body/object/code

4x4 April 15

• April 15th, 2005

What I did:

http://23longacre.com/thesis/pDraft1/presentationDraft.html
Screens for presentations… some visual thinking… front page is 36 thumbnails
This is what I’m going to show in class.

http://itp.nyu.edu/projects/projectinfo.php?project_id=240
Put the info in for Midori, but not for the paper outline…
I’m wondering if my "research methods" should be part of it?
How I found books, what software I used? Card sorting exercises?

http://23longacre.com/thesis/mine/Framework.jpg
Outline of the actual thesis… not as far down as I can go, but yeash!
How far down should I go? Should I make a better one of these and
just have the hyperlinks be my paper?

Next Week:

Paper outline done and current text placed in to it.

Another pass at presentation, practice in front of people.

Draft of sample workbook.

4x4 March 10

• March 10th, 2005

What did you accomplished last week?

• Attitude Adjustment - I’ve been kind of bummed and pissy and overwhelmed. I couldn’t even meet a lousy goal of 30 minutes a day thinking about it. It was touching too many nerves. But in the same school yard way my older sister never let anyone else insult me but her I’ve begun feeling very protective and growly… in a good way.
• New Blog - Websites are just too annoying. I can write them from scratch, but why should I? I installed Wordpress on my own server and now have an easier way to prove I’m not lazy. Wordpress is also flexible enough that if I do decide to create a web-presence for my thesis, a bunch of the work will be done already because it is based on mySQL. More importantly to me it has permissioning built in so I can keep everything in one place, invite everyone to the same place, and yet control the experience. It is still very very raw and I need to collect more of my work there, but there is a bucket.
• Continued Research - This week I’ve been looking at on-line curriculum/processes/journals. This was kind of a reaction to the "so what are you making" question so I can answer that with something comfortingly tangible.
• 1272 Words - An assignment done, and done on Thursday. Kinda the minimum, I know but baby steps. Maybe I’ll even make it to class on time, too. It also represents some progress in thought which doesn’t suck either.

What do you intend to do next week?

• Experience Flowchart - NOT use case scenarios exactly although they may come into play. If I’m talking about pedagogy I need to create a chart for what information people are exposed to, have access to when. Its the Information Architecture, really. This will help decide the delivery format.
• Format blog - make the bucket better. May seem silly but especially if I’m going to let other people engage with the exercises in this format I need to make sure their experience is clear, too… goes with the next one.
• Post some exercises- as of yet, nobody knows what I’m talking about when I talk about these things. I’ve got to get them up and accessible. Also, it is easier to fill things in than create from scratch, so that will help with going forward and doing them myself. I would like the way they are posted to be good enough to share them with Tom I. for feedback on the caliber of their content (not delivery).
• Over 80 % on freewrite/freedraw - So, with everyone itching to see "my work" you would think that DOING and posting the RESULTS to some of these exercises might be more important than the stuff that no one is going to see. Nope. I still might do that, but for my top 4 engaging with my thesis project every day, cornerstone 1, has got to be there still. Maybe I will post some of the drawing, though…

Any recent concerns or unexpected obstacles?

• Split focus - People do need an artifact to relate to. I need to spend more time on the final presentation of the format of the System than on researching what exercises or practices should be included.
• Daily attention - some days I just don’t care. I need to get better at engaging anyway.
• Where’s waldo - People keep thinking that what I make is the point. They keep wanting to see "my work." This is my work… isn’t it? I do want to get down and start having messy fun myself, but how do I convince people that coming up with the exercises is an accomplishment, too?
• Tool vs. Tool Kit vs. Medium - Most painters don’t use just one brush. They’ll uses many brushes, palette knives… a finger even. And then, they can choose between oil and acrylic and gauche, etc… Are they going to make their own paint? What colors do they use? What about Airbrushes? What about a painted ceramics? Is that painting or ceramics? It is really really muddy water and I think as the exercises progress I’m not sure if it will become an easier issue or worse because technologies inherant flexibility.

Any recent insights or surprises?

• Curriculum is a good word for what I’m doing in some ways. Christina Goodness came up with it.
• All of the above!

Ceci ne pas une Art Poject.

• March 10th, 2005

What is your Need?

I am not making an object.  If I could banish one question it would be “so, what’s the tool you’re making.” I don’t know.  I don’t think it matters right now because I’m not expecting anyone else to know when they start, either (see section on audience).  So, as for my need, it is to not be bored. My need is to have constant challenge. My need is to balance my own ability to generate one thousands thing to do today with creative constraints that will ensure one that one of them actually does. That is my need, and that is why I am “building” a system.  I will succeed on this axis if I have a series of exercises and readings that I think are fun and useful and interesting for people who want to make their own creative tools. I might not have done them all by the end of the semester, but I should have critical justifications for all of them.

