my school - the wall

femadlib K

Alex Brew contacted me through the Exposures archive project at Goldsmiths. She is a member of a group of women artists who describe themselves as 'feminist activists'. Check out the links to some fabulous artists' work on their blog http://femadlibkolektiv.blogspot.com/ I recently screened two of my mid-90s films for their fundraising cafe and party. Unfortunately I couldn't get up to London for either of these events, but hope they were successful.

teaching fellowship award

I finally had official notification of the award from UCA earlier this week. I was quite surprised that I am to receive all the funding I requested and rather daunted by the prospect of providing a break down of all the costs on a month to month basis through to December. I have researched some costs, tried to anticipate when they may occur and have hopefully put together a reasonable projection.

I have been assigned a mentor, to make sure I clarify and achieve the aims and objectives of the project. KP is UCA's Learning and Teaching Researcher and we met earlier today. I think she will be able to offer me some guidance about measuring the impact and success of the project. She has already suggested that I interview the headmaster and the school children and possibly make an audio recording of their responses to questions about the impact of the project. This has led me to yet another creative idea - cutting audio over the digital grid of images that I hope to make at the end of the project. I need to look into the ethical implications of this - such as the need for releases from my interviewees.

KP also mentioned the governments Aim Higher Scheme and I need to research this to see how my project may meet it's aims and objectives of raising children's aspirations at an early age. 

http://www.aimhigher.ac.uk/programme/home/

In the past I have given plenty of talks in conference-like situations but have usually been invited by the organisers. I have never had to write an abstract and I have never delivered a formal conference paper, so I have asked for guidance on this too.

last session with Y6

We set up bit of the production line at school yesterday to get the remaining 22 children to edit their digital images, select and make a print. Again, some of them needed some gentle guidance to select an image that was actually 'technically correct'  ie. IB who insisted she wanted to print a rather badly composed and over exposed picture of her pencil case!! 

We couldn't access the network on the computer that was connected to the printer so had to transfer images on memory sticks and trot back and forth between the Y6 classroom and the ICT suite. As usual the computers were chugging away so slowly... it was 4.30 before the final print was complete. 

Finally we laid all the prints out as 3 x 4 grids (12 images in each) on tables and we began to get an idea of how the final image wall will look. How exciting!! The children have made such a wonderfully diverse and interesting range of work. Whilst some images are immediately obvious, others tease the viewer to guess what they could be, some play with form, reflections, texture, patterns and others add vibrant colour to the piece. The separate parts come together to form a fascinating view of the school. Some images are sadly missing - such as glimpses of the burgundy and yellow of the school uniform. There were some lovely photos that didn't make it to print. I will keep these as backup for the time being as they may have a part to play in the final presentation or the digital presentation. Let's wait and see.

I had a chat with Mr C. about the presentation and it was his very good suggestion that the image wall should be formed of a number of smaller grids to make it more transportable and malleable in terms of hanging in different locations. He also pointed out an outside wall where he would like some artwork so I am going to look into ways of 'weatherproofing' the work. We also talked about the option of updating the grid and carrying out biannual photo projects on other themes. 

last day shooting with Year 6

Today it was raining and grey. Not great for photographing with the kids. We tried to encourage them to use the puddles to good effect working with reflections and so on. Its interesting to see how differently children behave with the camera. Some are quite timid and need encouragement to experiment. Several of them have only taken around a dozen images. Others are much more confident, assertive over the technology and determined to get a good image. We saw quite a few children rephotograph carefully to get a sharp, well composed image today. I think I was clearer about the potential pitfalls this week. For example I warned them about getting too close to the subject and I think we possibly have less focus problems than last week as a result. 

Now we know about the slow computers we built extra time into the schedule to allow for copying the images across. In fact we had Y6 volunteers set up the named folders for us over their lunch break. We had a couple of technical problems with cameras. We were using an odd one out - a Hewlett Packard - to make up numbers and it decided to freeze halfway through a session. Another camera was behaving strangely when we tried to transfer images and wouldn't let us delete the images from the memory card. Luke and I managed to figure it out between us eventually and most of the children have a fine set of images to begin working with next week.

