[LAUIL601] Primary Research: Case Study - Merlin Evans

Me: Hi Merlin! Thank you so much for agreeing to answer my questions which will greatly help me with my dissertation! Here they are below:

Merlin: Hi Kimberley,

Just going to answer these questions now as I have my laptop open and daughter is momentarily occupied!

What made you attracted to the idea of illustrating emotions and mental health?

- I felt that this was a core part of what it was to be human, and as the arts seems to be a vehicle of expression to explore what is human (and perhaps even what is not), it seemed core to my practice. My emotions and mental health have shaped my creative practice for decades, so it also made sense to me to explore this in a more focussed lense. As a medical illustrator, you are not trained at all to visualise what I call the 'subtle' anatomy - that of thought, feeling, emotions - just the blood bones and guts. This to me seemed a huge error and oversight, seen as we are not just walking around as mechanical string puppets /plumbing.

• You mentioned using interesting and natural tools like herbs tied together to paint with as a brush in your video lecture - what significance do you think that kind of mark making brought to the work?

Play! Often to get the sense of play in my drawn work I need to feel like I am playing as I make it. I'm always trying to make marks with items that are not so traditional - it's probably the rebel in me. I like the idea of making a polished illustration using toilet roll for instance. There's a sort of democratising of materials if they aren't all made with expensive sable watercolour brushes!

• Will you be continuing this series of paintings based around emotions? Will you continue using interesting tools?

Yes - will be doing a number of these paintings over the next year. I am currently on a residency at the Center for Performance Science, linked with Imperial University and the Royal School of Music - I'm mark making performance of error, so will be continuing to build 'error' tools for this residency.

• Do you find that being creative has positively impacted your own mental health?

Being creative has positively and negatively impacted my health in equal measure! It's also a challenge to show up each day and express one's inner thoughts and feelings outwards, be judged for it, and try and make money for it. It can do as much damage as it can uplift. Takes good boundaries to ensure it is only a positive impact (something I'm learning - lifelong student of this!)

• Do you believe in art being a good tool for therapy?

YES. And yoga. And nature. And animals and SLOWING DOWN.

• Have you ever read any interesting books or articles about the subject of art therapy and it benefiting mental health? Is it an area that interests you?

There's so many in this area - the field of somatic therapy and embodied therapy is absolutely huge, a growing field. There are tight rules from art therapists on what does and doesn't class as art therapy - but I like again to break those rules. For me, all art is therapeutic. You don't need an art therapy degree to realise that (I don't think) - but if you want a specific holding through triggering or trauma, then seeking professional training and support is of course advisable. The Body Keeps Score is an interesting textbook on the role of stored emotions in the body, and how we might release them. I have about 200+ books on my shelf at the moment on this area of illustration/art so can't really list them all here, but yes, in short. Area does interest me!

[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Esther McManus

Comics, publishing, storytelling. 2020 Award at the London Centre for Book Arts.

