Study Task 8 - Evaluation of Synthesis, Reflections on COP 1

In order to start planning for my COP 2 proposal, it would be valuable to reflect on my visual journal work and the journey I undertook through COP 1. I need to evaluate what I have done, what I have achieved, what has been explored and how well it has been explored.

Topics Researched -

• Zeegan Quote - questions illustrations motives and functions, holds discipline accountable for it's voice and comment and substance, expresses discontent with a select trend of work today focussing on aesthetics over meaning. 
• First Things First - discontent with graphic art's sole function as advertising tactic, deems commercial means as worthless, useless and a waste, argues other more important themes and issues the disciplines should focus their energies on, challenging and contesting consumerism.
• Street Art (textures) - Creative visual work in public space other than advertising, opposes financial powers over public space, textures represent humanity and meaning. 
• Sign Painting - Advertising/Commercial but human, laborious and hand-made, contrasting advertising's throw away nature and style, craft driven but traditional and meaningful.  
• Immoralities in Advertising - Male Gaze in perfume adverts, power of advertising on subconscious level, adverts creating a norm and expectations within society.

My Responses - 

• Textures - Time-consuming process opposing throw away nature of adverts, visually aesthetic outcomes with meaning, inspired by street artists researched (Blaqk, Siekon etc).
• Typography - Employing more labour intensive processes to convey meaning, taking slogans and perfume names out of context highlighting their absurdity and negativity, nod to sign painting and more traditional advertising techniques combined with modern advertising.
• Fake Adverts - Creating similar influx of slogans and imperatives adverts use but to sell nothing, creating visual noise but also aesthetically pleasing work to bring to light the bombardment of actual advertising on our daily lives.
• Line Drawings - Taking perfume advertising's imagery out of context to highlight it's nature, creating slightly dystopian feeling to images, taking out identity and facial expressions/features to highlight objectifying, breaking down adverts to their separate elements and portraying them in their bare bones.
• Textured Ladies - Combines labour intensive processes and out of context explorations, creates energetic and interesting images based on glamorous and polished adverts, puts humanity back into adverts and makes them almost more elegant, further attempting to break apart adverts and the images they portray.
• Textured Photos - More directly using adverts, combining elements into one, taking out identity for objectification, more dystopian as uses actual adverts but subverted. 

Reviewing the work i have done, I am slightly struggling to weave the links and relevance of the separate explorations into one coherent and effective theme and thread for the hole project. To me at least, it all seems a bit disjointed and unconscious, each stage and exploration almost separate from the last, even if there is some relevance there. I don't think this is  abad thing, as it shows I have been considering several things and once and have been trying to explore different avenues, but I feel like while I was doing this I should have been more conscious of its relevance and relationship with the previous work and theme that I was trying to explore. This is something I can do more of in COP 2 though; it is a lesson learnt in project management. Always refer back to the theme and purpose of the project and reflect on whether the work is actually succeeding to live up to this or push it or explore it further.