Learning Outcome 1:
Formulate, describe and implement a challenging and self-directed programme of study, relating to your Study Statement.
(Assessment Criteria: Enquiry)
I formulated this program overlayed on the course calendar.
It’s pretty full for the first 20 weeks because that’s what’s already or is about to happen.
The rest of the units are deliberately vague…
I have ideas…
I intend to develop the ironic materiality of Hu-Cow and start an exploration into the financial grip of oil companies on food production and how emerging technologies are vying for world dominance (they could be the solution) in F*sting the Oil Companies.
I will be using social media, animation, installation and performance.
I will be running workshops here in Wales and online at UAL on Emerging Technologies, Gender Identity and, of course, Eco-Mindfulness.
I will be developing The Mycelium Art Network…. Podcast, Symposia, Collaboration and looking at Art Funding for that work.
…as did the opportunities…
I made an animation for an open call; I was delighted when it was chosen to be exhibited.
I reflected on these opportunities in this blog:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/10/18/how-i-embrace-creativity-creating-space/
I also spoke in this blog briefly about the Feminist Internet; I had applied for a residency with them, but better still, they gave me a job running the online side of the reading groups that went with the Embodying Horizons workshops… and I will be presenting at the upcoming symposium in spring 2024 if they get funding.
If they don’t, that will be sad, but hopefully, we can use the contacts made to carry this work forward. We have already set up a WhatsApp group of creatives, tech, research academics and artists from around the world.
Everything is always about funding, but that’s the nature of public-facing art. I’m seeing established artists struggle with this, so I will investigate how to finance major projects, which will be the challenge for year two. Linett Kamala says she gets the funding all sorted and accounted for before tackling the in-depth aspects of the art. This sounded cold and business-like and is probably counter-intuitive to traditional art practice. Still, with public-facing art, that assumed paradigm has to shift. Artists need funding.
I hope to continue working with the Feminist Internet on future projects.
The impact on me as an artist was profound when I attended the second workshop in person, both in what I could see as new possibilities within my practice and what could be physically possible as a disabled person.
Travelling to London from a little village in Wales is no easy feat, even more so if you have mobility issues. I talk in this blog about mobility but, more importantly, how seminal this visit to London might have been to my art practice.
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/11/29/speculative-identities-ai-prompts-are-witchcraft-spells/
Learning Outcome 2:
Implement appropriate working methods for building an independent and effective self-organisation that enables the critical engagement with practice-based research.
(Assessment Criteria: Process)
This is a brutal statement, but in my art practice, I deal with very brutal realities.
If you have a fairly limited lifespan, you can’t f*ck around!
If you are trying to Save the Earth equally, you are obliged to get on with it!
Everyday hurts… I don’t want to surrender… so I have to have a process and routine… in many ways, artists seek to disrupt routines, but chronic long-term illness will do that for you nicely.
I spend an awfully long time in the toilet every day; there, I write and read… I am always making notes…
I write for the blog on the loo, and I often write scripts or outlines for stories, but I do love poetry; this is about AI and war…
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/10/26/desensitised-to-unimaginable-violence/
Once I get up and dressed, I take my breakfast into the studio…
I make using supplies I already have to reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse…
When I can travel outside the confines of the beach hut, I say yes to opportunities to network… with my old university contacts, my art community, my art cohort, local galleries, art centre and LGBTQ+ networks… I engage… I am even visiting a dairy farm next week!
But some days, I can’t even make it down the stairs… they can be my most productive days as I write and animate lying down; it reduces the pain…
This post looked at a side art journey.
Its rationale is fear; all artists experience that within their practice.
I was banging on about a drawing experiment, but scroll halfway down, and you’ll see I am apprehensive about my trip to London… sometimes you have to let go of fear and just do it…
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/11/01/its-pssing-me-off-the-frustrations-of-an-artistic-journey/
What started as a way of getting me into the studio became a meditation and, eventually, a piece of work.
It was the surprisingly simple process of gel plate printing on my notes…
The beginning of this process can be seen in this blog post, as can the coalescence of my practice focus.
Those concerns haven’t changed, but I see the drift into a more intense focus on gender identity, pushing my practice into new territory.
