Reflections on my end of term presentation to my Course & Module tutors.

Thinking about my end of term module assessment, and the presentation that I gave to my tutors, Rowan & Richard last Friday, I think it went well.  The short feedback provided, although not 'official' (- in the sense that it was informal), was good.  My presentation was 'on-point' and the explanation of my objectives seemed to be sufficiently succinct and well received.

Link to Presentation

The advice was to just keep thinking, reflecting, drawing and more thinking, reflection and drawing, to let things develop naturally.  Excellent advice that I need to turn into artefacts now.


Onwards and upwards...

Reflections on a tutorial with Dr Juliet MacDonald and Dr Anna Powell, Friday 7th April 2017.

This 20 minute tutorial was particularly valuable to me as I know that Dr McDonald has a keen interest in the practice of drawing, and her doctoral thesis is an extremely rich and detailed account of her journey in attaining her PhD.

Some of the thoughts that Dr McDonald has given to my own work suggested looking at the work of Marcus Coates.

"Marcus Coates (b. 1968) is an artist who specialises in projects that involve the natural world. Graduating from the Royal Academy School in the early Nineties, by the millennium he was attracting attention for filmed art events that were both eccentric and thought-provoking. These included Goshawk (1999), wherein Coates was suspended in a pine tree so that he might view the world as a bird of prey, the self-explanatory Sparrow Hawk Bait (1999), where he ran through a wood with his head covered in dead birds, and Indigenous British Mammals (2000), which saw him partially buried in wild moorland, performing a karaoke of bird songs" (The ArtDesk.com, 2015).

There was also an artist who "lived like a goat" and spent time living with goats in order to preposition his artistic experiences accordingly. Thomas Thwaites, a 34-year-old researcher spent three days in the Swiss Alps living as part of a goat herd. His research he says, was for future robotics that could be used to de-volve instead of evolve.  This is a useful paradigm to think about in my own practice?

It was suggested that I could create some tensions within my work. Perhaps a provocation and friction for something exciting? A little bit like a butterfly painting of the conflicts brought together?

A further discussion with Dr Anna Powell brought forward the following exercise:

It would be a useful exercise for me to create three questions that my work is trying to address;
is it Antagonistic? Provocative? Or to simply seek further knowledge?

In re-framing my title objectives I considered;

a) how can digital media based drawing be used to re-articulate the contemporary philosophical concepts of speculative realism through the backbone of a literary text?

b) bringing the ancient ideas of drawing as a primary form of recorded expression (and representation) and colliding this with contemporary technology and philosophical thought?

c) an argument of viewing the world from a totally different vantage point. An alternative speculative perspective, with the baggage of human sensations (that is our normal perceptions) being stripped to a bare minimum (hence the use of simple line drawings and tracings)?

Conclusions;

• Consider reframing the paradigm of engagement?
•  research of Ian Sinclair, an obsessive documentary spanning ten years of the London borough of Hackney. 
• And also Georges Perec, "Species of Spaces": fictions of wandering reality.
• Further research may be useful in the work of Daniel Eatock and his manifesto "Conditional Design Manifesto" together with "First Things First Manifesto"?.

References;

- 10 Questions for Artist Marcus Coates Eccentric visionary talks birds, shamanism, intoxicated animals and the Brighton Festival by Thomas H GreenThursday, 26 March 2015
http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/10-questions-artist-marcus-coates

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3198557/The-man-tried-live-GOAT-Researcher-transforms-prosthetics-follow-herd-Alps.html#ixzz4ej9ydSh9

http://eyemagazine.co.uk/feature/article/towards-a-complex-simplicity

https://conditionaldesign.org/manifesto/

Thinking about my Critical Reflective Summary, Tutorial on 31st March.

My senior tutor spent some time with me on 31st March, to help to crystallise my thoughts for my critical reflective summary (CRS).  I have waited a couple of weeks to review my notes and allowed some latent learning/digestion to take place.

A number of books were suggested that could be useful for my reading, perhaps not immediately, but certainly, as I draw closer to the major project module after the Easter break.

The books mentioned included:

"In Praise of Shadows" is an essay on Japanese aesthetics by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the Japanese author and novelist. It was translated into English by Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker. Published in 1933, in Japan, the English translation was published in 1977 by Leete's Island Books.

Also by the philosopher John Gray, "Silence of Animals" together with the book "Straw Dogs".  I have subsequently found the Silence of Animals as a Kindle edition and have now purchased a copy.

I may also consider reading "A Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter?  It appears that this is an interesting twist on the original little red riding hood fable.

There is a further useful reference to the post-human discourse by Rosie Braidotti.  The following publications may provide valuable material;

• Braidotti, R. (1991) Patterns of Dissonance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Braidotti, R. (1994; 2nd ed. 2011) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Braidotti, R. (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity.
• Braidotti, R. (2006) Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge: Polity.
• Braidotti, R. (2011) Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press. 

Further sources that are leveraging work around film and perception, particularly the psychoanalytical and the "imaginary signifier" can be gained from the author Christian Metz.

Overall this was a useful tutorial and there is plenty of work and reading for me to undertake during the next few weeks through my holiday period.

I am aiming for approximately 75% of the document to be in written form about the theories, observations and reflections, with around 25% of the document covering my practice.

Adobe Premier Pro, V.s. Apple's Final Cut Pro. A Workshop with Dr Juliette MacDonald, Friday 31st March 2017

Following a very useful workshop in which Dr Juliet MacDonald compared the feature rich and fully integrated Adobe software suite "Creative Cloud" and its application Adobe Premiere Pro, against the Apple version known as Final Cut (version 7). It was suggested that we should try and avoid Final Cut Pro X (v10), because it seems that the Apple software is taken around the backward step.

Whilst Adobe After Effects is a good software application for animation, transitions and vector graphic imports, there are lots of layers and keyframes to it together with excellent control of title sequences, especially where there are lots of graphics that need to be intermeshed. The product is ideal for short time length videos.

Whereas Adobe Premiere Pro is much better for longer scale movies, simply because longer length clips are handled in a much more user-friendly way.

As a short exercise to get to grips with Adobe Premiere Pro, on opening the application
select "create new project".
Select the [editing] button on top.

Content and footage can now be imported, and it will appear at the bottom left-hand side of the screen. This shows a series of JPEG files
or sequences such as movie files et cetera (.MOV) or audio visual files (.AVI).

Once sequences selected, it can be dragged onto the right-hand pane, which is the "Timeline".
Use the timeline pointer at the top of the timeline area to scrub across the timeline frame.

The top left-hand panel shows the whole clip sequence, and it can be used in order to set your "In" and "Out" frames for your selected clip. (Also as a shortcut it is possible to use [I] to set the in position, and [O] to set the out position).

By using masks to create merged effects within a sequence, this can be a very useful tool. A combination of still photographs animated and overlaid with a moving image is particularly effective.

On the right-hand side of the bottom left panel [which can be navigated to through the shortcut of [~]] provides you with a view of the "Media Browser".

An important principle of Adobe Premiere Pro is that all the source files remain completely intact. That means that all the operations are nonintrusive, and hence our nondestructive. This is vitally important when you are using footage and editing on-the-fly.

To import files into your project, use either the "import" command or alternatively the Media Browser. These are two separate and different ways to perform an operation, something that regularly occurs in many of Adobe CC applications.

Once your raw files are imported, in the file menu, it is possible to create a new sequence. Try various video capture formats and choose the right input and output format depending on the following:
A) the constraints of the video capture
B) the speed and power capabilities of your PC or workstation
C) the intended output/audience/usage of your final film video.

In essence, the Adobe Premiere Pro screen is divided into two areas. On the left-hand side is the workspace or input area, and on the right-hand side is the output area effectively. If one thinks in these terms then the use of this application can become quite second nature and intuitive.
If using the timeline on the lower right-hand portion of the screen, it is also possible to double-click section sequence, which will automatically open the clip onto the left-hand top quadrant workspace area. It is then possible to use various effects of, for example, size, scale, motion position et cetera and a multitude of other effects through the "effects" tab.

Another useful pointer and suggestion when one is using projection mapping, especially with multiple projectors there is an open student free version of the application "Isadora" that many students have found particularly valuable.

Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald (2014), Part #4.

As the book begins to unfold and McDonald's ideas of fear and anxiety become more evident and present, I was delighted to find a reference that she made to something that she found on one of her friends bookshelves: "the new edition of J.A. Bakers the Peregrine, the story of a man obsessively watching wintering wild peregrines in the Essex countryside of the late 1960's" whilst I think she was correct to say that it was published in the 1960's, in is within the text notes of "The Peregrine" (Baker, J.A. 1967), which suggests it was his observations through the 1950's that were then translated and condensed into effectively a single year. The book was published in 1967. Perhaps my own observational pedantry is coming through even here? !

Nevertheless, my pedantry aside... The fact that Helen MacDonald remembers reading this book on a previous occasion, where she is able to explain, not only the obsessive observations of "The Peregrine" that Baker is entwined with but also his sense of mortality, and in her words "an awful desire for death and annihilation"(MacDonald, H. 2104, p199).  I was both a little shocked, but also heartened, that while I recognised his sorrowful and saturnine approach to his writing, with a melancholic reference throughout, I must say I couldn't read the yearning for annihilation as such? This nihilism is much more akin to the writing of Frederick William Nietzsche, (another favourite philosopher of mine).

