Start of the final term - Thinking about the final push!

Unfortunately I missed the live lecture by Dr Bailey on the 3rd May, nevertheless, thanks to wonderful technology, I was able to review a video recording of it which has allowed me to make some suitable notes as follows:

Lecture Notes - 3rd May 2017 - The following starts to position the different TYPES of essays and academic writing styles that could be used.

 A useful site to look at for writing up my essay is;

http://www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/online_resources/business_writing/page_05.htm

Having taken a peek at this, it is a brilliantly clear and concise / no frills explanation of what should be in a report, and I highly commend it!

Coming back to an accademic report: - Usual format applies, but this is for a business proposition.  I don't think that is appropriate for what I want to do, but for completeness and future records, I've put some notes down here anyway...

• Title
• Summary/Abstract
• List of Contents
• Introduction
• Main Body
•    Market / Market Sector / Share
•    Competitors / Costs / Growth
• Conclusion
• Recommendations
• Appendices
• References
• Business Plan

Practice Lead Research - This needs to be really pinned down as the practice is the research -  Background reading / Reflective logs / The design of the framework

http://www.carolegray.net/researchpapers.html

Reflective Extended Essay

A literature review is essential to situate the sources of influences playing a role in your outcomes.

• A guiding research question
• A balance between context / Theory & Practice
• Core reflection on the usefulness of the research for you practice
•  
• Identify the key aims and objectives within limitations and boundaries!
• Bring it within a clearly curated FRAMEWORK! - The foundations have to be stable and in place.  The framework sets the parameters.

Blogs;

• A word of warning! - Its important to use the reflective blog for EVIDENCE of what you are negotiating on your practice?
• A formulation of creative methodologies... What are you creating and how can this be improved? / In aa curatorial sense, we are creating and curating our own port-folio.
• How are we using other people?  How are we reflecting of these methodologies?
• NO PERSON IS AN ISLAND! - You are situated within the world... Wht is the context and what does your contribution translate?
• Visual Translation and analysis of features of your work... Thi is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!... The reflections are sign-posts of WHY we have done research, how we make sense of things and what iterations are made as a result of refinements - e.g. selecting one image out of say 50 odd, - why does this stand out? Colours? text?

A working Brief helps you hit the assessment criteria and helps to put together a schedule of work.

Strengths / weaknesses of intentions and why.

An Academic Essay; - Have an Argument.

How useful has the academic essay been in your own practice?

See KOLBS REFLECTIVE LEARNING cycle!

To account for what I'm doing and why I've been doing it!

The FRAMEWORK! - the total package! - All of this is done in parallel now!

• What is my research topic?
• What secondary research do I need to do?
• what Primary Research do I need to do, why and HOW -
• What methods might I need to use and why?
• What will my outcome / output be?

All this needs to take place now.  The refinement over the last month of July is just a refinement only!

I have to do all of this together in order to showcase?

(Exhibitions in September are not part of the submission requirements...)

Don't cut and paste, rephrase / re-read / rewrite, DON'T PLAGIARISE!

Research Ethos...

Your measuring people! - What you want to put in place is a kind of framework of participatory / creative ethnographies.

Make sure you have FIVE methods that could be used for Primary Research, then focus on to what it is YOU will actually use...

PDP Number 3 needs to be completed.  See the core ideas on how to map out your major project and this is what Rowan wants to see as a starting point for discussion. (** See image below

).

When setting up my objectives, take a look at the criteria of the module and set the objectives so that they meet the assessment criteria!

e.g.  the major project is contextualised! Make sure you get marks as one for practice and one for written! e.g. The marking of 60 credits are split.  But some practice and written overlaps.  The currency and relevance...  The presentation in July is critical to show how I have established these objectives around my assessment criteria.

Set the framework up to allow my project idea sits in context / theory and / practice!

The subject contexts sets  boundaries for knowing what's on trend / what's avant guard etc.  I understand my work is current and relevant.  Knowing the audience, - it is communicating to a particular audience.

