reflective journal – Sidi's Journey

Intervention 7 – A workshop – feedback, reflection and model iteration

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.

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.

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.

Career Model iteration – Version 4 – Accountability

After I did intervention 6, I admitted that there are some problems in my intervention, and I will redesign it and conduct my next intervention. But this intervention is not totally useless. The feedbacks showed art students lack organizational ability. The problem is it’s not powerful enough to persuade them. In addition, I also think the organizational ability is related to the ability to have multiple identities, so I put it under the ability to have multiple identities as a sub-ability.

And I add one more ability which is accountability. I found it from the reflection of myself. This ability contains 1) the ability to think independently 2) self-motivation. I noticed that I like to acquire the permission of my tutor before I make an action. And I also like to believe what the tutor said because I believe they have more experience and knowledge that is much beyond myself. This is a challenge for me. But now I realized it through my reflection. I believe there are some people like me who need to develop accountability as well, so I add it.

Intervention 6 – organisation ability test: process, feedback and reflection

At first, I am trying to design a board game that combines and connect all of these abilities, and then invite art student and art practitioners to play it together. Then I can observe the difference between the two groups and let the art student group realize the gap between themselves and the other group. I tried to find some board games, but I didn’t find a suitable one, and it’s hard to design a board game that meets my requirements and expectations. So I think maybe testing each ability one by one is also a good choice. and I would like to start with ‘organization ability’.

I am thinking about in what situation, people could realize that they lack some ability. I think there are two ways. One is comparing with others, and the other is being pointed out by others.

So, for me, I have two ways to design my intervention.

1) inviting mature art practitioners and art students to do/play sth together.

2)using a quiz/test to test art students and point out their shortcomings.

Since I didn’t find a suitable art practitioner now, and I can not make sure the art practitioner has the ability that the art student has not. So I wanna start my next intervention from the second way.

Then I design a quiz which is about organization ability, after they finished, I will show them the right answer and tell them that the more similar to the right answer the more organized people they are. My goal is to test 1) whether fine art students lack organization ability 2) whether I can make them realize it and change their minds about becoming more organized people.

https://www.wjx.cn/wjx/design/previewmobile.aspx?activity=135690783&s=1

The right answer should be 2-5-4-1-3, and the more similar to the right answer the more organised they are.

Reasons:

1) Two cats next to you are engaged in a fierce fight that is hard to stop. It is very dangerous for your artworks when you are painting, and the cat next to you is fighting because they might destroy your paintings. So the first thing is to divide them.
2) Your paint has tipped over. Usually, the paint is right next to you, so simply bending down to pick it up can prevent worse things from happening in a second. It also prevents fighting cats from stepping paint elsewhere.
3）The bathtub is about to overflow. Here I said ‘about‘, which means you still have time to turn it off. So it’s not too late to pick up a cat, pick up a paint can, and run to turn it off.
4) The doorbell is ringing. You can tell the person at the door to wait for two minutes when you deal with the previous things. And you don’t know what the guy at the door wants from you. If he takes a long time, by the time you get back, the cat may have destroyed your work, trampled paint all over the place, and the bathroom is also flooded.
5)The mobile phone is ringing. You can call back later, so the priority is the lowest.

Uncomfortable zone: I didn’t find people I was already familiar with this time, and I sent it to 6 fine art students. I also try to contact some Fine art students in UAL that I don’t know through the WeChat group of the university student Union. There are only six people so far, but at least compared to previous ones, This time I tried to find a target audience I didn’t know.

Their answers of question one:

A: 2-5-4-3-1

B: 1-5-4-2-3

C: 2-5-1-3-4

D: 3-5-4-2-1

E: 3-5-2-1-4

F: 2-5-1-3-4

Their answers to question two:

The more similar it is to ‘5-2-4-1-3’, the more organized you are. If your answer is far from this one, you need to work on your organizational skills! Do you think you are an organized person? What do you think of this statement?

A: I don’t think I am an organized person, but I will try my best to keep things under control.

B: I don’t think the order can explain the ability of organization.

C: I am more organized. Everyone’s understanding of organization is different. I sorted things according to their urgency. Everyone has different views on these things.

D: Maybe

E:/

F: It depends on the situation. Sometimes when doing travel strategy, I will be more organized, but in daily life, it seems that it is not good.

