochner, A.P. (2011) Autoethnography: An Overview, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 12, no. 1
Intro
Autoethnography (Ae) - describes and systematically analyses personal experience to understand cultural experience. Both process and product.
auto = personal exp.
ethno = cultural exp.
graphy = written
author / research / autoethnographer uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to DO and WRITE Ae.
History
Lack of confidence in existing soc. science 80s, opportunities to reform methods. Absence of universal narratives. Opposition to enter/leaving culture for paid writing.
Scholars considered being self-consciously value-centred rather than value-free - sought a positive response to critiques of canonical ideas. To produce meaningful, accessible, evocative, personally experienced research.
Forms of representation that deepen our capacity to empathise to different cultures, peoples
Previous assumption of neutral, impersonal, objective research now untenable. Canonical do-write research conventionally white, masculine, hetero, mid/up class, Christian, able-bodied - disregards and invalidates other ways of knowing
Ae acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotion. It doesn’t hide from or ignore it. Embraces difference.
Diff cultures have diff world assumptions through diff modes of speaking, writing, valuing, believing - - race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, class, education, religion - - conventional research methods too narrow.
Ethnog. culture’s relational practices, common values/believes, shared experiences that help in/outsiders (members/strangers); participating observers, field notes; interview cult’l mem’s, examine speaking, uses of spc and pl., analyse artefacts
Ae. retroactive/selective epiphanies through cultural participation, possession of identity; analyse experiences using method/theory tools, research literature to validate story over pers. experience. Also important to consider how others experience sim. epiphanies.; cf. pers. experience with existing research, interview cult. mem’s, examine artefacts.
Writing / Product
Autobio. aesthetic, evocative, engaging, storytelling conventions (character, scene, plot), chronological/fragmented progression; illustr. new perspectives, pers. experience/epiphanies by find/fill gap in existing, related stories. “show”, bring readers to the scene; “tell” provides distance, readers abstractly think about told events; add “tell” to story that “shows” efficiently conveys scene. Make artful/evocative through diff. PoV: 1st pers. tells of pers’l experience, “eye-witness”; 2nd pers. to bring readers into scene.
Ethnog. “thick description” of culture; facilitate understanding for in/outsiders; feelings, stories, happenings through field-notes, interviews, artefacts.
Ae. aesthetic, evocative thick descriptions of pers’l / interpers’l experience. Discern patterns of cult’l experience described through storytelling (show/tell, altered PoV). Ae’er makes pers’l experience meaning / cult’l experience engaging - and - through accessible texts, reaches wider/diverse mass audience often overlooked by trad research. Makes pers’l / soc’l change possible for more people.
Narrative. stories of experiences in descriptions and analysis
Reflexive, dyadic interviews. interactive meanings, emotional dynamics of interview; pers’l motivation for researcher doing the project, how they were changed during interview process; pers’l reflection adds context to participants’ story, albeit not main focus
Reflexive ethnog. how research changes through field-work; ethnographic memoirs, “confessional tales”
Layered accounts. auth’s experience with data, abstract analysis and rel’nt literature; procedural nature of research; “data collection / analysis proceed simultaneously”;“invoke” readers to enter into the “emergent experience” or do-write & consider evocative, concrete texts as important as abstract analysis
Interactive interviews. collaborative endeavour between researcher/participant; usually multiple sessions; emerging/well established relationships; what can be learned from interaction?
Community Ae. Pets experiences of researchers in collab. how community manifests soc’l/cult’l issues; “comm-building” and “cult’l and soc’l intervention”
Co-constructed narr’tes. relational experiences, collab’ly cope with ambiguities, uncertainties, contractions of friendship, family, intimate partners.
Pers’l narr. authors self-view as phenomenon, evocative narr on academic, research and pers’l lives; most controversial for trad. soc’l scientists esp where no trad. analysis / scholarly lit. provided; invitation to author’s world
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Therapy
Knowing; method of inquiry; to make sense of us/our experiences, purge burdens.
understand/improve relationships
reduce prejudice
encourage pers’l responsibility
raise consciousness
promote cult’l change
Friedan ’64, white mid-class women unable to pers’ly develop nor intercommunicate, felt alone / had to contend struggles alone - writing introduced / shared women’s stories; therapeutic and motivated soc’l change.
