placement report | school of everything - christopher kamper 2009
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Publisher: Christopher Kamper
Copyright: © 2009 Christopher Kamper - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
All Photographs, Design, Texts: © 2009 Christopher Kamper
First Editon
London, UK 2009
Placement ReportSchool of Everything | Christopher Kamper 2009
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Carrer tools
1.1 Curriculum Vitae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2 Cover Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 Online Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. Project Outline with Images . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1 Hula Hooping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2 Hontai Yōshin-ryū Jujutsu . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.3 Astrology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.4 Taiko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3. Use of Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
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IntroductionThe message of “context is half of the work” famously be-
came the credo of the Artist’s Placement Group (AGP) in
the 1960s. But what does it mean and how is it relevant to
my placement? The notion of “context is half of the work”
simply means that within a placement it should not be the
artist’s main objective to produce some material artwork
but much rather to engage in the working principles of
the company, to question them and help to improve them.
A creative mind utilizes different strategies to overcome
problems than the strictly rational approach operative in
most businesses. In this respect, being in the place and us-
ing these strategies should become the context of the place-
ment, which in respect already marks half of the work.
In my case, I was able to live up to these expectations.
The company I worked for had almost no prior experience
in utilizing photography for their purposes, so my creative
skills were really needed. Furthermore, I was one of the
first employees to ever engage with their customers in real
life, providing useful information and creating a link.
The internet start up School of Everything (SOE) em-
bodies a brilliantly simple concept: Teach anything - learn
everything. Anybody can register on the website to either
become a teacher or student (or both) for any subject im-
aginable. The reason to develop this concept can be found
within the shortcomings of the traditional educational sys-
tem: The subjects and skills taught by this system answer
only to the needs of an industrial society; a principle not
just hopelessly outdated but also potentially discriminatory
to people outside of the norm. The SOE concept hopes to
ease these problems and provide a cure for people willing
to step outside of the mainstream of classical educational
systems.
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“At School of Everything, we believe that learning is person-
al, and starts not with what you ‘should’ learn but with what
you’re interested in. So we’re building a tool to help anyone in
the world learn everything, and teach anything, how and when
suits them - by putting people in touch with each other, not
with institutions.”
(SOE website 2009)
However, this concept is barely communicated on their
website - and this is precisely where I came into play. SOE
employee Dougald Hine asked photography students to
send in proposals as he identified the crucial lack of photo-
graphic presentments on the SOE website. Luckily, I not
only got the job but also gained complete creative freedom
to tackle this problem. Please read the project outline in
chapter 2 to learn more about my creative approach.
Even when this report is already handed in, the place-
ment will not be completely over. In addition to the dis-
play of my work on the homepage of the SOE, we will also
organize a small exhibition to display the pictures taken
for this project. Furthermore, all the people involved in-
cluding the teachers and students will be invited to attend
the opening and engage in conversational exchange. This
conclusion advances the notion of “context is half of the
work” even further: I hope that the work done for my
placement will truly become something transcendent and
non-material this way.
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1.1 Curriculum Vitae3 Chaplin Close, London, SE1 8TU Christopher Kamper
Date of Birth: 25/02/1986 Nationality: German
Telephone Number: 0207 207 6905 Mobile Number: 0750 335 00 91
E-Mail: christopher.kamper@gmail.com Full clean international driving license
Online Portfolio: http://www.christopherkamper.com
Current Objective
To enter an engaging work-placement where I can use my creative skills and expertise to gain valuable new experience and learn new abilities.
Relevant past projects
2007 -2008 In Real Life
Photojournalistic project about three individuals with extraordinary hobbies, namely an Otaku, a Larp Gamer and a Lolita. This project was published in book format, please see http://irl.christopherkamper.com
2008 Homepage of the Leichtathletik Verband Nordrhein
The Leichtathletik Verband Nordrhein is a non-profit sport agency in North-Rhine Westphalia organizing tournaments, supporting athletes and developing training curricula. I conceptualized, designed and programmed its main website in 2008, please visit http://www.lvnordrhein.de/
Work experience
2007 – 2009 Various freelance photography and webdesign projects, including
http://www.landhaus-stroh.de http://www.wtv-leichtathletik.de http://www.autodissel.de
2006 – 2007 Full-time work as a social volunteer at the Leichtathletik Verband Nordrhein. As I was responsible both for designing brochures, websitesand various other publications as well as customer-service duties, I both greatly deepened my communicative skills in addition to mycreative and technical abilities.
