Dissertation Preperation

My main inspiration for my dissertation was a recent trip to Morocco with University for a recent field module. Although Marrakesh was a beautiful city and an amazing place it really brought to my attention how different our lives are here in the United Kingdom. After starting my research into the Eastern Art and Culture I began to realism that there is so many different cultures and art that I felt that I was almost oblivious to it and in my mind I had been try to focus in on the subject as a whole.  This is when I came about the idea or Orientalism which is written by Edward Said.

So after first originally knowing that I did want to focus my writing on viewing a completely new culture in someway.It has stemmed off to become something which will discuss Orientalism, the main characteristics and driving forced behind it, the History behind the relationship between the East and the West.The idea that there is a new form of Orientalism, looking into how recent events such as war and terrorism have effected view between East and West, then I will begin to look at the role of the media within controlling the views of the masses and the effects, finally I will be looking at how Historical Orientalist Art in a way reinforces then European domination and Hostility between the sides, creating clear boundaries within Art. where as contemporary politically aware art is something that is created to try and change the minds of the public. I am interesting in looking into that as I would like to create an art piece to accompany my dissertation which will hopefully have a message of social change and try and change the perspective of a westerners views of the East.

I wanted to pick a topic for my Dissertation that could overall interest me throughout my research and writing and I find looking into peoples attitudes etc. really interesting Also I wanted something that was really current and effects all of us, where there is a lot that could be debated upon. Although I did find the writing rather challenging and the top a struggle sometimes I think i was important to really challenge myself and write something that I felt was proud of when talking about such serious topics such as Racism and War.

Lecture 2: Semiotics 

the imagery I decided to look at was Holly which at any other point of the year is just a plant but near December its becomes symbolic of Christmas. It has a strong association to Christianity with the leaves being symbol of the “crown of thorns” and the red berries supposedly symbolising the blood of Christ. The holly plant in many ancient European cultures was brought into the home for protection the winter months, warding off negative energy.

So although holly is just a plant and nothing necessarily to do with Christmas because of its history with our society it has becomes embued with festive symbolism which makes us automatically associate seeing the plant with Christmas.



Constellation PDP Reflection

Constellation from the beginning was something I didn’t completely understand and struggled with finding the relevance of it to my own practise and the work that I was doing in Subject at the time.I found it to be a large step from my previous education in college and due to the constant changing of lecturers, the substantial amount of information and ideas being shown to us,also the great amount of people in attendance of the lectures, while trying to get used to the new surroundings did make the environment quite uncomfortable and the prospect of trying to learn anything from them daunting. This is where blackboard became a vital learning tool enabling me the access to the information that was shown in the lectures equipping me with some of the information to grasp an understanding of the complex ideas being conveyed, although still wasn’t able to understand the relevance of a fair quantity. Therefore one thing that I feel was something I took from constellation was the ability to learn independently. A skill that can be transferred to any part of my learning process as I feel like it is a vital skill to be able to track down and source information and be able to self teach.The learning of this skill was also subsidised by the lecture about using the library which was one of the lectures that I did find informative in the first term that I found very useful and helped understand the library system that I wasn’t used to and how to source relevant information. Another lecture that I did find interesting and helped with completing other work for the year was the lecture with Cath, teaching the use of ‘Cath’s columns’ which I found an easy to understand technique when dealing with and analysing information which really helps when writing academic texts.
It was only towards the end of the first term that I got used to how everything was structured and began to embrace the information being given dealing that although I might not see it as useful at the moment it may become of relevance later on. A lecture which I feel could have been received much earlier on in the year was the study skills one because I would have found it of use to practise essay writing, refreshing how to reference and creating a bibliography instead of having it as one of the last.
The second term was of more interest to myself, learning about the different movements within Art especially ones that I didn’t know much about such as the Avant-garde. It was also was interesting to learn more about the ideas that movements had that have been influencing my work at the about such as Surrealism. Because in my Inside Outside project I am looking into inner emotions and thoughts that we all have as part of the human experience and how these can be expressed onto the outside world.But although I found the subject matter of interest I feel like sometimes the lectures themselves became quite confusing and got lost to what movement was being talked about or if what was spoken about to do with constructing movements within art at all. But again the information needed was also on blackboard with summary sheets provided as well it became manageable,with the information gained of great importance in supporting my on work to create coherent pieces of work that have taken full advantage of our historical art practices.