I am not entirely sure why the course material now requires me to record correspondence with my tutor about my chosen subject for Assignment One. It is not something that any of the other modules have asked for. Nevertheless, suitably redacted to concentrate on the principal subject, here is my email and my tutor’s reply:
“Whilst the idea of the Beautiful has not really engaged me I feel more drawn to the ideas of the Sublime and that is the path I want to go down. If you have a look at my recent blog-post, particularly on 1.6 The contemporary Abyss and preparatory work in 1.7 you will get an idea of where my thinking is heading at the moment. The ideas that appeal most to me are the Sublime as representing the unrepresentable, the void, and Buddhist notions of emptiness/nothingness. The two particular artists who are influencing me most at the moment are Hiroshi Sugimoto and James Turrell. What I have been concentrating on is a series of sky-scapes, cloud-scapes, with a view to producing images that are in a way devoid of any meaning or significance in and of themselves – other than at a most basic level, meteorological records – almost abstract, hinting at something ineffable and transcendent (without wishing to sound too much likes Pseuds’ Corner!).
If you have a moment please take a look and yours thoughts would be most welcome. All going well I would hope to have this assignment finalised within the next few weeks, at which point I would propose simply to produce a further blog post covering the points required by the brief and a final set of images. I will probably also include contact sheets to give some idea of the preparatory work and final selection process.”
Reply:
“The direction you’re taking A1 looks fine, with some solid points of research – Turrell, Sugimoto and Richter: they all have a solid conceptual framework for their work. Also, very detailed exercises uploaded to your LL.”
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 