User:Mxrwho/Documentation or My Work Diary

What I learned today and how I used it (SI22)

18/09	19/09	20/09	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Today I learned that Kodak had cows in Chicago that ate grass rich in silver which resulted in the production of a gelatin used for the production of highly light-sensitive photographic paper. I am going to research DIY film-making methods (and maybe projectors too). It seems like a good material to work with (and on) and maybe I can combine it with the some post-digital processes, which we also talked about today. Within the scope of post-digital processes, it was also interesting to play with the cassette player and to contemplate what comprises post-digital art and how technologies can be combined. Thoughts on "Sound Memory": I had to choose a field recording from a world map. I immediately went to the place I grew up, out of curiosity. I found two sound files: One was bird singing and the sound of water, and the other waves and wind. The second one was much closer to my house. I chose that one. Reading the description for my metadata recording, I noticed that I read half of it in Greek. It made much more sense. My memory was improvisational and generic: By generic I mean that it was not a specific memory but a memory of my whole life, a memory of any other day, but any other day in a past that is getting distant. I wasn't planning for a nostalgic homesickness and I was surprised by the result. A bit lyrical but the combination of sounds is interesting. I will probably mix the three files into one, maybe even make a little video for it (hopefully with some contrasting imagery, to take the piece even further).	Radio Worm broadcast: Experimental and collaborative play with sounds. For me two things were of particular importance: (a) Seeing the natural flow of work between the three caretakers, and (as always) the jamming aspect, also while "reading" with music in the background. I have created pieces from found material in the past (collaging elements from texts), but never before in a performative manner. I would enjoy doing it more often. I must listen to the recording to get the impression of the listener. Being in a studio is always rewarding. A nice introduction to our server and its commands.	Collective annotation. What we did as a group was more of a constructive reading (with a brainstorming element) of the text and from there we chose to annotate the points we thought were important, controversial, outdated or relevant to our current experience. Thus, our annotations were collectively curated and agreed upon. Regarding the context, we managed to approach the structure of society as something prevalent all around us from architecture to the way we view the self, and we extended Deleuze's thought and metaphors to the shape our society has taken today. Code and Deleuze's still raw idea of its importance were also mentioned during our discussion. The protocol was set on the basis of what felt natural to all of us as a process.	The most striking element of the first week was to see the group dynamics unravel and how a climate of collaboration and good practice was intentionally cultivated from the very beginning through discussions, creative projects and group exercises. I am looking forward to reading all texts (also the ones I already know, and also those used in the annotation exercise) and to investigate radio archives in archives.org. I am playing with the idea of radio in my head: what does it mean, what does it constitute, what is its potential and how could we twist it. Meanwhile, another project is forming in my head: An installation combining aesthetic elements from "Green Porn" (a model version of it), an actual set and sound sources. Could be interactive. My idea is very particular, I even have the color palette ready, I need to decide on some details regarding the text (in image and sound) and the possible interactions.
25/09	26/09	27/09	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Visiting Worm again I had the chance to talk with Lieuwe, who is a natural storyteller. From our conversations, which included among others what constitutes community, I picked an inspirational story about his aunt who had the initial S embroidered on the shoulders of her Salvation Army robe, which stood for "Soup and Salvation". I aspire to create a podcast for Worm with some of my fellow students that will bear this title.	It was very interesting to listen to the radio show of the second team of caretakers. It made me want to compare it with my team's, and it is always a unique experience to listen to a show while you already know the studio where the broadcast takes place. Building a soundboard was also a nice experience. It is also nice to revisit html and use it in an experimental setting. I enjoy the collaborative element of the course the most. ||	The Barthes article, one of the two readings we had for this week, was well-known to me. It's one of the main articles introducing the reader-response theory, which can be implemented on most interactions, especially when there are hierarchical expectations. It's interesting that I somehow always come back to this. Maybe it's something for the foundations of my thesis after all.
02/10	03/10	04/10	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Making a radio on our servers. Interesting process.	Interesting radio show, especially reading in turns and effectively using background sounds. Disappointing to see none of my classmates contribute to the live conversation when they were asked to. Playing with the oscilometer. Nice to see how you can tweek old technology to make something else than what it was intented to make.	Visual mapping. For me not necessarily useful but it was nice to see how associations spring up.
09/10	10/10	11/10	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Grep command. Weasyprint. CSS (which I luckily am somewhat familiar with). Suddenly, a new plan forms. Ideas about how to manipulate text spring up. These ideas are going to be of instrumental value for the zine content.	Meditative protocools. Amazing interviews (Leslie's resonated). Flowcharts. George Perec. The Machine. In combination with the grep command and a series of other text commands (such as sed and cut) I am planning to write a poem/play, with the material we already have from (some of) our pads. The plotters have been plotting against us.	Glossary. Wordhole. An interesting undertaking, especially seeing how broad some definitions can be. Language. The greatest mystery of all. I still find the mind map a bit redundant.	This week the pieces of the puzzle called SI22 fell into place and I can finally see the bigger picture of what it is that we're doing here. It took me a month, which is not bad. I really like what we're doing here, how it's organized and how everything unravels.
