Unfortunately, I failed to change the student’s minds as planned for the last intervention, but when this model exposes to them, it has the potential changes. And in the last tutorial with Minka, she suggested calling back to the participants to see some potential changes.
I sent messages to the workshop group to ask participants whether they have some thoughts after the last workshop, no matter the career model that I showed them or their own career model.
Yuchen (art practitioner) said that she is thinking about the balance between the critical path and the commercial path, which I mentioned in the multiple identities ability. Apart from that, she also thinking about her own communication ability. Since she always works with interdisciplinary workers, she thinks she needs to strengthen her communication ability with them, and think about how to translate interdisciplinary jargon into visual language.
I think she start to think about her own career model based on her personal experience. That is the thing I want to see, and I believe there are more potencial change.
Yuchen’s reply
Yuchen’s reply
Yuchen’s reply
Here is the answers from Muzi and Sirui:
Muzi (art practitioner) said that she is thinking about the sence of value. She also mentioned some abilities in my career model becomes to must-have ability. life will push you to grow up and develop it. But she is greatful that I conducted this workshop, since she is too busy to think and talk like this for a long time.
But her reply reminds me again that my career model is not the only and perfect answer. What I want to change is not let all the fine art student follow my career moodel. My model is just a reference, and I am trying to give the light in the dark, since this model was missing from my previous education. The real change is let them thinking about their own model, rather than only focus on studio skills. As what Muzi said, the ability in my model is the must-have ability for her, so how about her own model? Is there are other special abilities for her?I think that’s the potential change, and it needs time.
While Sirui (student) still have no thoughts. She only care about the recent exam. I think the difference is really depends on the status. Students do not know the cruelty of the society. But I still believe it has potencial change after she graduate and experiences some setbacks in the future.
Conclusion: In this intervention, I found and verified the difference/gap between art practitioners and students. People have better interpersonal skills, cooperation skills, and independent thinking skills after work. In addition, because of the specificity of students’ identities (innocence, ego mentality, not having experienced the cruelty of society), it isn’t easy to make them realize the importance of other abilities in the development model. It’s hard to change them (this is also where this intervention failed.) But this failure made me think about this model’s place, before graduation, after graduation or after work.I failed in changing the student participants, but this model gave two other (art practitioners) more thought about their ability development, which I did not expect.In addition, the sample size of this workshop is relatively small, which cannot fully explain the problem. This needs to be further studied by enlarging the sample size. At the same time, I found a new ability that I could consider adding to my model: endurance/tolerance.
Career model iteration – version 5
Introduction: I designed a series of multiple task based on my career model. Each question has one correct choice which represents one ability. I plan to ask participants these questions and ask them to answer them and explain why. Also observe how they answer the questions to find out the differences between them. And try to make student participants aware of the differences between themselves and art practitioners and think about those differences.
Audience: I invited two art practitioners who has fine art background and one fine art background student who study in Italy right now.
My goal: 1) to verify the difference between art practitioners and students. 2) to change student’s thought about develop other abilities in a all around way. 3) to discover other abilities that I didn’t notice before and develop my career model.
Muzi
Yuchen
Sirui
Host-Sidi
Record:
Participant’s answers:
1.Organization ability
Please give your answer after carefully considering the logic and possible consequences.Imagine you are painting at home and the following things happen at the same time. In what order would you tackle them?
1)The doorbell rings.
2)Two cats next to you suddenly fight, and it is hard to separate.
3)The phone rings.
4)The bathtub is about to overflow.
5)You’ve spilled your paint and it’s about to spill on the floor.
correct answer: 2-5-4-1-3
Sirui: 5-1-4-3-2, I am not a organized people.
Yuchen: : 5-3-1-2-4, I think I am more organized at work than in life.
Muzi: 5-4-1-2-5, I’m an impulsive person.
2. Interpersonal skills/communication ability
Suppose you commission a gallery/institution to sell your work and they tell you that five copies were sold last week, you will…..