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/02/15/whats-your-gender/
I have polished my animation language, but action art research has also developed depth in sculpture, writing, and emerging technology, changes I just couldn’t have imagined in those early days.
The gel plate printing developed into Hu-Cow: Titty Milk Dairy Rebellion for the upcoming interim show at CSM, which is an installation, animation and performance.
This is a long blog post and keeps growing! Read if you will, it’s a process post but it does have moments of reflection and realisation:
‘…looking at a busy work bench eventually gave the thought, this piece is coming together… What started as a gel plate meditation has developed into a interdisciplinary way of communicating ideas’
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/24/riveting-stuff/
I love words, especially new words; they are like gateways to a new adventure, a new thought, new art and, therefore, new knowledge. Their exploration has been fundamental in the development of my practice.
I am absolutely convinced that AI works like a Dada pick and mix of choosing words/code out of an infinite/finite Dada black bag…
I resemble that remark…
I talk more about this/like this in this blog. This is a perfect example of how my brain works…
My note-making at the Monday lectures is becoming poetry… they are, of course, streams of consciousness.
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/15/euro-bitch-daria-blum/
Learning Outcome 3:
Communicate a critical understanding of your developing practice.
(Assessment Criteria: Knowledge, Communication)
Micheal Parkinson once said that John Betjeman used humour as a weapon…
Clem Crosby UAL Academic Support says the beauty of art can be weaponised…
Talking of weapons, could emerging technologies, be a force for good?
Good question?
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/16/a-i-and-robots-who-will-spank-climate-chaos
Weaponising art sounds dangerous… but as soon as you say the word humour your mind is more forgiving more accepting… therefore art through humour can be most subvisive…
In this blog, I have a light-hearted look at tech’s progress through my life and the rapid changes coming while undertaking action art research.
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/02/05/why-look-at-emerging-tech/
You can see me communicating, subverting and creating a mycelium-like art network, ‘THE NETWORK’ in the blog post:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/12/06/five-gold-rings/
The organic mycelium network refers to the underground grid of fungal threads called mycelium.
What an mycelium-like art network might look like and what I’m trying to create is described here:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/15/the-mycelium-network/
In developing the Hu-Cow piece I aim to build:
A Network of Queer Identity, Enabled Art Action and Eco-mindfulness through Humour.
The start is here:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2023/11/10/hu-cow-titty-milk-dairy-rebellion/
You can see how that work is progressing on this blog:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/11/boob-paintings-2/
The blog describes being in the thick of the making part of the installation; in reality, it was only the beginning…
The co-foundation of this work is an animation about the dairy and beef industry using my cartoon characters, but it came after the installation piece. It takes time to think of characters and their storyline and redemption arc…
Edited parts of the film will go onto social media platforms after the show.
I want the animation to be shown at a film screening; however, censorship may preclude this! Interestingly, I’ve noted a fellow student is using Only Fans as part of their practice; maybe that is where the Hu-Cows animation should live, free of censorship, or maybe censorship makes it more alluring… I have catered for censorship within the performance and the QR code bomb.
This post reflects on the process and inspiration for the animation:
https://dpmatthews.art.blog/2024/01/21/animation-mx-farm-hu-cows/
What the final exhibition will look like will depend on exhibition briefings and what happens during the hang at the Mothership.
I am flexible and want to make this piece work within the framework of its setting and contribute to a good outcome for the whole MA interim show.
Communicating to a wide range of audience profiles takes flexibility. One can’t be all things to all people, especially if you are using adult animation. Still, I want to codify the complex intersectionality of Global Climate Chaos and the creative flexibility of Queer Gender Theory in a multi-layered approach that penetrates the inertia of the Anthropocene. A double-blind bid that gets you one way or the other!
During my second tutorial, Jonathan asked what was the most challenging aspect of making this work.
My answer: It was teasing a simple message out of a complex web of climate chaos in a way that subconsciously subverts the dominant narrative of climate inaction.
To tune you into a new paradigm without turning you off to change.
If all it does is make you laugh or question its intention or linger in your thoughts, it HAS ‘glitched’ the system, and you become part of…
THE NETWORK…
Mx.D.P 
Leave a comment