Esther_mcmanus@hotmail.co.uk

esthermcmanus.co.uk

• Background as a printer. How I approach shaping the message and meaning. Interested in production process and how audience engages with it.
• Skilled jobs, workshops, distribution and consumption and the relationships that occurs because of these objects.
• Roles are not clearly defines of author/maker. Audience, publisher and we can become all of them.
• Illustration and print, conducting research. Undertake quite a range of work. People and places.
• I graduated 10 years ago. Print and print finishing at London Centre for book arts and teach elsewhere, undertake commissions.
• I've always been working on my own comics and research and those things are always taking over as personal projects. By working on what you want to make, people will approach you for that.
• I was approached by Peter Jones at the University of London, in the history department, who had seen scenes of maps with stories I'd done. He approached me to work with him and another in an academic library. Papers, books, essays. They wanted to look into history for homeless men and women and wanted to work with an illustrator to bring together and communicate information in a new way. Believed in the eloquence of images. Audience can experience and feel in a poetic way rather than in an academic text.
• I worked with this very big academic taxed by an academic publishing. It was £80 for the book or £20 to download each chapter. That is not going to come into most peoples' lives and is not accessible.
• He pays a lot of attention to the text and the extra text room elements and what message we can learn about what we were to experience.
• Images, layout, materials of the scene.
• He couldn't explore it in a meaningful way in his academic text.
• You learn something through working.
• Even though we work in different specialisms, we developed a shared language.
• Archival research of homeless people in the Senate house library and archives and records.
• Strange big book of pamphlets down together in one book. Range of materials. What kind of sources record homelessness, how are they recording, how are vagrants described? As criminals. Who is saying these things?
• Criminal records, walking records, become visible, document pamphlets, conditions of migrant labourers, reports about vagrancy.
• When examining, I had to start thinking about what I wanted to do with this information? How do I want to present it?
• Legal judgements or moral judgements of the time.
• How people give accounts of themselves and others. Emic, Etic. (Etic: relating to or denoting an approach to the study or description of a particular language or culture that is general, non-structural, and objective in its perspective.) objectivity. Cultural insiders and outsiders can produce accounts of their culture. Emic - about themselves in their own terms. Etic: interpretations from outsiders expressed in terms or forms not set by the group.
• Interesting way of how voice could be used/could be featured in the publication. What would my voice be like? Even when not making a loud voice, the things are from my position.
• Public walk that James Greenwood took in the "On Tramp" book. He dressed as a tramp to move across the country and then turn into a paperback book. Following the great North Road. We did to Stevenage to Hitchin. With local residents or a historians or people interested in 19th century literature.
• People had different perspectives and contexts and valued expertise. My interest to see what clues could be picked up in the landscape. The distances we were taking. Understanding the routes and lives.
• Group writing activity to reflect in language on the things we absorbed. How did people communicate what they saw? Some of that was used in the publication.
• My role was to piece things together for a nonspecialist audience.
• In the pamphlet I wanted people to see the landscape. Any time frame and contemporary but also to incorporate the vagrant and tramp of old and from the archives and the 19th-century book. To bring in contemporary scholarship and journalism but to also bring in the audiences' experiences. Logical, clear, argument, image-based approach allows stillness and space.
• Which physical materials? Made with cheap materials. Sugar paper similar to what was in the archives. Grotty stock. Portable, pocket sized, relationship with audience with original text.
• Bring something to the text, and a meaning, legitimised a scholarship academic form. As opposed to something more tangible.
• Unique access as someone not studying at this institution.
• British library and Mayday rooms, women's library, women's art library. Access to really old books, zines, pamphlets. Elaborate way to access archives.
• I don't think you need to access a special collection or archive. I'm just interested in archives but it can be what's around you. Collected ephemera can be a personal archive.
• MA practice – looked at historic printing, physical forms, and experiences they communicate. What the form communicates.
• I'm interested in how archives do the same thing and how they communicate the time.
• "Textures of feminist publishing"
• Being in the archive itself – it's one thing to experience things as they are and as they happened, and another to be in the archive looking into that window. It's strange seeing addresses that are familiar to me and then ones that are less obvious to me. Handling the same papers that people did in the past. These people are similar in many ways. We want the same things. Strange relationship to time. Eager to keep exploring in my work.
• Felt very contemporary. Time is an abstract concept. How that could be told. Feel and experience some of these things. Comics, things happening across time. Physical book form. Conventional and flexibility.
• Comics and illustration can be effective in communicating these things, rather than text. Visible solidarities.
• Comics are good at showing relationships to time.
• Work extending up to the present and future.
• The hands of the researcher is always present to show that I'm always there.
• I got quite stuck in March because of Covid and is accessing archives. 
• How soon is now? The book of Marjorie Kemp. Carolin Dinshaw. The Me is Me. Hope Allen.
• Working on the manuscript that was unearthed. Interested in hope. Hope Allen. Intrigued by this work.
• Reading books, bits of Chelsea, looking around, drawing, connections in the landscape. Connections on angles. Exciting to go on location. Architecture of the time.
• Experiments with comics and how to show objects across time represented visually. Relationship with people like me showing history and contemporary people and narrative and imagination.
• Effective attachments, latch on sympathetic, contemporary person in our minds.
• Enjoy listening to podcasts about how history is just the same as the present.
• "Between friends "comic. Feedback made things seem more compelling. It wasn't an interest before but now I can see it. Emotional and personal level.
• Hope to communicate. Always thinking about the audience and how they access the work and respond to it.
• Institute for historical research.
• Making personal work in a passionate and joyful. Ultimately I think my experience of making things is a good thing but often I feel keenly work on something out of my grasp and never know how well it will go. So I want to improve what isn't going well. Doubt, frustration, but still satisfying in some way. Drawing is joyful but ideas and subjects and my passions keep it interesting. Whether commissioned or personal work
• Doubt is minimised because someone else sees its worth when commissioned.
• I'm not personally a big collector of comics but I enjoy engaging with them. Comics are stimulating and joyful.
• Physical materials, interacting, interactivity, that someone has hand made. There is something very human that I respond to. Analog processes are fascinating to me because they are laborious. 
• You don't have to make a book by hands. It can become collaborative. Then it's significant and social. So many businesses, skills, industries, can operate together, human labour and specialisms, meaningful. Video that eloquently shows the typesetting of the last of the New York Times. Meaningful. Showing in the work that I make through the attention. Skill sharing, materials, equipment. Living to make. Decisions on what I choose for reasons.
• Insiders and outsiders. Missing something and not understanding is inevitable when communicating. Misinterpreting. Because you're coming from your own position. I have a responsibility and I feel that keenly.

