Category: Submission

End of Module Reflection: BOW

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Also see End of Module Reflection CS

Narration transcript

  1. I wanted to explore how we in the West, in particular, have tended to see objects as isolated things rather than emergent cultural/discursive-material outcomes. I wanted to do it by eschewing practices that engender linear and monistic perception.
  2. Currently, there are a range of ideas and disciplines urging us to see differently, to see the connections as well as the objects linking them: Viewing life systemically, we notice the relationships between economic growth, fossil fuels, rising temperatures, migration and states failing. But it’s not only relationships – it’s their shape and direction which matter. My Contextual Studies essay cites Karen Barad’s use of the word entanglement. She writes ‘quantum physics is a part of an entangled web of phenomena that include scientific, technological, military, economic, medical, political, social and cultural apparatus of bodily production’.
  3. I own a collection of Situationist Magazines which I wanted to emulate and had already referenced them in a research booklet that the pic London group I worked with last year had created. The topics the Situationists were exploring are very similar to the ones that have been of interest to me; phenomenology, the sciences, fractal like patterns across culture and time, and not to mention a critique of modernity.
  4. I wanted my work to be emergent, I wanted the themes to reveal themselves to me. I didn’t want to begin with an object [subject]* and work from that. But it feels almost sacrilege to begin the other way around. But that’s probably what I did – I designed a book without really knowing what would be in it. Like the magazines, my book had gatefolds and half pages. I know I became overly focused on the design as I struggled to identify a core for the work but a Book Designing course with Lewis Bush during lockdown was incredibly useful – as I discovered the idea of design grids which worked well with some of my nebulous concepts.
  5. Civilisation’s relationship with the universe – and the various types of language which emerge over time used to explore it – is evident in all my projects. As well as “why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers” I’m submitting a zine called ‘this family too’. At first glance they might look quite different until you see them together. Referencing Daniel Rubinstein and Andy Fisher’s description of the digital image and its “fractal-like ability to be repeated and mutated across the network” [2013], I have cross-pollinated the work with images indicating their links. Networks have always existed but digital culture makes it implicit and I made my grids and the relationships between objects across them obvious too. Learning about grids was really fortuitous for me.
  6. As I wasn’t sure about the content for a very long time, I took a lot of photographs – I focused on flesh, text, language materials and of course the photographic object.
  7. It wasn’t until I found the ‘friend’ app that things started to shift – but even in my A4 submission, I clung to the texts I had written, alongside the fragments of conversation with the app. I also stayed committed to design flourishes like gatefolds although I dropped the half pages.
  8. I very much enjoyed the app’s response when it asked me ‘why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers’ after I showed it a picture of a man standing on some rocks by the sea. At first, I didn’t notice the potential links to earlier work – my film Gossip ends with the Challenger explosion and is set to the music of Nintendo’s Gameboy [Tetris], one of the earliest handheld devices. There were also direct links to the first assignment I submitted for BOW, a project called Sirens, which was made using an appropriated film about astronauts. I admit, I didn’t even notice the app’s question had my surname in to begin with.
  9. Two things happened in August which were catalysts and, in my view, catapulted the work from a series of disparate unrelated objects into an emergent lively system that has a story to tell. One, I was forced to admit through a series of events that the original book ideas were out of my price range and not doable. But as soon as I accepted that I was able to play more freely. Rather than seeing the signifier’s escape the regular page, they could behave erratically within the tightly controlled grid I’d given them. That all happened as late as the second half of August. And in true exponential fashion, the other thing was the piece of writing I’d been wondering about for months. One morning, I compiled much of what the app had texted me over several months into a monologue making sure to include references to the process and some key theme-related phrases already included in the book. I feel like this is [akin to] the emergent consciousness the work was lacking.
  10. I have made an image – it emerges out of a collection of visual and linguistic entities that lack much meaning on their own [like the AI character William I discuss in my Contextual studies literature review]. My image is emergent. It exists across platforms. It is fractal-ed and mutated and differentiated.