McDonald compares the writing of Baker and her intentions, with's the writings of TH White, in that inspired of his [White's] dreadfully failed attempts of training his goshawk, the struggle that White was having was in fact, against his own death, although in "The Goshawk" (White T.H. 1951), he recognised that there were beautiful things going on, in the outside world, and there is a sense of hope. However, when MacDonald compares this to J.A. Bakers "the Peregrine" she explains that his 'worldview' showed mostly death and dying, and this mirrored the Hawks (Falcons) as "Icons of extinction: ours, their's and his own". According to MacDonald, to Baker, his death was inevitable, and any hope was utterly dashed; hence she writes "there are no place names, though people in his book. They'd fallen away.… (Bakers) Hawks were made of death." (Page 200).

While other commentators of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967) do underline his sense of mortality, I think McDonald's reading of it is particularly dark.  I did not feel the same way about the outcomes of the book that clearly had such an effect on MacDonald.  In my case, on first reading the Peregrine some six months ago, the book apparently inspired me to think from a different viewpoint altogether.
I'm pleased to stay that this position remains and my continued desire to use Baker's book remains fast and genuine.

Nevertheless, in the analysis of MacDonald's grief and despair, it is not surprising that "the conversation of death" (MacDonald, H., 2014, p210) remains close to the surface. The anxiety and depression she seems to be suffering this point caused her to withdraw even deeper within that grief. She "jumped in panic when the postman knocked on the door: recoiled from the ringing phone. I stopped seeing people. Too, cancelled my gallery talk. Deadlocked at the front door. Out on the hill by fled from walkers, dodged behind hedges when farm vehicles drove up… Some days I lay in bed in so much mysterious pain and began to believe the only explanation was a terminal disease." (p210, p211). Her depression was taking hold of her. I have lived through similar bouts myself and can speak first hand of the wretched fear and darkness that it brings.

In her sorrow, she thinks only of Mabel, the goshawk, and again draws parallels through her own reading of relationships formed between animals and humans, particularly in research conducted in anthropology. For example, she quotes the work of Rane Willerlev, who lived with the hunters in the extreme environment of Siberia in the north-east of Russia for a year. He wrote how the hunters "believed that animals and humans can turn into each other by temporarily taking on one another's bodies" (Macdonald, H., 2104, p211). Macdonald goes on to say that such notions can be very dangerous and continues to explain that Willerslev suggested that by taking on such transformations of mind it can "make you lose sight of your original species identity and undergo an invisible metamorphosis" (p211). This idea of transforming a human soul, our very inner being, as the way we think and see the world about us, by viewing it through an animal's eyes can indeed "imperil the human soul" (p211).

Perhaps this is a warning for me?

Indeed this idea of taking on a spiritual and otherworldly extension is explained further by Macdonald who states "the ability of Hawks to cross borders that humans cannot is a thing far older than Celtic myth, older than Orpheus-four in ancient chauvinistic traditions right across Eurasia, hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next."(p226).  I have already articulated in previous blogs the relationship that Egyptians had with hawks and peregrines in particular. For example, the principal deity ancient Egyptian God, Horus, and his father Osiris are both depicted as gods in the form of a man, - with a man's arms, legs and body; but crucially, illustrated with the Peregrine or falcon's head.

But there is hope, and as Helen Macdonald is beginning the journey on the road to recovery from her despair and depression she sees something more than "not just winter moving onwards to spring:… But a land filling slowly with spots and lines of beauty." (p238). She is starting to see a kind of new birth, through her own individual contact with nature, and a special place that she begins to call home. Indeed she tells of the hill becoming her home.  She says;

"I know it intimately. Every hedgerow, every track through dry grass where the hares cut across field -boundaries, each discarded piece of rusted machinery, every earth and warren and tree… ...Yellowhammers chirping and hedges. Cumulus rubble. The maritime light of this island, set as it is under a sky mirrored and uplit by sea." (Page 239).

This particular paragraph is so much like the style that JA Baker writes of when he is reflecting upon his place, his special place, within the Essex marshes in his book "The Peregrine" (1967).

 Macdonald goes on to say "I don't own this land. I've only got permission to fly in here. But in walking it over and over again and paying in great greatest attention, I've made mine." (Macdonald, H. p239). It is clear that a sense of hope is growing in Macdonald's mind. The latter part of the book is much more uplifting, and again in her own words "there is a sense of creation about it: when the hare leapt up from our feet today, it was as if it had been made by the field ex nihilo." (p241). The sense of wonderment is almost palpable. The reattachment of her own soul to her place in the world and her appreciation of each and every stone or blade of grass begins to take significance again. She writes "it's a child's world, full of separate places. Give me a paper and pencil now and ask me to draw a map of the fields I roamed about when I was small, and I cannot do it. But change the question, and asked me to list what was there and I can then fill the pages. The wood ants' nest. The newt pond. The oak tree covered in marble galls."(p241). I find this particularly interesting because it is clear that Macdonald's 'first' language, that is, her first method of communication, is linguistic.

Whereas I believe my own sense of communication, while deeply rooted in the linguistic, has the benefit of imagery and imagination through drawing. Macdonald's explanations provide an insight into another person's perception of the wonderment of nature and the world around us. But I can't help myself creating mental images, which are far more 'tactile and tangible' than merely linguistic prose.

This gives me great heart and confidence again to continue with my intended drawing as a mediation of understandings between Baker and his Peregrines, and vice versa.

But then again, am I giving Macdonald a disservice in suggesting that her first language is linguistically recalled rather than imagistic?

As her recovery from the dreadful grief begins to return, further excursions into the countryside with her hawk Mabel helps her to see!

A passage that is particularly engaging is an encounter that she and Mabel have while out hunting, where they see a herd of deer some half a mile away. It seems that she recalls how her hawk, having already located a hare as potential prey, turns its' attention to the deer, 'some 30 Fallow Deer' near to a river. She says "The deer in procession resemble charcoal cave paintings rendered manifest. Art's magic working backwards." (Macdonald, H., p262). This imagistic reference of cave art provides more resonance to her identification as an illustrator; it gives more of a graphic meaning behind this primal notion of drawing as a form of recorded expression. It is clear that she recognises such importance as an artist herself, for not only the linguistic medium but clearly the graphic articulation as well. It is further expanded upon and again, has resonance with J.A. Baker, as she quotes "Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings." (p265). This imaginary place, this notion of something out there that perhaps no longer exists, this idea, maybe again, of a liminal place can equally be brought to bear in the sketches and images that I'm making too.

A sense of contentment begins to emerge towards the end of the book. It seems that Macdonald is re-finding her own feelings of happiness. She comments on her emotional state of mind in a short reflection of TH White's book "The Goshawk", and states "I have not thought of White for a while. As I grew happier his presence receded, his world more and more distant from mine." (p274).

This sense of happiness is also transmitted to Mabel, the goshawk too. "I know she is content: the half closed, happy I, the rattling of her feathers: these are signs of raw good humour. I cannot know what she's thinking, but she's very alive."(p275) The sensation of 'being alive' within herself provides an outlet of joy and happiness in Macdonald at last, it seems. It is evident again, now that her transference of soul into the hawk, while still tenuously present, has become more healthy. She thinks about how T.H. White has gone through such despair and sadness and goes on to say;

"I swear to myself, standing there with the book open in my hand ['s goshawk] is, that I will not ever reduce my hawk to hieroglyph, and historical figure or misremembered villain.… I can't. Because she is not human. Overall lessons I've learned in my months with Mabel, this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there -rocks and trees and stones in the grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel, I've learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not." (Page 275)

This last selected paragraph, while not ultimately the  ending of her book, is a fitting conclusion of both a recognition of the incredible majesty of hawks (and Falcons), but also a tribute to the writer that she has been able to detach herself from an intense relationship with Mabel, and return to 'human-ness', with a continued and open sense of wonderment of the world(s) we inhabit.

Final Conclusions;

• In final summary, the intertwining of Helen Macdonald's experiences of distress and grief, as she goes through the awful mourning of her late father, entwined with the agent of T.H. White's book "The Goshawk"(1951), provides an excellent setting and anchor points, for not only emotions to be explored and compared with, but also the psychological exploration of the relationship with a goshawk. In both cases, the relationship helps both writers to overcome their anguish and drive forward towards new beginnings. 
• I thoroughly loved reading Helen Macdonald's book, it is a worthy prize-winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction (2014) and her intellectual and articulate style is incredibly appealing. So much so, that I have already ordered her earlier book entitled "Falcon"(2006) which will give me further reference material from a very credible and validated academic source, to continue with my theme.
• In the meantime, my reading of Rebecca Solnit may have to be temporarily postponed while I read another book from a student of an associate of Solnit, that is, Professor Donna Haraway, and her student anthropologist Thom van Dooren, with his book "Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction" (2016) published by Columbia University Press, Chichester, West Sussex. 
• There is a busy time in front of me!

