#studio statement

[s-loggie-creativetech-blog]

Studio Statement 

Meta- Reflection 

25.10.12

The above quote is a fairly fitting one to describe the sentiment of this review . Though inherent connotation of laziness insults my ego to some degree.  My BCT experience for 2012 has indeed embraced the journey motif. 

I began the year ecstatic at having found a place in the tertiary system in which I fit. I poignantly remember the fact that James introduced the programme with an excerpt of a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson. An enthused "Hallelujah! " is still my response to this occurence. 

However, complexity /complacency / mediocrity /perfectionism are rather persistent plagues of the psyche and I believe I and my practice have fallen victim to these and of course their most troublesome off spring (Time management , commitment ,frustration, analysis,burn out and action) rather persistently through the course of this year. 

To be honest I think i completely underestimated the magnitude of what it takes to become a "Creative Practitioner" .  Conceptually the prospect excited me and through-out the year I have grown rather fond of the title its inherent  ambiguity. Yet   the practical has been an entirely different situation.  

Commitment and time management have been my challenges here. 

The BCT offers an amazing opportunity to take responsibility for and to authenticate ones own learning. You don't do it , You are it. Conceptually I was enthralled , Practically I was not.  In all honesty I have never applied much commitment to my academic pursuits yet I have always achieved highly. Imagine the petulant child in me's disgust at the reality of BCT life.  Its great being challenged to commit to an authentic learning opportunity ,but the practical reality of commitment to creative practice is far beyond what I envisioned .  

I quite enjoyed the discreet nature and subtlety with which both James and Kim pointed out that I was a gifted bull shitter during my final presentation last semester . Similarly Maggies comments on my 'Who am I' video were suitably satirically amusing.  

Concurrently I was also inspired by James's challenge to me :"Just imagine if you can align your technical knowledge/skills with your conceptual depth !".  In a Barney-esque  type manner the image ,the holy grail of the professional creative practitioner, glimmered before me in all its glory.  

This image though ,I must admit it seems a mirage at times, still glimmers before me. Perhaps brighter now than ever with another semester's mileage under my belt. But the petulant child in me is a procrastinator of admirable prowess , abominably lazy and frankly rather pissed off. Thankfully, James continues to chase it with a stick . 

Somewhere in my mind I like to categorize studying and therefore BCT along with highly thrilling tasks such as extracting the mold from the shower drain. This doesn't at all reflect my true opinion/true nature of the program me but alas . . .                       I am not sure where this negative attitude towards formalized education stems from . However, let me assure you it is not an easy psychosis to overcome. 

Second Semester has been a time of growth and experimentation for me. It hit me a mere few days ago that I have been resolving ALL year to indulge in a healthier relationship with time management and commitment . ALL year. I am shocked. I like to think I am productive.  

That said I have made some significant advances in my practice and learning. Two examples which I am proud of and have found to greatly enhance my practice are :

-  Keeping an authentic working visual diary

- Changing my relationship  with the studio space

In terms of keeping an authentic visual diary, I was greatly inspired by Kim's use of the medium and have always longed to produce journal embedded with doodling prowess. I also appreciated the need for an authentic journaling process in terms of cohesion in final project outcomes. 

The journal was a key example of overcoming my mental barriers to education. I have been challenging myself to synthesize my idea of my self as a creative practitioner with my idea of myself as a whole. This helped me to break down the barrier between my creative practice and BCT practice. My new journalling habits challenged me to traverse the divide between all the art supplies and project ideas I have sitting on the back burner in carefully squirreled away journals ,dubbed either to precious or too personal for inclusion in everyday life/BCT practice.  This has allowed me to achieve seamless journalling process . A process which I am really enjoying and finding exceedingly helpful in my practice. Just today when other class mates were scurrying around aiming to fabricate an "authentic"journal process , I was sitting pretty with my rather abundant scribings and scribblings. Better yet, I realized that I had not even been aware I was putting significant effort into my journal all along. It is now a part of my practice/process. Where I  go my journal goes. 

As another facet of synthesizing my idea of my self as a creative practitioner with my idea of myself as a whole. I realized I needed to change my relationship with our studio space. Yes it is VERY collaborative , YES it is small and NO, I do not like being privy to discussions detailing the toilet habits of certain individuals. But there comes a time to simply get over it and commit to making a space work for you.  Admittedly I have found the studio space  incredibly taxing all year ,so this was no mean feat. I find myself exhausted by the lack of permanence ,noise pollution,social schematics and the general state of distraction that absorbs our studio habit. Viva 2013!However authentic creative practice demands studio engagement , so for the Sound project I challenged myself to engage with the space. 