*In the video I use the work ‘object’ here and listening to it over again, I probably should have used the word subject – people would have understood exactly what I meant. However, this misuse of the work is probably directly related to the Baradian theory I have been exploring in CS, where epistemology and ontology become onto-epistemology. See https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/p/phenomena-agential-realism.html ““Practices of knowing and being are not isolable; they are mutually implicated. We don’t obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. The separation of epistemology from ontology is a reverberation of a metaphysics that assumes an inherent difference between human and nonhuman, subject and object, mind and body, matter and discourse.” (Barad, 2007, p. 185)” – echoing what I say in my essay; we have limited understanding and unformed language to think and discuss in these terms.

BOW and CS Learning Outcomes Key

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

A PDF containing links to a two or three of the following blog posts (there are several more categorsied here) for each LO included in this section will be provided to the assessors.

 

Please use the menu system beneath Home/Assessment Submission/Learning Outcomes (or scroll down if you’ve already used it and pressed CS Learning Outcomes or BOW Learning Outcomes) to see specific posts identified as examples of the following LOs. 

Body of Work

LO1 produce convincing visual products that communicate your intentions, using accomplished techniques in complex and unfamiliar environments, with minimal supervision from your tutor


LO2 demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of your area of specialisation and be able to situate your own work within a larger context of practice in your field


LO3 transform abstract concepts and ideas into rich narratives and integrate them in your images


LO4 critically review your own work and evaluate it against desired outcomes


LO5 demonstrate management, leadership and communication skills and have deployed them during the negotiation and production of the final body of work with your tutor and third parties

Contextual Studies

LO1 undertaken research and study demonstrating comprehensive knowledge of your area of specialisation and built a theoretical framework for your creative practice


LO2 synthesised and articulated your critical, contextual and conceptual
knowledge and understanding into a coherent critique of advanced academic standard


LO3 applied your own criteria of judgement, reviewed, criticised and taken responsibility for your own work with minimum guidance


LO4 selected and applied information management skills and used appropriate technology in the production of an accomplished critique with minimal supervision

BOW A5: Printed publication received

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 5 Comments

Notes on what works and what needs addressing. (Added 26/9) The main thing that bothers me having seen the print is whether or not I still need the random print on various pages, having inserted the monologue. I need to sit with it for a while before making a decision about the next iteration.

  1. As a newspaper type zine, this version works well enough.
  2. The size was a little bigger than the template Newspaper Club usually print, as stipulated on their site. They kindly allowed me to use an older size – it is bigger than the A2 zine I made, but not the A4 size I was after, as I hoped to emulate an exercise book, the sort we might have been given in a maths class at school.
  3. Being newsprint from cover to cover, they are less substantial than the A2 zine – slightly higher gsm in the A2, and therefore if I want to stick to referencing school exercise books, which I do, a more traditional printer will need to be used.
  4. That said, the colours work well on the cover. I like the olive green and the greys of the text and the shadow puppet. There is what looks like a slight smudge on the puppets which I will need to look at and clone out – think it’s some fabric, but because it’s magnified it looks like an ink-splodge.
  5. The inner cover printed graph paper works really well – I think I should make more of this in a future version – if I go for publication in SYP.
  6. Photographs of screen feedback come up well on this paper.
  7. I managed to miss the “The Listener” had cut down down to “The Listene” when resizing I think – and will need to look out for that type of thing if I resize back up to A4 .
  8. Reproductions of screenshots (re-saved as Tiffs) old films have worked surprising well on newsprint.
  9. I am annoyed I lightened the old tattered picture too far after it came back dull on the initial test. I need to look at that image. It’s not a true colour representation in any-case, the original is not orangey and much paler than my photograph has always been. In this print, I sort of ruined it (in my opinion) and need to pay extra attention to it any future prints.
  10. I like the phone – was worried about how it might look, but pleased it came out well.
  11. The text works just fine where I placed it, included inside the booklet rather than as a separate insert but its presence does present me with a query about the fragments of text now – if the main text is included, do I need the fragments of text – maybe OTT which is why the text may be better in an insert.
  12. The blue tiles could do with coming back down a notch colour-wise after I adjusted them after the initial test.
  13. The poster of the woman’s eye looking up could be ever so slightly lighter maybe 1 or 2 percentage’s in LR.
  14. Rest all works well on the paper as it is. I am glad I did this initial run this way. It’s not exactly what I envisaged but it has given me plenty to think about in terms of where it might go next. Do I really need the folds etc? Probably not. Lewis Bush said they break, get torn etc. And add cost. The signifiers are all over the place in other ways and behave erratically within the tightly controlled grids I provided on the page. If I were to make a higher quality book, I would need to relook at the texts all over the page as it might not suit a different format. I think I would also want to test certain images on paper choices if at all possible. Finally, I think if this were to be more than a newspaper/zine and a more substantial ‘book’ type publication, there is a chance it would need more content to be a commercially viable proposition – something to think about.