Whilst the kids are doing well and I'm sure we are going to have some great prints, I am beginning to get a wee bit concerned about whether this project is sustainable across four years. Already we have seen a lot of repetition in the images they have chosen in Y6 and I am not sure that Y5, Y4 and Y3 will be able to diversify the range. But maybe that's the point. Perhaps the repetition of the same things shot in different ways will be an important creative dimension to the final presentation and say something important about the school environment. I may have to guide this editing role to some extent - or maybe not. We'll just have to see what happens...

teaching fellowship award

Just before beginning the 'my school' project I was checking my UCA mailbox when I realised that what I was doing seemed to fit the bill for a teaching fellowship. I'm not very experienced at writing project proposals and the very same day was the deadline for receipt of applications. However I managed to put something very sketchy together and got some feedback from Philippa Ashton, Kathleen Rogers and a friend of mine, Lesley, who works as a charity fundraiser. By the following week, and two days late, I finally had something decent together with recommendations from Steve Littman and Bob Russell. A summary follows:

The project will provide:
· an opportunity for students to undertake teaching work with KS2 children (thereby providing a hands-on introduction to teaching for those who might wish to enter the profession),
· raise the ‘bar’ by providing high level specialist visual subject input into schools, by improving student’s visual literacy, creative skills, understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art while fostering increased awareness of contemporary artists within society,
· enable these children to engage with new technology and reflective visual practice currently unavailable to them within their existing curricula model,
· enable her course (DFSA) to engage with a local WP agenda,
· provide a pedagogic model for other courses, staff and students to engage with other schools on similar projects in different subject areas,
· enable a key member of staff to forge further links between the subject(s) of her on going (and exhibited) research practice and her T&L activities,
· and enable the college to publicise its wider work within the local community.

My own research and practice mostly concerns ‘the artist as a mother’ and my own children often feature in the work in make. I have been interested for some time in actually involving them in the work rather than them being the subject – establishing a more collaborative basis, particularly with my older son who is 11 and at the threshold of his teenage years. I am trying to increase my awareness of activities for young people in the local area and would like to contribute in some way in the future, whilst working this into my research objectives. Since attending a SEEDA conference for Women’s Enterprise at the Farnham Maltings last year, I have been inspired by the idea of launching a Social Enterprise targeting local teenagers and involving them in a range of creative activities. I hope to develop this idea in such a way that the University would have a pivotal role. This project is an opportunity for me to work with a younger age group, confront new challenges and see what opportunities present themselves that will add value to my development in this area. I will continue my research into other local businesses that have Social Enterprise status in order to establish a model for my own initiative, identify good practice and make links beyond the University.
http://www.seeda.co.uk/news_&_events/press_releases/2008/20081119.asp
http://www.seeda.co.uk/search/?quickSearch=1&s=social+enterprise&GoButton=Go

Alongside ‘my school’, I will continue my own creative practice - stills, video and sound work that is ongoing since the late 90s around my son’s games, words, songs and more recently my daughter is also becoming part of this work. In January 2007 I completed ‘living room’, a claustrophobic and chaotic family portrait made over the holiday period that reflects the dominance that the children have in our shared space. This is a 3 screen Hi-Definition Video artwork that was made and screened for New Territories – The National Review of Live Art in Glasgow which took place in February 2007. A series of daily screenings took place at the Tramway called Definitive Stories and ten artists were invited to conceive and execute new work in Hi Definition Video. ‘The project seeks to encourage artists and experimental filmmakers to use the Hi Definition system and asks them to consider innovative forms of deployment within this rapidly emerging format.’ This work was screened in Strange Screen Thessalonica In January 2008. My most recent research presentation, ‘the artist as ‘a mother watching’ - began to contextualise my art practice in relation to the work of other photographers and artists who make work about their children or their experience of motherhood.