Reflection of today's visiting lecture:

Lots of interesting points raised during today's session including thinking about the research that we are obtaining, critiquing it, being mindful of where it comes from, and how to present it in a meaningful visual way. This ties in directly with the work I'm doing with my dissertation. I learned of the words emic and etic and their definitions. Parts of this were really poignant especially when talking about the archives and holding printed objects that others had at different points in time. We are all human and all have the same wants and needs that can be felt and reconnected when holding an object from the past. I also briefly connected to the idea of analog processes being a labour of love, labourious, being an authentic voice. "Living to make" has left a certain impact.

I ran out of time to ask some questions but have emailed them over to Catrin and look forward to receiving a response. 

Questions and answers from email:

Thanks for your questions yesterday, and apologies I didn't answer them before you had to shoot off. 

Here are some answers, which I hope are of some interest. Feel free to shoot back a reply if you want to talk about any of this in more depth!

Very best wishes,

Esther 

 

When you have gathered information from people and places, what is your next step in the process to visualising your research? Do you make roughs and thumbnails? Do you just start making from ideas?

I take a while to digest my research in archives/locations and build up a picture of all the interests I have within a specific project. I think it’s worth taking some time to get clarity on how I might approach it and start setting some parameters. 

Generally right at the beginning (when I have the least clarity), I gather notes and archival or textual research and essentially make a big mind map with scraps of text and small sketches. Seeing everything together really helps me. I also keep some text documents readily available so I can constantly refine some short texts (or even bullet points) about what the project is ‘about’. At the same time I start making small layouts or compositions and reflect on how successfully they match up with my intentions for the project. 

I try to draw and visualise things as soon as I can, and also consider whether my research suggests specific book structures or materials. I find it important to make images and not get bogged down in reading texts/making notes! These initial sketches and ideas will probably not end up in the final work, but they’re essential for informing where the project will take me. Roughs and thumbnails are the only way I can understand the material I’ve gathered and how different elements have visual sympathies with each other, so I make countless rough layouts on large sheets of paper. Often I’ll scan those and play with the compositions digitally to tweak them more easily. After a few rounds of doing this, refining as I go, I'll generally have a good sense of what some final artwork might look like. 

Have you ever reached dead ends in your archival research and how do you tackle those?

Yes, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and confused in archives. There is so much material, so it’s really hard to know where to start, what to focus on, and when to stop! There’s always the fear that you’ve missed something important. I’ve found that taking time to read and reflect on archival research, letting some of that intensity of being in the archive cool off, can be a good way to assess what I want to respond to from my research. 

I’ve never really found a ‘dead end’ in an archive as there’s always something there, even if it’s not what I expected. Spending time with a collection has always led me somewhere, and I’m now accustomed to the fact that this is often out of my control! It’s impossible to predict what you’ll find, so I try not to approach with too many expectations. Being flexible and open to what you’ll find is maybe a good way to tackle that uncertainty.