“witnessing” an event, problem, experience to give meaning to participant’s pain and allow them and readers to feel able to cope better/want to change circumstances
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Relational Ethics
Researchers implicate others in their work / don’t exist in isolation. highlighted for Ae’ers.
Ae’ers value interpersonal ties with participants; participants often begin as or become friends
ethical issues re friendship become important to research process & product; kept in mind during research / writing;
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Reliability
memory is fallible
diff ppl tell the same story in diff ways
narrator’s credibility
Validity
lifelike, believable, possible experience evoked in readers
readers connected to writers
“how useful is the story?”, put to what uses?
Generalisability
Critique / Responses
Ae’ers crit’sed for seeking same goals of canonical/trad. ethnog./performing arts; to hold Ae accountable to criteria normally applied to trad. ethnog. / autobio. stds of writing - either too artful/not scientific or too scientific/not artful enough
As Ethnog. dismissed by soc. science as unrigorous and over aesthetic, emotional, therapuetic; crit’sed for too little fieldwork; observing too few cultural members; insufficient time with others; thought to use biased data; navel-gazing ( self-indulgent, excessive contemplation of self or single issue at the expense of a wider view ); self-absorbed narcissists unfulfilling scholarly obligations
As Autobio. dismissed for insufficient aesthetic, not artful enough; viewed as soc’l science, seeking scientific legitimacy; said to disregard literary, artistic imagination, desire to be artist
Error to place art / science at odds - Ae seeks to correct, disrupt science/art binary
Ae’ers believe Ae can be both:
-rigourous, theoretical, analytical - - and - - emotional, therapeutic, inclusive of pers’l and soc’l phenomenon
Ae’ers represent research in aesthetic, evocative ways.
Most important Qs to Ae’ers
Who reads our work?
How are they affected by it?
How does it perpetuate a conversation?
Produce analytical / accessible text to change us / the world for better.
Anderson, L. (2006) Analytic Autoethnography, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 373-395.
Article style:
- order/structure of topics covered in intro
===
Popular, recent qualitative research
Dominant evocative autoethnography > obscured recognition of compatibility with trad. ethnographic prac.
Distinction between evocative and analytical Ae
Analytical Autoethnography, 1) member 2) visibly a member and 3) committed to analytic research agenda
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Synonyms - auto anthropology / auto-biographical ethnography or sociology / personal or self-narrative research - linked various “turns” in soc. sciences
- blurred genres of writing
- heightened self-reflexivity
- increased focus on emotion
- post-modern skepticism
Interdisciplinary symbolic integrationists, postmoder/post-structuralist sensitivities (Ellis, C & Bochner, A) broadly characterised as “moments” of qualitative enquiry.
Ellis - “evocative/emotional autoethnography” - unintended consequence eclipsing other visions of Ae
realist/analytical Ae paradigm/trad. 5 key-features - diff. from evocative Ae, consistent with qual. inquiry:
1. complete member/researcher (CMR) status
2. analytic reflexivity
3. narrative visibility of the researcher’s self
4. dialogue with informant beyond the self
5. commitment to theoretical analysis
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BRIEF HISTORY
1st & 2nd wave Chicago uni research conducted research in their local environments but avoided self-reflexive, anecdotal study
Sudnow “Ways of the Hand” 1978 minute detail self-observation learning jazz piano - however v subjective
Zurcher ’83 essays on role-enactment autobio. role observation
Hayano ’82 “Poker Faces”
> Could have developed Ae in realist/analytical trad., but instead almost excl. identified w evocative Ae
Ae followers reject trad., believe evocative Ae is violated by framing in conventional soc. analysis
Evo. Ae. requires expressive writing styles but remain mainstream due to rejections of trad soc. science values
===
ANALYTICAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHY (AAe)
1. CMR (Complete Member-Researcher)
group membership precedes research
Merton ’88 “the ultimate participant in a dual participant-observer role”
Adler, P & P ’87, 2 types:
opportunistic CMR, most common - born/thrown into
convert CMR, begin purely data-oriented research interest
does not pressure panoptic/non-problematic position, CMR differs from studied group as also a member of soc. science community
Ae’ers must analyse as well as do
2. Analytic Reflexivity
obv. expresses awareness of the CMR connection to research situ.
