User:SN/Graduate proposal

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This morning I spent few hours checking my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I wrote few comments and put some likes, read articles and watched some videos. I barely remember which photos I commented and what about were my comments. For half an hour I was scrolling my Instagram feed without any attention to content. Just repetitive movements of my finger on the surface of the screen and the void in my memory. I think articles were about new discoveries as some time ago I subscribed to few science magazines and NG. Now is 8 in the evening and I cannot remember any sufficient detail of what I read this morning. This activity didn't bring me joy or satisfaction, yet my morning starts and evening finishes with checking social networks. It became a reflex: you get up, clean your teeth and check the feed in social networks, the mind is not involved.

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Recently I was reading an essay by Boris Groys. I caught myself on reading one paragraph for half an hour. I just couldn't understand what he was writing about. Words, sentences — all was clear, but the meaning was fading away from me.

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Often I catch myself on staring at the screen powerless to start to work. Such moments scare me.

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Today I printed out an entire ebook. I cannot concentrate while reading long texts on my Ipad. Reading from the screen takes too much time. I cannot afford it.

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For 20 min I was turning on and off Hide button on one of the layers in Photoshop. I was working on the web page and tried to figure out the best way to display and structure significant amount of information. I doubt whether this monotone activity helped me to find the solution for my problem, rather avoid doing it.

This notes I take while dealing with the digital world. Smartphone and laptop have become an essential part of my life. I used to think that they help me to expedite my work. Apps with smart interfaces, plugins, and scripts that are used to optimize my workflow. But at some moment this tools stopped to be just tools, I became dependent on them. They changed the way I work, think and feel. They affected my memory and perception.

I plan to make a video installation based on a diary of my "digital routine." I also want to make a book based on series of images (100 in total) and small notes, that I take every day. Right now I have a script that takes screenshots every 10 seconds. It consistently works on the background while I use my computer. In my intention is to collect data for 100 days, analyze and use it to highlight the anxiety about losing myself in a digital routine.

Describe how you will go about conducting your research through reading, writing and practice. In other words, through a combination of these approaches, you will explore questions or interests you have laid out in your general introduction. In this section you can help us understand how your project will come together on a practical level and talk about possible outcome(s). Of course, the outcome(s) may change as your research evolves, but it's important at this stage to have some concrete idea of how your project could come together as a whole.

What is your timetable?

Please include a timeline of what needs to be done and the order in which those things will be done.

Relation to previous practice

How does your research connect to previous projects you have done? Here you can use the descriptions you made during the Methods seminar or make new descriptions. Your Text on Method will also be useful in completing this section.

Relation to a larger context

Meaning practices or ideas that go beyond the scope of your personal work. Write briefly about other projects or theoretical material which share an affinity with your project. For example, if you are researching urban interventions, you might want to research about Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets. Or, if you want to explore the way data is tracked, you might touch upon the politics of data mining by referencing concerns laid out by the Electronic Frontier or highlight theoretical questions raised by Wendy Chun or others. (Keep in mind that we are *not* expecting well formulated conclusions or persuasive arguments in the proposal phase. At this juncture, it's simply about showing an awareness of a broader context, which you will later build upon as your research progresses.)