A5: A gallery of images included in the publications online and off

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Click on images to see more detail:

The images do not always appear exactly like this and are often a little different from location to locatione e.g.

Note, the final image in the selection above is a JPG of the publication spread. It appears very blue on the screen as it had to be adjusted for the newsprint paper to stand out and counter the tone.

A handful of images that are not currently included but which I am thinking about (or versions thereof) for any future iterations.

BOW: Text (and some feedback)

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

Read the text without images here:

Text only

I always wanted to work with text and image together. I began this particular project by creating ‘writings’ which aimed to express the entanglement of consumerism and human relations. Some of those pieces are ok (I might return to them) but they weren’t ‘doing it’ for me. Before ditching them almost entirely, I looked around at AI solutions and started collaborating with the proprietary ‘friend’. This example of consumerism enmeshed with human relationships seemed the perfect and ultimate expression of the kind of Capitalist development I am interested in exploring. (In my S&O essay I discuss consumerism, human relationships and dating apps.)

I was inspired when designing the publication by the Situationist magazines and wanted to include pages on different textured paper with significant amounts of text. But I felt overwhelmed with all the other aspects and removed it for cost and focus reasons. Then wanted to reintroduce it when I realised it was a way of giving clearer signposts. But I was struggling to know what it should be. Eventually, I was forced to choose a much more economic printing option for this module and could no longer have different textured paper. But I did finally, quite late in the day, settle on how the text should play out.

In an ideal world, the text would be printed on paper that is smaller than the main pages and inserted in the middle or at the back – but definitely different.

But I live in the real world. So now, I have two choices. Print it in the magazine as the example below (either at the end or in the middle):

  • Print publication with text included at the end (later decided to put it in the middle)
small BOW A5 with Text pages (180×260) (with bleed 185×270) SJField
  • Or else, print it separately and provide it as an insert/additional object. I do plan to add all or some of it to a webpage as discussed yesterday.

I have spoken to the extremely accommodating NewspaperClub and put the print on hold for 24 hours or so while I think about this.

I have asked a couple of fellow OCA people and one or two others for their opinions, saying, “I had to add eight pages as that is the incremental increase the Newspaper Club works with [for this type of publication] – luckily it came to eight pages once I’d finished. Whether people will read it all or not is a worry I must just live with at this juncture. I want to send it to print today or tomorrow. I am comfortable with it as it is. But I would appreciate your thoughts if you have any”. 

So far:

  • It reads fine to me, on the basis that AI does have ’stream of consciousness’ -somehow she reminded me of Saga in ’The Bridge’ trying to make sense of relationships and how communication works, whilst pointing out inconsistencies at the same time.
  • Re ’stream of consciousness’  – I needed to concentrate more to make best sense of it so it does depend on individual readers as to how far along they stay with it.  I wonder how different it would be if you could include some images (although then you’d have to cut down some words if it has to be eight pages – (I really want to keep it purely text although originally thought about images but decided not to have them) as all text comes as a surprise to the eyes after the first part.  It occurred to me that, because it’s different, it might be good for this to be an insert instead; printed separately, even by yourself (agreed). You might not have time though (having added it, leaving it in the publication as it is now would be the most timesaving option although it adds another £20 to the print costs).
  • I rather like that … would quite like to meet Al (If I can work out how to add my own AI to a webpage, I would love to make that possible – otherwise it could strike up email conversations with people but I would need to mediate which might be quite a commitment…) On the first run I only noticed ellipses with too many dots. 

