I've started the journey

Passenger aircraft making trails ( ants) journeying along pre determined routes

Surface tunnels created by ants pattern of movement

I have begun the MA in Fine Art and Contemporary Dialogues, and have decided to use this blog as a record of the journey.

My 'Thought Experiment' selected randomly from unmarked envelopes on the floor of the lecture theatre asks me to reflectively follow the movement of ants.

I have started to gather information - visual, thought connections and text.

My favourite book as a 10 year old. I had a childhood fascination/obsession with insects - made an ant nest in a jar. Collected the pupae, watched the queen ants and the male flying ants mate - the queen ants losing their wings and seeking out new nest sites. The winged males die. I mixed together different ant species only to watch them fight and kill one another

The ant in this biblical passage from the book of proverbs is described in the feminine - this is interesting as ants are a matriarchal society - they are driven by the need to create the next generation. We are asked here to consider the fundamental need for humans to gather and provide. This was taken up by certain forms of 'religon' to push the work ethic and to engender guilt and enslave others. This however does not seem to be its core meaning. It just seems to be saying that we need to be active in order to have enough food to eat and share.

Ant like behaviour - Collecting leaves in my garden - raking is pointless as more leaves are going to fall ! Small tasks like small stories however help to build the bigger picture - (reminds me of the mention of grand narratives giving way to small stories - in the lecture on Postmodernism - Jean -Francios Lyotard) . The garden is cleared and is visually pleasing - the activity is pleasurable - the scent of autumn leaf litter - the sunshine the sounds of the birds. The big task is broken down into smaller parts and is less arduous.

Ants don't bully - they are naturally genetically driven to cooperate for the good of the whole community.

Transferring thoughts into an image - the thin plaster broke whilst carving out the channels - but this is ok as it mimics the cracked soil surface under the paving

A fellow student stated that she feels that primary school education is delivered in such a way that we are 'turning out robots'. This obsession with predetermined pathways invades many areas of life including health care - for example the use of pre written care plans and monitoring forms and tick box systems on computer programs. These ways of working aim to reduce the risk of errors. Does working in this way mean that we lose the sense of the personal and individual ? Do we become just a number in the system.

Is control a bad thing ? It may depend on the controller and the purpose of the control. If we have no sense of purpose - no clear direction do we become depressed or anxious ?

An example of this was the first few days of getting to university for the lecture- I had to get used to the route into the city, the timings of connecting buses - and then find my way to the correct building and the correct room within the building. These initial trials of finding new routes and timings create anxiety, but once they have become routine and known, the anxiety dissipates.

Identity crisis, anxiety and depression may be the result of our postmodern world - the certainties of the past having been eclipsed. Does this create a space for a new form of control to exert itself over us ? We need to be careful ?

There - ramblings - hopefully I will pull out some threads linking with other artists, poets etc - this is the beginning of the journey.

Paul