Contextual Research Project Development Coursework Reflection Work in Progress Portfolio: Surfaces and Strategies Oral Presentation: Surfaces and Strategies

Critical Review of Practice – Informing Contexts

Portfolio 2 April 2018 m

Week One My current practice is very much one based on selection, with the decision of which parts of the UAE to choose to represent the ideas that I wish to convey. In the last unit, I was looking for areas of the country that showed either one or a combination of traditional Emirati life…

Week One My overall direction is towards a book about the UAE that fuses photography and the written word, along the likes of City of Glass by Douglas Coupland and Bill Brandt’s The Land. The idea is for each module to spent looking at one aspect – one chapter. Last module I focused on the fusion of tradition…

Week One: Having decided on an exploration of liminality in the UAE – a look at borders both political (between emirates and with other countries), geographical (shoreline and where the mountains meet the desert), cultural (East meets West) and sociological (different areas and styles of living, exploring where mankind stops and the desert begins), I…

Week One Reading through the resources for week one, I was most taken with several ideas in the Barthes text, particularly the separation of denotation (first order messages) and connotation (second order messages) (Barthes and Heath, 1977, p16) and Barthes idea that press photographs have a”a weak signifier and a strong signified” (ibid P26) which…

Unit 2 work in progress portfolio

Week 1: I eased back into my studies with a combination of relief and fear – relief that everything was still there having been traveling for much of the first unit and fear – the common feeling of impostor syndrome – what am I doing? How long will it take them to realise I don’t belong…