[LAUIL601] Tutor Lecture: Ben Jones

Tutor Lecture: Ben Jones

• Lecture theme of 'activism'
• My history with political illustration
• Editorial illustrator. 70% is political. Methodology. Didn't choose this direction but it found its way.
• Am I an activist? I don't think I am but I am politically savvy.
• My history. Interest in leftist politics. Dad was a social historian. Completed a PhD and written three books. Working class activities and leisure. Work at play. Time before the worker's rights and the worker's union.
• Going to the cinema was important. Affordable. Football. Free things.
• Camping and going for walks on a private land should be allowed.
• My mum is middle-class, had a middle class upbringing but now I'm working class and live modestly.
• Dad was from Liverpool and Liverpool was held back much longer than other northern cities.
• Never thought I'd get into political artworks as a student but a lot of work I did like was politically driven.
• I went to Madrid as a teen and Picassos Guernica made a big impression on me.
• Bombing on a small town of innocent people. Picasso captured that.
• Dada movements has a big impact on me. Hannah Hoch is my favourite.
• The process of collage captured me. How women were represented at the time.
• Language and type. Rejected painting and sculpture as they were seen as bourgeoisie.
• The Berlin group of Dada. Anti-Nazi at the height of the Nazi party gaining power. Dada artists saw this as a massive threat and an attack on democracy.
• Two of these artists were highest on the "kill" list. Hitler wanted them dance. John Hartfield pissed the Nazis off the most.
• Made publications. What we would consider things now.
• George gross considered himself as an illustrator rather than a fine artist.
• That resonated with me.
• I did graphic design at college and got into post arts. Pushpin graphics.
• Looking at posters, graphic design and illustration as getting opinions across in a direct way.
• Direct imagery to make an impact became important to me.
• Eastern European illustration/Polish posters. Created under the Iron Curtain. Soviet union. They were able to get through a lot of the censors.
• Subtle narrative through lens of the narrative of a play.
• Similar time, black panther movement. May '68 social reform. Graphics created by students. Very direct and created very quickly. Made immediately, screenprinted the same day and then out to protest. I love the directness.
• Then formed collective groups. Still wanted the poster to be important. Littered the streets of Paris with them.
• Important posters about politics but would then become part of commercial work.
• Keep on posters, Transcontinental. Printed in four different languages. Things happening in Africa, Europe, north and South America. Poster opened up from the publication. Not just about what's happening locally but also the world.
• During degree was interested in process and narrative. Authorship. Wasn't until around 2020 I moved to London for a girl who I'm still with now.
• 1940 to 1960. Mexican Revolution. Made chat books. Cheap publications. Sold little to nothing in currency. Letterpress and lino. Seeing them in the flesh was important for me. Metaphors I like that I use in my own work. Making fun.
• The importance of political editorial. Famous work, the plum pudding. Napoleon. Splitting the world up. Funny but direct.
• Press got better and publication. Punch magazine.
• Lots of things happening in the French Revolution, both very direct. Big chaps. Hierarchy. Two politicians bloated while the masses struggle.
• that's an idea that has travelled for decades.
• Op-Ed page in the New York Times. 1984. Financial crash in 2008. I was doing okay, just listening to art directors.
• 2008 got me to look at my portfolio. Process itself wasn't linked. Saw this as an opportunity.
• Illustrate your favourite book. 1984. Bit of fun. But I actually won the competition! Then I got commissions off the back of that and that was the start for me.
• I've worked for the New York Times since 2011. I love them, love the art directors, they tackle many issues.
• I use scale a lot in my work as well as metaphor. Fictional power suit/witch Hunter.