Full References (inc. Previous blogs of this book review);

Auden, WH (1930) "Consider This" (first published 1930) in "The English Auden", edited by Mendelssohn, E.Faber and Faber (1978), p 46.

Baker, J.A. (1967) "The Peregrine", (2105 edition) HarperCollins Publishing, London.  

Blain, G. (1936), "She is Noble in her Nature"(pp229-230) from "Falconry",(1936), Phillip Allen, London.

Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London. 

Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London 

Solnit, R. (2002) "Wanderlust", Verso Books, London.

Solnit, R. (2006), " A Field Guide to Getting Lost", Canongate, Edinburgh. 

Van Dooren, T., (2016) "Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction" (2016) published by Columbia University press, Chichester, West Sussex. 

White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.

Thoughts begining to crystalise after further discussions with Dr Anna Powell

After a short review with Doctor Anna Powell on Friday 17th March, I recall discussing some of the recent photographs that I had been taking by using an extended monopod, to capture images from an unusual height.

The extended monopod is approximately six feet in length and when held at my own arm's length,  with a remote camera shutter trigger, I have been able to record images from approximately twelve to fourteen feet above ground level. I explained my conscious choice to do this, despite getting some
strange looks from passers-by who were out walking or exercising their dogs!

Nevertheless, I recognise it is important to let go of how people receive my work both in terms of how it is generated and in terms of my outputs.

However, I also need to recognise and ask myself the question as to how do I engage the prospective  viewer, to ensure that their interpretation of my work outputs are relevant to the subject and context
in which I am trying to research and articulate?

In considering my own work, I explained in brief, that I am trying to join together very ancient philosophical ideas with very new ideas. Together my output is formed through the human act of obsessive observation, and in this case through literature.

In a way I could call this a collision, a collision between ontology, that is speculative realism, with digital media (and in particular digital drawing) together with the literature of the book  "The Peregrine" (Baker, A.J. 1967).

Dr Powell replayed the message I gave, back to me as "living and thinking in the world from a different point of view" which I'm glad to say fits precisely with my objectives!

As an exercise, these objectives properly articulated, intertwined with my methodologies and practice, together with a third area, which is a description of my various interests will become areas of discussion for my critical reflective summary for this module.

I feel well placed in being able to articulate these several points sufficiently over the next few weeks and start to form a cohesive document.

A further conversation with Dr Powell on 24 March helped me towards thinking about creating and maintaining my body of works. This was directly related to the workshop that we conducted around postproduction earlier in the month and explores and expands on the ideas of practice being a series of fitting and finding concepts theories and imagistic references (and often the other way round) of finding and fitting images of the moments.

This reminded me of previous reading that I had recently made regarding Henry Cartier-Bresson, who described "The Moments" of photography.

Images of the mind are equally fleeting, but they need to be recorded and maintained as a body of work develops. In my own case, I think the "where" (that is the location), is not so important, but the "what" is vitally important as content for me to capture and go forward with. The workshops and tutorials with Dr Anna Powell together with Dr Juliet MacDonald have been particularly useful and I'm looking forward to working with them a little more closely in the third semester.

Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald, Part #3

As the book progresses with the trials and tribulations of training Mabel, eventually Macdonald is able to remove the leash or 'creance' from the raptor's Jessies and allow the free flight to commence.
This idea of freedom and its association with flight is one of the most powerful images that we have; equally, the sense of liberty is essential in considering the mutual respect that a falconer must have for their Falcon. A falconer is not, therefore, a 'keeper' of Falcons, but merely a guide.
Our own human yearning for freedom, which is almost universal, is of peculiar interest here as Macdonald describes her visit to an art gallery and her encounter with a full-size copy of a bird hide. The construction is rebuilt within the museum, an identical copy of real structure in California. The exhibition itself shows a recording video through the windows of the hide of the flight of a wild Californian condor.  The intent was to bring attention to the fate of not just that particular bird and its close encounter with extinction, but a more general observation of wildness and freedom and the complicated relationship that humans have with it.  Macdonald interprets the piece perfectly in my opinion. She states
"I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing, -not just from the wild, but from people's everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals have. Eventually, rarity is all that they are made of.… There is a vast difference between my visceral, bloodied life with Mabel and the reserved, distanced view of modern nature appreciation." (Page 181)

Dr Macdonald is still dealing with her deep sense of grief, and through her hawk Mabel, she finds a new kind of escape and freedom from the enduring emptiness she is experiencing. She talks about her distress and numbness of mind and the mundane activities of day-to-day life. Macdonald hints at the escape from it while out flying with her hawk. She states "I stayed out longer with Mabel, found it harder and harder to return, because out with the hawk I didn't need a home. Out there I would forget I was human at all. Everything the hawk saw was raw and real and drawn hair fine, and everything else was dampened to nothing." (p186).  
Again the use of language to describe the hawk's perceived images is being drawn, 'hair fine', and is very resonant with my own thoughts about how I could speculatively represent an alternative view of their world.
That alternative perspective of the world through the hawk's contemplation has been written about before and again I'm glad to see it.  Macdonald talks about a time when her mother calls while she is with the Raptor and half in conversation, she notices;
"Hawk on my fist, tail fanned, shoulders dropped, staring through me and the phone, and her attention catching on everything serially. Field-fence-fieldfare-wing flick-pheasant-feather-on--some-on-wire-12-wood pigeons-half-a-mile-distant-tick-tick-tick".(p187).

I love the way that Macdonald thinks about the hawk's brain processing things serially. Does it do this? Or is the hawk's mind much more capable of processing data in a parallel way? The idea of digital drawing and the serial processes of engagement come to light here.

Later, in the same vein, Macdonald recalls an incident when a huge flying fortress aircraft flies overhead and brings terror to the wild animals beneath it. Except for Mabel, who virtually ignores this huge, yet perhaps perceived as a similar, a 'harbinger' of death. While Macdonald is mesmerised, her mind draws an example from the poet WH Auden who stated "consider this, and in our time as the hawk sees it, or the helmeted airmen:" (Auden, W.H.,1930), (Macdonald, H. (2104) p188).

This comparison of hawk and aircraft as bringers of death, or is it that, rather than 'bringers' of death, they have an ability to decide? Macdonald goes on to say on page 189 "the hawk is on my fist. 30 ounces of death in a feathered jacket; a being whose world is drawn in plots and vectors that pulls her towards lives ends." The idea that the choices of life and death can be made in an instant often haunts us, not through our own desire to carry out dreadful acts, but more the simple fragility of life and death itself. (Page 189). Macdonald articulates her own sense of clarity, and she quotes the remainder of WH Auden's poem with the lines "the clouds rift suddenly look there".

She feels "the insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from height and keep it there. To be watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think that I am safe." (Page 189).

It is interesting that in this turmoil of seclusion and isolation, in this total loneliness, it keeps coming through in Macdonald's writings and in an earlier passage she even quotes a piece of poetry by Marianne Moore: "the cure for loneliness is solitude" (page 32).

That sense of isolation and loneliness is another trait of a slightly different writer, Rebecca Solnit of whom I have read one of her books "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (2006) Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK. The sense of walking alone to is further explored by Solnit in a book that I have just acquired called "Wanderlust: a history of walking" (2001) published by Verso Books, London. - Something I need to read and create a critical evaluation of in the next few months no doubt.

References:

Auden, WH (1930) "Consider This" (first published 1930) in the English Auden, edited by Mendelssohn, E.Faber and Faber (1978), p 46.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.
Solnit, R. (2006) "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK.
Solnit, R. (2001) "Wanderlust: a history of walking" published by Verso Books, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.

Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald, Part #2

In chapter 6, entitled "The Box of Stars", an interesting explanation of her goshawk's physiology, which I found particularly interesting as I too have been researching on the perception of Hawks and Falcons, in particular, work that I have already made some short notes upon. Macdonald's explanation of her hawk is useful for me to make a note of here. She is talking about the wildness and independent irritability (it seems that they are quite truculent creatures).
She goes on to say;
 "nervousness, of course, isn't quite the right word: it is simply that they have jacked up nervous systems in which the nerve pathways from the eyes and ears to the motor neurones that control their muscles have only minor links with associated neurones in the brain. Goshawks appear nervous because they live life 10 times faster than we do, and they react to stimuli literally without thinking." (Macdonald, H. p56).

The idea of patience and waiting for the right moment that was encouraged in her upbringing is a continual theme of the book. Indeed referring to her own father's photography and obsessive observations she quotes Henry Cartier-Bresson and states "the taking of a good photograph is a decisive moment. Your eye must see a composition or an expression of that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera, the moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." (p72). This patience and sense of expectation create an anxiety of the sort in both artists and photographers alike, and it is interesting here that those same feelings come through from a source of another point of reference. The sense of patience comes through the quiet observations that the hawk has, and I suspect, all birds of prey have in their moment of seeing prey which they then arrogate for themselves, they seize, claim and expropriated the life of the hunted creature. The time in between those moments is a silent moment of introspection. Macdonald hints at this when she is describing her own observations of Mabel. "She is interested in flies, and specs of floating dust, in the way light falls on certain surfaces. What is she looking at? What is she thinking?" (p84) It is in these quiet moments that Macdonald too exposes her grief again and states "the hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. I was turning into a hawk."

