Assignment 4 Feedback

The brief: Using a found book, significantly alter the appearance of the pages to create a new volume that is personal to you. This can be any kind of book that is of interest to you. For example, a fiction book, a non-fiction book, a picture book or a photo book.

This assignment essentially forced you to respond to a readymade object, the physicality of it, as well as its content, and I see from your notes that this was a difficult project for you and that you weren’t happy with the outcome, and this does show in your results. I think you set yourself too complex a task here and as a result, spread yourself rather thin. A better approach may have been to focus on one theme, rather than multiple, and interact with the text a bit more (like in “Tree of Codes”, or Jill Magid’s screen prints for “The Spy Project”) rather than introducing lots of extra elements that just overwhelm and muddy the message. Despite the technical difficulties, you made a valiant effort to produce an engaging book, and your layered windows and use of colour has great potential, so I wouldn’t feel too disheartened that the result wasn’t quite what you hoped for. Overall your response to this part of the course has been very good, it is clear that you are revisiting work and altering your approach if the results aren’t communicating in the way that you want, which shows perseverance and dedication. With a bit more focus on tidying up your presentation, your work has great potential.

I’m not surprised that my tutor has picked up on the imperfect nature of this assignment and I’m actually pleasantly surprised that she looks at it more positively than I do. My tutor’s perspective is that I set myself too complex a task and spread myself too thinly which I agree with. She suggests focusing on one theme which seems like a sensible plan. Perhaps when I rework this assignment I can focus only on the evolutionary angle or perhaps remove it all together? I could maybe even focus on one section of the book (e.g. gluttony, wrath) or remove certain techniques such as the collaging to streamline the book? I’ve also been advised to interact with the text more which may be a challenge if I want to avoid the religious aspect of the book.