Masters Research

 When I think about pirate and the sea there are two things and representations that instantly come to mind, the first being Disney's representation of the "swash buckling" pirate in the film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. To me this representation is an interesting representation as it melds real world aspects, the British empire and East India company attempting to rid the seas of pirates. And other worldly aspects that of the black pearl and Davey Jones locker to name a few. The next representation that I connect to that of Pirates is the book Jamaica Inn written by Daphne Du Maurier, which is a story about Cornish smugglers and the very real history of smugglers and wreckers that existed along the Cornish coast. Wrecking was the practice of falsely steering ships towards rocks to purposely wreck and run aground, these ships would then be looted by the wreckers and smuggled in land where it would be sold. I think it would be worth looking into both these types of ...

Looking at these odd sea creatures dotted along the sea on the map sparked my interest in looking further into the sea creatures and exploring if there is a connection between love and fear of the sea if those feelings are manifested in the myths surrounding these massive bodies of water. I found this book by Jon Hackett and Sean Harrington that looks at the connection between sea creatures we have created and the cultural impact that they have had on our collective psyche, thinking about some now the obvious choice for an impactful sea myth is that of mermaids. Because they are seen as beautiful creatures that lure you in, this seems like a clear connection to the sea itself. Sailors and people alike see the sea as this beautiful place to be explored and enjoyed however it lures you in with this promise only to be much darker and scary than before. There was one chapter of this book that instantly drew my attention, it was about Thalassophobia. I had never heard of this sort of phobia...

  I decided to go back to the map library to search for some more maps that either piqued my interest or had these odd sea creatures on them. What I found were these beautifully decorated and adorned maps, where the focus wasn't really on the map itself but rather the illustrations around the maps. Like with this one where they have these intriguing illustrations of people and animals and what seems to be angels in the skies above. I started to think about why all these maps I was looking at had these illustrations around them, maybe it was some kind of storytelling to do with something in the bible or other religious text or it could be simply to make the map more interesting as I found before mostly these sort of maps were used for decoration rather than actual navigation so is this what the illustrations are for. I love looking at all these sea creatures that are drawn onto the sea they are so interesting and other worldly that I wonder if they came from real creatures of the se...

 I wanted to look at early maps of the sea and landmasses around the sea to see how early map makers interpreted the sea, I have an idea in my head that there are illustrations of monsters (here be monsters) in areas of the sea representing places they haven't mapped or explored yet. Thinking about this it might be interesting to explore this idea, thinking about myths that grew around the sea to explain the disappearance of ships and the legends that appeared with pirates that we now see on film like with "Pirates of the Caribbean". To get the maps I wanted I decided to visit the Map Library, there I asked the librarian for maps on coastal areas and the sea, thankfully he had loads of examples that I could look through along with a link to a website I could use to see even more maps. Looking at these was fascinating, the first one he showed me was dated 1610 and is full of interesting oddities that are used within the map. Like this where the map maker includes sea creat...

  We then took the posters to a group session where I got feedback from my tutor and the rest of the class, this was a really useful session as it helped me to understand where I need to go and potential ways in which I could connect each project idea. At the start when I laid out all three posters people in the class were asked to pick which one was their least favourite, like me they picked the left poster "sea & plastics" to most of the class they just found this one the most boring and I would agree with this. While the subject matter of pollution and rubbish in the sea is very important I feel this subject has been done to death and adding my voice on top of the others would not make my project interesting, even if I had a different way of approaching the subject matter. Out of the two remaining posters, the class and the tutor were more interested and connected better with the "calming waves" poster. One of the reasons was because they liked the look of th...

  Once I had decided on the possible subjects I could do for my Masters, we needed to create a set of three posters to describe the possible areas we could go in. Because I had one overarching area that cemented the possible areas, that being the sea, I decided that for each of the posters the background or main colour used should be a blue for the sea. I didn't just want to have the backgrounds be just one blue colour, instead I wanted to create a gradient of blues and greens as these would represent the sea better. Along with this because I wanted to create these posters by hand, using the computer very little, I decided to make the background using a technique where you take tissue paper and wet it on the paper with a sponge then the ink will seep through onto the paper and create this really interesting and sea like texture that works really well for what I wanted it for. As you can see the water and tissue paper technique creates this really interesting and water like texture ...

  For my next idea I wanted to keep with the theme of the sea, but this time I decided to see if I could connect it with my interests in space. When I was thinking about this topic I began to think about stargazing and how sailors used to use the stars for navigation, this really interested me and made me think if this type of navigation was still being used. Doing some very quick research on this subject I found some fascinating information, before accurate navigation, navigating the high seas with no landmarks was extremely difficult and caused many ships to be wrecked and lost. In 1714 after the loss an entire British fleet due to navigation errors the British government passed the "Longitude Act" that authorised money prizes for anyone who could solve sea navigation. 

  It was really interesting reading through this article about this phenomenon of people being happier or having better mental health when they are near a body of water, the article talks about how people living with 1km or 5km are "associated with better general and mental health" this got me onto thinking about which countries are the happiest in the world and if this was to do with how close the countries are to bodies of water. In this ranking conducted by World Population Review we can see that the happiest country is Finland and looking at a map of their country I think my stupid hypothesis that surely the happiest country in the world must have a lot of water is true. While this is very basic and the most top layer of the surface of this subject it is still really interesting that large bodies of water seem to have this effect on us and our mental health, I think this project could be really interesting if look into our seeming love affair with water and what causes th...

looking at all my mood board I think the subjects that interest me the most are the sea and the connection between the sea and mental health, while I may at first connected the pollution of the sea and harming of sea creatures to the decline of people's mental health I now want to look more at how going to the coast and being near large bodies of water may improve people's wellbeing and mental health. From my own anecdotal experience when I am near the sea and sat by the coast watching the waves a sense of calm comes over me.  Just from a quick Google search typing in "sea and mental health" you can find loads of articles about this sense of calm and happiness that comes over people when they are near the sea or large bodies of water. I think it would be a really interesting project to learn more about this feeling that people get and why exactly it happens.

  Keeping with the theme of the sea I want to research further into plastic pollutions in the sea and the issues it is causing not only to the sea creatures but also ourselves. This is a very topical subject at the moment with groups like extinction rebellion creative massive upheavals in our cities and parliament, along with this it feels like everyone is talking about global warming and want some kind of change to begin to happen. I feel like I could create a very strong project about this subject, focusing on one problem like plastic in our oceans is a good idea as pollution is such a massive area that trying to do a whole project on it could easily become massive and too large to finish. I think for this I really need to focus down on what I want to say and do with this, I can't just say "our oceans are full of plastic, this is bad!" there isn't anything to this it is quite one-note as most people already know this and want to change. So what exactly do I want to ...