Tag: hand-in work

Research Report

The general gap that I identified is the gap between art graduates and mature, self-supporting artists. Art graduates usually face employment difficulties after graduation, while some successful artists develop their careers all-around way. But no ‘rope’ can guide art graduates and tell them how to plan their careers and what abilities they need.

However, I do not identify this gap at the beginning. At the very first of this project, the observation that I placed is about the problematic employment of Art graduates. I try to help art students sell their artworks better, from operating commercial social accounts to generate purchase behaviour to let the audience better understand the work when viewing the painting. Throughout the whole process, I verified and evaluated my research question. Finally, after independent study, I clarified the observation I identified as the ‘rope’ I mentioned before.

During the independent study period, my research question is how can I increase the audience’s experience when visiting the exhibition to better understand and connect with the artwork? Especially for some abstract paintings, the incomprehension is a big reason for the lack of connection and resonance. And I want to strengthen this connection to narrow the distance between Art and the public, thereby increasing the audience of Art and potential customers who buy Art. In the long run, this is also helping to solve the problem of employment difficulties for art students.

I tried to use multi-sensory experiences to help the audience resonate and understand the artwork more. Therefore, in my secondary research section, I check the related theories and relative works in this area to determine whether I can do something different. For example, from the book ‘Seven Days in The Art World’, I started to think about the distance, connection, and resonance between Art and the public. Then, when defining resonance, I described resonance as arousing the audience’s thoughts and memories after reading an article named ‘Art reaches within aesthetic experience, the self and the default mode network’. Besides, I researched Bauhaus Color Theory, Kandinsky’s work and Newton’s Musical Color Wheel, which inspired me to conduct my intervention.

In addition, I visited some exhibitions and talk with my stakeholders as my primary research to acquire relative information from my angle. For instance, I visited Catrin Huber’s exhibition and found the Tate Sensorium exhibition online. Both of these two exhibitions have a multi-sensory part for the audience. But I think Catrin’s use of multimedia technology is to display works more comprehensively than to strengthen the resonance of the audience. Similarly, as a commercial exhibition, the Tate Sensorium exhibition has made some attempts with multiple senses, but I think their gimmick is more than trying to assist the delivery of the content of the work and assist the audience’s understanding.

Moreover, I use interventions to verify my questions and use questionnaires to collect feedback. I have experienced four interventions, and my audiences are those who like Art and have a hobby of watching exhibitions. At first, I created background sound based on the content of an abstract painting to test whether it can give audiences more imagination and generate purchase behaviour. But in this way, it is hard to tell whether the audience buys the artwork itself or the whole experience.

So next, I invited audiences to create sound by themselves. The feedback shows that they have more resonance, but they have no desire to buy it. Through the feedback, I noticed that there is no direct connection between the resonance and the generation of buying behaviour. After that, I am no longer taking buying behaviour as the only goal but turning to the multi-sensory experience and better understanding. I combined Newton’s and Kandinsky’s theories, created a piece of melody based on a painting. This time, the results show that the melody cannot help them have more connection, and it will affect the original meaning of the painting.

Lately, I experimented with an actual exhibition hall through a friend’s pop up exhibition. This time I use sound to express the same emotions as the picture, instead of converting the contents into the corresponding instrument or sound as before. I put a QR code on the wall to acquire feedback, and it shows that some viewers think that the sound made more sense in the painting, and it complements the images. The questionnaire data shows that 60% of people think the voice is constructive, 40% think it helps to some extent, and 6.67% think it is not helpful. I think this feedback is more objective than the previous interventions. Because it is placed in an actual exhibition hall, and the feedback comes from people who visited the exhibition hall.

Overall, my strength is certain logical thinking skills and planning ability, from planning to implementation to collecting feedback. At the same time, I also have self-management skills and practical communication skills. During the independent study, I attended every tutorial and clearly express my process and thoughts with my tutor. However, I also have many shortcomings. For example, my self-reflection and summary ability and critical thinking need to be strengthened. Both in this MA course and after graduation, these two abilities are crucial. Equally, I have learned a lot about the project so far. First of all, I have a deeper understanding of the methodology of this MA course and the meaning of my project. It’s a spiral process that keeps asking questions, practicing, and then evolving through feedback. This process requires the ability of self-reflection and review as well. Secondly, it helps me better understand this industry and my career after I graduate. In the journey of unit two, through interventions from different angles and methods, I gradually found a direction to make my project more meaningful, which is to create a ‘rope’ for art graduates, instead of only from the perspective of the exhibition. Thirdly, I learned some new knowledge that I didn’t know before, such as Art market, Synesthesia, Colour-emotion associations, and Colour- sound associations and so on. Fourth, technically I learned how to use sound editing software.

