Field Reflection

Term 1 | Art & the Conscious Mind:

Art and the conscious mind was a topic I have had an increasing interest in this year, especially at the beginning of the Field module, and this was the reason I spent so long and put so much effort into pestering people to swap their place with me. After finally receiving a message saying I could swap I was eager to begin the term and expand my knowledge of consciousness and perception of environment, or at least just being engaged in productive conversations and lectures on the topic.

The class was taught by lecturer and artist Robert Pepperell. We learned about Agnosia, a condition where the victim loses their ability to recognise the meaning and secondary connotations further than the shapes, angles and colour of an object, among many other angles on the topic of consciousness and perception. Throughout this term I was prompted to consider my own views and how they agree with and contrast those of the lecturer, philosophers and my peers in the class, and I think this is a skill which will be endlessly helpful during my time at university and working in the world of design.

I also got to experience the different teaching styles of different lecturers and a whole selection of sub-topics within the ‘umbrella’ of Art and Consciousness. These included James Green’s session on hallucinations. It was refreshing to speak to someone who seemed on the same level as the students in the class, offering advice about the industry but also speaking to us like we were having a casual discussion about our own personal experiences. I think this teaching style is really positive and helpful for learning and engaging people in a topic. We also had the chance to create an art piece with chalk and charcoal, a technique I would not have necessarily chosen on my own and one which I really enjoyed doing.

We also had a session with Theo, where the class simply played a mass game of consequences, or exquisite corpse, and learned about the benefits of play for creativity and breaking through the ‘block’ artists sometimes experience while working on a project. My favourite lecture from this term was Anna’s session on meditation. After just completing her mindful meditation course I was happy for the extension.

At the end of the term the class was asked to individually prepare and deliver a five-minute presentation communicating what we had learned during the term and express our own opinions and how we will use this new knowledge in future artistic projects and ventures. I initially found this quite challenging, especially considering the presentation was recorded and posted to the Moodle page for everyone to listen to. However, I used this opportunity to ‘face my fear’ and although I haven’t plucked up the courage to listen to myself online yet, I think it was a very productive experience. I thoroughly enjoyed this term and would really encourage future students to also give it a shot.

Term 2 | Tipping Point

After completing the first half of the Field module, it did initially slip my mind that I would also have to participate in the second half. This then resulted in further desperate messages to other students to swap from Imagination is Beautiful to Wendy and Anna’s topic, Tipping Point. The promise of working with a ‘real-life’ client seemed more beneficial and engaging than what I thought would be just drawing bar charts in pretty colours. In retrospect I am still not entirely sure this was the right decision to make, as all of the people who took Information is Beautiful seemed to really enjoy the work and all left with a solid final piece to display in their portfolio and be proud of. I, on the other hand, struggled through the tasks of Tipping Point and ended with a badly put together blog post on our final event and nothing at all to add to my portfolio or website.

However I did take a lot of valuable knowledge and benefits from this half of the term, including connections to Size of Wales, a charity who now hopefully know my face and who I could potentially approach for design work in the future with an existing idea of the charity and their work. I also gained an insight into the varying work of a professional designer; it is not all posters and clever signage, but more the ideas that I can contribute to a client, activities they could conduct to raise ‘footfall’ or awareness of a concept, in addition to the design work that would go into these activities. I got tips on how to write an effective brief and how to contact and interact with a client, which will hopefully be really helpful when it comes to doing this alone or as part of a professional agency in the future.

As well as these, I also learned quite a lot about teamwork, and looking back at my blog posts I can appreciate that I did not handle all of the situations the best I could and I have identified that this is something I will need to work on in future. One of my biggest weaknesses is my commitment; not because I am lazy or spend my time avoiding responsibility but because a lot of the time I will prioritise too many things and jobs to do at once, and will therefore only be able to apply a fraction of my commitment to each. I have since left my jobs outside of university and I hope this will help me to focus fully on projects in my next year of university.

Overall

The Field module, for me, has been eye-opening in terms of learning new ways to work and how people work together (especially in difficult situations), and it has certainly been eventful. Although I much preferred the first term, with the comfort of the classroom, thought-provoking questions and varied lectures, I can appreciate that both have improved my awareness of the design industry and  the different possibilities a future in design can offer me, and what I can offer it in return. Tipping Point showed me that there is much more to design than pretty posters and Adobe software, and given me experience with a client in a secure environment. Art & the Conscious Mind taught me to be more aware of myself and to consider more philosophical ideas, and to apply this thought to my design and art work in future.

I did enjoy Tipping Point, in-between the times of frustration, however I do think that the first term better reflected my ambition. The mindfulness session especially, although Anna conducted more sessions through Tipping Point I think the connection with consciousness was much more appropriate. I am grateful to Anna for sharing her passion with the group and I would recommend that everyone practise meditation or even just general mindfulness; it is so helpful for centring yourself and feeling calm in what otherwise could be stressful situations. I will continue to use the skills Anna has taught me this year, in her own mindful meditation sessions as well as those conducted during Field, and I hope she gets the chance to continue to share her knowledge with students next year and throughout her time working at the university.

Anna also introduced the technique of recording the group’s discussions and idea generation, so that we could look back at our ideas and critique our teamwork. This seems to be a technique growing in popularity and proved to be fairly beneficial to our work as it also meant that there was an added pressure to come up with ideas and not stray too far from the topic at hand.

