As you say, ‘Since this assignment is related to the digital issue, I thought it was fundamental to use tools that are specific to the medium, not only in the creation but also in the presentation of the work.’ I would go further to say the subject chosen and its presentation are perfectly on point with the intention of the course.

My only concern is that Assignment 4 is intended as the development stage of an idea before fully resolving it in Assignment 5, what you’ve produced does seem to be fully resolved.

Feedback on assignment
There is an effective balance between the conceptual intent and the interest of its visual representation presented in the context of Instagram. Realised as Assignment 5 I would have viewed it as a fit and appropriate summation of the development of your work across the course. I think perhaps how we need to look at this is rather like a maths exam where you’ve got the right answers but you haven’t shown your working. We need to show your ‘workings’ in the first part of what is effectively a two part assignment spread over Assignments 4 & 5.

Perhaps this gives a clue as to how to achieve that, ‘I considered the possibility of using my series of portraits belonging to the “Cadernos da Limia” and designing each of the filters myself using the Spark AR tool – which I installed on my computer and learned to use following some tutorials’.

I absolutely understand your reasoning for not following up on that but you need to take steps back to exam other paths, such as going through the process of designing your own filters and investigating other routes, which may indeed inform what is so far your ultimate solution, otherwise we have an Assignment 5 complete but no Assignment 4. That is unless you can see a way forward for this work being further developed in Assignment 5. Perhaps the apparent completeness is blinding me to the possibilities of further development.

However I believe the work you’ve made so far in this assignment has been very progressive, the conception, the research and the realisation all mesh together to produce a very effective visual representation of a very live issues created by the mass
adoption of digital culture.

In that respect you’ve found some interesting sources, particularly concerning the culture of idiocy, although this term has been carefully separated out from stupidity there still lurks the idea that there is perhaps a pejorative aspect to this term.

It feels to me that sometimes, lurking behind an academically formed respectability there’s a political ruefulness that control and critique of the medium has been usurped by a billion smart phones and new ways must be found to recapture the authority over the medium, one way being by curation rather than generation, or indeed by appropriating idiocy.

Coursework

As always the coursework is conscientiously addressed and punctilious in execution. One can see how projects, such as The Digital Self have fed in to the assignment. This is the function of the coursework, to support the development of the assignments.

Research

Your research has been particularly effectively used for this assignment. I’ve already referred to you citing Olga Goriunova and perhaps work like Juan Adrio’s could point a way for some more discursive experiments in this Assignment 4; even if the work so far made is eventually substantially the final outcome of Assignment 5.

Learning Log

As before…The log is easy to navigate with appropriate menu items. There is interesting variedcontent under the Reflections menu item but it needs self-reflective posts about how you are currently relating to your own work and tutor feedback.
Suggested reading/viewing

Perhaps the consideration of memes in the culture of idiocy might be a branching of
the ideas to consider, available from the UCA online library…

Shifman, L. (2014) ‘The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres’ In: Journal of
Visual Culture 13 (3) pp.340–358.

You didn’t add this to your bibliography, available from the UCA online library…

Goriunova, O. (2013) ‘New media idiocy’, Convergence, 19(2), pp. 223–235.

Pointers for the next assignment

See assignment feedback.

Summary

Strengths :
• Conceptual progression
• Supported by research

Areas for development:

• Illustrate visual development in addition to presenting finished work
• Reflecting on own progression andtutor reports