This also is a time while Macdonald is virtually spending 24 hours a day with Mabel, as a kind of habituation, getting used to each other's presence in every single way. Part of the training of the hawk requires a special bond to be created between human and raptor, and this bonding or habituation process can indeed take not just days but up to 3 weeks of intimate sharing of existence within the world together. During all of this time, Macdonald is not only watching the Hawks progress but her own dealing with her grief. The obsessive watching again comes into play.
She states "the first few days with wild new hawk dictate a reflexive dance of manners. To judge when to scratch your nose without offence, when to walk and when to sit, when to retreat and when to come close, you must read your hawk's state of mind. You do this by watching her posture and her feathers, the workings of which turned the birds shape into an exquisitely controlled barometer of mood." (p85).

This piece of text draws on my memory again; to an often remembered piece of work by one of my favourite anthropologists, and zoologist. A keen observer and that is the work of Desmond Morris. He talks at length about the ideas of human body language and its derivation from our primal ancestors. In "The Naked Ape" (Morris D, 1967) he discusses the subtle and exquisitely detailed movements of expression that humans make, which later goes on to become a foundation of behavioural study and a whole science of "body language". It is of interest that this notion of body language and communication through gesture is clearly coming through in Macdonald's articulations. She goes on to say "to train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk,… You seem to feel what it needs what it feels." (Macdonald, H. p86).  She talks about this sense of feeling what something else feels, that heightened sense of empathy.  She quotes the poet Keats, who called this a "chameleon quality"; the ability to "tolerate the loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment" (page 86). This too has special appeal to me in my own attempts to see the world from another point of view. To become something else, and literally, to see with something different's vision, requires a very deep and meditative contemplation which will, of course, be speculative at all times, and hence my notion of continental philosophy and ontology through speculative realism is so important.

Once the habituation and acclimatisation of the hawk Mabel are firm;  has become sufficiently bonded with Macdonald, she feels able to start short forays outside, with the hawk retained on the type of leash attached to her feet, through what are known as Jessies. These are tough leather anklets on which various falconry attire and furniture can be placed, such as hoops, rings and bells. The leash is known as a 'creance', which is very thin but extremely durable doubled-up leather cord, attached to the Hawks' jessies and allowed to extend at greater lengths as the training of the bird becomes more established. Out in the open, in the bigger world, the isolation that Macdonald has been placing herself within, and sharing only with Mabel, becomes apparent. Just a simple walk into the walled garden of her cottage (which seems to be within the bounds of Cambridge University), makes a frightening experience for Macdonald as she has acquired the nervous anxiety, almost agitation, with unusual objects, sounds, experiences and phenomena. She remarks on the light, the movement and noise in this outside world, but goes on to say "the hawk is unperturbed. She tips her head sideways to look up at the moving clouds-in daylight her irises are flat and shiny and slightly blurred, with pupils that dilate and contract like a camera lens as she focuses, zip-zip-zip-zip,  up to track a passing Cessna aircraft perhaps,-and then she returns her gaze and head upside down to watch a nearby fly, and then tracks another, et cetera"(p98). Macdonald then realises "the world she lives in is not mine. Life is faster for her; time runs slower. Her eyes can follow the wing beats be as easily as ours following the wing beats of a bird. What is she seeing? I wonder, and my brain does backflips trying to imagine it, because I can't."(p98). She then goes on to discuss how Hawks and birds of prey have a different perception of the world. Not only because of their acute eyesight and the deep fovea which I have discussed in a previous blog, but also the fact that a raptor's eyes, its' rods and cones, those light-sensitive receptors that are matched to the wavelengths of the colours red green and blue in our own eyes, are complemented with additional sensitivities.  These other modified rods and cones allow raptors to see well into the ultraviolet as well as polarised light ranges and even into the infrared spectrum, which allows hawks to virtually see the thermal currents of warm air during flight. It is also thought that they may even be able to sense the magnetic lines of force for them to recognise the poles of the earth! Raptors, as well as many other bird species, hence have the ability to trace the subtle variances of geography and topology with that added navigational reference.

This idea of perception of the other dimensions, that we are clearly unfamiliar with as humans becomes interesting too in my own work in trying to mediate some kind of language of recognition through the eyes of the Peregrine. I was particularly encouraged and drawn to an observation that Helen Macdonald makes during a quieter moment of her training Mabel. It is a moment where Macdonald recognises that as this hawk has been hand reared through an incubator from being an egg, she has never seen a prey animal before. Yet seems to instinctively, almost through 'a priori', to know what other animals she may hunt, and those that she may not. Described here, is the first encounter with moorhens and Mabel recognises immediately the need to chase them (p137).
But it is Macdonald's observation that occurred a few days earlier, while Mabel had been sitting on a perch and Macdonald had been going about her business when she noticed the hawk...
 "I'd seen her looking at a small drawing of partridges in the book that I'd left open on the floor. Intrigued I picked up the book and held it in front of her. She kept her eyes fixed on the picture, even when I moved the book about in the air. No way! I thought. The drawing was a link; it was stylised and sparse: it caught the feel and form of partridges, but there was no colour or detail to it. I flipped through the book, showed her the drawings: finches, seabirds, thrushes. She ignored them all. Then I showed her drawing of a pheasant. Her black pupils dilated; she leant forward and stand down her beak directly at it, fascinated as he had been with the partridges. I was amazed. Amazed that she could understand two-dimensional images, and even more amazed that something deep in her brain so these sparse inked curves as fitting the category "game birds" and had pronounced them worthy of interest."(p137).

Initial conclusions;

• This last paragraph is a strange yet marvellous observation in itself which spurs me on to continue my own quest! 
• The theme of drawing as a kind of articulation and the halfway point of language between man and hawk fits!
• It is purely speculative of course, but in that short paragraph (p137) there is a sense of triangulation of proof at last, that my journey is worthwhile.

References;

Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.

A book review of "H is for Hawk"(2014) by Dr Helen Macdonald, Published by Jonathan Cape, London. Part #1

I finished reading this book around ten days ago, and I have since, allowed it to begin to sink in and crystallise in my thoughts.

A quick introduction of Dr Helen Macdonald; Dr Macdonald is a historian with the Department of History and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. She is also an illustrator and poet, and here her writing has been exemplified through a discourse of the difficulties she faced while going through her personal grief after losing her father. She is also a Falconer, which is what drew my attention to her methods and writing.

Initially, this book was recommended to me by Dr Stella Baraklianou, around a month ago during an informal discussion about my project. And the work I am trying to articulate through drawing, against the literary backbone, which is the book "the Peregrine" by JA Baker (1967, second edition 2015).

Immediately after starting to read the book by Helen Macdonald, I realised, not only elegant way in which she recorded her story, but also the profoundly moving way in which she explained her feelings. In a way, the book is almost an autobiography, however, while the book does provide a detailed insight into some of her personal thoughts, which were generated through very close but bringing and relationship with her father, it is also an utterly engaging story about her relationship with a Hawk. The hawk in question is of a type known as a 'Goshawk'.

Macdonald explains her fascination with falconry started at a very young age and at the time of writing this book, she was already a proficient Falconer and had trained many different breeds of both falcons and hawks. However, early on in the narrative, it was made clear that this particular strain, the goshawk, provides a robust and challenging raptor for a falconer to train. They virtually remain wild and that sense of independence and individualism, of the bird's thoughts, seem to come through very clearly in Macdonald's writings.

As a point of reference for "H is for Hawk", Macdonald chose to use a previous piece of literature written by T.H. White, during the early 1950s. TH White's book was entitled "The Goshawk"(1951), and it describes his relationship as a complete novice, trying to attempt to train a goshawk.  It delineates the seeming constant battle that he has with the hawk, because of his pride and deeply ingrained sensitivities, perhaps amplified, during the time that he was a schoolmaster. It is his belief that 'through kindness, children should be taught', which seems to go against the general fashion of his day. He attempts to apply this idea of 'training through kindness' to the goshawk that he acquires. His frustrations and almost frightening engagement with the bird puts him into a state of total distance from reality. As he is attempting to train this wild creature without having any previous knowledge of falconry, it is made all the harder.

In a similar way to my intentions of using JA Baker's book "the Peregrine" (1967) as a backbone for my work, much of Macdonald's writing keeps the idea of TH White's "The Goshawk" in her rearview mirror. She recognises his vain and ill-conceived ideas about training his goshawk, and yet apparently makes the tribute to the fact that TH White, the learned and scholarly man that he is, is not attempting to undertake his journey alone. That is, without having read a significant amount of practical literature which goes back to the Middle Ages on the rearing and upbringing of hawks. It is probably worth pointing out also, that TH White is more famous for writing the book "the Sword in the Stone" (published in 1938) which is an English favourite, telling the story of the legend of King Arthur. Within that book, the inference of falconry comes through in many places; for example, the wizard known as Merlyn is indeed named after one of Britain's smallest Hawks, the 'Merlin'. Furthermore, there are various references within the book concerning mediaeval hunting and falconry, as at one stage the young Arthur is himself turned into a hawk for a short time.