• Human rights in Guantánamo Bay. Faceless organisations have more rights than people do. Made a collage of buildings and dollar bills into a person with a power suit. The top 1% are men.
• Big bits of journalism that has usually had a lot of time to gather information.
• I started working for Rutland press based in Detroit.
• With editorial you've got mere hours to form anything substantial. With the Rutland press it was my opportunity to write and take my time.
• I enjoy writing my own short stories and it was received very well and exhibited.
• I was then asked to do images for a Dreadful. This was based on corrupt people, politicians and journalists. Looking at works of fiction is important to me. Corrupt person then the punishments on the other page based on Dante's inferno.
• I am the writer and illustrator.
• Didn't get paid for these but they started to get me a lot of work around the world. Based on imbalance in America between classes and education. This moved my practice on a lot.
• Publication in Germany including cover. Neither a left or right piece. Neutral.
• Started working for the New Yorker four years ago which was a big deal for me. 
• Exposure articles.
• From a Margaret Thatcher piece I did I got a lot more exposure articles. Being part of a positive outcome and the editorial illustration as a rich man resigns. It feels very good to highlight the wrongdoings in the world.
• Welcome to the new world! Told through the language of a fable of fairytale. Using algorithms to persuade people / target to fakery vote.
• Character of an evil creature that uses horrible tactics to divide the country. You have to have your own take and own ideas. It helped me to get commissions I never thought i'd get like the Folio Society.
• A book about a failed bomb attempt based on real events. Still cones from a place of politics.
• Moving America in the right direction and more towards the left. Finally something that's quite possible.
• Book writers for the New York Times. Create illustrations for that. Symbolism of the first using metaphors and motif.
• In the last year I'm being asked to look more at politics and history. BBC history Magazine. Both positive and negative socialist views.
• V&A Awards. Runner Up
• History today magazine. My column. Things that are happening today. Diverse content. My favourite job.
• Positive and negatives of statues in public places. History language of character. Hidden in literature and bringing it back into right now: working with the Rutland press again. It can be exhausting doing political illustrations. Coronavirus ignited my passion again.
• Plague review. Coronavirus compared to terrorism. Police brutality unfolding.
• Rhetoric. Coronavirus attacking lungs and voice. Trump being a virus himself. Important to keep on top of what's happening in the world. I keep on top of the news every morning. Having my own opinion and deep understanding.
• Am I an activist? No but I think I am a reactionist. Looking at a subject and highlighting what's happening rather than fighting against it.
• I'm being paid for this which is why I struggle with the word activist. I'm profiting from it but I do have values and ethics. I turn down right-wing work and publications (Donald Trump's son-in-law has a publication and empire and I have been asked for work by six of these publications that I turned down because of my professional portfolio as well as my personal values and career. I would never be employed by the New York again.)
• I enjoy the Guardian, the Observer, Owen Jones on YouTube. Watching the news.
• Ben shows his collection of Cuban political art books and Mexican popular imagery.
• How do you juggle your workload? You have to work nights. There's ups and downs. You can have downtime but work to deadlines.
• Where do you find your imagery for your collages? I have thousands of images from Victorian books, royalty free, charity shops, when a library is closing down I take the books.
• It's important to read opposing views. You have to have that discussion instead of cancelling someone. You have to have that immersion in an opposing side.