3 Chaplin Close, London, SE1 8TU Christopher Kamper
Academic
2007 – 2010 South Bank University – London, UKBA Hons Digital Photography (still studying)
1996 – 2006 Andreas Vesalius Gymnasium – Wesel, GermanyAbitur (2,1)
1992 – 1996 Quadenweg Grundschule – Wesel, Germany
Interpersonal and technical skills
Excellent bilingual competence and communication skills both in writing and
speaking (English and German)
I am highly flexible, creative and enthusiastic.
I work best in a team but also enjoy working alone.
excellent knowledge of photographic practices, specifically in the operation of digital
SLRs, studio lighting, digital retouching, composing and printing
expert qualification in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Joomla!, HTML and CSS
very good skills in Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver, Final Cut Pro, Microsoft Office,
Microsoft Excel, PHP, MySQL and webserver-administration
Referees can be provided upon request.
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1.2 Cover Letter
This is a screenshot of the e-mail sent to the School of Everything that granted me the placement.
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1.3 Online Portfolio A good online portfolio is mandatory for professional
digital artist these days. It should not only display the work
and skills of the artist, but also demonstrate a thorough
presentation with a clear structure which is imperative for
the work to shine.
On the next few pages I am going to present my cur-
rent online portfolio and the section most relevant to the
application at the School of Everything in detail.
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This is the first site shown when you enter the URL (www.christopherkamper.com). It briefly describes my work and frames
my identity as a digital artist. Five examplary projects can be reached from the righthand navigation panel.
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Every project has a distinct project description and links to further information if necessary. The project shown on this page
was most relevant for my placement provider as it demonstrates my ability in a photojournalistic approach, a style very much
alike the one used for my main contribution to the SOE.
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Specifically for the website, I wrote a Photoshop-Action that processesed the PDF file from the project’s book and transformed
every single page onto a curvy background to bring it closer to its material format.
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Both the increase of the book’s thickness on the lefthand side respecetively the decrease of thickness on its righthand side have
been taken into account when writing the script.
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2. Project OutlineAs I have stated in the introduction, the SOE embodies a
strong philosophy about learning, specifically about learn-
ing exotic topics that lie outside the scope of the main-
stream. That is why we have decided to find and contact
teachers of these topic in order to portray them; our search
included: Hula hooping, astronomy, astrology, jewellery
making, TV presenting, yoga, meditation, pottery, knit-
ting, homeopathy, taiko, various exotic martial arts, play-
ing the didgeridoo and many more. I easily gained the
support of many teachers by offering them all the pho-
tographs taken during the session for no fee or condition
other than stated in the “Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0” license model.
I have chosen to use a visual style that is as far away
from the polished looks as found in advertisements as pos-
sible. The philosophy of the SOE is that anybody can learn
and teach everything – it is not “professional teachers share
expertise with their highly qualified students”. Therefore, I
went for candid, natural shots; nothing should look staged
in any way (a rule that only had to be broken for some pic-
tures in the Jujutsu series that would have been too dan-
gerous to take otherwise).
The shootings themselves turned out to be of much
more value to me than just some photographic practice: I
have learned a great deal about every subject photographed
and tremendously deepened my interpersonal skills as a
photographer working with real people instead of models.
I have documented every step of each individual project
and kept in touch with both my placement provider and
the people photographed to involve them in the selection
process. I am extremely grateful that I had the opportunity
to do this project exactly the way I intended to.
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2.1 Hula HoopingOther than most people might perceive it, hula hooping is
much more than some children’s game. A great variety of
techniques can be performed with a hoop; many groups
perform it on a professional level as performance.