deeper. awareness of reciprocal influence between ethnographers and their settings and informants
CMR forms part of representable process
mutual informativity “every insight was both a doorway and a mirror” (Schwalbe ’96)
CMR must be visible, active and reflexively engaged in the text
3. Visibility in Ethnographic Narratives
central feature of Ae, researchers own feelings & experiences incorporated in story
recording the observer as much as the setting
must avoid self-absorption digression “author saturated texts (Geertz ’88)
Can be used persuasively as well as to take reader to new depths of personal feeling
4. Dialogue with informants beyond the self
avoid solipsism and author-saturation
ethnographic imperative demands dialogue with data or others
AAe grounded in, but reaches beyond self-experience
Ouellet ’94, truckers, local rather than long-haul job for more co-worker interaction
5. Commitment to Analytic Agenda
use experience-based data to gain insight
===
Virtues & Limitations of AAe
AAe specialised sub-genre of analytical ethnography
but also lim. in its prac. utility
VIRTUES
Methodological
CMR access to data
Ae’er has multiple reasons to participate & incentives to spend time in the field
(Murphy) sometimes unable to withdraw from field
merge research with interests such as a career (Ouellet, truckers), personal leisure identities, spiritual goals
but AAe’er must not forget researcher role when facing appealing distractions, field notes are essential
Access to insider meetings
but must pursue other insiders’ interpretations, attitudes, feelings outside their own
Added vantage point for assessing certain kinds of data
& Analytical
connections between bio. & soc. structure
likely to be warranted by the quest of self-understanding
at the intersection of bio. and society
LIMITS
research rarely interests us as deeply intertwined with our personal lives as Ae requires
soc. inquiry must not be solely directed toward our own bio. involvement
===
Conclusion
research methods = flux & innovation
new research forms incorporated into old
Ae less visible in analytic ethnography
analytic ethnographers tacitly ceded Ae to evocative counterparts
specific data collecting methods partly succeed because other well versed models are absent
In the name of doing-thinking, what should we consider to be doing?
As a freelancer with extra curricular interests in graphic design, it feels like there’s plenty. Working on a client brief is doing. Pursuing - albeit rather slowly - an interest in photography and digital photo enhancing is doing*. My ongoing love of typography could be considered doing, although I’m at risk of not straying too far from a book at the moment**. My year-long personal project, SHOW366, is doing. In fact, I have just actioned this last one stemming from the following >
I had a short conversation today with MA Graphic Arts course leader, Stephen Monger. We both agreed that even wandering outdoors and looking up might be doing, as the receptive act of observing can replenish creative energy with the new imagery required to create. At a fascinating lecture this morning given by graphic designer and Bowie collaborator, Jonathan Barnbrook, he mentioned how the arches at the Gardens of Versailles resembled an M which became the foundation for one of his typefaces.
Although I now fail to recall exactly where/when I was, I realised shortly after that a shape which symbolises a water droplet also resembles a small flame, yet the reality of the two are at polar extremes. By placing this shape in the centre of the canvas and placing the sources around it as a kind of visual question, I realised the inspiration had come from an earlier, untraceable origin. This made the ability to critically reflect somewhat tougher, but still raised an interesting question. Can we define practice in terms of mindfulness?
* I recently took a walk with a photographer friend but felt unable to follow his lead due to a lack of comprehension about the terminology. I decided I would revise terms such as ISO, aperture and exposure and how the actions they stand for work together before trying this. Lack of confidence got the better of me...
** Rather than remain a lay commentator with a more passive interest in the typographic uses in signs, documents, menus etc, I have considered an ISTD membership, which will require online research leading to the completion of an assignment, i.e. practice-research.
