Art and the Conscious Mind Reflecton PDP
Posted: December 31, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 | Tags: Documentation Leave a commentArt and the conscious mind was an extremely intense project with each each week being packed with a lot of information. Although I found it hard to understand every single thing I think it was important to be exposed to a variety of different ways of thinking and new ways of creating artwork at this stage as something may become useful later on within my practice.
The talks that were given were full of new concepts and at the time I found it very hard to grasp what exactly was being said each lecture but after looking over my notes and reading up about some of the more interesting topics I found that not only I could take some of what I learnt and put it into my own practice but it also opened up more ways of thinking about the world that i wouldn’t of usually encountered.
One thing that I found really interesting was the use of surrealist games to create new compositions, especially when I wasn’t sure on what direction to take my subject work the use of surrealist games became really useful. I used the technique of randomly dropping pieces of my work to create different and random compositions using different sentences and imagery.
With the amount of information that was given it was hard to be able to take it all in and I found myself struggling to understand throughout the project but this made me become more interested in the things that really stood out to me such as the various artworks the we experienced and some of the different concepts.
One aspect of the project that I enjoyed was that although the lectures had rather complex ideas it was made easier by the use of the different artworks which tried to make sense of the ideas being spoken about, such as the labyrinth maze art work. This helped with my own understanding of the complex ideas and although I may not have fully grasped the ideas it made it possible to experience the concept which I find really important when coming to terms with new ideas.
Overall I feel that Art and the Conscious mind was a useful project which ultimately challenged my way of thinking and helped me see creating more work which at the time was incredibly useful as I was completely stuck with what to do within my subject work and it helped me generate a variety of different pieces. But the way the project was set up made the lectures very intense,with so much being shown to us I found it hard and I think that instead of having any immediate result from the project, apart from the surrealist games, I think the the topics and concepts could become more use in he future once I have researched more and are more comfortable with the ideas. Ultimately this I why I feel that the project was a success as it had made me become interested into completely new ideas which I might not fully understand now but I am now able to look into in my own time and bring into my own practice in the future.
The Location of the Conscious Mind
Posted: December 7, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 Leave a commentIn this lecture we discussed the the various theories behind the location of the conscious mind such as internalism- which is the idea that the mind is located within the brain and the opposing view, externalism- the mind is located not in the brain. Although the theories in the lecture were complex what I gained was that although many believe that our mind is in our brain that may not be the case. with different theories trying to explain the location,which is then backed up by there being no scientific discovery of the conscious mind.
Art and the conscious mind
Posted: December 7, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 Leave a commentIn the workshop today we were first spoken to about perception and how the containment of spaces and use of light and have a certain effect on a person. Focusing on key theories such as embodiment, pre-reflective perception ( that we use our past experience to anticipate incoming sensory information.)
Labyrinth
We then had a chance to walk round a light installation creating using material and a projector. The artwork itself made me feel quite uncomfortable and almost as if it had some control over me as you could feel pressure pushing down from the use of the lines of light moving.
Art and the concious mind
Posted: December 7, 2015 Filed under: Field 2, Subject Leave a commentThis is more work that I made inspired by the workshop on surrealist games. I created this work first then used and app which randomly places pictures of the work creating various outcomes with different compositions, creating almost a kaleidoscope effect. I think this way of working was interesting as although I had an input into what imagery I used I had no control of the final placement, which meant that sometimes there were successes and sometimes the final outcome just doesn’t work as a piece.
Art and the Conscious mind
Posted: December 7, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 Leave a commentover the course of the project there has many new concepts and theories that I have been exposed to. My main inspiration that i’ve taken from attending the lectures was the use of surrealist games as an imaginative way to come up with new compositions within my work.
In my own work I am focusing on human form and narrative, I would like to use what I’ve learnt and apply different techniques within my own practice to experiment with the composition and the creation of different narratives, the main focus will be chance and possibility and seeing how these different factors will effect the outcomes.
These pieces were made by cutting out different sections of a piece and cutting up sentences and dropping them onto a background that I had drawn using charcoal, which is a close up of a human body. The outcomes were the different compositions that had been made completely by chance which I can then work from and generate more work.
What is the conscious mind for ?
Posted: December 2, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 Leave a commentIn this lecture we were discussing what the conscious mind is and the possible reasons for having a consciousness. After first deciding that in basic terms, the conscious mind is essentially a selecting agent, that chooses one thing over several different options and that the human brain is a compulsory object viewing, meaning that we cannot go through life without automatically sorting through indeterminate visual information into coherent flow of imagery. We began to focus on the different theories trying to explain consciousness, such as panpsychism, a view that everything possesses consciousness. And eliminativism, to name a few examples. Which is the opposing theory, which argues that nothing really has a consciousness.
This lecture was an interesting first insight into the conscious mind and has given me a greater understanding the uses of the conscious mind within Art.
Art and the conscious mind- Surrealist games
Posted: December 1, 2015 Filed under: Field 2 Leave a commenttoday we had a workshop with theo humphries as part of the field project.we were discussing the use of surrealist games. Although I hadn’t heard of the term ‘surrealist games’ before I had actually played some of the games before as a child. Such as the exquisite corpse game, where you draw the start of a figure and fold the paper over so the next person can’t see what you’ve drawn passing it on, until the figure is complete. This game was a creative and comical way to push your imagination.
Next, we had the opportunity to create our own games using the same concepts the the original ones convey. The game we came up with was using the predictive text use on a mobile phone to create strange and unplanned sentence structures. We tried another groups game as a class which was to write down an instruction and a drawing and pass it on for the next person to complete the instruction. Below is some of the outcomes of this game:
Will Green Fine Art 