Ongoing Research

I've had further meetings with Mat and Annabeth and the concept of developing the character has been taken much further by Mat.

Several issues about the relationship between movement and character have been highlighted, in particular the friction created between movement type and image. For instance the figure is designed from drawings done by myself based on a character designed to reflect my age. The character is gradually aging, not as symetrical as younger people are, showing the signs of wear and tear. However Mat was able to link the skeleton to a dancing young female figure.
See Mat's test 1 and Mat's test 2. The bend in the mind is similar to that you get when Gillian Wearing puts children's voices into the mouths of adults. I must return to this at some point.

The next stage is to develop the scenarios in more detail, therefore basic storyboarding will be needed.

Climbing and digging are both important, but I think we can start with climbing.

The other image I wanted to develop was that of a crowd simply looking at something and then turning towards the viewer. 

I am also becoming facinated by the fact that these are empty shells. The eye sockets in particular being a possible entry into a disembodied mind.

Next stage is for Mat to look at some existing footage of climbing and see if its possible to link the figure to these and then develop this as a looped piece of footage. I will also be working with Annabeth to develop some motion capture footage to see how simple things like turning a head can be done, so that eventually a crowd can turn towards the viewer. However first of all I might get back into more dancing and see what happens when gravity acts on the figure's genitals.

I eventually decided that the technology was far too impersonal and that I would have to return to hand drawing techniques.

Uncooperative men digging endlessly

Man climbing and thinking he is getting somewhere. The treadmill to nowhere

An offshoot

Although I haven't been posting to Art and Pedagogy very often I have developed an offshoot blog about drawing.

 http://fineartdrawinglca.blogspot.co.uk

After Easter I have been asked to continue working 5 days a week until June. So when I go back it will be first year assessments, then second year and then straight into third year assessments and then the final show. I have spent the last few weeks mainly planning for next year and worst of all timetabling and booking workshops. The workshops are booked, but the full timetable is yet to be finalised. A course trip is also being considered, but it has to fit exactly between different events as they occur across three different year timetables. The Drawing blog has been a brief outlet from detailed timetabling, something I still regard as a non essential and a straightjacket, even though I've been struggling with how to fit all the module delivery patterns together, the experience doesn't make me think there is some value there, simply that it takes people away from teaching time. The fact that this timetable will go up onto 'EStudio' in some ways makes it worse; students check on it to see whether it's worth going in and woe betide us if we change anything. Again the idea of an ever evolving set of questions and responses is banjaxed, I believe in not knowing where we are going, but simply having the courage to take aim and head off. Perhaps the college will allow these types of things to happen once it has its own awarding status, confidence might come from ownership, I hope so.