As a part-time MA in Graphic Arts student, it will be necessary to consider my practice situations more broadly. When am I ‘in the studio’?
As a freelance graphic designer, my time outside the MA is spent on client and volunteer work (roughly a 90-10 split). I am self-taught and came to this profession as a means to develop a portfolio or creative work, expand my skill-set in terms of conceptual, creative, practical, technical, business and interpersonal aptitude, and acquire the necessary experience to become a creative professional without hedging all my bets on securing a job first. In short:
I got good enough to create a job so that I could start working in order to excel faster.
I am very interested to talk to anyone who understands this paradox and may have employed it in their own practice.
From the ground up I needed to open my mind to the history of visual communication and industry-level computer applications. (I also bought a Mac, which helped.) As I am still learning and in all certainly always will, I am in a good position to mindfully and critically reflect on my practice in real-time. When a client presents me with a brief, is the information sufficient? And how do I know or decide that? What runs through my mind and what, developmentally, has led to that realisation? When and how do I establish a dialogue with the client so they take their request more seriously? If the brief is sufficiently comprehensive, how do I approach it to identify the problem? At a more technical, macro level, what influences the choice of fonts, colours, patterns, moods, grids and layouts? To date I have taken these questions for granted and usually arrived at answer without a second thought. I might discuss them with friends and other designers, but, I realise now, on a more passive level. The yielded insight leads to further practice in order to finish the work and get paid!
SHOW366
A brief note on a personal project which I started on 1 January this year, a leap-year. I have tasked myself with the creation of a piece of original artwork every day for a year. There are no limits, i.e. it can be a sketch, a recording, a photography, typographic experiment, repeatable pattern, illustration... whatever.
I publish these pieces on my personal blog - http://johnathanmontelongo.tumblr.com/ - as a means to remain accountable. If I miss a day, the global public are free to ask why. I have already stated in the project’s introduction that in such cases I will often offer a reason, but it had better be good!
The basic point behind this project is to spend more time ‘in the studio’. If/when client work, academic practice and/or inspiration run low, I am endeavouring to create a habit/addiction as a form of creative exercise to keep the related muscles flexed.
In preparation for the next module of my part-time MA in Graphic Arts, I read the following chapter:
Nelson, R. (2013) Conceptual Frameworks for PaR and Related Pedagogy: From ‘Hard Facts’ to ‘Liquid Knowing’, in Practice as Research in The Arts London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 48-70.
I will summarise my interpretation of this chunky, challenging text and the basic principle through quotes and reflections henceforth!
“It is no longer tenable to take the methodologies of the sciences as the gold standard of knowledge” ... ‘scientism’, late 1800s
Useful for those of us who learn by doing.
“Positivism...the world which science describes is the world, and its method is the method of knowledge itself” ... “exclude most PaR”
A narrow school of thought, perhaps imposed by the self-superiority of learned theoreticians and scientists.
“science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has become much more cautious about it findings” ... “methodologically more secure to challenge the truths we think we know by actively seeking counter-examples”
An open-mindedness to change and reform of traditional thought once deemed to satisfy the route to knowledge.
“I propose to depart from positivism and ‘the scientific method’...other ‘softer’ methodologies should hold at least an equally important place in academic culture”
PaR - Practice as Research - comes under the umbrella-term ‘softer’ methodologies.
“My argument...is...against the notion that ‘the scientific method’ is the only valid knowledge-producing methodology. ...the arts and their modes of knowing enrich lives in ways without which they would not be liveable.’
I’m particularly drawn to the bold text above. Personally I learn through some theory and a lot of mimicking and elaborating.
Marina Abramovic: “knowledge...comes from experience ... ‘liquid knowledge’”
A broad and open-minded acceptance to doing-thinking and its adaptability to shifting knowledge.
“untenable simply to assume the privilege of neutrality and objectivity”
Leavy “dismantling of the dualisms on which positivism hinges: subject-object, rational-emotional, and concrete-abstract” Nelson adds “theory-practice”
“Hard sciences” no longer assumed to benefit from neutrality and objectivity. Knowledge is a process and a matter of more than one perspective.