I would very much like to widen the scope of my research by writing a journal or conference paper relating to the proposed project and this award would provide the motivation. I have taken a break from writing since starting a family in the mid-90s but previous to this I had a healthy run of published articles.

the last 2 months....

I can't believe I haven't written anything since 8th November. A friend and I were walking near Frensham Pond last week and she mentioned she had found my blog! Didn't think anyone read it so that was bit of a shock... and a wake up call to get a bit more active in here. 

We had flu round the family twice before Christmas so that knocked us out a bit. Now we have finally finished our family festivities - starting with Sam's birthday party at the beginning of December and Amelia and Mark both in last 10 days, with Christmas and New Year sandwiched in the middle. The season of cake, cake and more cake and a rapidly expanding waistline! 

Exposures meeting with Goldsmiths just before Christmas was cancelled because all the staff had flu so Grace and I are finally taking the archive to the library this Tuesday. I started the 'my school' project on Wednesday with a Y2 DFSA student, Luke, assisting. I have also applied for a teaching fellowship at UCA as the project seems to fit the bill for such an award.  It should help the University to further its Widening Participation Scheme and will further my own research objectives of wanting to make work with the local community, particularly in terms of trying to establish creative projects with young people. I should know whether I have been successful by the end of next week. 

do I have time for a second life?

After going to the presentation yesterday, I felt very enthusiastic about the potential of Second Life as a tool for teaching and learning. So finally, against all the odds, I have got myself an avatar and have spent my first evening exploring. First I went to a 'mall' where newbies like myself were meant to be able to find more out - but quite how one went about this was not clear. I read a bit about changing my appearance and tweaked it a bit - taller, slimmer - as I would like in my first life. Hot places to visit were not particularly interesting and not many people were around. All a bit lonely and boring really. So I decided to visit ucreative island - also empty. There was an 'interactive whiteboard' so I tried to interact with it and ended up losing control of my avatar to a little blue blob for no apparent reason other than to move it up, down, left and right!! What was that all about? Very disappointing, but I was probably missing something - what? There was also no instructions about how to get my movements back to normal which impeded my explorations for the rest of the evening and resulted in me flying sideways through a rainforest!! Great graphics but they crashed my computer.

The Uni is thinking about starting a new degree in computer gaming and it is possible that I would be asked to teach on this course - so I feel I should persevere with this in an attempt to carve out a relevant area of expertise. Reckon I'll have to ask my son to help me with the basics as I can't see how I will have time to complete the learning curve in tutorials. I don't particularly want to start building and so on, but I am very interested in Second Life's potential to pilot new methods of teaching, communicating with students and colleagues at other campuses, showing student work, disseminating research and so on. Coincidentally the Guardian Education ran a short piece about this today.

'performance' development review

Aha! Just realised it is my 'performance' that is being reviewed rather than my personal development needs! A misunderstanding of the meaning of the acronym.

personal development review

Can the use of a Mac and software be regarded as 'training'? Yes, there is a great deal to be gained from having a project in progress and finding out what you need to do to achieve specific needs - but does this equate with 'proper' training. I don't think so. We need to subscribe to an online or DVD training package that will update us with new versions of software as we introduce them at UCA. And we need to be given the time during working hours to use this package. I need to document this in my pdr which, at the moment, seems totally focussed on what I can do for the course/UCA, rather than any form of personal development for myself.

after the summer

Nearly two months since my last post! The holidays flew past and now I'm back at work. Amelia started school last week. I don't know where the last 4 years went, never mind the last couple of months. 

I am trying to assess what I achieved during my research leave before the summer. Need to go back and take another look at the 'High Gabble' rough cut. I think I will use mostly still images rather than video. Pick up shots are out of the question as Mum and Dad finally completed on the sale of the house a couple of weeks ago. I am pretty sure I have enough material to make something. I also want to use some of the photographs, scribblings, bits and pieces that we rescued(?) from the house on the last visit. I am still working my way through bags and boxes stacked in my office. It is very strange looking at all these fragments of the past and I have found Mum's refusal, even anger, about wanting to have, or look at, any of this stuff, very difficult to deal with. It feels like I'm on a very lonely journey which one would normally make after the death of a parent. But perhaps the death has already taken place. Mum is so changed and different to the woman that I see smiling in many of those photos. Yet in some ways she is so much better than this time last year. I just wish she would show some sign of affection towards her grandchildren and give some indication that she enjoys life. These type of expressions are very rarely, if ever, forthcoming. It's so sad. For me, for her and for Sam and Amelia. Dad seems oblivious! 