Reflection on Tutor Lecture:

While I am not interested in political illustration myself (I studied it during Level 4 COP which was entirely enough for me!) I am highly interested in politics, campaigning and equality and align myself on the left. I understand the need for clear imagery associated with a movement and how powerful that can be, especially when created by the people for the people.

What I found interesting about this lecture was the immediacy of the work being produced because of the deadline. I create my work very quickly too. There's an authenticity in work being made in one sitting and in a short amount of time so it isn't overworked. In the past I used to struggle with overworking ideas when I had more working vision. Now I can just express a core idea without the need for sight and it's very freeing.

The mention of opposing views is important for the written essay and for every day life. For the dissertation, it will provide a range of views for an unbiased reading. In every day life, not everyone is going to share the same viewpoint and it's important to try and reach a place of understanding without getting heated. Rich people / celebrities should absolutely be cancelled if they have done something abhorrent, however.

[LAUIL601] Visiting Lecturer: Merlin Evans (Drawn to Medicine)

@drawntomedicine

• award-winning writer, illustrator of medicine with client list of Harley Street, Great Ormond Street Children\"s Hospital etc. House of illustration.
• Work in multiple contexts with a continuing theme of reporting or reportage
• Drawn to medicine is Merlin\"s business. Scribe/graphic recording artist for 13 to 15 years. Reporting to myself in error has helped. Reporting medically. Emotionally. Reporting mental health (eureka)
• Visually drawing live, performing, scribe/listens, pulling together the core themes of visible and key texts. Scribes this year that look different. Council report from community groups. 16 to 14-year-olds concerns about facility. Filling in complaints forms, designing buildings etc.  in Hackney.
• Patients how to shape healthcare solutions.
• System of reporting live for flexibility and play.
• Different styles and colour. How can people access in lockdown? Rough and ready. What a perfect layout, crammed. Imperfection to it.
• Unified style? Voice? I had a tight unified voice and style at the beginning of my practice but now I select according to the client.  Differs from loose to tight.
• No longer travelling with Posca pens and boards in bags. Created 21 A1 boards at Hampton Court Palace. In lockdown I\"m now on zoom calls.  I\"m not physically present. I upload photos of my work in the chat function as the conversation happens.
• Documentation of error and correction.
• I never thought to document everything, including errors, to show to a client before. It would sit in a sketchbook or in a folder. Who am I to say I\"ve selected the right piece of work in the end? What does the client think? I made worksheets of all of my inspirations. Documented all of my ideas.
• Working with Transport Federation. With different headings. Tricky concept to conceptualise and fully render. Decided to thumbnail and iterate. In a collaboration serving as a facilitator for another\"s ideas. Communication and message. 
• In fine Art, I\"m not hired to visualise anyone else\"s idea and be concerned if the message is communicated.
• I like to include iteration and error sheets in my portfolio. Agency over finished projects.
• I like to let the client do a bit of the work.
• I trained as a medical illustrator five or six years ago. Technical. Exams, restrictive, hyperrealistic illustration, painterly realism and Photoshop rendering. How can I bring my testimony to it?
• Teaching medics to be scribes. Very difficult. When is Student Medical and you might be given a complaint in text form. And example is given using illustration. There is a pilot to document the complaint using iconography and words. This saves time and can speed up the timeframe for helping a patient.
• In illustration as the complexity to simplicity. I\"ve worked with the UN using illustration as a tool,  complex legal document into design.
• Anatomy almost like a colouring book.
• Drawing the emotions and mental health using gestural movements
• Visual testimony fusion of acrylic mark making with digital mixed media patient quotes.
• Different materials – herbs a brush using it like a mop. Conveying waves of emotion moving into me. 
• And I want to take my work into the 3-D world
• I found out about scribing from a very young age and was then tagged doing it on Twitter as graphic recording and it grew from there
• For my mental health work  I like to use analog materials
• Why medical illustration? Health and sickness is the human condition. It\"s the most universal illustration.
• Use illustration to support ideas of accuracy. Talk to the users of the illustration. Why do you like this one?
• Arts can be used to combat dehumanisation if you\"re meeting resistance you\"re onto something
• Merlin shares her website Instagram and you can email her with any questions
• By drawing and visualising we are giving a platform and elevating meaning. Show up with your gift.
• VR Tech – niche and expensive. Oculus Quest was around £300, a risky purchase trying something new that could end up being my practice.  Have to consider the cost, the usability,how comfortable you are spending that sort of money, perhaps share the investment with friends so you can all use it and share it.
• I\"m very comfortable with making bad work and sharing bad work.

Reflection:

While I have no interest in the primary type of work that Merlin creates, specifically in the medical illustration field, what I do find fascinating is her  illustration work in relation to mental illness as I am doing something very similar myself with my 601 project so far. I also find her scribing, graphic recording and the idea of creating work in the moment very authentic and relatable as I do the same. I do not plan what I am going to make as it depends entirely on my mood at the time. 

Merlin came across as someone highly intelligent and is a very warm character and I would like to reach out to her with a few questions for my dissertation project especially in relation to the work she is creating with mental health I feel she can really strengthen my project.

[LAUIL601] Lecture Notes: Visualising Research

 • So far – sessions on research methods, essay structure, module information.

• It was nice to talk about my work so far and put it into parameters.

• Early stages of exploratory research.

• Modes/ways of practical work emerges. Testing, trialling, or experimenting in relation, to examine, to explore.