“an awareness of an inevitable interrelatedness between subject and object has modified the complete separation supposed between observer and observed in the classical scientific method and requires critical reflection”
Critical Reflection is key to PaR if separation between observer and observed is to be overcome.
“plurality of micronarratives”
Etherington: “postmodern era...all that has gone before... important ‘stories’... nothing is fixed” ... “reality is socially and personally constructed; there is no fixed or unchanging ‘Truth’”
“incumbent upon all disciplines, including the sciences, to offer a reflexive account of their methodology and the rigour of its internal methods”
Schön: “[w]e cannot readily treat [practice] as a form of descriptive knowledge of the world...but if it is acknowledged that the methodology of the sciences can no longer be taken as a wholly privilege truth language then adjustments of the perspective might be made to open up space for what might very well be interesting.
Haseman: “Practice-led researchers are formulating a third species of research, one that stands in alignment with, but separate to, the established quantitative and qualitative research traditions”
“artistic praxis is ‘performative’... impacts upon us, does something to us, changes us in all manner of ways”
The need for more diverse research and knowledge gathering.
“now argued...all thinking is inexorably embodied” ... “our concepts might shape the world as much as the physical world shapes our knowledge of it”
Nöe: “To perceive is not merely to have sensory stimulation. It is to have sensory stimulation one understands.”
Impossible to stop or prevent the embodiment of knowledge. Perception is comprehended sensory stimulation from doing.
“relation between arts practices and any accompanying writing to articulate and evidence the research inquiry involved more than a willingness, or otherwise, of practitioner-researchers to write complementary commentaries”
“PaR evidences that artists come better to understand their practices in context...enhance the artists’ work”
Can seriously critical reflection can aid comprehension and accelerate development?
Nagel: “no ‘view from nowhere’... A view or form of thought is more objective than another if it relies less on the specifics of the individual’s makeup and position in the world”
Active pursuance of knowledge and the vast spectrum between objectivity and subjectivity.
“PaR...know-how, seeks... to establish... an articulation of ‘liquid knowing’ and a shift through intersubjectivity into the know-what of shared and corroborated soft knowledge, in turn resonating with the harder know-that of established conceptual frameworks.” ... “tacit know-how and the explicit know-what”
These terms, ‘know-how’, ‘know-that’ and ‘know-what’ appear throughout the chapter. It took a few reads to understand the difference and what they represent. “We learn how by practice” (p. 63)
“The purpose of critical reflection in a PaR content is better to understand and articulate - by whatever specific means best meet the need in a particular project - what is at stake in the praxis in respect of the substantial new insights.”
A crystal-clear, almost water-tight argument for critically reflecting, analysing and evaluating on practice as a means to achieve greater, deeper comprehension.
Ryle “to be intelligent is not merely to satisfy criteria but to apply them” ... “efficient practice [i.e. intelligent doing-thinking] precedes the theory of it”
Applying principles and standards, i.e. doing, demonstrates intelligence more than knowing them.
“Ryle established... what... I call ‘doing-thinking’” ... “intelligent doing-thinking [i.e. efficient practice]... precede[s] abstract thought or articulation in words” “route to knowledge is through interactive, collaborative engagements based in doing” (Vygotsky 1934)
Ryle: “Truths can be imparted, procedures can only be inculcated, and while inculcation is a gradual process, imparting is relatively sudden”
“insights in PaR have proved to arise as much in the process as in the product... value of documenting the process and critical reflection... make the tacit more explicit” ... “some practices have a regulatory framework, [Ryle] is clear that they may be learned through observation and doing”
Doing-thinking and processual learning through persistent instruction/demonstration and documenting through crit. refl. makes tacit explicit and able to be disseminated.
“Critical reflection on moments which ‘work’ in the process of making or where innovation come into place can assist in the articulation ... to disseminate the findings of the research in a manner analogous to the requirement of scientific method.”
