After testing positive for COVID 19, I took a little set back with regards to my schedule on my gantt chart. According to my chart, I would have completed my questionnaire and gained responses. I would have also contacted Mark Wright about making an immersive exhibition.
Despite this set back and a need to rest, when I began to felt better, I aimed to get straight back into the research and planning process.
I had a studio criteria session with my tutors, to discuss my progress so far. I expressed my lack of progress due to COVID, but also what work I had managed to achieve despite this.
When discussing about my challenges with the Fusion 360 software, my tutor Mark pointed out to me that he could use the software Zed Brush to hollow out my brain model.
My other tutor Caroline mentioned that she had a brain mould in which I could also make sculptures from.
Photograph of brain mould.
She suggested that I could create transparent hollow brains, or to 3D scan the hollow brain and 3D printing that.
I found these discussion sessions to really shape the goal of my project and spark fascinating experiments that I could pursue.
After attending the studio criteria session, I received feedback from my project proposal that I completed. I found the feedback to be most useful in reaching out to more collaborators and further contextual references to source.
Some key points derived from this feedback, was to reach out to Donna Young of National Museums Liverpool, due to her knowledge of the botanical collection. Mark also suggested researching into the term Economic Botany, as a research field that could contribute to the theoretical side of my project.
Caroline also suggested that I visit the Liverpool Biennial for further contextual references, especially the exhibition at the Lewis’ Building.
Photograph of the Lewis' Building
After reading through this feedback, I made a mental note to refer back to back to this for further application. I then started looking back to my ethics application for my feedback survey. When receiving feedback from Mark for my survey, he made some key points.
He suggested that my questions should be more focused and question about visitors’ knowledge of Glioblastoma, whether the exhibition is a good method of learning, and whether they have visited art and science exhibitions before.
I found these suggestions to be really important, to getting my desired feedback, and asking insightful questions to get provoking responses.
Once I had designed the survey questions, I did some research into what website to house the questionnaire online. I first chose to use Survey Monkey, as it was a popular survey website. However, they only allowed 10 questions maximum, which was not enough for my survey. For this reason, I chose the website Survey Planet, as the website was easy to use and edit. I liked the feature of designing a theme and viewing the survey from different platforms, such as phones, tablets and computers.
After constructing the questionnaire on survey planet, I sent over a link to Mark, who is also part of the ethics committee, along with the ethics application and ethical training certificate.