Expanding my COP theme/question

This weeks session i have found really quite useful and i have picked up a few more interesting techniques and theories.  As i know the basic outline of my theme, it is now important to narrow my theme down to some specific area however with that i need to expand my knowledge at the same time, seeking out other areas/fields as a way of conducting my research. 

In the session we covered answering aspects of the 6 outlining topics which are:

• Politics 
• Society 
• Culture 
• History 
• Technology 
• Aesthetics 

These are really good ways of narrowing a project down by focusing on one area but it is also important to explore the possibilities of them first. With my overall theme of music it is very interesting as i believe it can cover all of these categories and because i am aiming to focus it through the medium of television and perhaps music video something like technology even comes into play. 

One exercise we were given was related to these six topics but to think in a different way with them as we were instructed to think about and apply the heading topics to the formal elements.

These elements being; line, shape, colour, texture and collage. These are specifically important as they are related to ways in which we can conduct our practical research in particular things we craft into our visual journals. 

Underneath is my groups sheet which has the formal element headings on and above where we felt the six headings fitted/related. 

I found this was an intriguing way of thinking about the headings and was interested in the ways that even collage can be linked through culture and history. In culture there is many different types of people 'spliced' together to create one image or society and through History there is little pieces that connect and it makes a great analogy as to how History is one massive juxtaposed piece of work. 

Towards the end of the session it was more about focusing on how these could be incorporated in your own personal project. I now felt pretty confident that i could now tackle many ideas from many different angles. 

Here is how the formal elements can apply to my topic or rather music in general: 

• Line - There is always lines/boundaries that need to be crossed in order to spark a musical 'revolution'. 
• Shape - Shape is important in a metaphorical sense as music 'shapes' the culture and society it exists within or even the society and culture exists because of the shape in which the music evolves. 
• Colour - Music is colourful as its full of different types of musicians especially when relating that through the different genres and eras as the colour can come from a musicians personality or even alter ego but also through perhaps colour costumes that them personalities might wear. Sometimes seen as controversial in its itself but the idea of colour could also cover as an aspect within music. 
• Texture - Texture within music could i suppose be interpreted in many ways. Although a bit of a vague, lacklustre interpretation texture could be viewed or rather heard sonically. As in the texture of different types of music or perhaps new experimentations that have come out as a result of evolution within music. 
• Collage - Could be the collage of many different sounds that make up a certain genre or type of music or the collage of the many different types of musicians for example i just love the image of someone as colourful as David Bowie was placed in a collage sense next to some sort of west coast gangster rapper such as Snoop Dogg or the whole of NWA. 

I am now pretty confident and feel i have a better understanding of the formal elements and in particular how i can incorporate them into the practical work such as the examples i have written above. As a result of the session i came away with a lot more ideas and questions that i could potentially cover for my project and essay. However there was two aspects that were brought up that i haven't covered which are the aspect of female artists (i just haven't done it for some reason, more out of negligence than ignorance) and bringing into play the idea of music in todays sense rather than focusing solely on past events musically. Although i may want to just focusing on that one era, who knows? But thats all for another time.