What was your plan for the work and how did you realise it? What were your artistic intentions and how do you think they might be received?

This module allows you to devise and produce an independent, creative project that may consist of an extended single piece or short portfolio of closely-related works. It is an opportunity for composers, songwriters, sonic artists and those working across media to explore in depth a particular area of interest and concern, building upon creative and/or technical interests and specialisms developed in Levels 1 and 2.
Students identify their own research questions related to creative and/or contextual issues, with the advice, agreement and supervision of a specialist member of academic staff. The work will address these questions through a process of investigation and experiment, and will be accompanied by a contextualizing commentary of approximately 3000 words.

In the essay you need to create argumentative question and try to answer them in crytical thinking manner ( must be relevent to the topic) We need to read about your artistic goals, about the questions that you are asking in relation to what you can achieve in your work as a creative artist and about the artistic context of your work. There is nothing in here about podcasts as an artform, and nothing about your creative intentions.
Beyond this, we then need to read about how and why you have created the work in the way that you have: why did you record these sounds and how did you go about planning and selecting materials? What was your plan for the work and how did you realise it? What were your artistic intentions and how do you think they might be received?

Whatever you do, we need to know:
the research questions
the artistic context
the intellectual/research context
your processes
your reflection on the completed work

The commentary in the essay must be much more focused on technical aspects of producing a blog in general than the research aspects of the project. You need to restructure this to explain the research questions of the project and the ways you explored these beyond the practical aspects of making a blog. For example, the themes that you are exploring and how you have gone about this in your artistic practice.
You also need to contextualise this with some academic literature and some relevant artistic practice in a similar area.

You are encouraged to develop the project with a specific context or method presentation in mind this could be online, a recorded artifact, or performance (e.g. a Composers’ Forum or EMS Concert, an event of your own devising, or any suitable opportunity for presentation outside of Goldsmiths).

You need to create Blog

Websites and blogs
In the assessment description we use the word ‘blog’ but actually we are quite open about what type of online ‘site’ you build. We all know a website is a collection of webpages online, bringing together information or perhaps providing a service. So how is a blog different? Blog is short for ‘web log’, so the key feature of a blog is the log or journal aspect.

Here is a useful video describing the main features of blogs:

Play Video
So the first thing to say is whether you want to present your research so far as a static information site, or a blog with some static elements like pages, etc and some rolling content like posts… either is acceptable.

We’re not going to provide ‘how to’ instructions for site and blog building, because each of the sites listed below has extensive guidelines built in as part of the making process or on dedicated help pages. Most free blog and website builders will allow you to do more than the standard text and image, they’ll allow you to embed and post audio, video, URLs, social media buttons, and more.

Free blog services

https://www.tumblr.com

(I love tumblr and would definitely recomend it to beginners over many other blogs. It has lots of themes all of which have varying levels of customisation, and you can access the code to your site so if you get to grips with coding then you can customise to make an almost bespoke site. The community is great and loads of people have blogs dedicated to sharing their site designs code for free, which means you have more than just the official tumble themes – of which there are plenty – to choose from. BUT it does tend to be more of a photo and art based site though, posts are simple and often are not designed for a lot of text. If you’re interested in long text posts it might not be the blog for you.)

https://wordpress.com

(WordPress.com is not to be confused with WordPress.org (where you need your own domain and hosting). WordPress.com is free and super simple to use with a range of free themes that accommodate different types of blog purpose. There is only some very basic customisation of the ‘look’ of the blog – you cannot access the site’s code for example. If you are happy to not have anything to do with coding, and need something where photo and text will work in as much harmony/flexibility as you need them to then this might be the blog for you.)

Free website services

https://sites.google.com/

http://www.weebly.com

http://www.wix.com

Examples

Of course you’ll need to do your own extensive research but here are some contrasting examples of blogs about music projects. This one:

http://thewiremagazine.tumblr.com

… is an example of a very simple, utilitarian, reverse-chronological rolling post feed.

This one:

http://thedomesticsoundscape.com/wordpress/

… has a grid format with each picture representing a post that you can click and read. It also uses more extensively the side bar and footer.

This one:

http://malfunction-music.tumblr.com

… is a music research project in progress.

WARNING – building websites is fun and addictive! Don’t forget most of the websites you research and become particularly inspired by will not be research focused, or need to communicate the specific information you do. Don’t get carried away making your website look exactly how you want it and in doing so forget that you have a specific set of information to get across to your marker. It should be a balance of function and form.

RESEARCH PROCESSES AND ETHICS
As a part of your research may decide to undertake some primary data collection. Think carefully before you do this: make sure it will really help you to develop you practice, since that is what this project is about. This applies to you if you decide to do any surveys, questionnaires, or interviews. A good book to get an overview of all the things you need to know to do this successfully is: [it’s in the library and available as an electronic book]

The good research guide: for small scale social research projects, by Martyn Denscombe

In some cases, your project might even use sensitive processes or engage with vulnerable participants. If this is the case then the framework for data collection and broader methodology must be discussed carefully and in detail with your supervisor before you start.

If you collect any data from human participants, your project needs ethical approval. Please read the departmental research policy below for more detail on this. If you think this applies to you, here is what to do:

– first read all the documentation regarding ethics

– discuss with your supervisor whether this is the right direction for your project. If it is, fill in the documentation and first obtain their approval of it.

– send your ethics form to Lauren for approval at the module level

– once approved you can go ahead and collect your data, but you must make sure you abide by the ethical research practices you outlined on the form and keep a record of this.

REMEMBER If you choose to undertake primary data collection then how successfully you design and implement your methods will be considered as part of the marking, and indeed the relevance of the methods as a research tool for your project.

RESEARCH PROCESSES AND ETHICS
As a part of your research may decide to undertake some primary data collection. Think carefully before you do this: make sure it will really help you to develop you practice, since that is what this project is about. This applies to you if you decide to do any surveys, questionnaires, or interviews. A good book to get an overview of all the things you need to know to do this successfully is: [it’s in the library and available as an electronic book]

The good research guide: for small scale social research projects, by Martyn Denscombe

In some cases, your project might even use sensitive processes or engage with vulnerable participants. If this is the case then the framework for data collection and broader methodology must be discussed carefully and in detail with your supervisor before you start.

If you collect any data from human participants, your project needs ethical approval. Please read the departmental research policy below for more detail on this. If you think this applies to you, here is what to do:

– first read all the documentation regarding ethics

– discuss with your supervisor whether this is the right direction for your project. If it is, fill in the documentation and first obtain their approval of it.

– send your ethics form to Lauren for approval at the module level

– once approved you can go ahead and collect your data, but you must make sure you abide by the ethical research practices you outlined on the form and keep a record of this.

REMEMBER If you choose to undertake primary data collection then how successfully you design and implement your methods will be considered as part of the marking, and indeed the relevance of the methods as a research tool for your project.

AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
An approach that some of you may incorporate as part of your methodology (and eventual write up) is autoethnography. This is broadly defined as a form of qualitative research utilising self-reflection to explore personal experience and connect this to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. If you think this applies for your methodology then you must have a look at these books – it’s not just as simple as ‘writing from my personal perspective’.

Autoethnography as Method by Heewon Chang

Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnographic Sing/Making Music Personal by Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Carolyn Ellis