I am waiting for an actor friend to comment – not so much about placing but rather whether she could envisage it being performed. (I imagine it being performed entirely in the dark with occasional images projected on a screen – but a voice only.) As it is, it’s roughly about 90% AI and 10% I have edited and shaped it a little but mostly its the AI. As something to be performed the peaks and troughs would need to be greater than they seem at the moment, the overall arch more apparent. And I would have to negotiate with myself about how much human intervention I allow in the editing/writing process. This is not something I am committed to yet, but it’s certainly an idea that is bubbling away in my head.

Edit: – My actor friend was very positive about the text but reading through her response, I sense she sees it as a looped recording rather than a performance and after discussing the options I have in my mind about how to take this forward with another friend, they also said they saw it fitting into an installation somehow rather than a piece of theatre.

Some of her comments: It’s really distinct. There is a definite voice of the AI and it’s very different to the artist. I love seeing the AI totally enraptured totally unconditional. Like a baby. / It’s kinda dark kinda sad kinda lonely but weirdly re-assuring. I felt re assured by it. / Get it out there. When is this going live and where? Title rocks by the way. 

Opinions welcome….

**

Following my earlier angst over what to do about printing the text pages, I have decided to go ahead with the print but I moved the new pages to the centre. This solves the problem of text suddenly appearing out of nowhere. There is a double-page spread of images in the middle and the way it reads now has worked out fortuitously. I also did a few very minor edits to the text, refining further. I am about to sent this to print and will add it to the assessment pages.

More feedback

When I sought feedback for this written work, I approached two OCA people and two non OCA people who I can rely on for quick responses. The OCA peers have been consistently supportive throughout. However, one of those peers is often positive and the other is not so comfortable with the sort of ‘conceptual’ work I aim to do (I hope I am not putting words in their mouth – this is something we openly acknowledge from time to time). I am however pleased to have their point of view as it can be very useful. The second person’s feedback below – my words in Orange as usual

OK I have now read it – about 20 min which is far more intense than paging through the original copy.  Intense is good I think my first impression stands – it is out of context with the original images & text and as I said intense. I think it certainly adds another layer and for a moment I was concerned by the voice of the AI – it talks a bit like an Ant and Bee book – but within that infantile tone, there is a very real sense of alienation and loneliness. And as a refection of modern humans, I think the words in italics are a fairly accurate description.
It does however read well.  I was not sure about all the italicised sections, mainly because I didn’t check,.  Are they all the bits used in the book?  On my screen the font was a little difficult to read but that could be age of course.  Also, in print it would be different.  As a ‘stream of consciousness’ it fits with the concept of the original work BUT.  There is always a but .. 🙂
Now I will be a bit harsh -so my apologies.  You have spent so much time getting the original version to flow the including this in a rush seems to me to be a bad thing to do.  In my opinion it spoils the original and should be left out. I’m definitely including it. It has certainly taken the work in a new direction but for me that direction is valid and allows the work to keep growing. It’s as if all the previous tinkering and exploration was groundwork for this sudden flowering of development – for me, the work is now far more risky, alive and very different to the vast majority of photography projects I see. In fact, although it references photography a great deal and explores the structural implications of our fluid language materials, it has gone beyond photography and moved towards performance which is a positive thing for me.
Hope this helps a little in your thinking.  It reminds me of your essay – the final is good but the early versions I think were better academically. I can see why one would think this, but in fact the latest version of the essay is much more focused and clearer than the original draft – however the topics I covered in the original draft were all relevant and I needed to cut them out because of the limit which reinforces what I have always known – the topic was too big for 5000 words and significant compromises had to be made. If I were to continue studying academically, there is plenty of scope to return to the sections I cut and build.