Anyway, I digress...

I also hope to finalise arrangements with Goldsmiths for the Exposures archive, but this is something else that I need child-free time to sort out. I do not feel ready to talk to Sam about my old work yet, although I hope I can at some point in the future. Goldsmiths have asked us to make an inventory of everything we have so I will put this together over the next few weeks and then meet them with Grace Lau hopefully sometime in October. 

So - not huge progress, but small steps. One can only do so much in 12.5 days! But this year I should be able to up this time considerably in the half of the week I am not lecturing. From November when Amelia starts full time, I hope to properly reassess my aims and objectives to reach a clearer methodology as regards my research.

update on exposures archive

Good news! It seems that the Womens' Art Library at Goldsmiths are very interested in our archive material. We hope to meet in September when everyone returns from vacation. I think we should be able to get a really good collection of photographs, press cuttings and video together for them.  

cs3, final cut and research

I've spent my last two official research days following a tutorial for PhotoShop CS3. There are some new additions and changes that look quite interesting so I look forward to getting the update in the near future to try out some of these features. Last week I spent some time in Final Cut Pro trying out some ideas with the HD video I shot at my parents house. I put together some good visual sequences over a conversation between myself and the estate agent. Ultimately I think I will include many of the digitial stills that I shot as these allow for a more contemplative consideration of the piece. Trying to figure out how to change the aspect ratio of these to match the 16:9 of the video. I will be visiting my parents house for the last time next Saturday and intend to take my stills camera again. The British Heart Foundation are clearing a couple of lorry loads from the house but I am not sure that I will have the emotional or physical creative space to get to grips with any more video over there.

paris

Spent last weekend in Paris with old pal Pauline and staying with mutual friend Daniel. What a wonderful time we had. Daniel's amazing appartment is very central, near Bastille, so we did loads of walking, visiting the Rodin Museum, Pompidou Centre, and taking in the sights. We were also lucky to see the Melies - the Magician Of Cinema exhibition at The Cinematheque Francaise - a great opportunity to catch up on the work of a pioneer in special FX that I previously knew little about. Popped along to visit the graves of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde in the amazing Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. Add to that some wonderful food and wine together with tasty cake and foot baths provided by our host - a real treat! Pauline and I are already planning to get away to the Venice Biennale next year...

research profile and demo of work

The following links to my UCCA research page

http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=9596

The link below is to a pilot project for academics and artists to upload their work to web. My 3 screen HD video piece, living room, takes ages to download and only works on pcs. reconnection loads quickly, but is likely to only work on pcs too. Will be trying to resolve this for Mac users in the near future.

http://kultur-demo.eprints.org/view/creators/Gunn,_Rosie.html

exposures archive

A couple of months back I was looking through materials generated by the Women Photo Men and Men Review Women photo workshops that we used to run at Exposures after chatting to Steve Littman about future my research direction. There are many interesting photographs and the testimonials of participants are very poignant. I wondered whether there was any scope for a book or website to publish the material so it could be accessed by students or researchers interested in gender studies. Also there seems to be a resurgance of media interest in the definition of masculinity and the reluctance of some men to see their bodies as desirable.

