Seminar presentation

Last week, I had to present my work again, but this time in front of the PhD students of the ECA, regardless of their discipline.  There were about 7 or 8 people from very different backgrounds (Moving images, Documentary, Landscape architecture, etc), who got into a very lively discussion after my presentation. The concept of space versus static images, the significance of symbols and colours, the value of aesthetic education to the aesthetic experience, etc. All these topics seem to provoke quite a lot of thinking, and I am really glad to see that for the most part, people tend to respond positively to my project.
Tomorrow starts the last week before the Christmas break. I still have lots of things to do, including presenting the schema that will explain my intentions.
What I presented last week included a first idea of the thesis I will try to defend, the core idea of my project: There is a universal aesthetic response to natural environment that is intimately linked with a positive physiological response to distinct organic elements.
Of course this is not exactly what I mean, and I still need to work on it.
My research questions also seem to be evolving. the last time I had a meeting with my supervisor, Peter Aspinall, we started talking about working with people with minor visual impairment. It would be indeed a good way to assess the importance of the visual aspect in the experience of outdoor space.
There are just so many different possibilities, steming from a single (but very large) idea. It is definitely not easy to chose which path to take. Also because fundings and opportunities for publication will depend on it.

Conference poster

I have been pretty busy this past week with organising the conference and preparing my own presentation.
Principally I did this:  The programme booklet of the conference, all made from scratch by the Programme team.

And this is what I presented:

Now, the whole conference is part of our assesment for the Research Methods Course I am taking along with all the first year research students at the ECA and the University of Edinburgh. Actually the poster I presented (and the paper I will have to write before january) doesn't have much to do with what I want to study for my PhD  anymore (but what do I want to study). It is more an excercise on writing and presenting, than a real scientific work. And that's good because after only two months, I don't think I could have produced anything better than that!

Unfortunately, the stress is not over. I only have two more weeks to go but they include a ton of emails to write, a presentation to make next wednesday and to finish all the things I said "will be done by december" ! Yes, that includes deciding on a topic.