Tutorial with Jonathan on the 4/4/2011

Issues discussed/Subject: Blog and Studio Practice.

In this tutorial my main concerns were that my generative art process was not going exactly as planned! Since doing lots of experimentation I noticed that I actually prefer the approach of a part generated and part created process. I have been making up rules to start each experiment off, but then I prefer the outcome when I intervene. I’ve noticed that I’m not content with making up rules and letting the artwork unfold. This has become awkward as at present I do not have any contextual research on this approach. I’m hoping that it will still be ok to research generative artists as my main contextual research artists? I’m also hoping to find other artists that have made these choices too.

Jonathan’s suggestion and comments:

• I honestly don't see a problem here, you have come to this position because of your practice and that is excellent practice based research. You just need to continue exploring and reflecting on what you are doing and why you feel the way you do. Reflective learning is often more personal than we first imagine. I think you will find in your contextual research other artists who have explored generative art and then developed a level of control or intervention, but even if you don't the issues are there for you to explore. Look at kinetic art for example, not just Duchamp. You will find loads of work that starts with rules but then the artist is surprised by what happens or actively allows the audience to shape the movement. This is all useful context you can try and understand what they were thinking and why they worked in the way they did. Look at the artist Ian Davenport, very different to what you are doing, he pours paint but in a very controlled way, but there is a freedom that the paint has which is 'generative'.  In my own work with PVA glue, I talk about setting rules and I now even use the word 'orchestrate' to describe my process, but the glue has a life of its own and surprises me, but I do intervene. Remember that context can be contrasting work to your own not just similar.

• Keep exploring the generative stuff and don’t worry if you want to get involved in yours and not just let it go, that is valid as long as you talk about why and what is driving you to do this. You have started this on your blog already, maybe go back and look at some of your experiments and revisit them asking yourself deep questions about why you did it that way? This is really good stuff and thinking like this early on in the course is a good sign! Challenging yourself like this will only lead to deeper work!

• Use lots of tags, i.e. summarise each post with 5 or 6, maybe more tags, i.e., 1 word descriptions about the content, imagine yourself trying to find the content again in 18 months time, what words would you use to find the content again? When you can't remember when you wrote it or exactly what the title was then use much smaller collection of categories, these are where you are starting to organise the data yourself, the categories don't need to be planned from the beginning they can grow as you add more but often 5 or 6 broad categories are enough.  For your artwork the words should be 'studio practice' or 'my work' something to make it clear that the content is your own not just showing us someone else’s work.

• Overall this is great progress, well done.

• Extremely good Blog so far.

 Phew I felt much happier after this tutorial :-)