• What are you enacting? Modelling?

• Demonstrating through the visual.

• The visual essay will comprise of a written outcome and practical responses merging into a visual essay containing the 5000 word piece of writing.

• A publication is a good example. Any kind of document of words and images.

• Demonstrating the practical and written.

[LAUIL601] Tutor Lecture: Jamie Mills

Tutor Lecture: Jamie Mills

• PEEL Structure.
• The theme is Methodologies of Reporting.
• Observation, studies, reporting.
• Limits of reporting through an ecological lens. What that means.
• Mould grew on the book that is quoted from because of the damp.
• Beautiful quote about texture.
• Idiosyncrasy. Lived experience.
• Illustration, illuminating, reporting. How to report chaotic ecologies a non-reductive way. The great piece of turf.
• Complexity and systems are the way things exist. Twisting and looping.
• The writing captures the sense perfectly. Be open and see things that nonhuman scales.
• Seeing of things at scales; human scale, timescale, physical.
• Weird openness of parts and wholes. Pieces and particles, active, making up something.
• Ecological complexity: access. Priority of access. Ecological awareness. What the self is. Our experience. We don't see human flavoured things. Daffodil is objective. Daffodil + illustrator = illustrator flavoured outcome. It remains open by the human experience. Too complex, too strange. Mysterious and magical. Ambiguous, twists and loops.
• Nature. We think things have always been there. But things have twisted, Lupita, evolved, connected. Interrelatedness.
• Example of pumpkin seeds. Straightforward process of growing a pumpkin. But there are so many factors in the compost, rain water, the soil, the bacteria and fungi and what happens further below the seeds, the quality of nitrogen in the air, and from the plants around.
• Explosion of complexity and context. Strangeness. Caught in a twist with in the thing you're observing. How the world isn't necessarily your own.
• "prevailing principles that shape their work."
• I have to remember that I'm an observer but I can't observe everything.
• The closer I look, the stranger things are.
• Albrecht Dürer. German painter. 
• Patch of weeds by elevating it, all things start to happen.Slice of undergrowth vying for space. Root systems. Overlaps and overlays and transparencies. Ebon flow. Time, growth and decay.
• Access. Hello to the ground. Almost like a small mammal.Loops and interconnection. Directly over painting and looping.
• At best it is just an overlooked or ignored patch of weeds. Non-human interest and non-human scales. Rachel Carson quote.
• Jamie's own work – different scales. Different elements. Exploring complexity.
• A white cut out viewfinder from a piece of paper. Shapes the way of looking. Scale, withdrawn way. Drawing focus and attention. Highlighting a moment.
• Scaling up. Exploding. Mix of scales. Scale of observation.
• Using limited materials. China markers and mono printing. Limits and constraints. Focusing on textures and intricacies. Without having to think of colour.
• Responding to my own photographs. Quick sketches, quick thumbnails and patches of weeds. Primary focus on tone and texture (monoprints) thinking about those dark mythologies and strangeness and withdrawn.
• Is it possible to be trapped? Lost? Dark ecology.
• Thinking about how pictures exist and how much can be represented. 
• Synthesis and coming together. What form could they take? The sketches and photographs. In design file of work into a booklet.
• Smaller pages and viewfinders. How text can work alongside this.
• Any images we make are reductive and will fall short no matter what. But ecological awareness can show our own shortcomings.
• Commenting on the difficulties and strangeness. Through images we can communicate through time, magical and mysterious ecology.
• Jamie is drawn to systems and clear methodology of working so it's easy to keep momentum over long periods of time for him.

Reflection of tutor lecture:

A number of things really stood out to me in today's lecture including the idea of idiosyncrasies and lived experience, which is exacting what is underpinning my own work for 601. I'm glad to have a name for it and will look further into a definition. I like the idea that we are observer but can't observe everything. This sums up the 601 module as a whole. We can only research so much, in this research stage, because it really could go on forever. 

Using a viewfinder is interesting tool and concept and something I'm doing similarly on instagram. I create my abstract artwork and then, using the cropping tool, upload 3 variants that have been zoomed and rotated to focus on different elements, colours and shapes. It allows the work to interpreted differently in the parts of its whole.

