Finally I am back from my travels across the globe, and I am rather glad because it means I can actually knuckle down and do some work. It has been rather hard to do so when one is on the road and has so many people to see along the way.

Since I’ve been away things have progressed a little further with the EPSRC Digital Economy Sandpit project, called TOTeM,  that we have been working on. We now have a website, though the content still needs a bit of fleshing out, it does at least give you an idea of what TOTeM is about. If you are looking for a research job or phd studentship, and are interested in "The Internet of Things" we will be posting full job descriptions up soon, so bookmark the site.

While we are getting the TOTeM project underway, I now have a couple of months to devote time to getting on and making artworks. Already though, with a baby on the way I am wishing there was a way for midwives appointments and antenatal classes to be contained on an USB flash drive and just uploaded to or from my brain as needed, so I can get as much as possible done before the wee bundle of joy arrives.

Finally I have done my transfer and passed! It has taken so long to get to this stage, and despite my first supervisor saying that I could start on the next stage before my transfer, I was so distracted by the whole process and getting through my transfer I haven’t started making artworks yet. One has to be in the right frame of mind for that type of thing and having a stressful thing like a transfer hanging over one like the sword of Damocles is hardly condusive to making works of art.

The feedback I had was very helpful and is good for making me refine my methodologies more, though I do know that I have been far more rigorous on methodology that other art phd’s who have not been questioned at all on their unclear methodologies – * sigh * c’est la vie - at least it will prepare me well for my final viva in a couple of years time.

In terms of my supervision, it was decided that since my phd is going down a rather fine art route, my first supervisor was probably not as appropriate as other staff may be. She has been good in terms of her experience in supervising phd’s and for making sure that I am properly backing myself up with evidence, but I agree that her subject area has less cross over with my research than it did at the beginning of my phd. One of the examiners on the transfer panel offered to take her place as he is very interested in my work, and so I happy for that to happen, though I did say that I would still like to be able to tap into my now ex-first supervisor as an advisor and she was happy with this.

The positive feedback I got was that my transfer document was well written and interesting (yay! – I have read so many boring ones!). The head of postgraduate studies even asked if she could use it as an exemplar for other students. I told her yes as long as it wasn’t going to be a bad example given that it is 3 times the length it is supposed to be! Oh the irony… it is going to be used as a good example despite its horror length!

It feels good to get it out of the way, and all I want to do now is start of making works, but I can’t… I have family obligations in Mexico and Australia which means I have taken 5 weeks leave to attend to those, and will be back on the 25th of April when hopefully I shall have a good chunk of uninterrupted time to clear my head and start developing my artworks properly. I am hoping that I can still do some work on my phd whilst I am travelling, but past experience has shown this can be hard, especially when I have been away from my close family now for 18 months this stint, (9 years in total) so there is a fair bit to catch up on.