By the time TH White had received a good degree of fame for his earlier works, and after having sold the rights to "the Sword in the Stone" to the Walt Disney company, he wrote the book "The Goshawk" in 1951. But it reflects the turbulent time of his own life some 15 to 20 years prior.  That was before the Second World War too. Macdonald's choice in using his book as a backbone to her writings comes through clearly. Her battle with her emotions after losing her beloved father, while at the same time attempting to train this wild creature is equally reflected through her grief and in my opinion her suffering of a deep depression. Various sentences within Macdonald's writing draw the viewer towards this conclusion, such as whole chapters entitled for example "Darkness", (p92 -p98), "Hiding," Chapter 20 (p185-194); and a section entitled "Fear" (p195 - p204). I will go into these chapters a little bit further on in this review but to suffice it to say that Macdonald's suffering was made very clear. Putting grief and despair and depression to one side, the book explores how her relationship with falconry, emerges from a childhood fascination which may have originally come from her father's fascination with flight.  And in his case man's flight through aircraft.
 She tells of times she spent with her father, having almost been forced into 'plane spotting' with him, and her attention often drifting across the wide open spaces of airfields and grassland (p10). What she learnt from these excursions with her father was a sense of patience. As a photographer for a newspaper, he had a critical eye and inculcated into his daughter that same searching almost obsessive habit, of learning to wait for the right moment, and capturing it in some recordable way.

And then the shock of receiving the news that her father has passed away is soon to turn her world upside down. Like all people suffering from profound grief, the usual reaction is shocked, then to withdraw from society and take stock of what is important in life. I too have suffered many times in that loss, of not only my parents but also more recently, my eldest brother. And again, more recently, and so the feelings that Macdonald articulates are still quite raw in my mind, even though a long time has elapsed since the death of my parents, but the painful memories are still quite near to the surface, and I expect them to remain so.

Clearly, the subject matter in most hunting and falconry discourses have to engage with the theme of death at some stage. Whether that is the death of the prey animal or indeed other aspects of mortality, those notions are always near to the surface too. The idea that life goes on and things just happen almost in a parallel existence is also articulated in "H is for Hawk". A hint is found of that otherworldliness on page 21 where Macdonald describes some men hunting and quotes
"the disposition of their [the falconers] Hawks was peculiar. But it wasn't unsociable. It was something much stranger. It seemed that the Hawks couldn't see us at all, that they'd slipped out of our world entirely and moved to another, wilder world from which humans had been utterly raised. These men knew they had vanished. Nothing could be done except to wait."
This passage is where Macdonald is talking about her early observations and first encounters with falconry and how the men that kept the Hawks retained this sense of patience.  - Allowing things to happen and unfold in their own ways. It is a deep sense of respect that the falconers have for their charges as they know and understand that the birds have a choice; to be wild completely, or, to acquiesce in some small way, but only when they, and they alone, decide to do so. It is also at this point in the book that Macdonald points out the difference between a hawk and falcon, the latter being a bird of prey and raptor whose name is derived from the Greek word meaning sickle. The very words sickle and Falcon, which somehow infuse a sense of speed, both slicing through the air. Moreover, she explains the general view that "falcons seem to be better than hawks", as the latter have an apparent wildness and, in Macdonald's words "psychopathic" (p22) aspect to the way that they hunt and kill their prey. Indeed she quotes a line by Captain Gilbert Blain (1936) which suggests that "the Peregrine Falcon is the finest bird on earth." "Of all the living creatures she is the most perfect embodiment of power, speed and grace" (Blain, 1936).

At first, it seems that Macdonald is coming to terms with the loss of her father but again, like many experiencing grief, there are good days and bad days, which turn into good weeks and bad weeks, or good months and bad months and so on. The idea of presence and notions of liminal existences comes back again after a few months. "Something else was there, something standing next to me that I couldn't touch or see, the thing a fraction of a millimetre away from my skin, something vastly wrong, making infinite the distance between me and all the familiar objects in my house. I ignored it. I'm fine, I told myself. Fine." (p24), and later, "I dreamed of the hawk slipping through wet air to [something] somewhere else. I wanted to follow it."(p24).
It is clear that Macdonald needs some sort of outlet to the grief that she is experiencing and decides that the time is right for her to acquire one of the hardest hawks of all to befriend and to train. As already explained, the Goshawk.

It is here that she starts to also recall her reading of TH White, and "the Sword in the Stone" (1938). His own intention in writing 'The Goshawk' (1951), the book, he said "it would be about the efforts of a second-rate philosopher, who lived alone in a wood, being tired of most humans in any case, to train a person who is not human, but a bird" (White, T.H. 1952, in an unpublished manuscript found by Macdonald).
Macdonald states on page 38, "when I trained my hawk I was having a quiet conversation, of sorts, with the deeds and works of the long dead man [that is, TH White], who was suspicious, morose, determined to despair. A man whose life disturbed me. But a man, too, who loved nature, who found it surprising, bewitching and endlessly novel." Macdonald goes on to then say "by skilfully training a hunting animal, by closely associating with it, by identifying with it, you might be allowed to experience all your vital, sincere desires, even though most bloodthirsty ones, in total innocence. You could be true to yourself." (p43).

Once she had acquired her new charge, a young female goshawk (that she named Mabel), Macdonald describes her initial meeting with it through a brilliant examination and description and says "she is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A Gryphon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water". (p53)

It seems fitting to pause here and allow this opening of the book review to sink in further.

References;

Blain, G. (1936), "She is Noble in her Nature"(pp229-230) from "Falconry",(1936), Phillip Alen,       London.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.

Reflections on a lecture by Dr Juliet MacDonald, regarding Adobe 'InDesign' application, workshop #2

The initial overview of last week's activities included a recap on
a) a new document
b) outline of the "work spaces" and panels.
              Format of pages/facing pages.
              Panels:-pages, swatches et cetera.
C) Master pages and their manipulation.

Placing images. [File]-Place = puts the [linked file] onto the workspace Artboard (Remember the file needs to be located in the same file system); Use shortcut [command] plus ['D']

Right click and drag the placement box. [The ratio of an image is constrained in this function]
for an alternative method, use [left mouse button] click to position a full-size version onto the page being displayed.

It is possible to make multiple placements by positioning a range of files through the selection of them in the file open dialogue. [File-place-"select"]

When sending a file to an external printers shop for example, use the file package option to send all the images and links embedded within a single file

Working with colour-swatches and colour pallets.

Drawing with text, boxes and paragraphs/tables;
use the [Windows] tab to select all the panels you need on your visible desktop;
 For example, use "object" and "layout" to make alignments and changes to the visual form.
Another useful tool is to select 'smart guides', which allow for a visible interaction through the movement of your mouse cursor.

"Frames"; consider changing the standard frame of a rectangle or square into a polygon as well as star shapes;

Use the shortcut "W" in order to preview your work as your progressing through a design.

To position page numbers onto various selected pages, use the "Master" page and create a text box where you wish to position your page number. Then in the "type" menu, select "special characters" and then "markers" to the current page number. There is a shortcut for these actions which is "[option], [shift], [command] plus [N]"

In academic documents a "running head" can also be installed onto the master page as well as any preformatted text, together with picture boxes, so that all pages have linked formatting, and can display headers, footers and whatever other design on every single page.

In "layout" it is possible to change the page numbering according to the sections and cover pages required.

When installing videos to PDF documents, use [Windows-interactive-media]
Treat videos like images.

Create a frame first that is quite large in order to accommodate the pixel dimensions of the selected video.
Place the video file within the design document. It will create a submenu and video viewer.
Please note however that Adobe InDesign is happy with the '.swf' and also 'Flash' file formats, and sometimes (but not always!)  '.MOV' files from Apple QuickTime as H264 files.
However, remember it is important to edit videos and be careful with compression as InDesign is very fussy about which type of compression is used.

Click on the ["show import options"] to open the media panel within your display area.
The media panel can be used to create a "poster" within the finished document that shows a specific image frame of the video.
Also remember that with videos, only e-PUB (fixed layout) and Adobe PDF (interactive) formats are available. Clearly, it is necessary to only use fixed formats for academic assessments.

Example outputs;

Conclusions;

• It is also possible to make transitions within PDF documents and it is possible to demonstrate an elaborate set of transitions. However, it is best to do this on an actual verbal presentation rather than trying to incorporate it into the submitted presentation for academic purpose. 
• Indeed with regards to academic documents it is probably best to avoid transitions I think.
• A very useful on-site online web resource is the webpage HTTP:/www.indesignsecrets.com
• Also there is a wealth of information that Adobe's own website under HTTP://www.helpX.adobe.com

Reflections on a lecture and workshop on the Adobe product "in design" by Dr Juliet MacDonald, Friday, 10 February 2017.

The application InDesign holds its key concepts based on the original trade of mechanical printing. Within this practice, various ways of working, nomenclature and phrases have transcended into digital design.