However, Diana Defries is not part of this performance
culture. For her, hula hooping it is much more a spiritual
and meditative experience concerning self-awareness and
inner rhythm. But how could you find a course also teach-
ing this specific aspect? The School of Everything was set
up just to offer the right tools in this respect.
I visited Diana teaching her regular class on two ap-
pointments. I very much enjoyed the energy and joy ex-
pressed during these sessions. The challenge was to find the
right balance between capturing the ongoing rhythm and
also be on the spot for moments of pure laughter.
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2.1 Hontai Yōshin-ryū JujutsuHontai Yōshin-ryū is an ancient Japanese school of martial
arts dating back to the 15th century. As an authentic and
unaltered Samurai school, it teaches both unarmed grap-
pling techniques as well as the use of various swords and
staffs in addition to knife defence.
One of the few UK-based teachers of this school is Jer-
emy Carroll, who trained the art in Japan for more than six
years before founding his own Dojo in London.
I had the opportunity to visit one of Carroll’s regular
classes in London to get the best out of this astonishingly
quick and powerful training in self defence.
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2.3 AstrologyAs most people undoubtedly know, Astrology deals with
the movements and relation of the celestial bodies and
their influences on our personalities, affairs and future.
Nick Hughes has been studying Astrology since 1996 and
begun to see clients professionally in 2004. More recently,
he also became a teacher to lecture aspiring Astrologers
and private enthusiasts. The subject of Astrology is truly
one that you would not expect to find in a regular cur-
riculum at any educational institution. That is why Nick
decided to offer his courses on the School on Everything
where such niche subjects can be found by anybody.
I tried my best to document his efforts in teaching
this (photographically) fairly invisible topic when I went
to one of his weekend-workshops in Wembley.
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2.4 TaikoTaiko is Japanese for drum. In recent years, the term has
become generally used to describe ensemble drumming
and performances with huge Japanese drums.
In the UK, there are only two groups currently teach-
ing and performing Taiko, one of which is managed by Liz
Walters. Liz set up a profile on the School of Everything
homepage in order to promote Taiko and give students the
opportunity to learn this extremely rare subject.
I visited Liz at one of her monthly beginner’s work-
shops workshop in High Wycombe to learn more about
this fascinating part of Japanese culture. I have discerned
that Taiko requires both physical strength and endurance
as well as great mental power and concentration. In the
following set of images I tried to fuse these aspects together
with the fun and joy expressed during the session.
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3. Use of social mediaIt is a fact that good networking is crucial for a successful
career in the digital artist’s sphere. The use of social media
to achieve this goal has never been more important. I have
chosen to use Twitter as my main tool for this purpose;
Facebook was another option but it appeared to be too
personal and less easy to adapt for professional purposes.
I constantly reported the progress of my project over
the course of the placement with images I took in addi-
tion to smaller updates of what I am at right now and
other relevant information such as talks concerning learn-
ing processes and the educational system. I used Twitpic to
display the photos I took; however, I did not upload them
one-by-one but rather did a selection and stacked multiple
pictures on top of each other in Photoshop. I believe that
too many single uploads defy the purpose of a platform
such as Twitter, were clarity and the briefness of the mes-
sages is key. In total, I have posted 38 messages related to
the placement on Twitter using the application “Tweet-
Deck” which was a huge asset for this work.
Apart from the #pha09 tag I have also used another one,
namely #SOE_PICS to signal uploads of new images both
to my placement provider as well as to the teachers and
students being shown in the pictures. It also important
to note that the whole correspondence with every teacher
from the School of Everything was based on social media
platforms (either the SOE website itself or MySpace and
Facebook).
You can find examples for the usage of social media for
my project on the next couple of pages, starting with my
profile on the Twitter website.
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An exemplary post on Twitter combined with Twitpic
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This is how I used Twitpic with multiple pictures in one single upload.
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This is a screenshot of my profile on the SOE homepage.
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This is the Inbox showing my correspondence with the SOE teachers.
© Christopher Kamper 2009
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