Barcelona Seminars - Task 2 (in relation to my own VAP)

How might the ideas explored in this seminar [please draw on your reading of Tim Ingold] be useful to you in your own professional teaching and learning environment?

In relation to my own artistic practice I aim to let artwork become an exploration that evolves without knowing the end result, generating new materials in “an endless process of transformation” (Ingold, 2011, p. 213). Ingold (2011) further describes this process as “not so much imposing form on matter as bringing together diverse materials and combining or redirecting their flow in the anticipation of what might emerge” (p. 213). In the creation of my own artwork the ‘matter’ is of a digital nature, the ‘diverse materials’ are the digital tools I have access to and the ‘flow’ is the way in which I use these tools to manipulate and develop the image. 

I begin with a simple stimulus image and then begin to explore it using a wide range of digital tools. I have no particular agenda when doing this except to explore and see what emerges from the image. Usually the image begins to transform and suggests something new to me. I then take this idea and begin to actively develop the image in this way. I stop when I feel happy with the end result but that is not to say that I will not return to the image to develop it further at a later point. 

This methodology is quite different to that which I had practised before, where I usually had a clear end result in mind, and I have found it a very liberating experience. It has engaged me at a new level in that the process “calls for continual correction, in response to an ongoing perceptual monitoring of the unfolding task” (Ingold, 2011, p. 217) and I feel much more actively involved in the creative process.

References

1. Ingold, T., 2011. The Textuality of Making. In: T. Ingold Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge. Ch 17.

Bibliography

1. Ingold, T. (2008) Up, Across and Along. In: Lines, A Brief History, London: Routledge. Ch 3.
2. Ingold, T., 2011. Drawing Together: Doing, Observing, Describing. In: T. Ingold Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge. Ch 18.