User:Tisa/GRS

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

drafting chapter II

here

PROJECT PROPOSAL

Tisa N. Herlec

"The Constitution" will be a multiplicity of works assembled in a dynamic installation. Parallel to a self-hosted website.

The installation and the site present a holistic assemblage of my work, and are the infrastructure that will allow me to open my imaginary to others and trigger a cybernetic circular causal relationship (already established in collaborative segments of my practice). Hence, neither the installation nor the website will be static. Using the protocols of exchange described below, I will generate, dynamicize, share and set concepts in motion together with others.

I work with the mediums of: text, sound, objects/sculpture, visual (painting, drawing, printmaking), publication/zine, movement, workshops. I am the kind of a creator that makes connections, extends, overflows, chaoticizes, my methodology is the one of addition (it is X AND also X).

Collaboration is the main principle of my process – whether between humans, works, materials, concepts – tinkering, collecting, making, assembling as well as analysing, observing, writing, conversing, playing, exchanging happens.

"The Constitution" will have a dual function.

First: It will provide an archival snapshot of a particular moment in my research practice, a trail of breadcrumbs left by my process, a nest for thoughts and their physical manifestation. The works that I will make up to that point and their documentation will inhabit the space that will frame and tame them. The website will be the manifestation of the space in a digital realm.

Second: The space will function as the mediator, the plateau of exchange between my imaginary and others' imaginaries. I will open up the space, letting others peek inside my head and experience the multiplicity, the entanglement of my works. The space will be open to the public in a timeframe from 10.00 to 20.00 from X. 7. 2020 to X. 7. 2020. In this time I will be present in the space. I will engage in protocols of exchange with them, letting them effect my process; changing and rearranging the constituted space and also generating new works in it together with others.

More concretely: I will set up a discursive corner in the space. There, I will engage in conversations with others and drink coffe. I will give tours of the space and tell stories and visions behind the works that will constitute it. I will perform in the space (using it as a stage) and propose workshops to others. While doing all of this, I will collect imaginaries/responses/associations in different formats such as audio recording, writing (visitors' book and a notepad on my website). If the covid restrictions will be still in place, I will make livestreams of performances and host virtual discussions on my website, as well as set up webcams in the space for the duration of its opening hours.

All of the data that I will have gathered will effect the space and the works in it, interventions done by me or others will continuously change it, generating something unforeseeable. The project will be an experience in itself, a long-durational performative action and an encounter between variables and constants. It is absolutely necessary for me to establish "The Constitution" as a physical space (regardless the restrictions of contact with the public), in itself it is performative, a process in-constitution. With this, I will allow potentialities to emerge, document the already existing and noticed ones, archiving versions of my works, establish a discourse that is provisional and in its approaches propositional. My process and my works will get a chance at a recurrent dynamicization, unfolding with the presence, the action, the interventions and the insights of others. "The Constitution" is an infrastructure that contains and facilitates flow and improvisation, it defines and enables actions and interactions, a recursive change.

"The Constitution" will also functon as a stage, allowing a series of performative (inter)actions and collaborations to take place.

There will be performances of:

  • A duo "ch" with Linus Bonduelle using self-made instruments (found objects amplified by contact microphones, analog effects and voices, developing an improvisational discourse between imaginary characters. See more here.
  • An augmentable duo "cTrL+" with a cellist Lucija Gregov, inviting another musician into the performance, augmenting our collaboration, expanding its "function". (cTrL+P for example) See more here.
  • My solo performance. Hear snippets of my soundmaking here.

The already existing pursuits in the medium of sound outlined above will expand into: radioplays, field recordings, poetry, sound installations in public space, soundwalks, new collaborations and improvised performances.

Topos: The meta infrastructure of the space reflects my research interest and is closely related to my thesis outline.

A semiotic vision guids my research, metaphorically representing it and giving it a materiality:

A school of fish is swarming in the water. Their movement is rapid, dynamic, consistent, governed by a natural order, flow. Suddenly and silently a fishnet bursts into the water, engulfs a portion of the fish and the human drags them onto the surface. They will die, be gutted and cleaned, sold, bought, consumed, perhaps discarted. The net makes the fish become a part of a system of processing and consumption (that is not their natural ecosystem), imposes a structure onto their being. The remaining fish reccurently reorganize themselves, schooling forward as if nothing had happened.

