I’ve just returned from a very fruitful tutorial with Mick and feel motivated to reign in all the potential ideas and imaginings I’ve been accumulating and to have them all work together towards a tight and focused project. At the worst of times, I fear this is getting overly ambitious in the scope of my project but this is the plan anyways. That said, after today I feel a bit more assured that it possible 
Mainly, I gave Mick an intensive briefing on all the work I have done to date and more importantly, where I see the PhD project going. This is timely as I am due for a first term report. Things discussed include:
1. Recent work done at the Archivo General de Indias and the resulting online release of a portion of their digital archive.
2. My current exhibition at Propeller and how it connects to the project.
3. Where Pd fits into all this?
4. My work plan.
Although I’ve planned on developing a visual aesthetic influenced by my research, incorporating my research into the image-making had to be an organic, less calculated process. I knew I wanted to crop and montage in a style that was a connected progression from my past work but I could never have guessed as to how I would achieve this.
Serendipity had me going to Seville and chancing upon the 16th century images of the Philippines. It really all started from combining a family vacation with the possibility of interviewing Ocampo. The vacation happened but meeting Ocampo didn’t.
Luckily my time at the Archivo General de Indias proved to be very fruitful. After my time in Seville both in the archives and taking photographs of the old colonial buildings, I started the process of distilling my visual findings into the pieces that are now on exhibit in Toronto. The result was a pleasant change addition of what Mick refered to as ‘noise’ in my current work. This can probably be attributed to all the imperfections that I was exposed to when viewing the archived maps. I like the resulting contrast as digitality can often come off as very slick and sterile. It works well on many levels as the ‘rougher’ imperfections to the work is consistent with the organic aesthetic coming from digital artists in the Philippines
(insert telegarden versus SABAW pics).
After our meeting I realized that I have to better consider where interactivity and moving image fit in all of this. Along these lines, Mick will be taking me through some Pure Data tutorials which will hopefully beef up some needed skills.