Its quite straight-forward but I need to interpret what the assessment criteria is with respect to my own work.

An output can be anything! - A book, a website / a portfolio / a product.

The OUTCOMES are the research and what has been revealed as far as "how have things turned out the way they have"..

Allocate time for your PDP

Practice / Theory  Context!

what is my unique angle?

Consider the work-flow diagram?

SUBMIT ALL PRACTICAL WORK BY 19th JULY!

SUMMATIVE PRESENTATION is WEEK Beginning 24th JULY !!!

Take aways...

• What stage are you at with your FMP?
• Reformulate your question/brief idea?
•  Clarify your aims and objectives?
• Refine your working on methodologies?
• Revisiting and adding to the literature on your topic?

I need to have a Gantt Chart to guide you through your research process.  Sequence of Main tasks!  A To-do list. Week by week, hour by hour!

Wednesday 17th May is a PDP form and Gantt chart deadline to submit.

GATHER THE EVIDENCE!!!

Be prepared !!!

Book Review, "Falcon" (2006), by Helen Macdonald, part 2.

Over the past week, I've been suffering from a horrible virus which is left me pretty much on fit to do anything involving physical exertion or even talking! In a way, even though I've spent far more time than usual sleeping, this sedentary existence has allowed me to read and reflect on Helen Macdonald's "Falcon" (2006) in a keenly focused way.

The sheer wonder of these creatures that Macdonald is so keen to articulate is truly amazing, and I am beginning to understand not only her own obsession with these highly developed masters of the sky, but the wider sense of awe beyond those involved in falconry, or even conservation of these animals. The aura that all birds of prey hold, in their skill and extreme sensory abilities, is somehow strengthened and supplemented with our own human interpretation. This, which intertwined with a sense of discreet isolation or separateness, a bit like an aloof man of religion, a doctor, a top sportsman, eminent politician, industry leader, university professor or even a highly decorated soldier.  Humans naturally hold such people in awe.  We metaphorically and sometimes physically, put them on a pedestal, in much the same way we also do the same with raptors. (Consider Horus, the Egyptian God, the highest deity, depicted as a human with a Peregrine's head, discussed in earlier blogs).  Indeed, we put Falcons onto perches that are pedestals in their own right.

This humanised view, "the invisible mental lens of your own [human] culture through which [we] see the world," is what anthropologist Franz Boas calls Kulturbrille. (Macdonald, 2006, p15).If I recall, I think the word is a compound of culture and spectacles, that is eyeglasses. It is an allusion that we all view the world from a different standpoint. An English translation might be rose-tinted glasses, but I think the German version removes the idea of an ideal. That is, Kulturbrille is a much more personal thing, each of us can see positive or negative aspects independently.

Nevertheless, the point that Macdonald is making is again related to this mirror that we tend to use that reflects nature with ourselves. We make our own meanings from imaginary or real situations in encounters with animals. The animals, however, have no such symbolic needs to satisfy themselves. Their lives are occupied with survival, eating, breeding and flying.

I accept that this is, to a great extent, part of my own quest to make meaning through art and digital media. Equally, the search for mediation, between AJ Baker and his peregrines unfolds as his own impossible desire to virtually become one. Indeed Macdonald writes on p 17 and 18 about Baker's obsession to connect with the peregrines which eventually, at least to Baker, is successful after 10 years of dogged study.

 Macdonald's initial chapters of "Falcon" provide an excellent introduction to falcon's in general and covers many of the more popular species out of the 60 or so known Raptors within Falconidae.
With regards to my own work, I see a huge caveat that Macdonald points out in the section "What Is It like to Be a Falcon?" where she states: [...]
"To try to attempt to understand the living world of another person is philosophically suspect; for a different animal, the attempt is perhaps absurd, - but undeniably fascinating."
While this might be a warning shot for my own pursuits, there is more, when coupled with the thought from Werner Hertzog that I read recently in the Guardian. [ He states that anybody who tries to make a film about JA Baker's the Peregrine] "should be taken out and shot" makes me a little bit uneasy, to say the least!

