Interlude
I know that I've hardly started telling you about this project, and I’m sure it seems an odd time for me to interrupt myself but, what follows, takes two forms.
There’s a short version, that gives you an overview – a flavour of the project and its outcomes – and a longer version (a lot longer!) that provides more depth and background.
If you think of me as a little kid doing arithmetic homework, the short version gives you the answer whilst the longhand version shows my ‘workings-out’.
For those of you familiar with ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’,
the answer to my arithmetic homework is obviously 42.
This approach may seem awkward and indulgent but I’m building the longhand version for two reasons:
Firstly, by taking time to engage with the project in depth, making sense of its twists and turns (and the way it developed), reviewing, reflecting and writing about it (the 3Rs), I’m hoping that the longhand version – my workings-out – will increase the therapeutic value of the project, to the overall benefit of my wellbeing and mental health.
Secondly, and unusually, I’m starting to write this at a mid-way point in the project, evaluating it as a work-in-progress, in the hope that making it ‘of the moment’ will further boost its therapeutic role. In contrast, all of the other items that you’ll find on this website, (the galleries, projects and journal-pieces) were written and uploaded when the work was finished – these actions forming part of my completion ritual.
And, in another break with tradition, I’m also writing this directly onto the computer because this gives me a greater sense of immediacy, and reinforces my sense of connection with my images (whereas normally I prefer to compose my ideas more freely, and write a first draft with pencil and paper).
I’ll admit that I've primarily written the longhand version with myself as the intended audience. But if you’d like to read it, and follow all my ‘workings-out’ …
… you can download it, in PDF form [ HERE … ]
Otherwise, you can stay with the shorthand version to get an outline flavour of the project and its outcomes, in a concise form.
P.S. As an engineer, I'd call this summary a 'prototype' – as an artist, a 'preliminary sketch'.
So that's why I've called it a 'Proto-Sketch'!