Project 5- The change I want to see

My general research area is about the employment situation of art students. Eleanor (2018) said that the watchdog found that many colleges collected little data about the destinations of their students. Where data was available it was found that arts and media courses scored low in terms of employment prospects. Eva A (1993) stated that many of the respondents were expecting to have a difficult time after graduation, trying to accomplish multiple goals of getting admitted to a Graduate Art program, becoming a practicing artist, and finding a survival job.

For my primary research, I investigated the employment situation of my fine art classmates. The data shows that only 4% of people are doing an art-related job, while 17% have jobs entirely unrelated to their majors. 37% of them choose to be a teacher, and 15% of people are designers now.

In the beginning, my research data made me think that there are two main reasons for the difficult employment of art students. One is the nature of the major. Art major is a creative major and does not have a solid professional attribute. Kobe (2015) said that in uncertain economic times, any student graduating from university is no longer guaranteed a job. If this is true of students graduating with degrees in such career fields as business, law, and teaching, it is even truer in the creative field. The other reason is that some students don’t like this major, so it’s hard for them to stick with it and become an artist, and they change careers.

Subsequently, I questioned that whether there are any other reasons. After reading a few more articles about it, I came up with a few different reasons.
1) There is a mismatch between the number of art students and the number of jobs available. Eleanor (2018) argued that Arts and media does stand out as the area where there is the greatest mismatch between the numbers of students taking the courses and their future employment in the industry.
2) Art students lack of career counseling in their university. 82% of the art students felt that they had had inadequate career counseling in their schools, as compared with only 59% of the English students and 68% of the psychology students (Whitesel, 1980). Eva A (1993) said that having career information available in Art department offices and offering career-oriented Art courses to tell the student about what to do with a major in Art and how to prepare for that is essential. However, I think this point is a little outdated since these two articles were published 30 or 40 years ago. Nowadays, many universities set up career service centers for students to prepare their CVs or interviews.
3) Students who choose fine arts majors are mainly motivated by their interests, not by their future careers. Student interest in the subject is an important influence on major choice. Passion drive students’ lives and tastes for majors are a dominant factor in choosing specific majors by students (Jaradat, 2015). They had chosen their particular area of concentration in Art because of enjoyment in working with that medium, skill or familiarity with the medium, preference for the type of Art product created, better rapport with the professors, or preferences for the social structure in that area (Eva A, 1993).
4) The personality of art students leads to their limited choice of jobs. Eva (1993) claimed that the literature showed that Art students tended to have values systems and personality traits that might make working at certain jobs more difficult. Examples were not like a job that involved a boring routine or not liking to be a ‘pushy salesperson.’

Having analysed all of the points above, I now feel my topic is a complex topic with different reasons. My potential change has two directions. One is to make college students aware of choosing a major carefully by presenting employment problems. The other is to integrate resources to provide college students with a more comprehensive understanding—for example, the foundation course of UAL. But foundation courses are mainly for students who can afford it and are willing to spend a year exploring it. I would pay more attention to other student groups. Of the two directions, I personally prefer the first one. Because awakening students’ awareness is more valuable than providing information directly, if they have this awareness and are more careful and rational in their choice of major, they will always have a way to find relevant information.

Bibliography

Eva A, T., 1993. Program and Career Perceptions of Undergraduate Students Majoring in Fine Art. Ph.D. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Whitesel, L., 1980. Career Attitudes of Art Students. Studies in Art Education, 22(1), p.36.

Eleanor, H., 2018. Arts students given ‘false jobs hope’ by colleges. Daily Mail, p.21.

Jaradat, M., 2015. What’s Really Matter When Choosing a College Major!. International Journal of Arts and Commerce, 4(2), p.94.

Bonita M, K., 2015. Entrepreneurship for the Creative and Cultural Industries. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge.

Summary of my project 4

Question:

How can art graduates develop their careers in the Internet age.

Action:

Unfamous is one of the reasons why it is hard for those students to support themselves by their talent. Sometimes people are likely to buy an artwork not because they like it but because of the creator’s reputation. To confirm this, I conducted an experiment. I shared three different paintings with a few friends and told them two of them were from a master, and one was from a student. Most of them think master’s works are better than student. But the truth is those two master’s works were created by animals, while the student’s work was created by Picasso.

Based on this, if audiences know the artwork’s creator in advance, it will influence their judgment. In this internet age, it is an excellent chance for creative people to share their talent with the public, but almost all the platforms and social media that deal with artworks cannot be anonymous. So, my potential change is that I can create an anonymous platform or a free magazine to help talented people sell their artworks.