Tutorial - Preparation for COP 3

Well its quite scary to think but with this post i am doing my first blogpost for COP 3! Hikarumba!!!

This is a thought that daunts me hugely as this one is the big one but not to discredit the other years with COP of course. 

My main aim for this final year and the topic to research and just basically the whole project is for me to enjoy it. The last thing i need/want is to be stuck on something that i wont be motivated to do as i get bogged down and stressed at the best of times. I know even now that my topic/area of research will be music based/music related as that is where my practice sits pretty much now i believe. 

One idea is to research into the importance of Vinyl records and in particular the certain resurgence it has had over the past couple of years. 

I had a mini tutorial with Jamie a couple of weeks back which gave me an opportunity to talk about what i potentially wanted to research into even though at the time and so extent now i'm not entirely sure what i want to do. 

These are the notes i got from the session:

- Commodity Fetishism 
- Walter Benjamin (in the age of mechanisation) 
- John Berger (ways of seeing) 
- Tactile, physical objects and their value 
- William Morris 

Another brilliant tip was to also  utilise the colleges J-store where you can access an archive i believe and to also make use of Google Scholar. 

Another thing that came up was the idea that i would quite like to make my own album covers as a practical side of the research, making up fictitious bands/artists to illustrate. One thing thats really funny with is is that me and my good friend Isaac have been coming up with fictitious band names for the past two years and basically the most ridiculous the better so i could either take some from the extensive lists that me and him have amassed or i have a go at doing them myself for this project. That is if thats what i want to do of course, i may have other ideas just yet. 

One final thought is how i cant really relate to this idea of the tactile nature of a record and ultimately being a record collector because i simply haven't got one, however i do keep thinking i really should get a record player, we have one for the family back home but i would like one for myself. However this is no excuse as i can interview people and go into record shops something i think i should do more in general not just for the sake of this research project. However like i said this is not final in terms of the related subject just yet i will be thinking more about it in the coming days and weeks.