I am fasinated by the dynamics that such a happening produces, and the metaphorical, semiotic significance of the action of fishing (represented by the fishnet and its materiality): an act of framing happens, a possibly repressive rupture of one system, a passage onto another. Paranodalities emerge. I question on what is inside (a system, a network, the net, the habit, the imaginary), what is outside, what are the characteristics of the permeable membrane in-between, what are the dynamics from/towards the inside/outside, intra-actions that happen, frictions that are constant.

I think of: myceliums, roots, lineages, spiders' webs, weaving, entangled matter, chemtrails, transportation pathways, movement, ... I think of: chaos, flow, homeostasis, structure, networks, organization, taxonomy, process, disciplines, hegemony, ... I reside somewhere in the middle, grasping for air and observing.

My material works have sprouted from the fascination with nets and ropes. Their formal constitution. The way they encompass, leave out, capture, arrange, dissect - and are, in themselves, dissected, decomposed, washed ashore, polluting, ...

An outline of emerging works that are going to find their place in "The Constitution" and that are driving my material process ahead:

  • Material found on the beach - nets:

Photo 2020-10-07 14-52-34.jpg

  • Scanned:

Scanned threads.png

  • Experiments with salt that unify the detached materials:

Photo 2020-10-14 10-42-22.jpg

  • Printmaking with the found material:

Indigo.jpg

  • Working with threads, "A dark thought with a good purpose":

Dark.jpg

  • Painting the in-between spaces, "A battle of energies in the sky"

Slika nova 2020.jpg

Photo 2020-10-07 14-39-00.jpg

The ongoing work will expand into ceramic sculptures eaten by salt, crystal and mycelium growing pursuits, sculptural knotting of strings and threads and nets also in a form of a spatial installation, ... I will let material and thought to intuitively guide me. Process is crucial for me.

In the digital part of my project - my website I will deploy these features:

  • self-hosting on a Raspberry Pi
  • freewriting tool (python nltk library)
  • livestreaming
  • an open notebook/comment
  • playlists (changing speed)
  • text to speech instant subtitles generator
  • visualisation of sound
  • an instance of mediawiki (data organization)
  • metadata fields (extra info on works)
  • private and public sites on the website
  • data storage

This is my first tryout on the sandbox, using the Jupyter notebooks:

Website sandbox.png

This sketch serves me as the starting point. Within my website, I want to produce narratives made out of different media (picture, video, sound, text), intuitive flows of associations that will navigate the visitors across the entanglements of my works that the website will archive (and afford new ones to emerge). I will make a linking structure between the elements, a system of indexing (possibly with Mediawiki queries). See this reference. As stated, there will be an interactive side to it.

In the realm of technology, I will also attempt to construct the following tools for documentation of my elusive practice:

  • "A sculpture made out of focus", a gyroscope following the movements I make while performing, compiling them into a 3D drawing, printing a 3D sculpture.
  • An earphone microphone which I will use to make field recordings and recordings of conversations on walks.
  • A pedal camera with which I will capture single moments in my studio space and instantly publish them to a segment on my website.
  • a bash imagemagick script that will order and edit the images that go into my Archival book of visual research.
  • More contact microphone instruments (already used in the duo "ch").

METHODOLOGIES/RESEARCH STRATEGIES

  • reading and constructing a real-time research log (reading annotations+intertextual links, also summaries of texts and own thoughts on texts, reading theory as if it was poetry (observing own emotion, thoughts, connections);
  • writing responses to texts, short essays, co-writing/thinking with others;
  • recording and transcribing my presentations and tutorials, keeping a diary of my insights/shifting perspectives;
  • recording myself speaking and writing intuitively (I call it freewriting);
  • writing fiction (poetry, stories);
  • observing/visions/images/hallucinations
  • transcribing content (words) from sound improvisation;
  • making an overview of my works (archival and generative);
  • analysis of my works and the process that made them;
  • making notes of conversations w/friends;
  • interviewing practitioners, other people interviewing me;
  • exchanging letters;
  • visual/sculptural: thinking with material, depicting of concepts, collecting objects;
  • giving form to process-generated data (booklets, sound pieces);
  • sound improvisation alone & w/others;
  • writing scripts/compositions/exercises (a cookbook);
  • shifting scale principle (concepts will be applied to different scales, making parallels: x > macro > micro > x ... x > personal > societal > political > x)
  • ...

I want to learn from:

  • myself and my self-generated data, practice, experience.

My intuitive, rhizomatic chaosmos/my practice is documented here.

  • the insights and the works of the people that I personally know.
  • the theoretical works in the field.