When considering any form of printing in the digital age, it is important to firstly examine whether the output from your work will be a fixed layout or a dynamic design. A fixed layout is suitable for printed matter whereas a dynamic layout is suitable for digital graphics presented on some form of screen. Further considerations of image resolution and/or the need for scalable graphics comes into play too. With regards to printed outputs, consideration of colour reproduction mechanisms reside within the four traditional inks used in modern printing, which are cyan, magenta, yellow and black often abbreviated to CMYK. In the case of electronically or digitally rendered outputs that will be projected (or presented on some form of screens, such as plasma or more modern variants liquid-crystal displays), the colour management is not through negative pigment manipulation such as CMYK. Instead, it is managed through additive manipulation of colours of light itself, namely the primary colours of red, green and blue. The final essential consideration of the outputs is simply a question of dimensional format which traditionally has been called landscape (that is where the horizontal dimensions are wider than the vertical dimensions), or portrait (where the vertical dimension is greater than the horizontal dimension).

As mentioned previously, Adobe InDesign's origins are based on the idea of the printed book. The format of printing, from the original Guttenberg Press and the subsequent Bibles and books printed from those early machines, were combined reproduction with artworks. Originally such artworks were hand painted or hand drawn such as those which can be found in the book of Kells and other early manuscripts. The ways of thinking about these artefacts have pretty much remained unchanged for over 600 years.

It is only since the end of the 20th century that electronic and digital printing (commencing with any form of growth in popularity, initiated in the early 1980s) emerged with the notion of the digital bitmap to mathematically position dots of ink based on a concept of a matrix or grid. Early pioneers of digital drawing and manipulation together with textual reproduction were born in such software applications as QuarkExpress (particularly for page layout design) and CorelDRAW amongst many others. While these early competitors took emerging market share within the industry, it was not until the American company Adobe began to gain dynamic market presence through the 1990s and into the early 21st-century.

In regards to artists portfolios, being substantially different to traditional format books (which tend to be what is known as "single spreads"), these artists portfolio presentations do not translate quite as well to the digital format. However, as portfolios can now be easily displayed through electronic means, portfolio presentations are now becoming much more popular.

Outputs from the digital context of reproduction are in continual change. For example, some of the myriad styles and formats can be found in
-digital magazines
-digital portable document format (PDF's)
-e-books
-interactive online documents
-web design (through the use of other Adobe applications such as its sister product Dreamweaver).

The fundamental difference of web design is that it requires dynamic layouts rather than fixed layouts, whereas an output intended to be printed as a hardcopy or portable document format is of course of a fixed layout.

Other considerations of printing however still remain the same and include image resolution and the need or otherwise, for scalable graphics together with the document format of landscape or portrait; the printing and presentation outputs of subtractive pigment management through CMYK or additive light colour management of RGB.

We then conducted an exercise to familiar ourselves with the InDesign product. This included a short workshop on how to open new documents and through selecting the various intentional outputs such as printed matter, web-based or digital publishing. Also discussed were the early identification of a language that has transcended from the mechanical printing age, including the phrases such as "bleed and slug". Bleed is simply the extra image overlap which will be cut off from the paper to create a clean edge of multiple copies of paper when presented in a book or brochure format. Whereas 'slugs' are the crop marks and edges which are used as reference points in preparation for the practical cutting or guillotine operations to create the clean edge of books.

With regards to page layouts, the concept of InDesign is to use "frames" which is a very different notion than perhaps the more immediately familiar methods used in word processing.

By using the tool palette within InDesign, one is able to draw frames within a master document to create a fixed and standard layout which can be replicated easily throughout the book. Once an arrangement is established with the frames button, it is possible to then import, or 'link' files and images of text and pictures through pasting. This is usually done by the use of "placing an image" by using the selection of the keys 'command' and 'D' (on Apple Mac devices) or 'control'+ 'D' (in Microsoft Windows systems)

When in the selection mode (and a black arrow is displayed on the screen), it is possible, by double-clicking the black arrow on the particular choice to change such selection into what is known as "direct selection".

To visually check the aesthetic representation of formats, it is possible to insert various online text through generators, or random language, or alternatively, use the built-in 'traditional' printer's method of selection of Latin text commencing with the words Lorem ipsum.

In typographic design, consider the grid concepts as setting the definitions for aesthetic presentation. See the book by  Josef Mülller-Brockmann, a German publication entitled "Grid Systems in Graphic Designs; -a Visual Communications Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and 3-D Designers.

References;
Lecture and workshop on the Adobe product "in design" by Dr Juliet MacDonald, Friday, 10 February 2017, at the University of Huddersfield.

Josef Müller-Brockman (1999), "Grid Systems in Graphic Designs; -a Visual Communications Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and 3-D Designers. This is now in its 9th edition, 2015 by Niggli Verlag (Publishers), Sulgen, printed by Drückerei, Kossell GmbH, of Germany.

Post production lecture #2 by Dr Anna Powell; Friday 3rd March

Continuing from the previous lecture, Dr Powell discussed the work by Mark Amerika and his post-production techniques as "remixes", and for example the website www.remixthebook.com

There is an interesting remix entitled "an artist yapping about some art stuff times for" and also the piece "isarhythm."

Some of the concepts were originally developed before remixing by the artist William Burroughs and his original work around literary cut-ups. This was re-presented at various shows in Paris and San Francisco.
I wondered whether perhaps Burroughs's influence may have come from Henri Matisse perhaps? I know that Matisse spent considerable time towards the end of his life using cutouts to re-assemble the art that he had previously painted. With regards to Burroughs, he used text as a form of bricolage, an experimental way of writing that was especially fashionable in the 1960s.

Breaking down this concept into its core elements of texts, they still remain semiotic signs and provide meaning as words in themselves. This helps us to rethink how language works. By shifting the thinking as words, these become triggers for new ideas. Subjectivity comes into play with inter-textuality.

The re-contextualization of concepts therefore begins. A decision-making process is going on, even though superficially there is a perceived randomness to the outcomes at first sight.

See the video by David Bowie and an interview with Alan Yentob which discusses his own musical lyrics work and Bowie's use of cut-ups, particularly during his Ziggy Stardust phase.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35281247 

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracked_Actor

These ideas of intertextuality were developed further by Julia Kristeva and later built upon by Lucy Kimbell and Mark Amerika.

We then conducted a practical exercise where we chose 10 to 20 words from three disparate documents and then re-mashed them together as a creative exercise. The outcomes were fascinating as the brain attempts to make sense from the phrases being randomly pushed together and new ideas start to emerge.

Going back to the origins of some of these ideas, it was the advertising critic and writer Marshall MacCluhan who came up with the ideas of form and content in advertising and started the infamous phrase "the medium is the message".

When we talk about art in the contemporary sense, the form itself tends to connect with the style being presented.
 Whereas the content looks at the media or medium in which the art has been created and therefore relates to the context in which the art form situates itself.
 In this sense, it could be argued that "the message is in the media."

The central idea of these notions is that the material from which something is made of, tells us something about the context through content. This sums up a much deeper communication theory, in that the medium gives a much deeper and practical engagement with some artworks.

In Marshall McLuhan's book "the medium is the message", he changed the title of his second book in 1967 to "the medium is the massage". This was a clever play on words as it makes his original book a far more accessible manuscript to engage with as it can be taken forward in a much more intellectual level. This playing on words to reprogram and change perceptions is how McLuhan (who later suggested that he just made a typo!), can be used as a piece of artistic practice.
The variation of the word;

• message into mess-age
• can then be changed to massage, 
• which in turn can be adapted to mass-age.

This helps to understand the idea of post producing texts by re-conceptualising an original thought.
See the work by Shepard Fairey: The Medium is the Message, - exhibition (October 1999). See https://obeygiant.com/

In this piece, which was a simple graphic design sometimes referred to as the "OBEY" sticker which was exhibited in the six space in Chicago, became a ubiquitous sign that has appeared from everywhere from lampposts to sides of buildings to the gallery exhibition space itself. The graphic design was originally taken from an image of a WWA wrestler called 'Andre the Giant'. And has also appeared in films such as "the Devil's Own" and "Batman" and also is a favourite of skateboarders, as a 'cult' image.

The process of letting ideas and their corresponding images snowball is akin to making something out of nothing. The artist argues that his work is famous "because we want it to be!"

Being critical; however, Shepard Fairey theorised that the idea of his own image becomes overwhelming because his sticker was positioned in so many different places such as skateboards, lampposts, hats of gang members, T-shirts et cetera. Because it is depicted as a simple sticker, it has
become a message to make a mess.

I recall commenting in Anna's lecture that it seems that Fairey had been influenced by the novel "1984" by H.G. Wells.  With a little post productive research for myself, it is clear that he had. See the exhibition that Shepard Fairey had in London, at the "Stolen Space" gallery on Osbourn Street; entitled "Nineteeneightyforia"...

https://www.stolenspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/Ninteeneightyforia7-1024x682.jpg

The simple face (which can be seen to the right hand side of Fairey's works above) is is not unlike a logo that appeared around the wartime (Second World War) often referred to as the Chad ( found earlier in the 1930s in the UK) or Kilroy (USA version, WWII) logo.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c2/07/0a/c2070a5f816f357dfdbc08b1cd736173.jpg

Jasper Johns in 1954 also explored this notion of semiotics & through his work entitled "Flag" (1954): A Process Caused in Caustic, as he called it. The context of this work was based on the time of America's involvement in Korea. It asks the question where do you draw the line between a flag becoming an identity and representation?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6b/
Jasper_Johns_Flag_Encaustic_oil_and_collage_on_fabric_mounted_on_plywood1954-55.jpg/210px-Jasper_Johns-Flag_Encaustic_oil_and_collage_on_fabric_mounted_on_plywood1954-55.jpg

A more contemporary way of thinking about this idea of postproduction is the way that it is used in guerrilla marketing. For example, see 3M's advertisement for their vandal-proof glass where they place what appears to be a huge sum of money between two sheets of their product in a public space and then video various attempts by vandals trying to get access to it!