I'm referring here to a recent article in the Guardian entitled "Violent Spring: The nature book that predicted the future" published on 15th April 2017, by Robert McFarlane. I'm delighted that this newspaper has decided to celebrate the 50th year of publication of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967), as this alone further underlines the currency of my own work.  A highly fortuitous observation on their part for me, I must say!
 Despite the Hertzog warning that "whoever tries to make a feature film of The Peregrine should be shot without trial," (his exact words).  I'm not trying to make a feature film, far from it, I'm reversing the narrative hopefully in such a way that it is not a mirror but a different point of view.  Maybe the grand master, Hertzog, may forgive me and accept in small part, that perhaps, my own naive arrogance is sufficient to allow me to continue.

Coming back to Dr Helen Macdonald's more scientific examination of what it might be like to be a Peregrine, the sheer speed in which they conduct their existence alone, means that their reactions are virtually within a different dimension of reality to that of humans. For example, Macdonald quotes that our combination of the persistence of vision and our ability to process moving pictures. (The old celluloid film, if I recall had a rate of approximately 16 frames per second, which provided a small amount of flicker). This rests around 20 frames per second. Hence interlaced television for the past 30 or so years (until the advent of HD) runs at 25 frames per second. Apparently, this seems to be too slow for Falcons to even recognise. They have the ability to see approximately 70 to 80 frames per second! This is just one example, and I have already begun to articulate the visual acuity of hawks and falcons elsewhere in my blogs so I need not repeat it here.

The detailed research and myriad wealth of knowledge that Macdonald has acquired over many years are expertly explained together with our historical and cultural union with these birds, not only in the Western traditions but moreover, a whole global picture of man's relationship with them. Many of the sources that I have researched appear in her book. An example; I was pleased to see the work of Vance Tucker, whom as I have just mentioned in the previous paragraph, provided me with the abundant research into the anatomy of falcon's eyes. His work is mentioned on p 38, in reference to the fast turns that Falcons have to make when exiting from a stoop (A near vertical dive). They experience G forces of over 25 Gs. Military aircraft pilots in pressure suits are likely to pass out (lose consciousness) at much beyond 6 or 7Gs. Accepted, there is a massive weight difference between a falcon and human, nevertheless the adaptations in the anatomy of falcons, and to a larger degree peregrines, in particular, shows how supremely attuned nature has allowed them to become.

The historical relationships between man and Falcons are highly diversified. So much of Macdonald's work brings focus to how their influence upon humans has been fundamental to our own development and culture. So much of it is often taken for granted. But the threat to this companion species cannot be underestimated.
In chapter 4 of "Falcon" Macdonald delineates the steady and undeniable decline of these magnificent creatures. This is even before the advent of DDT being used as a pesticide throughout the globe after World War II, which almost put a nail in the coffin of Horus (metaphorically speaking) and the whole raptor apex species.

Thankfully, by the early 1960s, there was a new recognition of the damage that DDT was causing, not only in America but in Europe. In 1962 Rachel Carson published the book "Silent Spring" (I have just ordered a copy!), Which provided a huge wake-up call to the general public about the lethality of pesticides and the damage that was being caused, not only to the natural world but ultimately to humans themselves. Others also were waking up to the urgent need to try and save a huge number of raptor species. (2006, pages 128 to 131).

In the United Kingdom work had already started at the Monks Wood Experimental Research Station in the toxicity of pesticides on apex predators, and raptors including Peregrines. I was delighted to see the connection to Huddersfield at this point in Macdonald's book, with a picture of 'our very own' Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who visited the establishment in 1970 (2006, p 133). (PM Wilson was born and schooled in Huddersfield, living in the town for much of his younger years and continued to support the town football club through his life. He never lost the Yorkshire accent.  I was fortunate to briefly meet him in his later years, well after he had retired from active politics).

