So, it’s mid-March now and I’m truly into Semester 2 which began at the end of January. After being informed by UEM that we had to drop one of our two classes for this semester as although we were informed and enrolled in it being taught in English – it turned out it was in fact in Spanish. It was of course not possible for us all to still do this class as we are by no means fluent enough in the language to complete the uni work efficiently. Additionally, we knew there were no other classes we wanted to enroll onto as we chose them at the beginning of the year, purely based on the most relevant to our interests and those that were taught in English. However, only doing one class means that I have had even more time to engage in other types of learning to develop myself as a person and benefit me for my future career such as: decoding and learning the Spanish language through tutoring/ set homework/ independent practice, conducting and developing my own photography projects and shoots, considering final year ideas in preparation for my return to Coventry Uni, experiencing new art and culture and updating and advancing my social media which is incredibly important for myself as a photographer.
The class we are enrolled on: ‘Creation and Visual Development Techniques’ is split into two classes per week, each with a different teacher. One of the teachers is who we had for our two classes last semester, which is beneficial for us as we have a good rapport with her. For her class, the first task was to create a poster for an art exhibition which I didn’t personally find very helpful as I wasn’t learning any new skills which would benefit me for my future career.
The second task which is more like a project, due in mid-May, consists of a group task, to create a ‘scanimation’ book. I am also currently finding that this task is not helpful, as although I am learning new skills in Photoshop to create the ‘scanimations’ which will appear to move when the pages are printed with the help of acetate, they are skills which I will never use again in my career and are not relevant to my artistic interests. However, it is still practice in Photoshop, which at the end of the day, is not entirely a bad thing. Additionally, the part of the task which involves making the book will also not benefit me as the concept (a children’s book) is not relevant to my photography interests and it will be made on a basic level; as we have been informed we will print it at the university on thick card, attach the acetate and bind it and I believe this also from past experiences.
On a positive note, I have enjoyed more the tasks set by the other teacher. The first one was to simply illustrate to him which artists we admire or aspire to be like, so he could get a feel for what kind of work we like to produce; as he stated that we could tailor the tasks to our field of interest. So far, we have been able to do this but only with his tasks set; the next task was to create a stop-motion video. This was another group task and meant that we had to essentially take a lot of photos on the ‘burst’ mode on our DSLRs and put it into a video format, in order to create the stop-motion effect. We chose to create a video which reflected all five of our (myself and the four girls I live with) favourite memories we have of living in Madrid and our Erasmus year. We chose five photos each, including one group one of all of us and got them printed as authentic-looking polaroids. We then re-visited or recreated the backdrops as best we could of the photo’s locations, moving the photo around: starting the sequence with the photo against the lens, bringing it out and moving it around and then bringing it back up close to the camera lens until it goes black and to then change to the next location. Each of us played as a ‘character’ in the narrative and the entire video is to represent the happy memories, experiences and opportunities we’ve been lucky enough to have and appreciate from doing our Erasmus year and living in Madrid. The final location/photo is of at UEM itself, to represent how the video task revolved around completing it for the university and that this whole Erasmus experience has been because UEM accepted us to go and study there. We were all very pleased with the final outcome and although this wasn’t a task which has given me any new skills to use in my future career, I still practiced ones I already have and I think that it’s a lovely and treasurable keep-sake video to have for years to come.