A. Feel happy and keep working on it.
B. Ask the gallery for a list of buyers.
C. Ask the gallery for a list of buyers, and try to contact them when appropriate.
correct answer: C
Sirui: A
Yuchen: C
Muzi: C
3. Cooperative ability
Suppose you need to select a project. One is to complete a painting project independently, the other is to work as a team. These two projects require the same amount of time and energy for you. Which one would you prefer?
A. Independent project, reason…
B. Team project, reason…
Correct answer:B
Sirui: A, I don’t like to socialize. I just want to do my thing.
Yuchen: A, I don’t want to spend time and energy communicating with others, and I want to minimize unnecessary misunderstandings.
Muzi: A/B, I can’t decide. On the one hand, I don’t like to communicate with others. On the other hand, I think team work can expand my network and help me in my future work.
4. Independent thinking
You are drawing a painting to be marked at the end of the term. Your teacher, whom you like and admire very much, gives you some suggestions, but you are not sure whether the teacher’s suggestions are right. What will you do?
A. Continue to work on your original idea
B.Try to revise it as the teacher suggested
C.Seek other people’s suggestions and revise them after comprehensive consideration
Correct answer: C
Sirui: B, If I have no idea, I will certainly listen to the teacher, after all, I don’t want to fail.
Yuchen: B, If the revision is not too complicated, I will follow the teacher’s advice.
Muzi: C, When I was a student, I chose A, but now I choose C.
5. A Commitment to Curiosity
Imagine that your friend has created a new piece of work to share with you, this is the style that you don’t like. How would you respond?
A.Give a false compliment.
B. Directly express that you don’t like the work.
C. Although I don’t like this style, I still try to see the advantages of others and give affirmation.
Correct answer: C
Sirui: A, As long as it is my good friend, no matter how he draws, I will praise him.
Yuchen: C, I think there must be something I can learn, like composition, color, whatever.
Muzi: A, I’m going to go for A.
Q：What do you think has changed the most between your student years and now?
Muzi: I think my tolerance has gotten better. I used to be more intuitive and impulsive. But now I’m more patient.
Yuchen: I work in a game company, and I think I’ve also improved my tolerance, as well as my ability to cooperate and communicate
Q：I have just interpreted my model, and you can also see the difference between you and the other two participants in the process of the workshop. Would you consider developing more of your other abilities now?
Sirui: I’m not going to develop anything else right now. I think I’m still focus on myself.
Q: For example, you and the other two participants gave different answers to the second question about the gallery helping you sell your paintings. Will you still choose A without contacting the buyers?
Sirui: Yes, I was afraid of offending the gallery, and there was no point contacting the buyer. The gallery is in charge of selling, they are more professional,I think it’s enough that I just paint.
1. Please use 3 keywords to describe how you feel after seeing this painting.
A：Hot; Planet; Confused
B：Retro; Psychedelic; Serious
C：Mysterious; Chaotic; Unbalanced
D：Moon; Universe; Touch
E：Space; Remote; Hot
2. Please describe the degree to which you feel connected to this painting from 1 to 5?
3. Please use 3 keywords to describe how you feel after watching the video?
A: Industrial pollution; Steam siren; Noise
B: Serious; Sci-fi; Future
C: Scary; Profound; Supernatural
D: Sad; Countdown; Destination
E: No feelings
4. Please describe the degree to which you feel connected to this painting from 1 to 5?
5. How do you feel about music?
A: Busy port.
B: Serious; it feels like a prelude to a major event.
C: I think it’s mysterious and detached from reality.
D: Sad.
E: Feel like mining.
Comparing the two scoring charts, three people felt that the connection became stronger, and one even felt that the addition of music made him feel less connection.
Comparing the two keywords, I found that after adding music, the audience’s understanding did not change much. Some words are the same (orange part); some words are guided by sound, such as the sound of siren and countdown ( The blue part); some people even think that adding sound will make it feel-less.
There are many researches on the relationship of sound and color, and their theories will be influenced by the author’s own background, cultural environment, time and other factors. Therefore, to a certain extent, what music represents and what color is a subjective personal point of view, and it is not universal.
Sound and images are different media that can give different sensory stimuli. For the next step, I want to test if I use these two media to express the same emotion, even if there is no corresponding relationship between the two, will it enhance the transmission of information?