To try to decide what to do with this material, I contacted dear friends and colleagues, Grace Lau and Robin Shaw, and they came to lunch yesterday. It was so lovely to see them. Nearly 5 years since I saw Grace and probably over 10 since Robin and I met up. After lots of catch up chat about our current projects and interests we started to look through the material. It is fairly certain that we would have a problem with releases if we tried to publish many of the images and it would be difficult to contact the models and participants since so much time has passed. None of us has the inclination or the time to take this on. We have decided to see whether the Womens' Library at London Metropolitan University or the Womens' Art Library at Goldsmiths would be interested in adding the materials to their collection.

research time and technical hitches

This week I have been trying to get up and running with the Mac. I wanted to capture the HD video I shot with the Sony Z1 into Final Cut Pro. What a nightmare. I spent most of Tuesday trying various codecs but couldn't get device control. Steve Littman came over on Wednesday and discovered that the Mac needed to install various updates from the web but because it has been given a student spec I do not have priviledges to do that. He managed to get the password so by Thursday I was able to begin capture. Unfortunately I still don't have proper device control to set in and out points, so I have had to capture the video as big long takes that I will have to make into subclips. Looking at what I have shot, I am not sure there is much I can do with it. I prefer the digital stills that I shot at my parents house. I think I was so overcome by the emotion of being there and having to engage with the practical issues, that I didn't really permit myself the time for creative reflection as I hoped I would do.

Assessments and Research

I'm on campus at UCCA every day this week. Two days of first year assessments and three days of third year assessments. I love this time of year - it's like going to a film festival for a whole week! It's great to see that most of the students that I taught two years ago have matured and produced some outstanding films, interactive artwork, multiscreen installations and so on as their graduation work. There are definitely some undergraduates to watch over the next couple of years too. Next week will be formal marking and feedback.

This busy work schedule has meant calling on favours from friends to look after the children. We will reward ourselves with some 'family time' at half term when we go camping in Cornwall - let's hope we have good weather. After the external examiners have reported and the Progression Board is over, then hopefully I will get a few weeks research leave. I have already booked out a high definition video camera with a view to making some work at my parents house which will probably have to be sold sometime soon.

research and working from home

Despite two 10 year olds 'wrestling' on the Wii behind me I have managed to complete student feedback on the recent digital imaging project so I will hopefully be ahead of myself at the end of the semester. This is around the time my 'official' research time will start, so it's important to try to clear the decks if I am actually to achieve anything in 10 days.

Last year I spent most of my off campus research time in June and July looking for sheltered accommodation for my mother and father who subsequently moved into the area in November. My mother has been ill in hospital almost ever since and is due to be discharged next week. Balancing work and research with family and home has been quite a major challenge since about this time last year. I haven't managed to make a research presentation at UCCA, but figure that is probably OK since I made two presentations the previous year. I also achieved an 'output' ahead of taking my research leave. I made a three screen high definition video work 'living room' that was shown at the National Review of Live Art, Tramway, Glasgow and subsequently travelled to Thessalonika for the Strange Screen Festival.

Anyway - the pressure is on to achieve another output soon. I have thought about going back to an archive of old work created pre-family to publish a book or create a website, but I am not sure my heart is in this project. I want to move on and devote precious time to projects that are more relevant to my life as it is now.

What should I blog about?

Over the last few days I have been trying to think how I should use this blog. Will it just be for research purposes, or should it also examine more personal concerns. Like many other women artists, I find it so difficult to seperate out all the layers of my life (particularly when the children are on Easter break!!). In fact much of my research and visual work is about family life, so it seems quite important to take a holistic approach to writing this if it is to serve any useful purpose in moving on my ideas and saying something relevant to any possible interested audience somewhere down the line.

My 4 year old daughter joins my 10 year old son at school September so I am beginning to think about what to do with a bit more time on my hands. I went to a SEEDA funded conference about women setting up their own businesses which was quite inspiring. I have a few ideas that I may try to develop - perhaps as a 'social enterprise' - but my thoughts are still taking shape. I want to draw some connections between my teaching at the University College for Creative Arts, my own photo/video practice, the students and their work. Perhaps some sales opportunities - artmarket for all concerned together with workshop/networking opportunities - but not sure what format will pull all those strands together. I belong to the 'Home Interaction Research Cluster' (they haven't included my name on web page yet!) at UCCA and 'The Home' - as a 'container' for the family and (in contradication!) as a working base - will be a significant feature in developing my ideas. http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=17006