Taking this idea further, consider "The Exhibition" and try listening to the audiobook of "the medium of the message" by Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel in 1967. The text was taken and then re-contextualised.  (There is an excellent resource at https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/quentin-fiore-the-medium-is-the-massage-1967/)

In the series of programmes that were produced by John Berger, "Ways of Seeing" discussed the ideas of "The work work of art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (by Walter Benjamin) in a more contemporary way. This provides an excellent source for further study. The program opens with the start of the classic film by Russian director Dziga Vertov. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziga_Vertov)

Berger identifies that "in the painting, there is no unfolding of time". This in itself is an interesting concept.

An interesting exercise worth pursuing would be to take an existing theory or text and then applying some form of post production to it, for example perhaps the re-manifestations of John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" and Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message", and then re-contextualise it with current notions.

This could become a task to pursue for the next session?

Group tutorial with Stella Baraklianou, Friday 3rd March.

In this short group tutorial, we were given the opportunity to discuss our own work individually after a short introduction by Stella. The discussion was opened with the work conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by Norman Parkinson and his concept of the "squeezed in the corner" space.

This work was further supported by work by Joan Jonas entitled "Vertical Roll" and other works entitled "Disturbances."

With regards to my own project, Stella provided some really useful information regarding a book that she read some time ago by the author Helen McDonald, entitled "H is for Hawk".  I've ordered the book!

There was then some discussion on the perception of sight, and interestingly this was broadened to include one of our deaf colleagues and his interpreter's knowledge, about Usher's syndrome. In this condition, the visual acuity field is changed so that it is not possible to provide sign language through visual cues. Therefore the sign language is conducted through touch, that is, hands-on method, of reading gestures.

Conclusions;

• Another peer of mine provided a fascinating quotation by Slavoj Zizek who states "the function of ideology is not to escape from reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape".
• Further reading of a book entitled "Realism, Materialism and Art" by Suhar Malik and Christopher Cox and Jenny Jaskey is worth reading.
• Consider also the Google Books by Rodchenko, as further sources of information. 

Reflections on the photo project workshop with Sebaastian Hankeroot (of the Hague - The Photobook), 20th February 2017.

The purpose of this photography workshop was to help students bring out the 3-dimensionality of photographs, by bringing out light, establishing the correct focus, and removing distractions. By revising the contrast of photographs and combining the activities above, it can create a new expression in the finished works.

It is perfectly acceptable to change an existing "poor" photograph by changing it and refining it. Do not be afraid to do so, simply because you will always have a backup of the original in any event. Creating a sense of three-dimensional's is essential to good photography.

Ask yourself why you originally made the photographic shot? Keep coming back to that question and critically analyse the work that you do.

Before embarking on photographic adjustments it is essential to calibrate the screen on which you are viewing and adjusting the shots. There are a variety of applications on the open market such as "Spider, Colour monkey, or T-one"

It is also important to consider colour spaces that do not exist on the actual screen, but yet we know that the camera can record. CMYK is a very much smaller file size and range of colour space than what the proprietary Adobe RGB pallet is capable of, or is even more, what our own human eye can see.
S-RGB is an even smaller colour space than either CMYK or Adobe RGB; so the lesson learned from this in itself is to simply forget about sRGB as the colour space is so narrow that it is not worth using.

An important tip when calibrating the screens is to use natural light. Do not allow direct sunlight to hit or reflect onto the screen been calibrated. As a rule of thumb, Gamma can be set to 2.2 and White 26.5. By doing this, this, stops extra warm tones appearing on photographs. With regards to colour adjustment within the camera, try a setting of 200 red 150 green, and 100 blue. Within the camera, the output must be consistent!

By adding other colour filters, such as for example in a photo with a strong magenta cast, this can be corrected with a green filter and so on, choosing the complimentary colours of the actual cast.

The story told by your image changes the way that you edit and feel about it. Create enough density in your image before you do anything else.

Like a painter, build up layers of information when composing a photograph in order to to create an illusion. The photograph can then be manipulated by under exposing and then adding exposure (a recent book by Christopher Edwards shows this technique very well). It turns a clearer three-dimensionality to establish curvature and depth. The light within photographs creates atmosphere.

Organise the process and the work! Take these steps seriously so that you are well-positioned for postproduction. For example, the choice of a book cover, its hardness or its softness, its size et cetera; even the smell, makes a massive difference to your output and the finished artefacts.

A practical explanation of Sebaastian's work was then shown;
the first step using Adobe Lightroom, is to create a picture by reducing the exposure of the original image. Generally this should be no more than about 1.25 to 1.3.

Then by using the Lightroom's feature of "tone curve" it's possible to change the shadows in the image, but these should be adjusted gently. It is also possible to change the quarter and half tones as well. It is at this point that it is possible to change contrasts too, and by doing so, the detail of the image can start to be brought forward, and overexposed areas can be subdued.

We then conducted a practical analysis and adjustment of some of our own work.
We started with a piece that Sam had created which was an image of Hull docks, with two people sat on a bench overlooking the run-down docklands. An interesting feature of the image was Sam's capture of a kind of triad which included the union Jack flag on the left-hand side and then the two individuals people. Within the whole frame, the two people looking at the shipyard (which is now redundant), holds some irony in the union Jack flag also being displayed. The inclusion of the two people makes the viewer ask questions. Is it boredom? Probably not, - is it Britishness? Possibly.

Liam observed that there was a lovely low light to the image, and there is a lot going on within it.

• Do we want to bring attention to the union flag? 
• There is a misty quality and some "dead space" in the layers of the image, for example the bottom left-hand is a little too dark.
• By attempting to pitch a triangle, the light on the side of the ship in the centre right of the photograph helps to create the triangle with the people, which is also shown within a portion of focus.
• There is a tension of banality and unusualness, a little bit like the famous Turner painting of "The Fighting Temeraire".
• The desire to crop the image is towards the left-hand corner, to place the triangle of the people and ship in a position to retain it.

We then analysed a photo that I had created, perhaps some eight months earlier during the summertime. My intention of this photograph was to create three-dimensional layers by the use of a foreground wall and layers within the landscape and hills beyond. The foxglove provides a link from the foreground wall to the scene and then to the sky. We debated whether this was an important feature of the photo.

Some practical observations of adjustment would be to change the light within the sky area by bringing this forward to emphasise the detail. On the right-hand side of the image, the wall needs to be lightened in order to make a richer engagement.

However the foxglove creates a focus which is a suitable subject. Nevertheless in contrast to the dark area on the right hand side, this dark area becomes a distraction.

The wall itself can add expression to the final print and the fronds of each of the branches on the left-hand side can be brought forward through the appropriate adjustment in exposure and contrast to become more detailed. Before and after effect can be clearly seen.

In the analysis of Tim's work (which was a hot sulphur spring that he photographed somewhere in Italy), there is an interesting juxtaposition of focus which is elusive as to being on the water and the face of the person on the left-hand side. This creates a mystery and it takes a while to figure right what the photograph and image is of. The colours are beautiful and so can be brought out to full effect. There is also a sense of chaos in play; the contrast is interesting too. As Tim said, the smell, that foulness of the sulphur and the misty-ness adds to the theatre. There is a sense of the magical, the person emerging on the right on the left-hand side seems to be coming through the gloom.

There is a good sense of three-dimensional reality in the image. It is balanced, but that may be improved by throwing it off balance? The picture itself is a question. There are no distractions, but it could be enhanced.

In analysing Liams photograph (which is actually an image taken by Natasha), of a person sitting in a pub in Hull; this is very interesting as it is clear from the image, that this is a regular customer who has a particular seat that he always occupies. The subjects gaze is accepting and arguably intimate?
The background is interesting too, for example there is a picture of Linda Lusardi who is appearing in a pantomime poster on the back wall. This helps to place the social context of the photograph and where it is. Perhaps some further detail could help?

Overall the composition is balanced. The viewers eye is drawn to the subject eye in the image through good focus. There is a distraction in the glare on the top right-hand, but overall it is non-judgemental which is a good example of good photography.

Perhaps some visual enhancements can be made through postproduction on the gentleman's coat by under exposing it a little bit further.

When we compared all the photographs we asked ourselves if there were any similarities? It was found that the depth and cropping were necessary on the first two photographs, however on the third and fourth photographs the use of shadows is key to these enhancements here.

If it seems that there are dominant colours of an image, it then becomes a question of density, colour balance and tonality. It is critical to reduce the exposure of an image if useful postproduction is going to be used. The workshop was very useful and seemed to imply that exposure reduction was the most important lesson learned from the activity.

