Sophie Ashdown

If you’ve been having trouble sleeping, you may have read my long rambling about my quest to decide on my research topic.

In the last installment, this was the working title:

“How do contemporary data artists incorporate the geometric elements and industrial aesthetic of Constructivism in their visualisations of data, comparing specifically the output of Artist Nathalie Miebach and Data Journalist David McCandless.”

It was a no-brainer for me to use Nathalie Miebach as a focus for the research since I love her work SO much:

However I was nervous about whether using a non-artist (David McCandless) would be valid for use in the research paper but having talked to my new tutor (Gia Milinovich) I now feel much better about my intended course of action.

At Tuesday’s session last week we were put into groups with one of three research tutors. I will admit that once I knew that Gia was one of the tutors, I blatantly begged Jonathan to put me in her group! I attended the session that Gia ran about Metamodernism back in March, and also did the walking session from Whitechapel Gallery with her and loved both sessions. I have since read more on Metamodernism, although I can’t pretend to fully grasp all of the nuances. It needs more dedicated time as there doesn’t seem to be a simple “layman’s terms” explanation but I’ll keep trying. I hope to learn and understand more over the coming months in further sessions with Gia.

In the Tuesday session I talked to Gia about my idea and outlined how I came to it (more details on that here.) I expressed my concern about whether it was “arty” enough and Gia quelled my trepidation. My topic is overall about art and it doesn’t matter if one of my focus “artists” isn’t a traditional artist. David McCandless creates work that is visually interesting to me, even if it comes from a scientific and journalism perspective.

Gia talked about the Data Science Institute at Imperial College, and how I should get in contact with them to see if there is someone who would talk to me about it. I’ve already looked them up and found contact details, although I’m not quite ready to start talking to them yet. I want to form my plan better first and explore what I want to gain from talking to them, then have a set of questions and intentions ready for when I make contact. I imagine that their time is very valuable and I don’t want to waste it. I’m hoping I can perhaps find a sympathetic PhD student there who will give me some time to answer questions and won’t mind being mentioned in my research paper.

So now I’m working on my first draft of 1000 words. Currently I’ve got a rough outline and am working on putting more information into each section.

I’ve already realised that I need to refine my Research statement further, but I feel okay about this, since Gia said that it can be adjusted multiple times right up to the last moment, as long as the paper supports it.

Ultimately I’m feeling good that I have a path of action, and am excited about where the research will take me.