“Another argument against submitting the product alone is the inability of an artwork to take account of its own context” - Ryle: “’examiner cannot award marks to operations which the candidate successfully keeps to himself”
“heuristic approach” - Kozel: “the strength of the researcher is precisely the ability to give up the guise of detachment [intuition?] and to understand the source” “critical distance is required [but] not that of a neutral observer”
Dissemination is an important reason to be able to articulate tacit knowledge above accepting it as artistic ‘intuition’ or a ‘hunch’ (both generally learned through trial, error, and the attainment of it as a skill).
When asked what I design, I am rarely able to answer. I agree that a degree of unobstructive critical analysis and reflection (a balance must be struck if practice is not to suffer at the expense of overthinking) is important and may even lead to enlightenment of my own practice - “critical reflection...turning know-how into know-what” (p. 65)
Schön: “when someone reflects-in-action, he becomes a researcher in the practice context... not dependent on the categories of established theory and technique, but constructs theory of the unique case”
“rigour needs to be exercised... [demonstrating] coherence...across a range of discursive practices... multi-mode approach... likely to include different modes of writing”
Fine-tuning research and knowledge gathering to specific discipline.
“documentation and complementary writings... augment the articulating and evidencing of the research enquiry”
Social media can be brilliant. We’ve seen this lately in response to recent world news. It can also spread fear and malice quicker than any other means of propagation.
But enough of that. Where’s this going?
Last weekend I animated my Creative Heroes short film. I basically played with toy cars and wax crayons for hours on end and it was brilliant. Then it had to be edited which wasn’t as much fun to begin with.
Our session with resident Premiere Pro guru, Jason, was a month ago and I’ve done about a hundred million things since. I took to lynda.com for a refresher. After a few tantrums and battles, through brute force, sheer ignorance and a few lightbulb moments, I managed to fudge together a first edit. I put it straight on Vimeo and Facebook and invited feedback. It stings at first but it’s always worth it. I try to remember this every time I release one of my babies (creative works) out into the wild (public domain).
First edit: https://vimeo.com/146154653
It made a good first impression but the consensus was that there was not enough time to read all of the text. People also thought it needed more demonstrations using the skidding car animal depictions. I’d actually made another such sequence which didn’t fit into this first edit, so that was ready to go. In summation, play text slower, add more animals. EASY! But keep it to 60 seconds. NOT SO EASY!
I stripped out superfluous text which created necessary space and became one of my Manifesto Good Habits: if it’s not needed, lose it. I was able to extend text scenes for improved readability and include another skidding car animal to give the audience what they needed and wanted. I also tested my fledgling Premiere Pro abilities (and my patience) a little further and made two variations of this second edit: one with narration, one without. Some people had thought a narration would help digesting the text onscreen. Others, myself included, thought the duplication would distract attention.
Second edit without narration: https://vimeo.com/146413948
Second edit with narration: https://vimeo.com/146413949
These experiments were a good use of time. Feedback was unanimous: without narration is better. It was nothing against my deep, mahogany tones blundering their way through the film like a childish PowerPoint presentation, but the version without voiceover encouraged the audience to actively watch, rather than be spoon-fed information that they could passively chew and immediately spit out. Of course, the concept of how positive and negative space interact with each other, especially through an abstract racing car metaphor with animal shaped skid marks by way of a demonstration isn’t going to ring familiar with everyone, but this just added value to the feedback. The fact that I agreed with most of it was a bonus.
Below is the third edit which involves minor yet crucial edits in the first 16 seconds and some basic colour correction and enhancement throughout. I’m starting to see the light at the other end of this project, which I have genuinely found creatively and technically challenging from the start.
Third edit: https://vimeo.com/146495875 of “An Uncompetitive Race”
After some to-ing and fro-ing, a weekend of stop-motion animation and a day of getting to grips with Premiere Pro CC 2015 in order to get my first motion picture off the ground, here it finally is.
At least the first edit of it.
It needs a lot of colour correcting and some additional sounds, but it’s taking shape and has given me my first taste of editing footage together.