Image of Harold Wilson, from "Falcon" by Helen MacDonald (2006) p133.
Scan took from an original photograph by an unknown photographer.

I love to see these connections, and while I'm very much aware that circumstance, luck and serendipity are all curiously linked through some random and unexplainable coincidences, they provide meaning and motivation to continue.

In reflecting on so much of this book over the last week or so, this seems to be a general connection emerging between my own lines of enquiry, and it seems Dr Helen Macdonald. The feeling that "I'm onto something" is continually being strengthened by even the smallest encounters. I hope this continues as there is a deep sense of fulfilment on the one hand, but unbounded curiosity and a yearning to learn more on the other.


References;

Carson, R. (1962) "Silent Spring" Penguin Books, London [1999 edition].
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.
MacFarlane, R. (2017), The Guardian Newspaper, 15th April 2017, "Violent Spring; The book that predicted the future... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/the-peregrine-by-ja-baker-nature-writing
Tucker, V.A. (2000) “THE DEEP FOVEA, SIDEWAYS VISION AND SPIRAL FLIGHT PATHS IN RAPTORS” Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham, NC,
in The Journal of Experimental Biology 203, The Company of Biologists Limited, Great Britain  (pp 3745 – 3754).

Some thoughts about perception, and a little sketching in Jersey

I was lucky enough to be able to take my poor long-suffering wife away for a few days to Jersey last week, to celebrate her birthday. While we were there, staring out to sea overlooking St Ouens Bay to the west of the island, I was thinking about not only the mottled reflections of light coming from the sea, all of the reflections from objects in their various forms and wavelengths.

Sketch of St Ouen's Bay, Jersey, (April 2017) Graham Hadfield

I'm not the first by any means, - to say that art is all about light, this has been a common theme for as long as people have been thinking about it since perhaps the renaissance and even before. Perhaps though it is Paul Cézanne, who explored the detail of light more than any other, particularly in his 80 or so renderings of Mont San Victoire, which later influenced the likes of Manet (and the haystacks comes to mind) to make his own recordings and renderings.

Thinking about this, that light reflected from particular pigments, or in nature compound surfaces, is, from my 'O' level physics, merely a reflection of the wavelengths that have not been absorbed by the material onto which sunlight (or white light). It is the subtraction (that is, through the absorption) of all the other spectrum wavelengths, other than the specifically reflected wavelengths, that gives us a perception of colour. This applies to all reflections of electromagnetic wavelengths, from infrared through to ultraviolet and hence all of the colours of the spectrum in between.

In my quest to trying to find common ground, that is a rapport if you like between human perception and the Peregrines' perception, surely I need to strip away everything that is superfluous phenomena. The redundant phenomena that humans may be used to, accustomed to or take simply for granted. So by stripping away all of the colours to leave just two binary states of visibility, that is light or not light (e.g. darkness), in plain language, black-and-white, this alludes to a presence and non-presence.

The idea then that a sketch or drawing rendered in black and white, the black of the ink and the whiteness of paper or the background is surely the minimal phenomena that I can engage with?

This underlines the importance during my next term of continuing to seek chances to develop through continuous drawing and reflection.

Book Review - "Falcon" (2006), by Helen Macdonald. Reaktion Books, London. Part 1

Having been struggling with the book by Donna Haraway "When Species Meet" (2008), I've decided to take a little diversion, rather than an abandonment reading Haraway. A book that really resonated with me a month or so ago was another book by Helen Macdonald called "H is for Hawk" (2014) which won the Samuel Johnson prize in 2016. In comparison with Haraway and her rather American style of writing, which almost seems like a kind of chatter (much of which seems entirely superfluous to me, but that might just be my own possibly prejudiced view), Helen Macdonald, who is equally an academic, provides a much easier style of sharing information.

Having bought the book a couple of weeks ago, which is the 2016 addition, Macdonald writes a short preface to it, and on the very first page, she even mentions our very own JA Baker! So that gets me off to a splendid start.

