Thursday, 28 April 2016

Context of Practice 1 Evaluation

The Context of Practice (COP) module made me more aware of ethical practice by introducing philosophical concepts related to culture and design. I have learnt that the design process is not just about making impressive things for self-promotion as the process must effectively communicate my response for a given brief to the audience. Although I found reading academic articles challenging at first, the study tasks given during seminar sessions helped me to familiarise with the language used in academic writing, and ultimately, apply it to my written assignments. I really enjoyed reading for COP because it gets me to evaluate deep concepts like Adorno's theory of the Culture Industry and Freudian theory. Moreover, it makes me appreciate what I have, and cut down unnecessary consumption despite all the temptations that come from publicity.
We were told to choose a question and write an essay at the beginning of the academic year, in which I choose a question about the relationship between Animation and the Culture Industry. I wrote several drafts to get to the final writing to ensure that the tone of voice in my essay is appropriate to the concept being discussed in the essay. It is a painstaking process of researching to develop a deep understanding of the concept of Culture Industry, yet it is worthwhile since it allows me to consider different perspectives about the concept and use it to critically analyse the animation industry. The idea for my animated response through reading other essay by Adorno titled 'How to Look at Television' in which he explained how the theory of Culture Industry is structured to control the unconsciousness of the people, to depoliticise them so that it maintains the status quo in the capitalist society. I decided that motion graphic is the best way to present my visual response because it has the capacity to clearly present the process of animation, as a product of the Culture Industry, influence the mind of the audiences who watched it. I am pleased with how my animation turns out as it is my first time animating with After Effects, and I relied heavily on online tutorials while doing it. As I am new to the software, the effects that I could make is limited, hence I made some changes from the initial storyboarded idea as I could not figure out how to make some of the effects. For instance, instead of having a camera panning away from the audience and zooming into Walt Disney, I made a ripple effect while Walt pops into the scene.

Procrastination would always be the most prominent issue that I face when I was writing the essay. Although I like the module, it is still hard for me to have the motivation to start work early, and it took me a while before I get myself to start writing even though I know what I want to discuss about in my essay. I need to be more disciplined and stick to my schedule.

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