Memory Artifact-A Reflective Review

There are a number of things I feel that are wrong with this artifact:

1. It doesn’t seem to have a point. I like to give my work a story or purpose, but at a glance these photos just seem irrelevant and pointless.

2. I don’t think I portrayed what I was trying to achieve with these photos in my development process, which directly resulted in point 1.

3. Through my waffling and mind wandering I went off the topic I originally aimed to achieve, which, again, directly resulted in point 2.

I now know not to let myself get carried away with my ideas, and to set myself boundaries and stay within them.

With all that aside, I do actually like these photos as an artifact. Considering photography was never something I had particularly wanted to use before and only went ahead with it because I wanted to try something out of my comfort zone, I think visually they look intriguing. And if at first they might seem a bit unnecessary, at closer inspection they do begin to tell a story. For the gravestones that can be read the audience will think “who is this ‘Mark Smith’? And what made them so important?” thus engaging them, forcing them to collectively remember them and having the desired effect.

Artifact 1-Memory

Here is my developed idea for my first artifact:

Idea 1-Development

After thinking about my first idea and how broad it is I realised that memory isn’t broad at all. In fact memory is very specific to each person. So with that in mind, I took the idea of memorials and condensed it down to a more personel level. And what do we use to remember people by? Thats right gravestone!!

Idea 1

Whilst in Berlin I noticed an overwhelming amount of memorials varying from specific memorials for the Romany Gypsy victims of WWII to more general memorials for all victims of war. This made me think: For a memory to exist, it needs to be remembered. This is what led me to my first idea for an artifact to do with memory: 15 images of remembrance. Obviously going back to Berlin would be rather unfeasible, so I’d need to scale it down to Coventry (an obstruction!!). As luck would have it Coventry was as much a victim of WWII as Berlin was and so there is no short supply of memorials knocking about.

To summarise my first idea for my first artifact is 15 images of memorials around Coventry.