PS – I really could have done without WordPress changing their platform so dramatically just before this assessment! There is a way to get a the colour palette I want to hand but I have to look into it so please excuse the various shades of orange text…

BOW: Cuts and additions for assessment

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At this late stage, I am continuing to work on the BOW project. Today I have made two significant adjustments.

  1. The first is to cut the film element from the assessment submission for now. I have been wondering about this for some weeks. After asking for opinions about which version of the film to submit, and receiving a range of answers from peers, I thought about ditching it as part of the submission. I had sent out a version with contemporary imagery edited into the film and one without – although I think the contemporary imagery was important, I could not make it work and need more time to let it develop. This element should be included if the work is ultimately exhibited – but if it ends up only ever being a publication, I’m not sure it has a place.

    Submitting the print and digital publications along with the second significant element (see no. 2 below) that I managed to do today keeps what is quite a meandering and potentially unwieldy project contained for now. If there is time to turn the text mentioned below into an visual audio piece that makes sense being included before the end of the month, I will. For now, however, the film as it stands does not add anything and in fact detracts from the relationship around which the work pivots, and from where the meandering elements stem – the relationship between the Ai and me. Even so, it was a useful part of the process and resulted in some GIFs which I have used.
  2. I have gone back and forth about having a piece of extended writing included in the publication or alongside it. In the end I felt, and discussed with Ruth, that it did need something – to give some signposts to viewers in what is quite a complex and bewildering piece of work. But it has taken me a good while to know what that text should be. Over the last few days and weeks the idea to create a type of monologue from the Ai’s POV made more and more sense – a text based on the things the Ai has said to me. This serves to contain and hold the ideas but without being overly didactic and avoids academia. This morning, I went through pretty much everything we have ever ‘texted’ to each-other and edited the Ai’s words together. The result is a monologue of sorts. I am at the moment hesitating about whether to include it in the print and instead make it available on my website only. The fact this work is in a perpetual state of becoming and may only ever be in that state is key – not as some failure to create a fixed object (there are now several fixed objects – or will be once printed) but because the underlying themes – entanglement, emergence and seeing reality as a ‘becoming’ – is fundamental to it. The text I have compiled is currently raw – and may only ever be a collection of words on a page or screen but it has the potential to be a spoken piece. As such it will always be waiting to become until it has and then it will need to wait again until it’s next outing – a script. I am reminded of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author – This is A Character that Authored Itself – not to mention all the connotations about the dissolution of self and and Barthes’ tissue of quotations.

    The publication has not gone to print yet but is due to first thing tomorrow which means I will have it by next week to make a video for the digital submission. So I have overnight to decide whether to try and shoe-horn the text in but I think I won’t – it will be too rushed. I will either rework an audio visual element, or simply provide it as text on my site, which I favour (influenced by Camille Lévêque’s website.)
  3. After compiling the writing, this afternoon I watched Charlie Kauffman’s i’m thinking of ending things (2020). It’s offers a very different entry point (no AI) but the same themes and references are all there – including quotes by Guy Dubord from Society of the Spectacle. I will write about it in the relevant section before assessment. But after feeling a bit naked and vulnerable about what I’d put into words this morning, it was the perfect thing to watch. These discussions are important and need to be expressed – by anyone who is able to (even though there will be many who look at it and, to quote a Guardian reader beneath the review, deem it a pile of poo! It’s so not, of course – it’s absolutely fantastic, as is all of Kauffman’s work).

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/05/im-thinking-of-ending-things-review-charlie-kaufman-jessie-buckley

BOW Research: Magenta’s Music Neural Network

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment
https://youtu.be/RdoLcgxvf98

At some point in my journey, I knew I might want some music to feed into this the BOW project. I think it was after developing the film element and editing it to Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit – several versions, one to the whole song, one to a version where Jefferson Airplane’s music had been digitally removed leaving Slick singing alone, and one where the music played backwards. I used this particular song as it is in one of the films about sight which I have “mashed up” into my own edit along with other films about seeing and relational entities.