Macdonald is quick to point out that even though this book in scrutiny was written in 2006, she states that just like "H is for Hawk" nature is used as a mirror to the human condition and this book is no different to the one that she wrote almost 10 years later. She explains that the reason for this book at the time (the thoughts of which started in the early 2000s), came from a part of her studies towards her dissertation for a PhD in the history of science. The interesting point that Dr Macdonald makes is that she was so distracted with her own engagement with falconry, that this became a greater priority in some ways than the research of her PhD. Apparently, she didn't want to waste all the effort, and explicit source material that she had collected, and the chance to write a book to capture and share this work came to her through a serendipitous meeting with the editor of the book's publishers. The rest as she says was her celebration of the memories and anecdotes tied together into this book.

Her encounters with falconry and birds of prey had already been a huge influence, not only on her late childhood but also in her maturing years. The key passage that she mentions on p11 of the preface talks about her reflection on her own state of mind in 2006, just before her father passed away. There is even a reference about her Hawk "Mabel" who is the central feature of her later book "H is for Hawk". This is in the line where she expresses "it wasn't until that dark year with my own Hawk Mabel that the visceral truth that we use nature as a mirror of our own needs became something I understood, rather than merely knew." This is exactly the point that I think Donna Haraway has been trying to articulate in all the reading of "When Species Meet" (2008), which until this discovery, I had been oblivious to. Macdonald is able to capture it twice within the preface of her book!

"Falcon" (2006), is Macdonald's intimate analysis about the relationship between human culture and that of the history with Falcons, and how our lives have been intertwined with these creatures for thousands of years. In my own opinion, there is a much greater sense of independence of those falcon's than perhaps the subjects of study that Donna Haraway has chosen to analyse, particularly in her relationship and studies of dog behaviour. Nevertheless, the similarities of both writers provide highly illuminated reflections on our own existence and anthropocentric interpretations.
And finally in Macdonald's preface to "Falcon" (2006) that she has added to the book in 2016, she finishes off by saying;

 "now more than ever… We need to look long and hard at how we view and interact with the natural world. […] We are living through the world's sixth great extinction caused entirely by us [human activity…]. How and why we see landscapes and creatures as we do, how we value them and why we should protect them… Is far more important than academic interest. They are questions to which the answers are simply about how we can save the world."

This is the crux of my own motivations for engaging in the project that I have chosen to do! I am hooked by this book already!

References:
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.

Harraway's "When Species meet", part 4.

In the final section of the first chapter of "When Species Meet" (2007), Haraway draws an important observation about the fact that we are in the midst of a "reinvented Pastoral-tourist economy", which is having a great impact on the general populace of the West, and their sense of appreciation of what they think to be "wild, open and unspoilt natural places". While this in itself is significant as a step forward towards people having respect for such places, it should be noted that the landscape, particularly in Britain, has changed multiple times over the last millennia due to man's continued and varied agricultural activities. (For example see the book the making of the English landscape, (1955) by W.G. Hoskins). So we can hardly call this, an unspoilt natural place, but perhaps that is a moot point.

What I'm trying to get at here though, is that Haraway recognises a resurgence, especially in Europe and the United States, people want to get outside and enjoy what they believe to be open countryside and "nature". The story that Haraway explains this through comes from a small brochure that was sent to her from a friend during a hiking tour of the French Alps. The brochure alerted walkers that they may encounter "the local guard dogs, large white dogs whose task it is to guard the flocks." In a way, what is being reached for here is to encourage tourists to politely respect the jobs of those working dogs and "for hikers to be on their best countryside behaviour." I love this idea of being polite, it conjures up a kind of rapport that is unspoken between the tourists and these huge white guard dogs, who might be thinking a completely opposite attitude towards the human gawping tourists. Hence their likely angry barks, which is what I have always encountered from dogs whenever I have inadvertently stepped into their zone of territory. To me, what Haraway is doing again, is projecting a human behaviour towards another animal (i.e. dogs), with an expectation that they might respond perhaps in a likely human way.
This anthropomorphic treatment of other species surely has to be thoroughly challenged. We need to investigate other ways of establishing a rapport with companion species that fits with their worldview, and not our own?
 In fairness to Haraway, she does point this out in her final sentence as what she calls "a prosaic detail: the exercise of good manners makes the competent working animals those whom the people need to learn to recognise." The footnote to this explains it all correctly, however. "Apparently friendly and curious behaviour from wild wolves directed people is most likely to be an exploration of a possible lupine lunch rather than an affectionate cross-species romp." So in fairness to Haraway, she is well aware that real life is not a case of romantic naturalism, that really about eating and being eaten.