My other need is to reflect on the human condition, my condition. How do we think? How do we interact with stuff?  What happens when we have more power over the world?  This is arena that I care about and why I’ve picked a pedagogical framework.  In the most disgusting, self referential, meta sort of way, the system itself is my best answer to “so, what’s the tool you’re making.”

What are people going to be able to see when you are done?

No matter how barefoot in the park I want to leave things, I do admit that I need to be clearer about how I, and others, will engage with the resulting process going forward. I was hoping that that would have been where I could have gotten help from the critics, but I did not present enough for that to be part of the conversation.  Part of the difficulty is the usual schism for the ITP program, how to create engaging documentation for things that are part software, part hardware, part model airplane kit.  Here are some options… not all of which are exclusive.

• A syllabus/Pitch for a class – I could collect from different universities, community centers what they ask for if someone wanted to tech a new class and tailor my documentation to outlines and talks and readings, etc.
• A basic DIY website – A website that doesn’t take in feedback. Like a book with interactive exercises.  Question here would be: is it all up at once or is the idea to keep publishing new exercises? (oreillynet.com, marthastewart.com… hackaday.com)
• A book manuscript/proposal – Different than a website (for many many reasons) but partially because the whole idea really must be fully formed with a beginning middle and end of the experience decided rather than a more updateable “magazine-like” potential of a website.
• A community website – This would allow others to post their results to the different exercises, comments on their experience… or maybe even add their own excercises?
• A gallery website – curated examples of some of the results from exercises.  Like the book “An Animated Alphabet” or as a personal documentary.
• A gallery exhibit – Why not show the objects off? Put the tools on a pedestal?
• A “blogging” Software – A software that others can use to create their own documented online journey using exercises.
• Software – who really likes working on the Web? A desktop application because it is a private journey, with maybe the ability to publish certain exercises to a community website? To their own Blog?
• An moderated email newsletter with the new exercise and related materials delivered to your inbox.
• Newsletter/Kit-of-the-Month club where eventually people would not only get the exercise but a box of all the parts or certificates or whatever they need to do it.

Who is this for and how will they interact with it?

The format issue can’t be resolved until I answer the audience question, at least in part.  I do know I’d like to think of my results as being more Leonardo di Vinci Journal than Creativity for Dummies, and yet I want it to be accessible.  

Skill level: I don’t know if I have solved my lowest common denominator issue, but for now I am going to work with the idea that my target would be people with skill level equal to a minimum of a second semester-itp student skill level.  Still very broad, but I’m choosing that level because for right now I do not want to get into very basic programming 101, but I am okay with the idea that people might not be super comfortable with it already.  I don’t want to explain how to use an EPIC programmer, either. These are areas I feel can be beefed up later, supplemented or “out sourced” if need be.  Likewise I expect to the audience to have been to a gym once or twice in their life or maybe have gone out dancing instead.

Why: I think the people who would be interested in engaging with the process would do so because they intrigued with the idea of making their own–perhaps purely symbolic–creative tool.  If that were all, however, a simple collection of pick-and-choose exercises would suffice.  My audience is people whose current process is failing them some how.  No one follows someone else’s plan if they know what to do.  I think there needs to be more of a sense of a guided journey–a friends highlighted, annotated, copy of Lonely Planet to travel with?  In the end it should feel like their trip, but never like they were at a loss to pick what to do that day.

Venue and Duration: This is something people have to be able to have in their own territory. It belongs to them and they have to be able relate to it and own it over a period of months.  I would be hesitant to incorporate formalized result sharing over the web in the thesis itself because I think that is contrary to the spirit of private dialog.  What specifically I’m worried about in the case of open-to-all forums on the web is that they very quickly seem to become more about status than learning.  I don’t want anyone to feel like their process is less valid because SuperKid39 has already posted 100 versions of what she did for Exercise 19.  It is totally different to borrow a friends written in book than to buy your own travel journal to discover that someone has marked up all the pages.  I think it is important and valuable to have engagement with fellow travelers, but that needs to be balanced with preserving the feeling of walking on your own patch of untrodden snow.

Do you have any guinea pigs other than yourself? How soon do I expect to bring in other people?

Really good questions. Can I and should I have other people try certain exercises? Absolutely. What I can do is get the exercises up, whether or not I’VE done them, somewhere other people, first years and professors and alumnae can look at them, try them out and give me feedback when and where they can.  This won’t be the same as having them follow “The Program” but it would be a start.  After all, these are kind of the point.