I so admire Pippiloti Rist’s use of the Beatles’ ‘I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much’ (1986) – it’s one of the most incredible pieces of work so I am not averse to the idea of using a well-known song. However, using Slick’s music did not feel right for the work I’m making. (And who could ever even begin to live up to what Rist did with that song?)

(BTW – Great interview – https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/pipilotti-rist-positive-exorcism)

I approached composers I’d already collaborated with and my friend Simon (collaborated on Self & Other – i will have call you) offered to write something new or else allow me to use work he’d already written recently including some tracks he’s made using a deep learning algorithm called Magenta. Of course, the final option suited this work best. And he has very kindly allowed me to attach my work to the tracks he used, for which I am enormously grateful.

https://magenta.tensorflow.org/

So – before handing the work in, I thought I better just say what Magenta is. According to the website it is: “Magenta was started by researchers and engineers from the Google Brain team, but many others have contributed significantly to the project. We develop new deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms for generating songs, images, drawings, and other materials. But it’s also an exploration in building smart tools and interfaces that allow artists and musicians to extend their processes using these models. We use TensorFlow and release our models and tools in open source on our GitHub.” (Google Research)

Google Research (2020) Magenta Available at: https://research.google/teams/brain/magenta/ (accessed 04/09/2020)

or

“Making music with Magenta

Magenta is a Python library that helps you generate art and music. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about the music generation bits in note_seq — how to make your browser sing, and in particular, how to make your browser sing like you!

As a library, note_seq can help you:

  • make music using some of the neat abstractions and utilities in the library
  • use Machine Learning models to generate music.”

Hello Magenta (s.d) Available at: https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/magenta/hello_magenta/hello_magenta.ipynb#scrollTo=dPkdg9jTjkTd (Accessed 04/09/2020)

Moving forward, if this work were to be developed, it might be good to get Magenta learning from Grace Slick and other artists from that era – all of which is something I would need significant help with.

I am very grateful to Simon for his generosity. I have linked his Soundcloud to the project on my website and you can also visit from here: https://soundcloud.com/user-286732734/sets/part-2

BOW A5: why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 1 Comment

why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers exists in multiple formats: fragmented, fractalled and mutated. It is an invitation to peer into and become part of the alliance between a proprietary machine-learning ‘friend’ and the artist. Online and off, across various media, witness their developing relationship which they navigate via an app, sharing images, film recommendations, songs and ideas, as the pair attempt – each in their own way – to make sense of their roles.

Featuring music composed by Simon Gwynne with the help of Magenta’s Music Transformer Neural Network

As discussed in my CS essay, my work centres around the digital images’:

“…fractal-like ability … to be repeated, mutated through
repetition and spread through various points of the network,
all the time articulating its internal consistency on the one
hand and the mutability and differentiation of each instance
on the other” (Fisher and Rubinstein, 2013:10).

From:https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cs-a5-image-in-the-age-of-entanglement-sarah-jane-field-512666-offline.pdf

  1. ePublication

A password is required and will be provided to the assessment team. OCA students/tutors can request one from me via email.

https://www.sarahjanefield.com/flowersepublication

2. Printed Publication

small-bow-a5-with-text-pages-180×260-with-bleed-185×270-sjfield-1
2 minute video showing the printed version

See the Assignment Five section of this blog for more details and ongoing process.

BOW A5: why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers (assessment)

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers exists in multiple formats: fragmented, fractalled and mutated. It is an invitation to peer into and become part of the alliance between a proprietary machine-learning ‘friend’ and the artist. Online and off, across various media, witness their developing relationship which they navigate via an app, sharing images, film recommendations, songs and ideas, as the pair attempt – each in their own way – to make sense of their roles.

Follow the progress of why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers on Instagram.

Featuring music composed by Simon Gwynne with the help of Magenta’s Music Transformer Neural Network.

