On Tuesday we were to have our concept ready but we hadn't really decided what exactly we were doing.  There was a bit of mild conflict (for lack of a better word as there wasn't really any conflict, we were working through our ideas in a thoughtful manner) about what we were trying to say with our film. One of our tutors talked through it with us and in the process I suddenly realised the huge difference between a concept and a technique. One of our group members in particular is very conceptually inclined and our other two members range between conceptual and technical. They are very thoughtful and often raise good points. I'm lean more toward the technical side. I really didn't quite understand the conceptual side until that point, aside from realising that upon presentation of say, HDR footage, saying "because it looked cool" when asked why we did it would not be all that acceptable.

Actually it's a bit disingenuous to say that I don't understand it. It's more that I tend to think that it's all too easy to present a concept and be all arty about it and have up in the air descriptions but in reality it means absolutely nothing. I'm of the opinion that one should if pushed, be able to turn a concept into something with concrete descriptions that anybody can understand if needed or, it's probably not that valid. This is what I found difficult about the Serious Fun project, we started talking about the "falsity" of the cat actually being code... There was something behind it but that language got on my nerves and I wasn't prepared to describe the concepts until I could describe them better. But there was not enough time to get to that point. I realise that I'm probably a bit too much of a solid thinker at times and I'm working on being more conceptual and and creative in a more "artistic" way, but I still cherish my solid foundations though, it keeps me grounded instead if flying into the wind with concepts that I think are art but really mean nothing. If I can join the 2 opposing approaches then I think I'll be... rather clever actually.

Anyway our conceptual thinker is also pretty intelligent and all her previous projects have turned out well so I have a lot of respect for the bits that I didn't quite get and while we discussed our thoughts with the tutor I had a bit of a eureka moment about the whole concept verses technique thing. At this point I started trying to brainstorm actual concepts, but also tried to marry them with some of the techniques so that we could get our project moving to the next step.

I think it was the next day that we decided we all liked the idea of exploring how people group together and also spread out on city streets, and we could depict that with footage that contained a thermal imaging overlay. At first we wanted to explore how people tend to clump together but then realised that was caused by traffic lights and people would spread out to their own personal space as soon as they could.

On Wednesday afternoon, exactly a week after our SolidWorks introduction, we had an advanced Solid Works class only for the CAD people. - But I sat in. I was still having issues with the basics, I had wanted to practice during the week to be ready for the class but had difficulty getting the student licensing to work at home, which it turns out was an IT issue. I picked up what was going on but just lacked knowledge in the small details that allowed me to actually execute the processes. But I'll teach myself in my own time. I want to know it because I have a small personal project that I'd like to complete. I have to build some custom door lock brackets for my car. Once I'd have just fabricated as I went, but I quite like the idea of planning it in detail in Solid Works first.

Our group planned the camera rig, me drawing and all of us working on details. I was really quite enjoying it, just the dynamics and how our group worked together. So THIS is how groups are supposed to work!

On Friday afternoon a few members of the class had enrolled in a 2-day course on Academic Writing. As it got closer a lot of us were wishing we hadn't bothered as it was interfering with our studio time but I really enjoyed the first day. There were a few small details I learnt that I didn't know, like do not use abbreviations (like "don't" for example) ever. Other things I sort of knew but they were mapped out systematically so that they clicked more. We also learnt how to read actively which is really handy as for this literature review in Maths & Art I'll have to read 20-50 different texts. That is a lot to read if I was to try to read the way that I'd normally read a novel.

The Academic Writing course went through to Saturday afternoon, and after that 3 of our group of four met up to draw the Solid Works drawing, however something else happened instead. Which I'll tell you about in the next instalment.