Overall feedback

You have made a video to document your book project Four Bars. As we discussed in your previous assignment (4) the book is now almost ready for publication. The video is a tool to give a publisher – and a potential reader/viewer – the sense of the finished book. The book project – the idea, the targeted ‘call’ to composers, the collaborative process, and the book – is inspired and inspiring and also about what it means to be ‘inspired’. It has the potential to be a strong artwork in its own right, bringing about a dialogue between artforms and about methods. I feel however that your video does not show the book to best advantage, and that it would be good to rethink how you present the project for assessment. This is not a problem with the book as a form, but rather with the video, which has other things going on that detract from the experience of the project.

The sound and image of the metronome are obtrusive and also seem to me to go against the free interpretation by the composers of what ‘4 bars’ can be. Because it’s a video, you’ve had to decide how long to spend on each page rather than allowing the reader/viewer to decide to turn a page. Looking at the pages in the video on my big monitor, I can’t focus on the detail or try to interpret for myself. They all blend together and I don’t want to look through it all. You could potentially make a different ind of video where you move around the 4 bars and the photographs, spend different amounts of time etc. But I think that it just isn’t a video at least it doesn’t work as ‘video of the book’.

In your writing about Assignment 5 (word file) you introduce your ideas and your experiences and the journey you’ve taken with the book. Some way down, you discuss what you perceive as mistakes (though they are useful steps in thinking about the best way of realising the project). For assessment, I suggest that you introduce the project more clearly – saying what it is, and why it matters, how it works – how and why you did it. The theory though important to you and interesting cannot explain the work and the work is not an illustration of the theory. The Berger quote could be a good springboard to introduce the project. Or you could use quotes from the email exchanges with composers… or both. Get to the project sooner in the intro, for instance, ‘this project is about the relationship between things, between one art form and another and how images are interpreted… and meanings imagined…’(I’m sure you can say it better). Don’t be afraid of being very simple and clear about what is there, what happened and why it is important to you and to an audience. I know the text here is not for your assessment but you will be writing something.

At some point far down you write that,

‘The ultimate goal of the project has to be publication for the benefit of Musicians Without Borders, as required by the commitment made to the authors.’

Blas González

I am not sure that ‘ultimate goal’ is quite correct. You don’t have to justify the work in that way – it is a work of art, and the benefit is more diffuse and more expansive than selling books for Musicians Without Borders. It is important because you said you’d do that, but, as I said before that isn’t the only reason for the project. In a way it short circuits the potential meanings of the work to reduce the purpose to this (however important publication and remuneration are).

Feedback based on Learning Outcomes

BoW Assignment description of work:

As mentioned above, do read the assessment guidelines to help decide what to include and how to introduce the work. And make it easy for your assessors to approach the work, and engage with it.

As I discussed with Assignment 4, (I’m quoting because it’s important and true!) ‘The analogies with musical structures (sonatas etc.) that you’ve drawn out in your arrangement gives extra layers of meaning to the work, that can be noticed or just sensed in the background. The reader/viewer can focus in on formal aspects of the content of the images, and the music notation, or/and speculate on what the image diptychs refer to or depict (road surfaces etc.). This attention to the formal and subject matter unifies or rather accentuates the idea of reading the visual in the images – the photographs and accompanying musical notation. Or perhaps what you’re doing is asking the reader of the book to ‘play’ the book – like a musician would play the score. The book as score has abstract elements and concrete referents, and symmetry, transitions and so on. It is a beautiful and moving piece of work.’

You might choose an example to focus in on to show what you’ve done. Or just state that you are treating the book like a sonata… and the reader is invited to play the music of the images.

How to present the project and the book for assessment:

It is up to you of course how you decide to present your project, and you have experimented withdifferent possibilities. The most important thing is to show the work – the collaborations, the images, the book – in such a way that the reader/viewer appreciates its richness. This is not a presentation on the way to publication, rather, think of it as a non-commercial presentation that needs to work in its own right. You are free to do with it what you will.

The following are merely suggestions. 

  • I like the idea of an interactive pdf where the viewer can turn the pages so spend the time they want on each. It could be quite simple without sound, or it could be more complex and have hyperlinks that mean you can play the music. You might also be able to link to snippets of correspondence between you and the composers, or to very short bits of text like the Berger quote.
  • The mock-up of a book is also I think important (as you are planning).  I think because this isn’t a commercial proposition (for the purposes of your OCA assessment), you should allow the book to be as creative and experimental and beautiful as you want it to be -with its transparent pages, maybe fold-out too, some bigger and smaller… as you want. Could it fold out into a 3D model? Might it be a concertina-type publication so you can see the images all in a row? Try making different versions. Is the cover important? How would someone judge this book by this cover?
  • Could you create an audiofile for the book? A soundtrack…
  • The story of how the project came about is also important. How are you going to present this? You might not want to put all of the story into the book, but have a ‘making of the project’ book/poster/timeline/conversation…

Action points

Before you submit your work for assessment, do read through the assessment guidelines to be sure you understand how to edit and present your work for assessment. https://www.oca-student.com/resource-type/assessment-guidelines/assessment-guidelines-2020 -onwards
Make it easy for your assessors by giving them guidance and showing them the stages of the book project. These are clear and interesting: – taking the photos, sending them to composers, getting (or not) responses, putting them together… It is up to you how you present this but imagine the assessors don’t know your work already. Get to the book and make it easy to

  • Your idea to make a mock up for assessment seems like a good plan.
  • Try different versions to see what is most engaging. The targeted call to composers and the taking of the photographs and the process needs to be shared with assessors. The ‘meta-‘ part of your project.