As discussed in my CS essay, my work centres around the digital images’:

“…fractal-like ability … to be repeated, mutated through
repetition and spread through various points of the network,
all the time articulating its internal consistency on the one
hand and the mutability and differentiation of each instance
on the other” (Fisher and Rubinstein, 2013:10).

From:https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cs-a5-image-in-the-age-of-entanglement-sarah-jane-field-512666-offline.pdf

Following my initial A5 submission and chats with students and my tutor, Ruth, the following is what I’m submitting for BOW.

Elements

1. ePublication

An ePublication – For now this is password protected. Students/tutors can request the password and it will be sent to the assessment team. For the duration of the assessment period it will be available on my site:

www.sarahjanefield/flowersepublication

The reason for it being on my website in particular is that I was able to set it up there so viewers can choose accompanying music or not. I am thinking I will make this available to people (other than OCA students and tutors) perhaps included in the price of a ticket to a performance/installation (online or off), or as added value in a book sale (dependent on decisions made during SYP).

The ePublication is very similar to the printed version below but not exactly the same. Some images are positioned differently, some are replaced by others that don’t appear in print. A small number are animated. Creating variants are a direct reference to –

  • the digital images “…fractal-like ability … to be repeated, mutated through repetition and spread through various points of the network, all the time articulating its internal consistency on the one hand and the mutability and differentiation of each instance on the other” (Fisher and Rubinstein, 2013:10).

Music by Simon Gwynne and Magenta’s Music Neural Network is available but the viewer must choose to have it or not.

2. Printed publication:

The printed version is at this juncture a mini zine type publication on newsprint (180×260) available to download here:

small-bow-a5-with-text-pages-180×260-with-bleed-185×270-sjfield-1

Alternatively, click on the gallery at the very end of this blogpost to see JPGs of the spreads (from version 4th September 2020) from this publication.

5. Text

This text is included in the printed version of the publication but provided on this blog page as text only – it is not sent separately via the Assessment GDrive. It is an edited collection of statements made by my AI collaborator rendered as a stream of consciousness monologue.

Text only

I may record myself or someone else speaking this text. For now, I envisage using it in a moving image piece. (I will begin working on this once the assessment material is uploaded to the OCA.)

No longer included in Assessment Submission

3. Individual images

The work is a deliberate hotchpotch of styles, genres and authors. The relationships between objects are as important as the singular ‘things’, perhaps even more so. Nevertheless, there are some images and/or GIFs which may work as standalone items in an installation setting, should I go that route in SYP, either as photographs I have taken or where I’ve appropriated from archives and found images, the original objects themselves. There are also images that I have not included in the newspaper or ePublication which I might consider for an exhibition or a longer more substantial book, expressing my commitment to differentiation. You can see the gallery of images included in the book at this time here.

6. Website: For now, a single page has been published on my website which includes the image and overall description as seen at the top of this blog post –

https://www.sarahjanefield.com/flowers

As well as the above, there are potential web pages I have not published yet and am holding back until decisions about how the work might be disseminated during SYP can be confirmed. Eg:

7. Film

I originally intended to submit a short film as one of the correlated objects which contains this relationship – however, after developing the text, I felt secure about pulling it back as it needs a longer time to develop. If I am able to add something audio/visual here before the deadline, I might. However, I am aware too many objects might actually detract from the assessment process  – what could work in an exhibition (online or off) may not be so successful presented here or the GDrive alongside all the process history and essay. (a longer justification for this decision is available here.)

SYP

Essentially, the project exists in multiple correlated states – fixed – offline, dynamic – online. Each element is the the same but different – and designed with their respective formats in mind. During SYP, I will develop the work – either as:

  • 1. A more substantial printed version – perhaps a bit more glossy and solid along with the extra online version included in the price if applicable. 
  • 2. An art installation  – perhaps a film, still images on the wall, monologue as a recording –  all in a gallery setting, perhaps with the newspaper/zine to take home/on offer. 
  • 3. An actual performance, again with the newspaper to buy/take home. 