This was a very eloquent lecture and gives me confidence in the work I'm doing. 

[LAUIL601] Lecture Notes: Essay Plan & Structure

Lecture Notes: Essay Structure

• Looking back: Identify, propose and develop research project. Result in exploratory outcomes.
• Opening stage (3 weeks)
• Research, gathering, responding, initial practice and testing.
• Explorative stage (5 weeks)
• Practical exploration, research material, case studies, unpacking and making sense of findings.
• Now: practical and structuring writing 
• Where to meet ILO's in 5000 words. Critical and theoretical synthesis. Theory and practice.
• The context of your investigations. 
• Primary and secondary sources. Analysing and making sense of research.
• Testable processes from research.
• Project management.
• Break 5,000 words into sections. Seeing links and connections between your research. 
• Contact academic support if any support is needed!

Critical writing

• What? Written discussion or analysis from varying angles and voices
• Why? Not just academic relevance but unpicking personal motivations and interests. Being able to situate myself in illustration
• Critical vocabulary. Being able to speak confidently and being a useful critic to myself and others.
• Expanding professional opportunities. Writing in context, want to go onto a masters or PhD?

Revisiting Essay/Explorative Stage

• Introduction
• Main Body: seeking connections and triangulation 
• Conclusion: evaluate, pulling it back together 

Guide

Introduction (Roughly 400 words)

• May come back to this at the end to state the overarching research, outline the topic, why is it important to you?
• Outline how you are going to investigate the project. "I'm going to be interviewing these practitioners and making testable processes and pieces."
• Tell the reader your stance.
• What are you finding out?
• Why is it interesting?
• How are you investigating?
• Where are you starting from?
• Be specific. Which books, what methods. 
• Organisation and management.
• When doing interviews show you have prepared and managed.
• 400 words covers what this project is.

Main body (roughly 2,000 words)

• Context
• Research methods
• Evidencing the research - Journals, articles, podcasts, interviews, books.
• What are your primary sources? What are your main points? What is the context of your investigation?
• Now applying that to case studies. I am a case study
• Context, research methods, synthesis.
• Descriptive, contextual, theoretical analysis. Describe case study, contextualise it. Has it changed your lens or how you view it? What's the link between them?
• Be detailed and specific.
• One or two case studies. Can be very detailed. Relate them back to your secondary research.

Reflective Practice (700 words)

• Applying that to your practice. How is it relating to your work? This comes much further down the line when you've made work.
• What was the testing processes for yourself? How was that informed by your research? Be specific. Use examples of the work you've made. Relate it back to a case study. Synthesis. Effectively demonstrating your work.

Conclusion (400 words)

• Pull together and draw together. Draw together conclusions and summarise. No new information will be in the section. Broad implications for your practice. Was there tangents to explore? Evaluate the success or shortcomings of the project.

• Synthesis. Management. Use headings or chapters in your piece of writing.
• Quality and relevance of sources.
• Mix of things. Books, journals, articles, podcasts.
• Up-to-date discussion within the past 5 to 10 years.
• Interviewing practitioners it's a good way for conducting research.
• Quoting and paraphrasing. Smaller quotes and paraphrasing into your own words to show you understand it. Harvard Referencing. There is a library guide on estudio.
• Paraphrasing is summarising into your own words, in brackets stating the original source saying the name and date.
• All of the essay can be in the first person showing your own voice and criticality.
• 10% either side below or above the 5000 word count which doesn't include the bibliography.
• Use online journals and archives. You don't need to use only the library.
• Secondary research can be put into specific subheadings if it's useful to you.
• If you're looking at photography and case studies do I need to use photographs? Not necessarily. It could be a reportage you are looking at our documentary. You can't read everything.
• Be easy on yourself. Ideas improve, stick with it.
• Theory is a poetic process
• Make the most of what you can. Reading actively.
• Ideas move and change. Find and follow pleasure. Theory is a cumulative project.
• You write better with what you enjoy.
• You don't need constant blog posts.

Take-Away Task: Reflective Report 1

• 601 label
• A written reflection of the opening stage. 300 words.
• A rough framework of your writing. Next steps and plan. How is your project going so far?