See my research log here.


The key terms describing my methodologies are:

  • second-order cybernetics;
  • divergent thinking;
  • inductive reasoning;
  • practice-based research;
  • polyvocal, polymorphous and polyamorous.

TIMETABLE

All the time:

  • making material works
  • documentation
  • making notes
  • performing (as much as restrictions allow or streaming)

November:

  • set up the Raspberry Pi self-hosting
  • sketch website infrastructure
  • learn nltk, css, html
  • cowriting, chapter [I]
  • find a space that will become "The Constitution"
  • finish the bash imagemagick script
  • 19-11-20: host the py.rate.chnic workshop a)PART_to_de(PART with Ioana Tomici and Mark van de Heuvel

December:

  • 4-12: Deadline First Chapter
  • 17-12: RADADAR digestive circuit event (Cirkulacija2, Ljubljana, SI)
  • learn nltk, css, html
  • arrange my archive, documentation of my previous works (for the website)
  • write fictional story, chapter [II]

January:

  • make interviews, chapter [III]
  • analyse, test, arrange data, chapter [III]
  • make the manual, chapter [III]
  • building my website

February:

  • Deadline First Draft Thesis
  • building my website
  • making the gyroscope tool ("The sculpture made out of focus")
  • making the pedal camera instant publishing tool

March:

  • Deadline Second Draft thesis (texts to 2nd readers)
  • building my website

April:

  • Thesis Deadline
  • adding thesis texts to my website
  • Finalizing the infrastructure of my website

May:

  • adding documentation of my works to the website
  • residency+performance with cTrL+KG (Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, SI)

June:

  • Inhabiting "The Constitution"

July:

  • opening "The Constitution" to the public

...

COMPLETE LIST OF WORKS

OBJECTS

INSTALLATIONS

VISUAL see images here

  • A dark thought with a good purpose
  • A battle of energies in the sky
  • Cardboard+strings
  • Embossing threads
  • Indigo
  • Keys etching
  • Colour prints (structure) washed by rain
  • ...
  • Chains
  • 5 faces
  • Unshut book
  • Breakings

PERFORMANCES

SOUND PIECES

EVENTS/CURATORIAL

WORKSHOP

WRITING

TOOLS

  • A sculpture made out of focus (gyro > 3D)
  • An earphone microphone
  • A pedal camera
  • ...
  • Distraction manager
  • Dissonar
  • Approaching


THESIS OUTLINE

Tisa N. Herlec

The written part of my thesis will be constructed out of three chapters. In each, I will discuss one aspect of my research interest using different forms ([I]: a collectively written essay, [II]: a fiction story, [III]: a manual).

These texts, following different writing forms, will be conceptually connected to each other. In every chapter I will include an account on my practice, a subchapter charting the key insights of the works that I make.

My graduation project "The Constitution" makes a performative record of my practice, it encompasses my process and archives it, and with its encounter with the public it progresses and changes, generating subsequent works, influencing and framing others. This process is conducted within the notion of a cybernetic feedback loop dynamic.

The thesis follows a similar protocol. There is a framework to my thesis - three chapters written (2000-3000 words each) within defined form(at)s. A cybernetic collaboration occurs in all three.

CHAPTERS

[I]

Form: a cowritten essay

Object: field report

In the first chapter of my thesis, a cowritten essay will be produced, an exchange between two thinkers - myself and my friend Leon Holsten. Discourse will unravel in our dialogues (phone conversations and collaborative writing). We will share our own personal experiences of the texts and other references that we are studying together. Writing this text will be an experiment in collaborative writing and a negotiation between standpoints, a study of tensions that might emerge when two conceptual apparatuses find themselves in an in-depth encounter. Publishing this text will allow for a response from its readers (in a form of open commentary section on my website), a possible versioning of successive texts, and expansion into other discursive collaborations with my cowriter.

The text will speak about the entanglements that humans take part in. It will take sound as the phenomenon guiding our research of multiplicities and intra-actions between elements in an (eco)system. The domain of field recordings will serve as an inspiration, and so will specific cases of the natural systems adapting to the human interventions into them. Paranodality and non-spaces will be mentioned as the areas of the outside, the tracing of marginalia that pushes the dynamics of influence from the entryways and passages into the networked weave of inseparable elements.

Keywords: entanglement, exchange, influence, networks, collaboration, birds, sensibility, noticing the intricate, implicit multiplicities, paranodal spaces, conglomerates, additive, field recordings, acoustic ecology, cyborgs, ...