Conclusions

• Creating a sense of 3D, 3-dimensionality is essential to good photography.
• S-RGB is a smaller colour space than either CMYK or Adobe RGB; Forget about sRGB as the colour space is so narrow that it is not worth using.
• By adding colour filters, say, in a photo with a strong magenta cast, correct it with a green filter.  Choose the complimentary colours of the actual cast colour.
• Narratives of images changes the way you edit and feel about it. Create density in images before any post-production.

Further thoughts;

• Thinking about layering in my own work, how can I manifest this through the appropriate use of proximity and composition to help form Gesthalt?
• What are the boundaries of perception an recognition that can be transposed to a Peregrine falcon's sensory experiences?
• Thinking about the 'deep fovia' found in almost all raptors, how can I apply these thoughts to the drawings I am making?
• There's much to do, and lots of experiments to take place!

Reflections on a 1:1 Tutorial, Digital Media Processes, (UoH), Friday 17th Feb

I had a really useful tutorial and one-to-one discussions with my tutor, Richard, on Friday, after which I quickly made as many notes as I possibly could because I found the session so valuable!
We opened the discussion by my explaining that I was now "trying to keep it simple," in the sense that (as one of my feedback points that Richard made at the end of the Christmas term), I was perhaps over-complicating things previously.
By referring back to the previous module feedback (which was highly useful), I have been able to create a "single page brief".  This will help me to try and focus my attention, over this next term. I felt that Richard was very supportive of this approach too. I also think that my tutor took on board the fact that I seem to be adapting my practice at the moment towards writing. While this is acceptable regarding the module brief, (where there need to be approximately 4000 words or the equivalent created), I recognised that it is equally critical to address the issue of artistic practice itself, as almost a separate mindset from the act of writing. It seems clear that the physical and visual method is what is of particular importance here.
I recall that I also explained the very successful workshops that Stella Brackley and Sara Nesteruk had carried out in which, in reflection, I found both of their practices to be very stimulating, and their enthusiasm and encouragement has certainly helped me move forward. This is not forgetting another workshop (by Dr Anna Powell) around post-production which I also found of equal importance, but I can separate out as an almost theoretical workshop, whereas the other two engagements were much more practice focused.
The act of writing and then going forward to "making and producing" something in itself seems to be an excellent exercise that I have begun to adopt. While it is early days, I am confident that this approach will give a richer and more fuller account of my creative visual practice.
I also recall that we discussed this approach of the theoretical writing taking place first.  I think I explained to my tutor the reviews that had begun to delineate around the core of my chosen subject matter, which continues to be "how I can use drawing" (as the primary form of expression) through digital media and collide it with the philosophical construct of speculative realism?
I also further explained that I am continuing to use the book by JA Baker entitled "the Peregrine" (1968), as a backbone narrative to help me position my work. By creating a visual reinterpretation of the above, and staying with the initially chosen book "the Peregrine", I used an example of a piece of work that recently came to my attention. A visually stimulating idea from a fantasy / other world views, and explained that by creating something that "isn't the normal thing" for humans to see is what I'm interested in.  I'm committed to re-articulating this through drawing and sketching by taking passages from Baker's book.


I'm also thinking about how biology can provide an understanding; That is, the idea of how falcons can see. The eye itself is like a camera which I particularly like.  The idea of the image being transferred to the back of the retina: the fact that peregrines eyes take up most of the cavity within the skull: their ability of their binocular vision. All these start to act together to provide new concepts and thoughts about how the Peregrine's perception can be very different from the human's.
I was really pleased to feel that my tutor seemed to 'link-up' with me and appeared to join into these ideas. I also picked up a genuine interest from Richard which I found truly encouraging.
I went on to discuss some details about the structure of the Peregrine's eye and how the retina is composed of two different parts of the fovea. - Recalling too, my explanation how the Falcon is entirely reliant upon its eyesight and without it, it is unable to find any kind of "reference". This is the reason why falconers use a 'hood' to put their bird of prey into total darkness; because quite simply, the birds will not attempt to fly without the faculty of sight.
I was able to articulate how Stella was able to describe her research and the concept of "Pixel".  Her paper was really precious for me as I've been able to awaken my knowledge of the retina's construction; namely the rods and cone receptors on the retina itself.
Taking that idea, one step further, (the rods and cones within the retina) and comparing it with the charged coupled device (CCD) that is found in the photographic sensor, completes the circle really well. Therefore, in a digital sense, the eye and its retina together with the rods and cones that make up the organ are very similar in philosophical terms, to the digital camera!

I seem to remember that at this point I also brought in the subject of Egyptian mythology and some of the work that I have been recently studying around the myths of Osiris and Isis and their son Horus, who later became the god of the sky. Horus is depicted as a God in human form, but usually, with a Peregrine's head. I have already blogged elsewhere about this research, so I'm need not delineate it any further here.

I think that in reflection, I was touching on my concepts of the all-seeing eye, and then comparing it to the notions and research around speculative realism?
This is a general concept of looking at the world from an entirely different angle. I seem to recall that I said something like "this idea of looking at the world from a completely different viewpoint is at the heart of speculative realism". Or something similar to that, which I was delighted to see Richard jumped on and made notes to the same effect!
I can't quite remember the precise words I used but it was something along those lines, I also seem to remember that I put an alternative phrase together which included "looking at the world from a different point of view (reference point or perception) is at the heart of speculative realism." But the original phrase was more succinct!
Then, with a further recall, I became a little bit tongue-tied in my explanation of my "artistic problem statement". As by trying to explain the ideas of speculative realism through a verbal/linguistic medium "in itself", might lose some of the magic of translation. It makes it tough to explain the theory; by using words is limiting.
In terms of the work itself; the practice has been chosen as the drawing because drawing is a whole and overarching language in a way. I also seem to recall my tutor agreeing with the concept that drawing is a perfectly acceptable medium.   I think he said " it is the method of the mind and of the eye," which is a really brilliant reference for him to make.
My idea of drawing the world according to this specific Peregrine, the one that JA Baker wrote about some 50 odd years ago, is what lies at the heart of the reason why I want to use his book as a backbone. What was important to that Peregrine, would have likely have been something completely different to what was important to Baker at the time.
 Therefore any image of Baker is likely to be quite insignificant as far as the Peregrine was concerned at the time too!

It is interesting therefore that there are now two viewpoints; one human and one Peregrine. I think that Richard was also keenly interested in some of these thought processes that I was having. I was very encouraged by the feedback that Richard was giving me and it seemed that we had 'connected' with a joint understanding. My previous attempts to articulate my ideas have not been quite as successful as this one-to-one meeting, and I was delighted that we seemed to be of one mind.
Overall, to close, my tutor was extremely helpful in making some additional recommendations for further reading; In particular the work by Liz Wells and the book entitled "Land Matters".  The ideas of landscape photography and cultural identity are what Liz Wells articulates in a particularly elegant fashion. I'm glad that I have the opportunity to read this book through an online resource within the University. The chapter entitled Time, Space, Place & Aesthetic;  and another detailing 'The photography Journey and Memory' are also crucial.
Another book which was recommended (which I have a copy of already is by Rebecca Solnit). A copy of "The Field Guide to Getting Lost" which I need to dig out and read again, as I recall this was one of the books I found very useful during my first year of undergraduate study.
However, the book that my tutor was keen for me to review was a series of writings by Rebecca Solnit (that has been edited by Marcus O'Donnel). Entitled "Walking, Writing and Dreaming. Polyphonic voices".
see http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/1729/

(The book "Wanderlust" is also particularly useful resource as there are further dissertations and essays by a variety of philosophers practitioners and artists including Roland Barthes).

Conclusions;

• The idea of working with two viewpoints seems to be of particular interest to Richard, which I want to expand upon too. It is through this that I think that I understand the concept that was being put forward, in the idea of "proximity".
• Through this concept of proximity, what I choose to put in the foreground versus what is in the background, in relation to the visual experience is what is important in order to engage the viewer critically in relation to who is seeing what where and when.
•  This becomes a visual language, in the concepts of proximity and composition, the place is also important to consider; the idea that the physical place formerly in Bakers book, was the Essex marshes, much of which is no longer there.
• Whilst this is interesting, as an artist, it is possible to make up the landscape in the absence of any real world scenes. I'm glad that my tutor Richard, explained that the "veracity of location" is something that can be mutable.
• I need to develop the language of how I can draw, and how I can relate this the imagination and the language of my mark, concerning how our Peregrine might perceive things.
• How I represent "things" in how I draw, is the critical challenge set for me to try to define.
• The idea that the work is experimental works well with speculative realism because in direct terms the "speculative" part of Speculative Realism is about the unknowable and, how, we as humans engage within a space?

Further Conclusions (Updated)

• I've been really enthused and inspired by the conversation that I had with my tutor, and I understand the importance of continuing my practice without deviation from the elements of proximity, composition and drawing through digital media.
• The closing remarks that were made have given me a strong challenge to address in how I want an audience to see through my drawings a relationship in space between Baker and the Peregrine.
• To articulate this, my work needs to develop through much more drawing practice and those ideas that are being incubated at the moment will start to flourish.
• Quite simply put I must draw, draw, draw!...