Placement Report | School of Everything - Christopher Kamper 2009

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

7

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.

8

“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.

9

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: [email protected] 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.

11

1.2 Cover Letter

This is a screenshot of the e-mail sent to the School of Everything that granted me the placement.

13

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.

14

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.

15

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.

16

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.

17

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.

19

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.

21

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.

31

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.

41

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.

51

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.

61

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.

63

An exemplary post on Twitter combined with Twitpic

64

This is how I used Twitpic with multiple pictures in one single upload.

65

This is a screenshot of my profile on the SOE homepage.

66

This is the Inbox showing my correspondence with the SOE teachers.

Placement Report | School of Everything - Christopher Kamper 2009

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