Week 1

Meeting Day!!!
All plans to rise early and be a busy worker bee on my dissertation fell through! Scrambled out of bed at 10am to make the 11am meeting. I was ready on time... Mum on the other hand was not. We made it to the meeting half an hour late.... and the room was empty apart from the leader Sinéad (very nice lady). She looked after us and another woman who arrived even later than we did.
 I was very surprised to weigh in at 3.5 lbs lighter... success! I really thought that I would have put on weight because I don't feel like I was on a diet or like I stuck to it much. It it possible that the weight watchers scale was experiencing some placebo effect??
 After the meeting we went for lunch in Amicus, very nice :) I had the BLT on their tomato and fennel bread. It was really tasty and I learned how similar fennel and liquorish are... they must be in the same plant family or something because they taste like twins! I had a diet coke with my food so I didn't feel deprived, Mum had wine. I cannot drink wine during the day... it only leads to bad things or well, really to good but drunken things!

James and Jane met us in Amicus and then the three of us went and saw the Altered Images exhibition while mum had her hair done. The exhibition is OK, not great to be honest but I did like the idea behind it. The way they fully realised the tactile possibilities of art. However one of my favourite pieces was ... this is kinda complicated to explain... the original art work is a video montage of the details in some sculpture and so for the exhibition this was accompanied by an audio description of the work and there were resin models of the images on screen. That is the bit I don't get... the sculpture was a tactile object to begin with, the video changed the way the art was viewed and then the resin models brought it back to its
original form but without it being the original or having any of the tactile properties of stone.... what was the point of that really? To me it just highlighted the fact that sculpture is meant to be touched! People who like sculpture notice the details anyway, they don't need a sensory exhibition to connect with the piece. The exhibition is designed to appeal to people of all ages and abilities but I don't think it really worked for me.
:( I am happy I saw it though! Here is the link : http://www.alteredimages.ie/index.html. The main reason for my interest in it was due to the inclusion of a piece by David Creedon. He is a Cork photographer who I heard speaking at the UCC Photography Society this year. He spoke about his work 'Ghosts of the Faithful Departed' which is basically a series of images of deserted and derelict houses throughout the countryside; it was really interesting. His work is also beautiful.
 I liked his piece in the exhibition but it wasn't the image from the series I would have picked and the brass (?) tactile piece which accompanied it in the exhibition wasn't what it should haven been. If they were trying to add a tactile dimension to the photograph I don't think they should have made the model out of metal. They should have used various materials  for example, using glass or perspex for the glass in the windows and maybe real crockery and paper for the debris on the floor... but that is just what I though. I am sure they had their reasons.

Still no movement on my dissertation :/