The next chapter entitled "Value Added Dogs and Lively Capital", explores the relationship between modern capitalism and workers rights (based on the values originally proposed by Karl Marx), and the potential rights of other living breathing sentient beings (and here, for Haraway, read mostly dogs). Marx's notions of use value, versus exchange value, come into play here, which ultimately turn into exploitation. Humans have been exploiting each other well before we emerged as a separate species. Likewise, animals exploit each other too. Again I struggled with Haraway's points of trying to tie the works of Karl Marx and the exploitation of labour together with our more historical habits of exploiting animals. Ultimately, I do recognise and understand her drive to expand on the fact that early 21st-century "capitalist techno-culture" is providing an environment where we as humans "might deepen our abilities to understand value added encounters."

In summary, I think that Haraway is commenting on our current culture is in the midst of a change in attitudes. To me, this seems an obvious discourse rather, as we are always in the middle of history in my view, not at the end. We are constantly in flux and in the middle of change at any point in history, and while it is important to record and observe cultural attitudes and narratives, I feel there is always a need for a more holistic recognition that we are merely in the midst of time. Attitudes change, and it is important for all disciplines, anthropology, biology et cetera (the sciences), to work in tandem with the arts, in helping to shape cultural attitudes.

I'm glad to say that it is more or less at this point (p 82), that Haraway starts to talk in a slightly different tone, that is to say, "Caring." This is more now focus on how do we share "suffering". This is a subtle move away from the anthropomorphism that the first couple of chapters seem to engage with. Haraway is not talking about some kind of heroic copying of pain and suffering, but instead to "do the work of paying attention and making sure that suffering is minimal, (necessary?), And consequential. In this sense, my exploration of JA Baker's writing in his book "the Peregrine" (1967) seems a perfect point to finish on, that it is clear that Baker is indeed trying to position himself in the responsible and caring way of sharing the suffering of his subject Peregrines.

References;

Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.

Struggling on with Donna Haraway!... Some further thoughts on her book, "When Species Meet" (2007) #3

Having made a start in reading the work of Donna Haraway, I've decided to revisit her book "When Species Meet" (2008), by the University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis. I've chosen to spend a fair time of my Easter holiday trying to absorb her work in a different way perhaps than my first attempt back in January/February this year.

Haraway opens the book by describing it as "an acknowledgement of the lively knottings that tie together the world I inhabit". This seems to be a good start! It fits with my intentions to study relationships between humans and, as Haraway puts it, 'nonhuman animals' and with the knowledge that Haraway, being a professor of anthropology, it seems that her enquiries are indeed likely to resonate with some of my own thoughts.

However, I quickly find in the acknowledgements section at the beginning of the book, much of it is devoted to the relationship between humans and dogs. While there is a clue that this may be the case through the depiction of the silhouette of a black Labrador extending its paw into a cupped human hand, the title itself "When Species Meet" suggests that there may be a wider enquiry. Not being a very doggy person myself, I will pursue reading to her lengthy tome of over 400 pages, but with the caution that I may find myself struggling with it at times! If I find this to be the case and this battle becomes a chore, I will probably abandon the exercise, but this time I'm determined to give it a better chance than the 30 or 40 pages that I read at the beginning of the year.

Some of her initial points to position enquiry I've paraphrased. They are useful because she sets out (as her second objective) as "how is 'becoming with' practice of becoming worldly?" Which is about her initial question of "whom and what do I touch when I touch my dog?" And I read this as also being, whom and what does a human touch, in any human to animal encounter?

Haraway explains that us humans are actually only really made up of pure human genomes in about 10% of all the cells of the human body, the rest of the cells are filled with a plethora of various organisms genomes, including fungi, bacteria and a whole host of other life forms, all of which come together to harmoniously allow us to live! Many of these critters (and the critter is a term that Haraway consistently uses) get a free ride in that vessel that we call our bodies. She observes that her sense of self is almost entirely overwhelmed by all of these various other tiny companions.

So again, it seems we're off to a good start in that there is an explicit recognition of companion species, both within ourselves and without. But soon enough, Haraway's rather rambling and florid (and times a little archaic) writing turns the subject back to dogs… Although there is an interesting discourse on p 19 about the observations of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, about an encounter that he had with his cat. He recognised that his cat was looking at him, and so he knew that he was in the presence of someone, a sentient being capable of thinking, not some autonomous machine. But what Haraway points out is that Derrida did not start to question what his pet was actually feeling or thinking, or even doing, and as such suggests that he "failed the simple obligation of companion species". I find this interesting because there is an implied duty by Haraway, which whilst I understand her concept of companionship being a sharing of experiences (and Haraway deconstructs in detail the meaning of companionship, its derivation and etymology, its literal Latin translation meaning "with bread" as an inference to sharing and eating together), the observation by Jacques Derrida, was very much based on a singular event. Haraway attempts to criticise his failed attempt to enquire further, which is fair enough, but I think she misses the point which ultimately Derrida was trying to say. That is, what's the difference between a response and reaction? This was a linguistic enquiry, simply because Derrida was more interested in the language of encounters and exchange rather than biological intimacy.

Moving on, Haraway sites the work of two other French philosophers, Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in their famous jointly written book, "A Thousand Plateaus". At the time that this book was written, (through the 1970s and published in 1980), it must be recognised that our culture and attitude towards animals (other than humans) was only just beginning to change from the dominator (and arguably, non-feminist) perception, like the master and slave, or human sovereignty over nature. This, I believe is what Deleuze and Guattari were also ultimately trying to break down, the masculine-centric, patrilineal thinking that has dominated philosophy before their very own writing about it. This is important here because I believe in the 30 or so years that have elapsed since their original thoughts, Haraway identifies (correctly) that their attitudes are vastly out of touch with her own (which of course are based on her own cultural environment and particularly a progressive, almost ideological, milieu found in California and the West Coast of the United States). Perhaps that's rather unfair, as neither of those two French philosophers has a chance of defending themselves in our modern culture.

Then back to writing more about dogs and observations of events! A regular pattern of prose rises with Haraway, where she often provides, instead of descriptions that illuminate imagination, she merely provides lists of nouns, separated by commas, which go on and on, such as that on p 39, the politics of wolves, dogs, cattle, tics, pathogens, tanks, minefields, soldiers, displaced villagers, cattle thieves et cetera et cetera. The staccato, almost scattergun approach to her articulation is tough for somebody like me, who is more visually orientated, to imagine or visualise as a kind of rendering of a picture, which is required to establish a clear understanding. Even in the last part of this last sentence, as I analyse it, the language is much more visualistic and image orientated!

In thinking about Haraway and her style, from a visual point of view, it's almost like a series of flickering photographic slides of all sorts of ideas, being bombarded at the spectator, rather than a smoothly unfolding (and arguably more sophisticated), narrative that brings a sense of journey (like a cinema film does) to the viewer.

Anyway, it's around here after about 40 pages that I stopped the last time, so I'm determined to keep going in the hope that I will start to absorb a deeper sense of rapport and common ground to find with Haraway. Onwards and upwards, but I think this reflection articulates my struggle with this author!


References;

Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.

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/