I set up a booth ,taking a lead from Beau and the 2nd/3rd years . Personalising/claiming a space was a greatly generative and empowering . It greatly aided me in collage production and sound explorations. 

To conclude, it is truly an honor to be engaged in an authentic learning process. 

I pray that I remain mindful of this both now and in the future. 

I commit to developing myself further as a creative practitioner. 

Thank you

Sarah Loggie 

25 . 10 .12

[j-foottit-creativetech]

Studio Statement

Over the course of this semester my creative practice has grown significantly. In the first project of the semester, I mostly developed skills relating to team leadership. This project challenged me greatly in this area. My organisational skills were tested to the limit, as was my ability to multitask. My need to focus on my particular area of the project as well as keeping track of our overall progress as a team proved to be real challenge. I noted that this impacted my documentation, as I tended to focus on getting things done without thinking about documenting the process.

Following this first project, I looked to improve my visual language and use more imagery in my documentation. I began to develop a habit of taking photos prolifically, and regularly processing them to put them onto my blog. The second project gave me plenty of opportunities to develop these skills, particularly during the collage section.

The second project also highlighted the challenges I faced when working with physical mediums and materials. I found it much more difficult to remain motivated when working with physical materials than digital mediums. Sourcing materials has been a constant struggle for me during this semester, however I have developed a lot in this area as well. I especially became more accustomed to working with physical materials during the third project, where I was working with clay, plaster, polyurethane and expanding foam.

Looking forward to 2013, I am interested in developing my visual language further. I would like to go beyond still images and start looking more at how I can use video to document my creative practice, as well as how I can use video effectively to express concepts. I think this will also involve developing my conceptual abilities, pushing myself beyond the logical into more abstract realms of expression. From a practical point of view I am looking forward to developing my programming and engineering skills further.

[chonthip-pruksanunt-creativetech]

Studio Statement

Studio Statement

Over the semester, I have learnt the different between working in group with people I know and with people that I don’t know well. Sometime it seems like I don’t trust that they can work on the roles that had been given to them. But it’s not that I don’t trust them, it was more like I am being careful with the project I got, so I don’t want the project to ruin if there is something wrong with each members’ roles. So I tended to work on other’s roles too, not just mine. Therefore, this made me stress from time to time and could not concentrated properly on my given roles, which is bad for me, the group and the project.

This habit of mine started on one of a group projects (The Transformation, 18th July 2012), which we were clearly giving the role to each members. But when it was nearly the due date for our project, the outcome of the project were not really finish yet. Although I had done the works on my role, but if other members haven’t done their then there are really no point in presenting out project. Therefore, from this project, I have learnt to step out of my comfort zone a bit to have more roles in the group and to make sure that the group will have something to present when time comes.

I started to plans more on the project because I don’t wanted to mess up the project like before. I started to have plan B, C … for each project. Plan A is the main one that we will follow, plan B is the support plan that if there’s anything wrong with plan A then plan B, which is easier, will take place or support plan A in some part. As seen on ‘Live Performance - Presentation’ (Aug 31st 2012), I had used my plan B to do the live performance presentation, because plan A, which one of the members was working on it haven’t completely finish and I couldn’t work on it because I don’t quite understand the intention of this plan. In the end, one of the members and I started doing plan B and finished it in time, so we used this plan for our presentation and the outcome was quite good too.

What I could have improves more are, planning, communicating, developing and trusting. Planning, I shouldn’t use completely new idea on the supporting plans. The purpose of supporting plans should make the project easier than and not as complicated as the main plan, but also has the same idea as the main plan. Communicating, I must develop more on my communicating skill to be able to clearly communicate the ideas, intentions, purposes, etc. with other members and other people. Developing, stick with the original idea until the end is not really that good sometime. I should have tries to develop the idea from time to time to make the outcomes look more interesting than before. Before, I would always stick to the original idea and didn’t want to change it even a bit. But as I had done more projects, I have learnt that, develop is not changing but to improves the idea more to make the project looks more interesting and better than before. Trusting, not only trusting others but also trusting in myself. Trust myself that I am able to do it, trust others that they are able do it and trust that our group will be able to do well. Those will help decrease my stress and could make me be able to concentrate more on my roles and it could also improve the outcome of the project too.