Unit 3 Written Report « Marking Place

Unit 3 Written Report

Artist Statement

Nonsite represents my Digital Arts research over the past two years. I have been reflecting on how my memories of being an undergraduate art student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada from 1974 to 1976, relate to my experience as an MA student at Camberwell College of the Arts, London from 2007 to 2009. I have been writing about the formation of my identity as an artist, on how a sense of community is created by a school or college within a university, and in particular I’ve been considering the art world as an imagined community of artists, regardless of our actual geographical location.

This research has become a memory work. My goal is to create a place for the reader to locate themselves and to help them make sense of the world. I’ve been reflecting on art events, artworks, exhibitions, people and artist talks, that I remember from the mid-1970s and how they contributed to me becoming an artist and as such, part of a larger art world and contemporary art community. Within nonsite, I am collapsing my memories of those past events with my current reflections as an online student at Camberwell, an art college in London that I have never visited, yet that has formed a particular sense of community for me.

I have been searching for an appropriate visual form for this net.art project in relation to my written research. One of my challenges has been to determine a design for the content that appropriately reflects and collapses the content from these two distinctly different times: 1974-76 and 2007-09. I have dated each post as part of entry title and made the decision to time stamp the postings in order to arrange the sequence by day and month regardless of year.

You can view this project at: http://nonsite.com

Unit 3 Learning Outcomes Report

This written report is a ‘curated’ an overview of my Unit 3 research and I have contextualized that research in relation to the six Unit 3 learning outcomes:

1. An ability to resolve work according to objectives defined in my proposal.

My objective has been to make a website that creates a sense of place and community. I have used my current situation as an online ‘distance education’ student at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London as part of the subject of this website. I have never been to Camberwell College of the Arts, I only know through the online technologies of distance learning along with low-resolution photographs published on our course wiki, yet I have a very clear sense (knowledge) of it as a place and a college within a larger university.

Through a series of online entries at nonsite, I have detailed and documented my experience and impressions of Camberwell over the past 22 months juxtaposed with my memories and recollections of events and experiences as an undergraduate art student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada in the mid 1970s.

Through editing the entry time stamps, this artwork collapses and moves between these two distinct time periods, reflecting on how my identity as an artist in relation to the international art world developed. I can clearly remember as a art student, the point that I saw myself as an artist. I now see how that moment relates to an imagined community of artists within the contemporary art world.

This project works well for me in terms of what I understand are the core values of Digital Arts: it is only possible to view and comprehend this work through digital technologies.

Specific Assessment Evidence:

nonsite is an online text/visual presentation of work, demonstrating my critical understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in digital arts.

nonsite is an artwork resolved according to my proposal and presented professionally as part of a group event: the Camberwell Summer 2009 MA Digital Arts exhibtiion
nonsite and my weblog supports my research
My weblog is my on-line log documenting my role as a member of the exhibition/presentation team, see:

This document is my written report in two parts: artist’s statement and critical evaluation of my work in the context of current creative practice and reflection

2. An ability to articulate and debate issues pertaining to digital representation and presentation in relation at audiences and professional contexts.

For the May 27, 2009 Digital Arts Symposium at Camberwell College of Arts, I designed the poster (above) for the symposium, and I created and publicly posted a video: HELLO specifically for that event.

Within that video I addressed three issues pertaining to digital arts representation and presentation:

with digital technologies it is easy to steal, borrow, use and remix other artists’ work
digital artworks focus on ideas and don’t really need to exist in a material form and therefore are more responsible and sustainable
digital arts are works that not only use digital technologies, but that wouldn’t be possible without them.

Specific Assessment Evidence:

HELLO is a visual presentation of work, demonstrating a critical understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in digital arts.
HELLO was presented professionally as part of a group event on May 27, 2009
My posted contributions to many of the ‘subject’ discussions for the MA_DA wiki page documents my role as an active member of the exhibition/presentation team including:

3. Practical skills in negotiation, organization, promotion and realization hosting of an on-line exhibition whilst working as a member of a team

My participation in the organization of the summer Camberwell 2009 exhibition in July include proposing two designs for the mailer, and participating in many ‘subject’ discussions on the MA_DA wiki.

Flyer/Poster 1: Basement 18

Basement

Flyer/Poster 2: Turbulence

Turbulence

Specific Assessment Evidence:

nonsite is an online text/visual presentation of work demonstrating a critical understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in Digital Arts.