At the beginning of Field students choose their favourite topics and are assigned according to their choices and the space available. This process must work to a certain extent, however after spending hours looking up students on Facebook to ask each of them if they would change places with me, if there was one thing I would suggest to change about Field it would be to add a form for students to request a swap. I am aware that ideally all students should choose their subjects within the time frame given, and stick to those choices, however people change their minds and there will always be situations which make choosing on time impossible. Other than this I think the module is really good for integrating students from different subjects and I have found my time during Field ultimately very interesting and beneficial to my studies and design work.

Field Presentation

Today was my final day of what has been ‘Art and the Conscious Mind’, this term’s little project at uni, and to end the term we all had to give a five minute presentation on what we have taken from the course. Today has been weird overall, I have a sore throat and was feeling quite hazy on my way to the room. I spent the time waiting for my time to present feeling something I hadn’t felt for a long time, and did not miss; that sickly anxious feeling that screams at you to get out of the room as fast as possible. I spent the whole time re-writing my notes, thinking up ways of escaping the situation, putting my notes in my bag, changing my mind and getting them out again, just to do the whole thing in the end.

Like the shy little girl I used to be, I panicked and asked to present my blog and speech at the end, when everyone had left, and I still feel bad about it now (I am so past that stage of my life, anxiety shouldn’t be allowed to affect me any more, and yet.) but at least it is done and out of the way now, and I don’t think I did too badly. The only thing wrong is that I didn’t get to read word for word as I thought it would be better to wing it; it was more flowing and interactive than if I’d stood there shuffling around reading off a sheet of scribbled on notebook paper.

It is not supposed to be an essay or a reflection on the course as a whole, which is why there are very few examples of artists’ or philosophers’ work, it is meant to be a brief overview of what I have found interesting over the last five weeks and how the information links with graphic design in general and also helped with my own work. Here’s what I wrote:

I strongly believe in non-absolution: the idea that humans are complacent in how much of an impact we have and how knowledgeable we are of the universe and our surroundings, as well as ourselves and the link between the two. There is a vast amount of truth we are simply unable to perceive. Yet. In this way our mental capacity is extremely limited.

Saying that, it is essential to our progress that we keep pushing these limitations and learn more and more, which is why I took the subject of Art and the Conscious Mind.

I found the lecture on hallucinations and UFOs with James Green interesting as these concepts are perfect examples of what we are yet to have a full grasp of. As well as this, the open mindedness it takes to uncover the secrets of our own minds and environment is what helps to push the boundaries of art and design as well as our knowledge of the universe.

I think that for fine artists and illustrators in particular the question of relating the conscious mind to practice is an easy one. From my knowledge a lot of the work they create comes entirely from their own consciousness, their active and subconscious decisions and pure creative flow.

Designers have the more difficult task of delving into the mind and ideas of the client, a whole other being. The purpose of design is to relate to and stimulate the senses and minds of the audience; it must cause a reaction, whether that is to invest in a product or service or to obtain a new outlook or knowledge of something. It is there to grab the conscious attention and to influence or manipulate the unconscious mind of the audience.

I think the main lectures I benefited from were those of boundaries, meditation and creative flow. Meditation and mindfulness because it is something I have previous experience with and I have a strong belief in especially in regards to my own design work. It is important to be mentally in the present and aware of yourself and your situation and intentions, when it comes to functioning generally as well as in the field or practice of art and design.

When we began the lectures I had the belief that boundaries were strictly the physical ones of the object or person, however after listening to the lecturer explain his point of view and the ideas of philosophers convinced me otherwise. Using the example of people, we exist far beyond our own skin; we are not separate from the universe, we are part of it. In the physical sense we are our skin, muscles, bones, blood and senses, although we may not be aware of all of it. We are the food we put in our bodies, the places we inhabit, the lipstick stains on glasses and the notes we leave on the fridge at home, as well as the clothes we choose to wear and the communities we form with other people.

In a less physical sense we exist in the music we listen to, our morals and decisions, our interactions and exchanges of energy. People create society and a network of mind and energy, unity. It is impossible to be entirely secluded from the world when we all exist in so many things outside of our skin.

When creating design what we are really doing is taking our experiences, our talents and ideas, ourselves, and projecting them onto paper, onto computers, and out into the world. The art we make is a part of ourselves, extending our boundaries, and in design the boundaries of the client and the audience that interacts with it.

Exquisite Corpse

(Or as the rest of us ‘normal’ people know it, Consequences.)

As part of the Field module, last week we had a lecture/workshop on the creation and purpose of surrealist games. The idea that these games, such as Consequences and Photo Montages/Collage), were invented as a creative aid and a way to boost the imagination, motivation and rescue us puny designers from the all-controlling and feared Creative Block, was discussed and explained and then we were sent away to draw silly little characters in the name of art.

That reminds me, I would also just like to use this platform to say that if I see one more person spell college as collage I will personally feed them their own eyeballs.

And without further ado, here are a few of our very peculiar final outcomes:

This idea of automatic drawing and unconscious mind made me aware of the fact that I had been doodling for almost the entire lecture and in fact, throughout most lectures this year so I thought I would document them in this post: