==RW&RM XPUB 2017-18==
Reading, Writing, and Research Methodologies 2017-18
Led by Steve Rushton
"The Reading, Writing, and Research Methodologies Seminar is tailored towards (further) developing research methods within the first year of this master. By establishing a solid foundation of research skills, it will eventually prepare students for their Graduate research in the second year. Through reading core theoretical texts, they will establish a common vocabulary and set of references to work from. They will learn the practice of classic ‘essayistic methodologies’, including close reading, annotation, description and notation, students learn to survey a body of literature, filter what is relevant to their research and create comparative pieces of analysis. The seminar helps students to establish methodical drafting processes for their texts, where they can develop ideas further and structure their use of notes and references. The course takes as axiomatic that the perceived division between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ is essentially an illusion."
Curriculum:
The seminar over the three trimesters will involve:
(a.) Identifying the object of your research: description and analysis of your work
(b.) Contextualizing your work through description and reflection on contemporary and historical practices.
(c.) Identify research material key to your practice.
(d.) Synopsis and annotation of key texts
(e.) Writing machines: creating methods for group and individual writing.
Throughout, there will be an emphasis on working collectively, whether in a larger discussion group or in smaller reading and writing groups.
Editing Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies - handbook information
Method for all the sessions
For every session there is a different task, which employs a different writing reading or notation method. I will set no assignments outside of the class, but you must commit to trying the methods I suggest for the day of the seminar. Over the three trimesters you will accumulate a collection of texts and approaches to writing which serve as a resource as you go into the second year.
Outcome at end of year: Text on Method
The specific outcome for the RW&RM seminar of 2017-2018 will be a 1500 word text which reflects on your own method and situates your work in relation to a broader artistic and cultural context. The various texts produced within the RW&RM seminar will serve as source material for your text on method. In common with all modules on the course RW&RM serves to support the other elements of the course. Therefore, the text on method will inform your Self-Evaluation at the end of the third trimester and provide the basis for your Graduate Project Proposal that you will produce in the fourth trimester.
Here are the TheTemplate; and here is the link to previous texts on method: '''FINAL VERSIONS''' deadline early May
Wiki Basic style sheet
Titles and works = italics
Essays = Title in Caps
Notation = Harvard System (writer, page number) = (Smith, 26)
URL = make link
Guide to Essay Writing
Jstor is a very useful resource
Intro Session Zero
Introduction to RW&RM by Steve Rushton
Today's pad: https://pad.pzimediadesign.nl/p/stevesclass
Outcome Session Zero
Please upload notes on our discussion about your writing practice below.
https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Mywriting
Following Steve's general introduction to methods in context of the whole course over two years.
(a) What happens in the seminar?
(b) How does this fit in with the other aspects of the program?
(c) How does the the seminar feed into the course over two years?
(d) what is your writing practice?
(e) what do you want to do with writing?
Note: For every session there is a different task, which employs a different writing method. I will set no assignments outside of the class, but you must commit to trying the methods I suggest for the day of the seminar. Over the three trimesters you will accumulate a collection of texts and approaches to writing which serve as a resource as you go into the second year.
Session One
Today's Pad: https://pad.pzimediadesign.nl/p/rw_rw_27-09-17
Task Two:
10:00 Intro
10:15 Upload notes on writing practice on to wiki (below)
10:20 - 12:00
Describe two of your works/ projects
for each work describe
What (100 words max)
How (100 words max)
Why (100 words max)
300 word description of two works = 600 words (max)
12:00
Outcome One Session One
In groups of three,
Read each other's texts
Readers: give feedback (what were you given to understand by the text? how can it be improved to make it clearer?).
Spend no more than 10 mins giving feedback on each text
Writer: remain silent, do not try to defend the text, concentrate on what the text is actually communicating to your readers.
Make notes of your reader's comments
13:00 LUNCH
14:00 Continue reading in groups of two and make notes. Make changes to your draft. (Keep original version below edited version)
Finish work on edit
15:00 Meet in class as group to review two things.
15:30
1) Upload notes from last session to wiki
2)Discuss feeding methods into Special Issue
Discuss feeding methods into Special Issue
Outcome Two Session One
See pad below:
Session Two RW&RM 11 October 2017
Today we will work with material gathered over the last two weeks
Today's pad:
https://pad.pzimediadesign.nl/
10:00:
Introduction: organising work flow
1) Review research and action undertaken for Special Issue 4 since the last session.
2) Gather material. Discuss how that material can be worked on during the seminar; discuss different possible interview forms such as verbatim interview, interview chains, comic strips, interview embedded in narrative or report &c. Discuss how these forms may work in relation to Special Issue 4
3) Allocate tasks in small groups or individually; make plan; set outcome for the end of today
4) This session will be a prelude to the Zine-camp on the 11 November.
This event will serve as a methods class in which we can work with visitors to the Zine-camp.
This is the blurb for the Zinecamp at Worm:
“Remixing Interviews.
Workshop hosted by XPUb, Piet Zwart.
Outcomes: a series of zines which edit, reorder, scramble and unscramble the material XPub have generated into different zine forms such as interview chains, comic strips and more.The workshop is one outcome of XPub's current project Autonomous Archive, which investigates the archive of Het Poortgebouw.
1 day workshop
Date: Sat 11 November 2017”
Session Three Nov 1
1) Recap = debrief Steve on progress of publication
2) Discuss what to do with research material generated at the end of the process: making a template to drop material in to. How to make such a system navigable and readable.
3) Plan for the Zine-camp:
4) Allocate tasks and state outcomes for the end of the day
4) Continue to work on publication.
(questions; what narrative are the interviews telling?, how is it told? Archive images and generated images.)
Session Four Nov 15
At the last session we discussed what to do with the archive of Special Issue 4. After reviewing several options we agreed to go away and give it some serious thought. Annett Dekker's lecture may have provided new perspectives and suggested different possibilities of how to deal with the SI4 Archive.
AM 10-11:00:
1) Review: Zine-camp (what you did and how to take it further)
2) Review: Annett Dekker lecture
Pads
Pad from Annett's Lecture
Pad for today
3) In the light of Annett Dekker's lecture, what is our current thinking on archiving the Special Issue 4 material?:
Key questions (please add)
Who will the special issue archive serve?
How can it be made public?
(or should I ask, what are the many ways in which it can be made public?)
11:00-12:45
Make models for SI4 archive (sketches and outline)
12:45
Review models for SI4 archive and timetable action going forward
13:00 LUNCH
14:00- 17:00
14:00 Review progress on publication and poster and allocate tasks
14:15 work on publication
16:45: Review today's work and plan ahead
editing tips
Outcome Session Four
Today we spent the morning session discussing possibilities of how to archive the material generated whilst making SI4.
The full record of our session today can be found on: Pad for today
We articulated the aims of such an archive, as follows:
“This archive serves the following aims: It will be permeable and accessible. Its nature reflects the transparency of the process of making the book. It serves as a testimony to the potential of the archive as a site of cultural production. It gives legitimacy (to its subject) through the ACT of documenting. The process of putting information together helps bind relations across a number of networks where a relation was not previously recognised. We aim to make this network of relations visible. At all stages the design decisions informed the process, a material archive is therefore an essential element.”
From the four draft proposals sketched in the class the preferred outcomes were:
1) Timeline - using a timeline extension on wiki or calendar?
Each week is a page (Sept 25 - December 7th) 11 weeks
In each week’s page you have the corresponding material (some files are only aliases, real file is in folders in Poortgebouw archive or PZI) Material in each week: Links to pads, content files, design files, research, gallery, emails as text, versions of our wiki, audios of interviews in preview?, zines physical archive in weeks and then in categories, printed and digital material in different formats and
2) FILES ON A PI: simple html website with directory of files
week > categories > files.
Physical version housed in PG
Both these options are achievable in the time allowed and given the resources we have.
However, the group agreed that serious thought be given to design elements which involve, personalise and intrigue the user.
Session Five November 29
This is the last RW&RM session for this trimester!
10:00 - 11:00
Review this trimester's RW&RM
SI4/ poster Review
Look forward to next trimester
RW&RM Trim 2 =The Alphabet is a Writing Machine
Subjects:
Ogden's BASIC English - Neurath's ISoTyPE - Oulipo- Calvino- Uncreative Writing- Distant Reading- Building Writing Machines-
Link to the Stanford Literary Lab pamphlets:
https://litlab.stanford.edu/pamphlets/
Link to a review of Franco Moretti's Distant Reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/books/review/the-mechanic-muse-what-is-distant-reading.html
Update views on archiving SI4 material
11:00
Gather material to archive SI4 project
14:00
Assessment prep
16:30
Review
TRIM TWO
RW&RM Trim 2 =The Alphabet as Writing Machine
Subjects:
Ogden's BASIC English - Neurath's ISoTyPE - Oulipo- Calvino- Uncreative Writing- Distant Reading- Building Writing Machines
The alphabet as Software
Literature as information streams
McLuhan: “All the [smart] things to be said about computers can be spelled out in Plato’s Phaedrus”
Library
Plato-Phaedrus (370 BC)
Eric A. Havelock - Preface to Plato (1963)
Jack Goody and Ian Watt - The Consequences of Literacy (1963)
Walter Ong - Orality and Literacy (1982)
Lydia Liu - The Freudian Robot (2010)
Gerritzen, Lovink, Kampman, eds. - I Read Where I Am, Exploring Information Cultures (2011)
Kenneth Goldsmith - Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (2011)
Otto Neurath - International Picture Language (a guide to IsoTYPE using Ogden's BASIC English, 1936)
Raymond Queneau - Exercises in Style (1947)
John Johnston - Introduction Friedrich Kittler: Media Theory After Poststructuralism F. Kittler - Discourse Networks 1800-1900 (1985/1990)
Marco Deseriis- Text Virus (2008)
James Gleick - The Information (2011)
M. McLuhan - Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man (1964)
William S. Burroughs - The Invisible Generation (1963) [cut up as writing machine]
William S. Burroughs - The Electronic Revolution (c1971)
Six Selections by the Oulipo (1961-1970)
Calvino- Cybernetics and Ghosts (1967)
Calvino- Night Rider [from Cosmicomics) (1967)
Jos de Mul - The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination' (2008) http://www.demul.nl/nl/publicaties/publicaties-per-categorie/boekbijdragen/item/1549-the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-digital-recombination
Link to the Stanford Literary Lab pamphlets:
https://litlab.stanford.edu/pamphlets/
Link to a review of Franco Moretti's Distant Reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/books/review/the-mechanic-muse-what-is-distant-reading.html
Session Six
Introduction to The Alphabet as Writing Machine
AM:
1) Orality and Literacy
2) How to become a reading-writing machine
PM:
Writing
Outcomes Session Six
17:30 Recap
=========================================================
=========================================================
Some classics from the methods library (please add)
One day collaboration
Filter same information through different forms: report - review - interview
Session Sixteen: messy writing task
Session Fifteen: fable-writing w/shop
Session Fourteen
Reading with Y2.
A session in which we get together with the second years to read and discuss the writing component (aka thesis) they produced this year. What they wrote, why they chose the form they did, and how they did it.
Session Thirteen
DEADLINE TEXT ON METHOD
Today you will make the finishing touches to your ToM.
Agenda:
10:00 meet to set achievable aims for the day.
What needs to be done to finish the text?
How will you respond to points made in the feedback?
Throughout the day: Steve will be around to discuss your texts
UPLOAD ONTO WIKI LINK TO TUTORS
Session X Drafts for Steve to give feedback and comment
upload text on wiki (as word file or as wikipage)
Getting to final draft stage, TEXT ON METHOD
Bring your draft (or upload on wiki [above], or as word doc) to the small project space and Steve will read and give feedback.
Session Eleven = No Part of the Buffalo is Wasted
The printout, cutup & stick together
Please print everything you have written for this class
10:00 Cutting up and assembling text around a template
14:00: make a new document of your cutup
16:00:Meet in Prj Space to review progress and plan ahead. Bring your long piece of paper.
Before next session; make new doc by cut and pasting edits you have made
Outcome Session Eleven
Session Ten
The Question.
10:00 = 1) The Question
11:30 = 2) The Type Up
14:00 = 3) Annotating The Question (what questions and comments does the text you have made generate for your reader?).
16:00 = 4) The Review
OUTCOME SESSION TEN
Session Eight
To prepare..
as a mental exercise...
imagine...
you have a show in
THE PERFECT SPACE and
THE PERFECT AUDIENCE
come to see it!
What is THE SPACE and who are the AUDIENCE and WHAT WOULD YOU SHOW THEM?
This session will involve
interview, transcription of interview and editing of interview.
Here is today's pad:
And here is the program:
10:00-16:00
1) Boomerang. Nancy Holt & Richard Serra
2) Perfect, Perfect
3) Normal, Usual
Normalville Contemporary Art Centre for Contemporary Art
[today's pad:]
Normalville Contemporary Arts Centre of Art (CACOA)
3 works will be installed in 1 of the 500sqft space.
What does the audience need to know about the work?
The audience live in Normalville but 90% of them are not from the art industry.
2 hour plan:
for 30 min ::::0) Prepare for the interview
for 30min :::: 1) You will be the curator and will ask questions to elicit responses from the artist (that will encourage the ppl from Normalville to visit the show?
for 30 min :::: 2) You will be the artist and will be interviewed by the curator on the show you are proposing, you will negotiate your position.
for as long as it takes ::::3) Transcribe the interview
for as long as it takes ::::4) discuss and edit interviews.
As artist: Plan the exhibition
As curator: Plan the questions you want to ask
For interview:
Talk NO MORE than 30 MINS -- or a focussed interview will become an 'interesting conversation'
Please don't talk "industry language"
References:
Tate Shots: 5 minute artist interviews: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/audio-video/search?
From 16:00
At 16:00 those who want to be part of the radio re-do meet in the small project space.
Session Steve will introduce the "orwell writing machine"
Orwell's Politics and the English Language
Outcome Session Eight
[[interviews]
16:30: Review today's session
Session Seven
Thinking together about reading
Today's outcome: a publication which survey's what we read, how we read it and why we read it.
10:00 Intro
'We are street readers [...] info junk dealers'
Reading: I Read Where I Am, Gerritzen & Lovink, eds.
10:15
brief discussion
Intro to survey with Steve as test subject
11:00
In pairs:
Player 1 types notes (half hour max)
Player 2 answers survey
Player 2 types notes (half hour max)
Player 1 answers survey
Survey:
Please talk to your note taker about your relationship with reading, please include discussion of the following
what you read:
Online
Magazines and journals
Currently reading
Do you take notes? if yes, how?
Could you talk generally about your reading history and reading habits?
14:00: Editorial team meets
16:00 review outcome
OUTCOME 1 Session Seven- IN PAIRS
OUTCOME 2 Session Seven - EDITORIAL TEAM
Editorial team work on texts made in pairs and synthesises them and uploads it here
OUTCOME 3 Session Seven- GROUP READING
Session Six. Writing Machines
This is the task for this session
Set yourself a writing assignment, design a writing machine.
Use the methods employed so far, or design your own methods, to develop a procedure (constraints) for writing (AKA a writing machine) You can use the methods we have experimented with = (for instance Task4; WHW; think of your subject from the point of view of ecology, machine, discourse; swap interviewee-interviewer roles...
Your subject: the piece you are working on now, the piece you have just finished or the piece you are about to make.
Word count 1500 words max
If last time you didn't get a chance to speak to Steve about what you want to achieve with writing over the next two years, sign up here and we will do it today:
http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/fineart/Calendars:Fine_Art_Calendar/Fine_Art_Calendar/26-01-2017_-Event_1
Timetable for this session:
10:00 Steve's intro
11:00-(1) make plan
12:00 (2) execute plan
15:00 upload outcome of today's session here:
Outcome Session Six
16:00 regroup to discuss todays outcome.
Session 8 december
10:00 Steve gives intro to: 'why the hammer can only think nail'.
A field exercise in which:
The subject is
1) an ecology
2) a machine
3) a discourse
11:00 - we go into the field, observe the subject and take notes.
15:30
Group performance of our notes in three acts
1) an ecology
2) a machine
3) a discourse
This session's outcome: a recording of the above archived on the wiki.
OUTCOME SESSION FIVE
Session Four. What kind of writing practice do you want to build?
Continue from the last session:
11:00-16:30
Meetings with Steve:
Aim: to talk about your ambitions over the next two years, specifically related to writing. What kind of writing practice do you want to build? Agenda: please consider these points of discussion beforehand:
1) What role does writing currently play in your practice?
2) What role would you like writing to take in your practice over the next two years?
3) What you read and how you read it – what you write and how you write it (from tweets to shopping lists)
4) Throughout, Steve will take minutes and hand them to you for your own use at the end of the session.
Sign up here:
16:15 Upload texts below:
16:30 Meet in Project space to recap the day’s activities
Outcome of Session Four
Session Three
10:00- 11:00
Meet in project space for update with Steve
Feedback from readers (continued from last session)
In groups of 2
(1) give feedback on the second draft of the What? How? Why? texts.
(2) Make edits to your text and upload changes
Session Three: weaving research strands, making collective notes
Task three
11:00-17:00
Select three things
1) a piece of media (YouTube clip, film, TV show)
2) a text you are reading which has a useful relation to your work
3) a work of art (by another) which delights or infuriates you
Make a link to media, text &c (where possible) here:
https://pad.pzimediadesign.nl/
Bring a lap top
( When we discuss the texts you choose, Steve will outline handy note taking technique)