PDP

To begin with, I was quite worried when it came to starting constellation as coming from a foundation where very little academic research and formal writing was necessary I had a lack of confidence in myself and my ability to focus on research. My own practice tends to be extremely material based, and I never really apply theoretical themes to my work or base my work on that of others.

The first couple of sessions were quite challenging for me readjusting to thinking in a more in depth, philosophical way. When we started talking about theories of where agency lies and what aspects are in control, or change how a final piece turns out I became a lot more interested and focused on the subject matter. I could much more easily place these ideas comfortably into the pockets of my brain where my making experience lives, and use the new bits of information to help me understand the way I make, for example, noticing variables such as the heat of a room, my posture and what sort of mood I am in can hugely effect how a piece ends up looking.

There were aspects of the constellation lectures that remain to be quite confusing to me, as they seemed quite a bit more focussed to a fine art background. I found questions such as ‘can a forest paint itself?’ very hard to relate to my own way of working, but did find these parts very interesting, as they gave me the opportunity to look into how others may approach their practice and further their ideas.

The parts of this module that have most impacted the way I work have been the sessions in which we talked about line representing emotion, and when we created hands on, physical doodles when listening to music. These opened up my line of enquiry within my own work to experimenting with how the intangible, like sound and mood can be expressed physically through work. This caught my attention as I always feel like my work could benefit from some sort of focussed idea of what sort of atmosphere it is trying to convey. My final piece within my Field work is based around sound, where I tried to recreate the feeling of hearing everyday sounds and amplify them with colour and light. I found that although I am not 100% happy with my final outcome, I have learnt a huge amount in terms of how I have worked in the past, and how not to be frightened of approaching more abstracted themes and ideas when making.

Constellation has also improved my confidence when presenting to a large group on my own, as I really have not had much experience in this before. Having to present what I had learnt from an overview of the lectures alone helped my contextualise my own thoughts and make links between them in my own head, allowing me to pull out individual slices of information from the collection of notes and ideas I had scribbled down instead of being overwhelmed by pages of heavy notes and studies.

Writing my essay brought to my attention my lack of research and referencing skills, and helped me recognise what sort of methods work, and do not work for me when trying to find out new information, or find information to help back up my own ideas.

Overall, although at times I have found it difficult to understand and engage with immediately, Constellation has taught me a lot of new skills which I will be able to apply to my practice, and future essay writing and research.