23/10	24/10	25/10	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Playing with tapes was very satisfying. It reminded me of my childhood, since my father loved sound devices and we had a reel-to-reel tape recorder at home.	Delving deeper into tape (and sound) art, its history and manifestations was inspiring. Also making the soundboard was a nice link between the analogue and the digital.	I felt that the paraphrasing exercise was a bit pointless, because it wasn't deeply connected to the development of the glossary. Maybe better integrated exercises and in combination with other academic writing elements (such as citation, that will follow) would save time.	I worked on the text from last Wednesday's pad and used the commands grep grep -E "==Archive==|==Interviews==|Memory" 1.txt > 1a.txt and awk awk 'BEGIN {srand()} NR % 10 < 3 {print "Archive: " $0} NR % 10 >= 3 && NR % 10 < 6 {print "Interviews: " $0} NR % 10 >= 6 {print "Memory: " $0}' 1a.txt > 1b.txt to cut and rearrange the text and add the words "archive", "memory" and "interviews" to make it. I used the awk command further to break and rearrange the sentences ( awk -F ' is ' '{print $2 " " $1}' 1.txt | shuf), turned the text into html and edited it in sublime to give it a form and add some bold lettering ("the worm protocol active archive" was an accident in a way [my intention was to have these words in bold inside the text, but I apparently didn't code it as I should] but I like accidents too) and did some manual editing (replaced most links with [link] to keep the online feel but also create a sense of absence. Overall I like the associations created within the text that run a bit freely. It could take some more manipulation and I would also like to have a visual element added. A next step would be to convert it to .pdf with weasyprint.
30/10	31/10	01/11	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Was interesting to see us try to develop collaboration protocols, even if it was so close to the zine camp and while collaboration should have already been established. It felt like a moderator was needed. Talking about our projects was very helpful and Manetta gave me an idea that helped my little publication become fuller, by adding the recipe and turning it into a distributive practice. Thijs offered to help by adding etherpatches to the experiment, which was great. Allessia wanted to help too, but in the end the coding part troubled her a lot and she didn't proceed. Working with the plotters later on was also nice, both as manual labor and also to understand machines better and the possibilities (ordering circuit boards, 3D printing parts etc) that might be useful later, when working with mechanical prototypes maybe.	It was sad to miss part of the radio show, although we got the chance to listen to it later. It also taught us something about sharing our plans in advance, as a way of supporting each other and having each others backs. We go the chance to work more (and in my case largely finalize) on our projects for the zine camp. Again the plotters. Nice to see progress (in the end of the evening our plotter was fixed, although I wasn't there to see it).	More work on the glossary, this time more focused and experience-driven. Describing practices was a nice exercise into "show don't tell" and got us thinking about an ignorant audience (so, writing with an imaginary target group in mind). The publication was finalized, we made a test print with Thijs and then printed the lot. I also asked Senka and Alessia about their opinion regarding ways to fold and we adopted Senka's idea. I took the pages to the publication station and cut them, in order to fold them. Thursday was folding day, and I also decided to use the box I made in the wood workshop as a container for the folded 'recipes'.	Zine Camp. It went really well. The mood was good, the people helpful. The students were enthusiastic and eager to help the visitors of our stall and each other. Much of the presentation was prepared on Saturday evening (I was absent) and on Sunday afternoon. It went very well.
06/11	07/11	08/11	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
We talked about our experience with zine camp and connected it to the upcoming SI22. We decided that we need to work collectively and that a metaphor could help us bridge the gap between individual works.	An amazing in promptu radio show, where we all took part and contributed in interviewing three prominent members of the Radio Worm community. More work of metaphors.	Very useful Field Report produced collectively during Methods. (Almost) all pads were collected and we created an overview of all weeks. It felt to me like the making of a very useful time map.
13/11	14/11	15/11	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
break, but preparing for Tuesday's broadcast.	Rosa, Senka, Riviera and I summarized our course (using also the field report), presented the metaphors and posed the question on the theme. We decided on the Apocalypse during the broadcast, a decision which we also discussed later.	Realizing that we had to come up with ideas for our Special Issue, and although I initially wanted to create an object, I decided it would be better to do what I feel more comfortable with, as the time was a bit short and I didn't know if I would have to do something completely alone.
