George Melly Portrait (aged 18) Photographed by ECH in 1944

Supervisory Meeting - 05/11/2014 @ MMU

Present at the meeting: Simon Faulkner, David Brittain, Gavin Parry

The meeting was again used to discuss practice based creative outputs currently being conducted. This work consisted of the following:

• The appropriation of selected Hardman negatives, resulting in the manipulation of composite elements of the works, in order to create new works.  The photographic process has then been reversed in order to work back towards the creation of a new negative.
• The reframing of Hardman's work, presenting some of the portraits in a manner never intended, through tighter cropping and increased tonal range / contrast.  This was intended as more of a technical test, in terms of the possible ways of presenting the Hi-Res scans taken from the archive.
• The linking of a separate database created, which details the data held within the Pilot's Flying Log of Douglas W Roberts, which documents flying activity in the RAF during WW2.  The data has been used to link key dates between the two different activities.
• The meeting between KWR and the National Trust on 15/10/14 - which discussed the use of the materials and the potential output of the project, via exhibition and publication.

In response to this discussion it was suggested that Keith should:

1. Continue to work with the Hardman database, moving into the analysis phase of the project.  The interrogation of the data should be used to drive ongoing visits to the archive.
2. The development of a series of titled 'pamphlets' which should be used to display the different lines of creative and archival enquiry. (E.G. Chronotype / Typology / Key Dates)
3. A written component (abstract) in relation to these different pamphlets, which should attempt to address both the process and the connection to the database.
4. Continued reading around the specific area of 'Database Aesthetics' and 'The Database as Symbolic Form'.  Focusing on practitioners who incorporate or interrogate databases as part of their creative practice and methodology.