Key information for this unit
Contemporary Art (A Very Short Introduction) by Julian Stallabrass, published by Oxford University Press.
Exploratory Project (Formal Assessment)
The exploratory project is intended to encourage greater speculative and experimental approaches to visual research through individual projects, so that eventually you can make informed choices about your use of visual language. This means more emphasis on risk taking and ‘creative failure’ than on the production of fully resolved work. It is important that you reflect carefully on the first year and choose an area to explore that will challenge you. There is no point in choosing something that has success guaranteed. Of course you cannot predict what will happen and you may need to change your plan as you go along, but you must not give up too easily.
The following are some approaches you might want to consider. Immersing yourself in a subject or narrowing your subject; breaking a habit or acquiring a habit; generating lots of visual ideas from one source or trying the same idea again and again; hanging scale, mass, speed, volume, orientation; moving into colour or moving into monochrome; testing materials or learning a new technique; using drawing or photographs of existing work to rework pieces; combining, juxtaposing or sequencing existing work; encouraging ambiguity, taking risks, doing something open-ended or pushing a piece of work as far as you can; collaborating with someone else; responding to an artefact or archive; producing a series of experiments; constructing work from multiple parts; exploring collapse and disintegration; borrowing strategies from other fields and refining finished work.
Your project plan is to give you some structure, to think about managing your time over the unit and to build in reflection points. You can set yourself rules to carry out for a short period of time, like the studio tasks in unit 1:1. You are not setting yourself up with a fixed outcome against which you measure your results. You may well revise your plan during the project. There are likely to be times when you get stuck or fed up with what you’re doing. It is important not to give up too quickly. Give yourself time to carry on working though these periods. Be dogged. The project group is there to support you but you are likely to spend some time alone in an uncomfortable place, if you don’t your project probably isn’t challenging enough. Leaps forward in practice often come out of being stuck and finding a new way to move forwards.
Assessment
Informal assessment
· Comprehensive knowledge of the critical, contemporary historical context of the discipline – Unit Task 1.
Formal Assessment
· Knowledge of and experience of working with a range of visual languages appropriate to content and subject matter through insight into the discipline.
· The ability to produce a body of fully explored work that shows active decision-making.
· Comprehensive application of technical and methodological skills concomitant with your ideas.
1. A submission sheet that identifies what you are submitting and exactly where it can be found. You will be given an OCA pro-forma for this.
70%
2. Practical work - Documentation of the Exploratory Project. No more than 20 images - photographs, screen grabs, or up to 10 mins of video or sound extracts (or detailed information about where to find extracts and links directly to listen to or view) of your work.
You must date all the work and show progression, i.e indicate clearly how each piece of documentation relates to the others chronologically.
You must provide the following information for each piece of work documented - size, materials, duration for time based work, and a visual indication of the scale of your work where appropriate.
3. MA sketchbook/journal/blog - No more than 8 pages from your sketchbook/journal or 8 blog links that open directly onto the
material to be assessed, with no further tabs or links to be opened. These pages/links must contain some reflections on your progress, examples of key decision making and relevant contextual information.
30%
4. 1-2 page project proposal and 500 word evaluation of the project. You have a + or – 10% leeway for your word count, anything above or below this will be penalised.
Submission date: 12 pm (UK GMT) MONDAY MAY 7th.
