Following on form OUIL401, I was fairly nervous about getting started with COP this year. Essay writing is not something I have ever been very good at so I was a little bit apprehensive about considering a research question. However, once I got started, I found that the research and my discoveries were influencing the direction of my work really well, and that I wasn't struggling with being stunted or stalled by obstacles, the process ran really smoothly. I found that from the discovery of new information, I was constantly changing the title and direction of my essay as I was trying to fit in other parts of information and trying to make them relevant to my essay. Having spoken to some other students about this issue, I decided to just stick with the title I had, and only include information that was relevant to that question. This made the process much easier, and I found myself working much more efficiently.
I think he essay is by far the weakest part of my submission- as stated, written work is not something I have ever been good at, and structuring an essay was one of the most difficult parts of the module for me. However I think it provided a strong basis for investigation, allowing me to follow up on theories through exploration all work in my visual journal. This has definitely shown me the importance of context within my practise, and that academic research can be as important to my own practice as visual research is. I have really enjoyed allowing my learnings to influence my practice and I think it has lead to me using more collage and including satirical elements into my work.
Using satire is not something I have really done before, and it wasn't something I was ever really that interested in before. However, after working with satire during SB2, I found that I really enjoy making that type of work and it's hopefully something that I will look to include in my practice a lot more, and possible work with in COP3.
I really enjoyed working within the visual journal this year; I wanted to really expand on my work in SB1 and I think my visual work has evolved quite far from it, whilst still keeping with the theme of the essay. This was something I was quite worried about towards the start of SB2, I thought my visual journal was starting to stray a bit too far from my investigation in SB1 however having spoken to my tutor, they explained that it was good that my Visual work is taking on an identity of its own and that I am able to explore as many ideas as possible. For me, my exploration with collage has been a real learning curve. Having never really worked with collage before properly, I wanted to explore this ,ethos as fully as I can within this module and I feel that some of my outcomes have been really successful. I will hopefully start to use certain elements of collage in my practice in future and think it will definitely help to benefit my style of working.
I think something that held me back during the module was my attendance to the workshops and sessions. Towards the start of the year I was attending the seminars etc but towards Christmas I seemed to lose sight of the value of attending the sessions and therefore stopped attending. I feel that my essay could definitely have benefitted from having some guidance through my tutors a bit more. However, I think I benefitted from the freedom of being able to explore visually on my own, without much outside influence as this is usually how I prefer to work.
Looking back at the module, I feel like I have invested my time somewhat badly. I placed a lot of importance on the essay and academic side of it; focussing on constructing an academically impressive piece of work rather than focussing on what I think COP should be about- allowing the context behind the work to influence and evolve my own personal practice. If I were to do the module again, I would look at investigating visually at the same time as producing the essay and allowing the two to work harmoniously rather than using a finished essay to influence a body of work. I think this way of working would allow me to be much more reactive and also allow me to respond more reactive;y to ideas and theories.
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