Analyze and reflection:

All these participant didn’t answer the right answers that I design. I think their some problems in my test. I need told them this test is about organization ability at the beginning, and remind them that before they make chose they should consider the potential outcomes and the logical order.
I think maybe I should try test this through online workshop. Since some participants just fill this randomly rather than tell me their true thoughts. And the online workshop allows me to better observe the participants and judge whether the answers they give are not completely true.
At the end of this test, I should have told them the reasons of right answers, which will be more convincing.
I would say that this is a failed intervention. My goal is using this test as a intervention to 1) verify my assumption-they lack of organization ability. 2)help them realize it and try to develop it.

Reflection, Positionality and career model – version 3 – Appreciate ability

Conclusion: after I talk to this expert and did some research, I decided to combine her opinions and my original opinions to iterate my career model. Both of our opinions are right in their own way. But it also shows that each of us has our own positionality. So I think combining these two is a better way since this model is neither perfect nor the end, but a reference for my audiences, like giving the light in the dark, and an inspiration for them to think about their own personalized models.

Apart from that, she mentioned the ability to appreciate others, and be interested in others work and be kind. I think that is a great point, especially for art students, most of them are too confident and need to be humble. So I’ll iterate my career model by adding it.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KD7QLYD29/

I sent this email to ten UAL Fine Art staff and I received three replies. Although the quantity is not very large, I think the quality is good. Because two of the responses are the Fine Art course leaders. And I also had a deeper conversation with Patricia.

The result of the average rating is:

Organized ability: 5 stars

Communication ability: 5 stars

Cooperative ability: 4.3 stars

Business ability: 3 stars

After I got the questionnaire results and did research about those three artists, I am thinking about my definition of business ability.

Before art students graduate, they can freely pursue their own painting styles and favourite theme in universities studio. But when they need to face the problem of supporting themselves after graduation, maybe their personality style can’t make money quickly. So I think they need to have the ability to produce profitable commercial work which they may not like. But at the same time, art graduates can continue to pursue what they are really interested in.

It might work for some art graduates. But they need to be careful to balance the critical practice and commercial practices.

Like what Patricia said, 1. Artists should always focus on making their work in a way that is most interesting for them. If you’re trying to appeal to the market for the sake of making money your practice likely won’t get very far (and you’ll lose interest). 2. The market is hard to predict and trying to please someone else is no way to live.

I don’t mean to throw out my original definition, I think it’s worth being. At least it could give some art graduates new thought when they face problematic employment. But Patricia’s opinion also makes sense. I will combine it together and evaluate my model.

In addition, I also noticed her positionality.

Those who can pursue their art regardless of financial considerations, and those who are extremely talented enough to wear several hats and combine their artistic pursuits with other work, are a minority.

But her opinion also makes sense. When the path of art is narrow, art graduates need to be able to deal with multiple identities. And, how to balance those different identities really depends on different individuals.

Reflective journal – My mindset

Looking back at my decisions in the project so far, I find that my way of thinking is one-dimensional instead of thinking from a more diversified perspective.

I began with the problematic employment of art graduates, and I analysed the reasons for it. Then I found that it’s a complicated problem that contains many different reasons, from policy, personality, education to society etc. But for a one year MA project, I cannot solve all of these problems, and I have to start at one point.

Then the process becomes to:

One of the reasons is the lack of professional understanding when choosing a major, so I want to create a platform to help art students better understand their major before choosing their major.
It is difficult for art graduates to sell their paintings on the Internet because they cannot run commercial accounts. Therefore, I want to make a booklet to help them run commercial accounts on social platforms.
They couldn’t sell the paintings because the audience didn’t resonate, so I tried to strengthen the audience’s resonance through multi-sensory.

I find my way of thinking is very direct, point-to-point problem-solving. For example, I only consider art students changed careers because of employment difficulties, but I didn’t think that at least they found a job. Should we do what we love or love what we do? I only consider how to help the audience understand the works of art students, but do they care whether the audience can appreciate their works?

I think I lack the ability to think comprehensively and critically. At the same time, the background research is not enough. In the future, I will ask myself more ‘why’ when making decisions and thinking about problems.

Reflective Journal – first failure intervention

In my first intervention, I try to create a brochure about how to create a business account by interviewing successful people. I successfully interviewed three people (my previous classmates who did very well), while other famous artists who didn’t know me didn’t reply to my email.