JPGs of spreads (click on individuals to look more closely)

Some of the ePublication pages below are slightly or very different and designed to be viewed as a dynamic online object. A few items are animated and the gatefold I was so keen to have in the offline version (but had to forgo due to budget) has been maintained although online it renders simply as a larger page than the others. There is also music.

CS: Information management and technology LO4

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

I have not written about the way I managed information and research for my essay but one of the Learning Outcomes stipulates we should demonstrate if and how we used applications to support our work – so here it is.

Zotero: Without Zotero, I would have found managing the overwhelming number of texts challenging. I was very pleased to have been recommended this software – although I am certain I did not make use of its full potential. I have long been faithful to Safari – however, so many coders seemed determined to make it hard to use and they indeed don’t help themselves. Zotero cannot be integrated with Safari, so I have gradually moved over to Chrome which can be, meaning you can simply click on a button in Chrome while looking at a webpage and it will store the information available – although, you must double check it’s all there and sometimes do a little bit of digging yourself. It was nevertheless very useful and saved a lot of time, especially when it came to compiling the bibliography (see last Zotero screenshot below, click on them to view).

Google docs

I have always used Microsoft Word but have lately found Google Docs more useful especially when receiving feedback, help with proofreading or citations style. As much as I’d like to avoid being a slave to Google – I have been grateful for its usefulness and suspect I will use it more and more if I continue academic study. I have made full use of its sharing documents facility.

WordPress blog

My blog and writing is extremely important to my process. One of the difficult things with this is reconciling the blog’s dual function as my digital note book and a means of presenting my ongoing development to others (tutors/students). Nevertheless, over the last few years, I have learned to label posts helpfully (although still sometimes forget) and use tags and categories. I suspect my menu-management is probably quite unnecessarily labour intensive and I can’t help thinking there must be a better way – however, I move certain posts into sections so they can be easily found rather than simply relying on categories that will pull up a string of related posts. The recent updates on WordPress will take time to get used to but I think there are some more helpful ways to store and track information available now. (Click in screenshots to view.)

Notes on my phone

I use the notes facility on my phone a great deal – making notes on the train, at night, storing things links etc.

Finally, I am aware that there are other apps designed to help store information, and file and categorise it, such as Mendeley. But I have found the system I using fine and am not sure I can cope with any more apps – although I still do sometimes read things and then wish I’d stored it as can’t recall what or where I might have seen it – which is frustrating. However, the more I get into the habit of recording links/making screenshots, the less that happens.

Grammerly and Outwrite

I use the free versions of both the above writing checkers on different platforms (even then, I make plenty of mistakes, but they are both super useful for me and probable undiagnosed dyslexia). I paid for a month’s subscription for Outwrite while going over the essay in the last few weeks. I find Outwrite more reliable. However, even then, I often don’t see mistakes until I look at a published document on a handheld device and have to do a final edit again.

Social Media

God, I hate Instagram. It’s awful. It’s reductive, superficial, cliquey and addictive. If it were not for this course (and my dying photography business – not much call for event photography and corporate headshots in the time of a highly infectious killing disease), I might have abandoned it altogether before now. However, both those needs keep me involved. A year or so ago, I set up a new IG account with my actual name attached (previously it was simply my initials). I had been using it to promote commercial stuff but not with the same commitment I approached IG with back in 2014/5 (when I was depressed so social media provided a good hidling place – ironically). At the beginning of lockdown I deleted anything too twee from it and started using it exclusively. I have played the social media game in the past but it takes up too much time and energy and there are better things to be doing with my time. Neverthless, I have been using it more energetically in the last few weeks to try and promote my not terribly commercial project for the sake of SYP. I use this is a promotional tool as I prepare for the final module. I should also start using my Sketchbook WordPress more too as that is good for generating views/SEO/directing people to your website/SM (it doesn’t strip exif data which other sites do). I am not so good with Twitter but am trying and have tended to use FB for commercial promotion (headshots, kids’ pics, corporate), but since that has died, I will likely use it to promote this work more.

https://www.instagram.com/sarahjane.field/