Practical work resolved according to my proposal and presented professionally as part of a group event, see:

nonsite and my weblog both support my research

My weblog is my on-line log documenting my role as a member of the exhibition/presentation team, see:

4. An ability to analyze and reflect critically upon your own and others’ work in the context of current practice.

Over the past 22 months I have reflected critically on my own and others work on my weblog and in Unit 3, I participated in the Unit 3 February 22, 2009 ‘silent’ critique by posting:

http://dmacwilliam.wordpress.com/unit-3-february-22nd-critique/

On May 27, 2009 I participated in the Digital Arts Symposium.

Specific Assessment Evidence:

For online text/diagrammatic/visual presentation of work, demonstrating a critical understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in Digital Arts, see:

Practical work resolved according to my proposal and presented professionally as part of a group event

my participation in the May 27, 2009 Digital Arts Symposium.
my participation in the Camberwell Summer exhibition 2009

nonsite and my weblog both support my research

5. An ability to evaluate and summarize your overall progress and formulate a constructive plan for continuing professional development

My research on nonsite has opened up several other avenues for me. I can see this research leading to other outputs including written versions of these texts. I have been in contact with Garry Kennedy who is editing NSCAD: The Conceptual Years 1968- 1978 for MIT Press (2010) and he is interesting in including these reflections in that book.

On completion of this MA in Digital Arts I plan to continue this research within a future PhD research project.

Overall my progress has been slowly evolving and progressing based on my research as documented throughout my weblog which has been the main vehicle for documenting my ideas over the past 22 months.

On a formal level the coloured backgrounds and the manipulation of the entry date stamp has allowed for forward and backdating and presents a number of interesting possibilities for weblogs. Right now it seems a bit daunting, but I’m trying to decide whether to start the larger project of writing the 35 years in between.

My plan is to also continue to explore ideas around Robert Smithson’s Non-Sites, in relation to Marc Augé’s Non-Places, and Annette Kuhn’s photographic memory work. My recent research into Douglas Huebler’s artworks from the late 1960s and early 1970s which use photographs, maps, drawings and descriptive language to define time, location, place and a community are a rich area of research with I plan to further consider.

Specific Assessment Evidence:

http://dmacwilliam.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/mind-map/ is a diagrammatic/visual presentation ‘mind map’ demonstrating my understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in digital arts
nonsite and my weblog both support my research, see:

This written report offers a critical evaluation of my work in the context of current creative practice and reflection

6. An ability to produce work that reflects the concerns of the course of study and current research in digital arts

Over the duration of this course I have produced outputs that reflect the concerns of this course of study along with current research in digital arts. The first was my video for the fall Digital Arts Symposium October 2007: Digital Arts is Too Big. I included links to the first prototype of nonsite.com in an exhibition at Wilson Road in November 2008. As noted earlier, I participated in the May 27, 2009 Digital Arts Symposium at Camberwell, I posted a video ‘HELLO’ specifically for that event.

For the Camberwell 2009 summer exhibition in July I have made a new project ‘Hello’ that uses a set of jpeg slides within a small digital picture frame to direct viewers to my online nonsite project.

I have posted a number of entries on my blog referring to the concerns of the course and current research in digital arts. See for example:

I have continued to participate in the Monday chat sessions and have completed each Unit’s learning outcomes.

Specific Assessment Evidence:

nonsite is an online text/visual presentation of work demonstrating a critical understanding of digital arts and how my work relates to current thinking and research in Digital Arts.
My participation in the summer Camberwell 2009 exhibition in July indicates practical work resolved according to my proposal and presented professionally as part of a group event
nonsite and my weblog both support my research

Bibliography:

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso

Augé, M. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso

Calvino, I. 1988. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. New York, Random House

Elkins, J. (ed) 2009. Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art. Washington: New Academia Publishing

Harmon, K. 2004. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. New York: Princeton University Press

Kuhn, A. 1995. Family Secrets. London: Verso

Manovich, L. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press

Mitchell, W. 2003. Me++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge: MIT Press

Rheingold, H. 1993. The Virtual Community. Cambridge: MIT Press

Sinclair, I. (ed) 2006. London: City of Disappearances. London: Penguin

Tribe, M., Jana, R. 2007. New Media Art. Koln: Taschen

Weibel, P., Druckrey, T. (eds) 2001. Net_Condition: Art and Global Media. Cambridge: MIT Press

Marking Place

Unit 3 Written Report

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