Q4: Now, please use this website to choose an instrument’s sound that comes to your mind when you see this painting.
https://outsidetheorchestra.org/bingo/
Q5: Please write down a song/melody that comes to your mind.
1. The swan (instrumental song by Camille saint-saens)
2. Hair Flowin, Snow Falling – Jay Chou
3. Daytime nighttime – Tristesse Contemporaine
4. Calabash Brothers – Chinese nursery rhymes
Q6: Please write down a smell that comes to your mind.
1. Smell of rain/drizzles
2. Smell of grass
3. Smell of museum, cold
4. Dry ice smell
Q7: Please describe the degree again.
Q8: Will you buy this painting
All of the answers are ‘NO’.
Comparison three results:
Inviting the audience to create sound by themselves is a good way to strengthen the connection and resonance. But that doesn’t inspire them to buy art, which is the failure point of this intervention. And this failure made me realize that there is no direct relationship between resonance and purchase behaviour.
1. Some thoughts in the audience selection process
Before I start my experiment, I will first use a few small questions to determine my audience. I hope my audience has at least one condition, that is, they are interested in art works. For example, they often go to art galleries, painting exhibitions and so on. I think at this stage, people who are interested in art may be the potential customers of my project.
Interestingly, of the eight people I found, all of them were art-related majors or regular art gallery goers. Some of them have bought gallery merchandise, but none of them have bought art paintings.
Moreover, when I asked them:’ Under what circumstances would you buy a work of art?’. They all mentioned 1) When i resonate with it 2) When I’m rich enough.
2. The results of the two questionnaires
Q1:Write down a few random words to express how you feel when you see this painting. If you don’t feel anything, you can write ‘No feeling’.
Without sound
With sound
mottled
Depression, fog
cozy，quite
cozy
cloudy day, life, city, street
A woman walking along the street in France,stepping on the sycamore leaves, coughing, good weather.
a little healing in the gloom
No more healing, feeling a little anxious
a little bit blue
delighted
no feeling
A little more realistic, more relaxed
watercolor painting
street, walking, morning
no feeling
a man is smoking outside and throw his rubbish
Q2: 1) Did this painting take your mind away? For example, remind you of some experience, a piece of art you’ve seen before, a movie, a melody, etc.
without sound with sound
2) If yes, what is it? could you describe it briefly?
Without sound
With sound
a big teddy bear on a blue bin
covid 19
a movie called Midnight in Paris
walking in the morning, only myself
Monet, Van Gogh
Walking on the way to school, the sound of cars and walking sound, the scene is also street scenery
a square in Nottingham
when I travel to the beach
Movies
Living in London, Fleabag
Music: The Carousel of Life
a lawn in Nottingham
Q3: Please describe the degree to which you feel connected to the painting. （1 is the smallest and 5 is the largest.）
without sound with sound
3. Analysis
1）The sound can help the audience understand it better
Before I add sound to the painting, I asked the painter what he want to convey. He said he painted scenes or objects on the street that people would easily overlook. He wanted to convey the idea of slowing down and observing life.
Then I added some natural sounds, such as the sound of walking, the sound of birds, the sound of wind blowing, and the sound of passers, to assist the content transmission of the painting.
From the answer of Q2-2, I found that with the help of voice, their understanding and association are closer to the author’s original intention.
2) This painting is too complicated
This picture is composed of many small pictures, and too much content will easily cause confusion to the audience.
I think I can try an abstract or surreal painting for my next intervention, and I can add more sensory experiences.
3) Question: how can I balance the connection and the understanding? how can I acquire evidence that the audience connect with the artwork? (not by questionniare)
I chose to start with ‘tips’ because I found some students want to build their personal branding by creating an art-business account, but they don’t know how to start it. I also found that some tips provided online are quite general and are not only for art students. So I thought maybe interview the successful person and provide tips could help them. After I talk it with my tutor, I noticed that successful people wouldn’t share their secrets. (I guess that’s why I sent lots of emails but nobody reply, and I didn’t realize it before.) In addition, the tips I’m offering are not what I or my audience can be successful if we follow it, so this way is useless. And this is not an intervention because it didn’t make the change.
