The task we were given this week was to make groups of two or three and create a collaborative piece of work. On the face of it this might seem extremely difficult not knowing any of the other students and considering their geographical spread.
To facilitate some kind of introduction we were asked to post either a quote or photograph or some other media on the forum to start a discussion.
The quote I noticed first was " Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" From "To Autumn" by John Keats
Link here
Posted By Philip. To me this gave the opportunity to explore the whole idea of Autumn, it's colour and it's bounty.
The second quote I had noticed was
“If you have fairy blood, even in the tiniest degree, you must live close to Fairy Land, and eat a little fairy food, or else you will always be hungry.”
by Robert Moss Link here
Posted by Jo-Ann
I was drawn to this because it was so different from the rest of the submissions, which were a mix of tv programmes, quotes from Shakespeare and well known clips from poems etc, nomne of which really attracted me in any sense.
I had put up a photograph I made of three blue fish.
Jo had commented on the colours here and suggested a possible project of colours of nature.
Long story short, Philip,Jo and myself decided to team up for this project. Quite early on we decided the way of combining three peoples work, but also showing those same peoples seperate ideas and skills was to create a magazine and make our contributions in the form of articles, with collaborative work interspersed. Our three themes were Fairies (Jo), Autumn cookery (Philip) and Natures bounty (Me). The task was really how to tie these three subjects together cohesively.
Jo has photoshop skills, so that was the magazine's production sorted, Philip is a cook who photographs food, so alright there, and I get out and about a bit so for my part it was just about taking some photographs and writing a piece to go with them.
I decided on a spoof story of going to look for food in the hedgerow but being interrupted by fairies being mischievous. Then taking photographs to prove my story.
This was the result. A horizontal orb web became a fairy hammock, shadows of leaves became dancing fairies and a colour anomaly on Blackberries became the fabled "Purple fairy berry" Then I just needed to tie it together with some text. This covered all three of the themes, Fairies,Food and Foraging.
My landscape image was used as the cover, so that was collaborative, so that fulfilled that brief.
Finally the back page shows all all of the themes in one place.
The magazine was 8 pages long. We had settled on the idea within 24 hours. All photos and text were ready by 72hrs. I think we did an amazing job seeing as how we did not know each other before this, and we ended up producing a professional looking piece of work which not only showed collaboration, it showed cooperation and highlighted all of our strengths within the context of a joint project. I am proud to have achieved this and am proud to have done that with Jo and Philip.
One group decided to take pictures of strangers after asking them to write down a wish. This was in three diferent countries-Italy, Dubai and England. The results were interesting, and a much larger sample might have shown a similarity between wishes which might have been a talking point.
One pair created a stunning set of images based on the efficacy of natural remedies, and two other groups created collages. Interesting to see the different approaches to the same problem.
All in all I found this exercise to be quite stimulating, in as much as it made me think about what I was doing from my partners perspectives, and produce something cohesive in a short space of time. I found the whole experience extremely enjoyable.