Personally, I don’t think it’s too shabby for a first time animation. The little red guy has a main roll in the actual film, so this is his warmer-upper is his debut.
In all seriousness, this has given me the chance to gauge movement between frames for speed vs smoothness of shot and also drawn my attention to things like the wheels rotating as the car moves.
Shooting commences this weekend and I’m looking forward to building a home film studio and having a play in Premiere Pro afterwards.
Impact, Curiosity & Solution: A Race Between Black & White
I went off-piste. Yup, my midnight revelations, while inspiring, veered away from the brief. So although I might have made a comical piece of film, making a therapeutic parody of my creative villains (though I prefer the term demons in the context of creative blocks and self-doubt), it may have resulted in a zilch overall. Cue panic. Time scuttling past and I’m now on idea number three, wherever and whatever it is.
Of course this happens while I’m visiting Reykjavik (have I mentioned that enough in my learning journal yet?) so the enjoyment of my surroundings is accompanied by the anxiety of my set-back. I notice the simultaneous ideas…
I woke early on Wednesday 4 Nov to plough through some freelance work to help clear the decks and my mind. It was at this moment that I noticed the milk carton in our Airbnb apartment.
Positive and negative space. Simultaneous ideas that frame and ground one another. It might be a swift resolution of the two, but we see one idea before the other. In this instance, groggy at nothing o’clock in the morning, I first saw the milk sloshing that had been drawn using the natural colour of the carton using positive yellow space to frame it. In turn, this positive space becomes the negative space in and around the letters “Muu, 1 litri”.
In most cases, I think it’s normal for us to see the positive space first (i.e. what’s been actively drawn), then solve the visual pun as the negative space (passively drawn) also makes sense, or catches up.
Artists who use positive and negative space to create these visual puns, like Jason Munn & Noma Barr, are my true creative heroes. Always have been! Yet somehow I managed to overlook them till now! All too often it’s the simplest ideas which are the best.
On Thursday we went to see John Grant with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra (this is going somewhere). When he performed Glacier, I started thinking about how a glacier and a valley are both positive and negative spaces: a glacier is the positive space that carves the negative space of a valley; a valley is the positive space that resists, or restrains the glacier’s negative void creating impact. These two typographic experiments came to mind which I sketched later:
SO! Back to the brief: produce motion work that considers your influences, interests and enthusiasms, as you begin to form a creative position. Put another way, personally and in context:
Why do I love positive and negative space’s usage in visual puns? What makes it so effective? Because, let’s face it, Monty, that’s why you love it and why you try to capture it in your own work wherever possible and appropriate.
I broke it down into three stages:
Impact. To attract viewer’s attention, the image needs to be instantly appealing.
Curiosity. To retain viewer’s attention, the image needs to provide an unknown.
Solution. To reward the viewer’s attention, the image needs to provide satisfaction, like a magic-eye poster.
Running parallel to this sequence, I decided there are two rules:
Balance simplicity and complexity. Too easy, and the viewer it bored at best, but it could also be patronising. Think children’s toy adverts!
More than one simultaneous idea. Positive space might show a house, for example, but what’s the hidden message? Hence curiosity.
Looking at what my brain had dumped on the page through a pencil made me think of a short race between two sprinters. However, not a typically competitive race.
Race Concept
Impact: Bang! goes starter pistol. I’ve noticed the race and I’ve taken the bait, what’s happening here?
Curiosity: One runner leads (the actively drawn, instantly recognised idea represented by positive space) but we fixate on the runner lagging behind (passively created, unfathomed idea represented by negative ‘white’ space); why are they back there? Attention retained.
Solution: Leading runner allows lagger to catch up. They can only win this race simultaneously. They break through the finish-line together, the penny drops; victorious!
So, refreshed from the Nordic light, air and water, let’s get storyboarding!
This music venue in Iceland uses 12 tuning forks displayed in a circle to create a snowflake.
This simplistic ingenuity and combination of ideas creates impact, resulting in curiosity which retains attention, arriving at recognition/solution which gives the viewer an internal mental reward.