Then I realised that it was a failed intervention. Because I didn’t change anything and successful people won’t tell you their secret.
From this experience, I learned that what is real intervention. Interviewing could be background research or secondary research because it only knows something from others rather than your own experience.
Why it happened? firstly, I think I didn’t understand the meaning of intervention. But it was a good failure, at least I learned what intervention is. Secondly, I think I lack some life or work experiences. I even didn’t notice that successful people won’t share their secrets. I need to be more thoughtful and have more logical thinking. Next time, if I want to know some ‘secrets’ from others, think about why they would like to tell me, what I can offer them, and what profit they can acquire from me.

Reflective journal-my plan in unit 3

During unit 2, I did four interventions.

At first, I try to help art graduates sell their works better, and I think one of the reasons people won’t buy artworks is they lack resonance. So I mainly explore the best way of combining sound and painting to help the audience have more resonance when viewing artworks.
From 1) add the sound corresponding to the picture, to 2) invite the audience to create a sound for abstract painting by themselves, to 3) apply synesthesia to create melody, to 4) use sound to convey the same emotions of the painting.

In this process, I used intervention to verify and evaluate my research question. For example, after intervention 2, I noticed no direct relationship between purchase behaviors and resonance. So then I change my goal from generating purchase behavior to shorten the distance between public and artworks.
I want to say that intervention 4 is more successful than others in some way. Because it reaches out to real audiences and the sample size is the largest, and the data shows that it works.

But recently I have been thinking about another question. For artists/art students, do they really care about whether the audience can understand their work? If I find a way to help art graduates sell their artworks better, how can I ‘sell’ it to them? Will they accept it?
In addition, selling art is not the only way to help art graduates facing employment problems, nor should it be.

Now, go back to reflect and analyze the work that I did; I find that each intervention actually corresponds to an ability that art students need to possess in employment.
Then I realized that I am finding a ‘rope’ between newly art graduates and mature, well-rounded artists. This rope is a career model to guide newly art graduates on how to plan their future careers and what kind of ability they need to have.
So, I plan to find this ‘rope’ in unit 3 through more different ways and interventions. And my newest question is: How can I find the rope between newly art graduates and mature artists to guide art student plan their careers.

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.

Reanalyze and review the question

This diary is mainly to sort out the logic behind my project, and to reconfirm the purpose of the project. The original goal of my project is to solve the problematic employment of art students. Especially for those art students who want to support themselves by selling their artworks.

I thought the first reason that the audience won’t buy art paintings is that they don’t have resonance. So my intervention 2 and 3 is to combine other senses to help audiences to understand the meaning behind artworks and have more resonance.

However, for the audience, there is no direct connection between resonating and buying behaviour. I need to find other resonances that can resonate with the purchase behaviour.

I reanalyze the reason behind this question from different aspects (audiences, artists, exhibition, social, education and application), and I am trying to design my next intervention from a different angle.

For example, I can look for a special group as my potential customers, and try to establish the demand for buying art among them. This idea made me think about those people who need art therapy.

Or I can use an exhibition perspective as an entry point. For instance, the popularity of commercial exhibitions created for social media has led to more and more behaviours using exhibitions as background boards for photographing. People don’t want to immerse themselves in and admire a painting, let alone resonate and generate buying behaviour.

But I found that changing from another angle would deviate from my original purpose.

Maybe the problem is that the question I asked is not good enough. ‘How can I strengthen the connection between the audience and the artworks so that the audience will have the desire to buy? ’

Through my interventions 2 and 3, I verified that there is no direct connection between connection and purchase behaviour. Buying behaviour is a very complex behaviour, involving many complex factors, and resonance is only one of them.

In addition, it is too commercial to make buying behaviour the goal of my research. If art is just for buying and selling, this is not what I want.

So, based on the intervention I did before and some thoughts, I decided to optimize my question into: How can I increase the audience’s participation and interaction when visiting the exhibition so that the audience can have more understanding and connection with the artwork?

Of course, this project is not aimed at all art students. First of all, I am aimed at art students who are willing to add other factors to their works, so that the relationship between me and these creators is a cooperative relationship, rather than relying on my own understanding to modify their works. Secondly, as an art student and illustrator myself, I am willing to use my own work to do such experiments.

The feedback and reflection of intervention 1

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.