It has been quite an exhilarating week. I attended the welcome event for the studio based fine art digital students and we all spent a lot of time chatting afterwards getting to know each other. I have also ‘met’ all my fellow online MA students twice now, and presented my recent work and study proposals (see my last video blog). Everyone is so open, easy to get along with and keen and Jonathan Kearney is I must say an impressive course leader and a very approachable individual. I could not have hoped for more and I feel very upbeat about my studies at UAL and Camberwell.

I must admit to having been a trifle apprehensive about presenting my study proposals as I was not sure how they would be received by my colleagues and particularly Jonathan. I need not have worried. Everyone was engaging and making helpful suggestions and good comments. It was great to see other student’s work and study proposals too.  They have quite a varied background and impressive plans. I can’t wait to see the remaining online students’ proposals next week.

It’s a pity we cannot see the studio based students’ study proposals too. At the first lecture yesterday on practice based research, I struck up a conversation afterwards with two Fine Art Digital studio based students and found that we have some interests in common that we agreed we would like to pursue together. It is a huge benefit to meet people with similar artistic passions and to be able to share our knowledge and research between us.

Yesterday I also had a chance to speak to Jonathan about his immediate reactions to my study proposals – “Terry you have about 5 MA’s there”. We both realise that I have quite an ambitious programme in mind and I now recognise that l will not be able to pursue all of them to the required depth. As I begin to research them all I can absolutely see his point. Nevertheless I was encouraged by his comment that I can save some of them for a future time and any work I do on projects discarded for my MA can be resumed after, so my research on these will not be wasted, and a period of experimentation is desirable in its own right anyway. His advice to now focus on one of my study areas and to prioritise my research and making to this is well taken.

So I will begin with making a 3D sculpture of the life model and painting this with light (projection mapping) as illustrated in my study proposal video. In my next blog I will talk about how I am going to do this and hopefully where I can use appropriate facilities and technical support within the University to make the sculpture.

On 3 October I am attending an introductory online seminar given by Alex May (who has presented his original work on Projection Mapping at the V&A) and I will talk about this too in a follow up blog. Jonathan is interested in making contact with him too and hopefully we will have a full day on Projection Mapping during our Low Residency next term.

Later I will also post blogs on the research that I have done so far on 3D scanning, 3D Painting, Holographic (Peppers Ghost) Projection, and Viewer Interaction with hand gesture using Leap Motion. I am due to have a discussion next week with Matthew Edwards, one of our Digital Media Specialist Technicians who has offered to get involved where he can in these areas and point me to others where he can’t. I will follow this up next term if I have finished the piece I am now focusing on.

Finally, as I am about to start my formal research at the University I intend to read one of the books recommended in our first lecture. I am not sure which yet but it will also give me a chance to get to grips with library services.

Roll on Week 2.