20/11	21/11	22/11	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
Workshop on voice machine learning. It was interesting to play a bit with programs that run consecutive scripts broken down in pieces, so you could see and manipulate each piece separately.	More interviews during the broadcast. The ideas regarding the SI are forming, some collaborations are already strong. Riviera offered to help with the typesetting of my manual.	We discussed through Jitsi about separate publications (which will allow more freedom) and teams with separate focus. We had a brief discussion concerning the narrative (I was in that team). To be continued.	I spent a large part of the weekend playing with ConTeXt, trying to typeset my "manual". Visiting PrePostPrint on Friday was also very nice and interesting and I see all this publishing fever lately as very closely connected to what I am doing and where I'm headed. Pretty valuable broadening of horizons, meeting people with common interests and backgrounds, coming across some very interesting experiments and developments.
27/11	28/11	29/11	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
The previous year defended their theses. It was interesting to see how diverse they were and also the different approaches. However, only one of them seemed to be developed enough to be comprehensively presented. We talked about our projects for the special issue. Manetta pushed the agenda of making my publication a short of catalogue for the trimester and other people's work. However, others had already decided to proceed in making their own publications or didn't show interest in adding their work to the publication. We chose with Alessia the paper at the publication station. I repeated my proposal for a Scratch Orchestra, but there was no enthusiasm.	The building up of characters in an improvisational manner for the broadcast was very interesting and fun. I felt that it was helpful in visualizing the apocalypse narrative. Riviera started typesetting the Manual in Context. We have been in constant dialogue. I started asking people personally for work they would like to add to the Manual and this brought some more fruit. The importance of networking and personal approach never seizes to amaze me.	More building up of characters and some line editing for the press release. Recording improvisational relationships between the characters we made was a lot of fun. It could be used in next weeks broadcast. We made a test print. It's always nice to see the physical result.	My initial plan for the special issue was to make an object. In the end, feeling lost in the multitude of opinions and the seeming discordance of voices I decided to fall back to what I already knew. The challenge this time was to actually approach and convince people to offer their work for the publication, which is not something I am used to doing and not something that I particularly enjoy doing. In certain cases I was very pleasantly surprised with the work that was given to me and I think that the publication was actually very much worth it. I had an epiphany during the "weekend": What our tutors were saying, that we already have everything for the issue and didn't have to produce "new" material. My take on this is a bit different: We could produce new material, but with the tools we already had acquired: I missed some sound making, some tape recorder play. We should have produced music collectively and archived it in different ways. I think we got lost in a general anxiety that didn't allow us to take some distance from the project and we got also lost in our personal incompatibilities. I think we missed the chance to actually have fun and to produce something collectively. In this sense, the trimester has been disappointing, but of course I learned much and developed new questions.
04/12	05/12	06/12	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
We did a test print with Alessia, and it went well.	Last broadcast before the apocalypse. A very strong performative element, which we tried to hold together with some basic principles and prompts. We printed the rest with Alessia and Riviera.	Last preparations before the launch. We seem to be ready and the project has coherence.	Our launch was on the 7th. We were planning to insert a LARP element but it didn't work, as the people who came without knowing about the event were already confused enough. The broadcast went well and everyone came to talk about their projects. The reception of the work was positive.
11/12	12/12	13/12	General rest of the week thoughts, comments, etc.
	Reflection: We got to talk about our projects, the launch and the trimester in general. Florian came as representative of the Worm side: My manual seems to be controversial. The general permission we got from Ash to reuse the recordings however we saw fit was apparently not enough for having the interviews published, especially in connection to the element of error, that I chose to incorporate in the work, in a play between transcription as an archiving practice, the live, performative element of radio making and the error in general as an important part of this "liveness" that is extensively talked about in the interviews, and of the creative process in general. Florian's arguments made me face the "formal" weaknesses of my experiment and took away much of my joy for the project. However, it was also a good way to be reminded that I must proceed in everything with caution, and that good intentions are not enough and can lead to misunderstandings.
BREAK	BREAK	BREAK	General thoughts, comments, etc.
The break was much needed. I managed to rest, relax, get a little closer to myself, be productive and creative. I managed to think in more positive terms, to embrace my efforts and my mistakes and approach them in a constructive way.
10/01	11/01	12/01	General thoughts of the week, comments, etc.
The trimester started with a workshop on (hidden) disabilities and accessibility in the art sector. Since I am working with different media, it is always of interest to find different ways of translating my work for everyone. It was interesting to see the concept of accessible media players and to think of different aids or things to consider in video creation besides captions, such as mouth visibility and the inclusion of sign language.	A second, two-day workshop on collaboration. The first day was focused on our recognizing our feelings and needs, and their bodily manifestations (and expressing them). Tomorrow will be about navigating relationships and handling conflict. Overall interesting, however I wonder whether a condensed, one-day version wouldn't have been equally effective. I am bit skeptical regarding the simplified psychology approach that underlies some of the aspects of this workshop but I will only be able to form an opinion after tomorrow.