[II]

Form: a fiction story

Object: nets

In the second chapter, the fiction story, I will think and write together with the material that is guiding my works - a discarted, deconstructed fishnet, washed ashore of an anonymous beach. I will embody - personify it and let it tell its story through language. This chapter is closely connected to the material works that I will be making this year. See my "semiotic vision" in the project proposal - it is the ground on which I will build this story on.

The narrative will expand from the material itself, speaking about the relation of flow and systems, movement and stilness, birth and pollution, cycles of passing from one structure to another. The net will speak of society's mechanisms of shaping bodies and materials, hegemonic control and governance, the conception of a tool, the externalization of human intent and industrial revolution: the influence of machines/technology on contemporary conceptions of humans and materials (also: dopamine, disembodiment, attention economy, distraction). The principle of personification of a material will allow me to speak on behalf of the material and also on behalf of humans. The net will stumble across social scontracts, habitus, normalization.

Keywords: systems, networks, structures, material, matter, composition, hegemony, social contracts, disobedience, violence, bodies, form, tradition, influence, ...

[III]

Form: a manual

Object: the interviews

In the third chapter, the manual, I will find inspiration and guidelines to improvisation in collaboration with various practitioners. I will interview them about: their processes, approaches to the construction of their works, specific practices they do to enter the state of flow, their relation to the documentation of performative, elusive works; and about the ways their past works relate to newer ones. When applicable to the individuals that I will be interviewing, I will also ask them about their methods of teaching improvisation.

I will attempt to support my claim: Engaging in practices of improvisation enhance sensibility and awareness, build our capacties for interaction, communication and community building. They aid us unravel hidden patterns of behaviour, open potentialities and options, and construct our own methodologies of being and creating in the world.

The data from the interviews and from my own practice will acquire a form of an assemblage, a methodological manual for improvisation and flow. In the process of writing this chapter, my role will be the one of the collector and the archiver, the one that arranges a multitude of recipes in a cookbook - doing so only when I will have tested, modified and taxonomized them. The manual will consist of methodological tactics, scripts, protocols, exercises and instructions that the readers will be invited to execute alone or with others, using the manual in everyday life and in generative improvisational practices in the media of their choice.

Writing this chapter will allow me to engage in discussions with improvisers that I respect and cherish; to exchange methodologies and approaches (that are seldomly articulated). It will afford me to look at my practice of improvisation through the prism of methodologies, to analyse, expand and update. This chapter will allow the readers into the backstage of the domain of improvisation (and my own practice that is a part of it), deepening their understanfing of its constitution. The full recordings of the interviews and their transcripts will be publically accessible as an addition to this chapter. I will conduct a series of workshops (when possible) for the public, sharing these methodologies in practice.

Keywords: improvisation, ubuntu, kinship, collectivity, daoism, theory of flow, chaos theory, flow, process, archive, documentation, improvisation as inherent to beings/systems, improvisation as a resistance tactic, proposition, methodologies, dynamics between improvisation and social contract, strategies of interrupting the scripting, habitus, normalization, disobedience, opposition, empowerment, unscripted dramaturgies, humor, dance, movement, playfulness/playing, collaboration, togetherness, ...

...

P.S.

My research interest comes from an inner sway, a realization pertaining to my own constitution. I am inclined to rationally understand, categorize and systematize - the world, my own work, the processes I'm dealing with, thinking, others. This is my nemesis. I approach it by engaging into processes and activities in which I challenge my inner limitations and biases, where I search for their edges and push through them, expanding my own affordances. While improvising, I dynamicize these notions, ground myself in ever-changing process and prospect the state of continuous flow. I unlearn, let go, get lost, find inspiration, make, think, expand. I am the embodiment of the friction that I am researching. I share my insights with others. This tension persists in my practice/research where I am materially, processually, conceptually and experientially exploring the dynamics and implications of structure+composition+form+system(s)+hegemony and process+improvisation+flow+subconscious+collective+chaos+empowerment. They coexist, entangle, mingle with wach other, interact. I am currently in the process of unlearning the notion of binaries and dynamicizing my systems of thought.

I am intrigued by the constitution of the world, the structures that we are a part of (as bodies effected by the mediated environment of sociality), I wish to grasp this and juxtapose it to the world as I experience it with the practice of disobedience to its chains: improvisation. I consider improvisation a domain where habitual behavior and social contracts are questioned and challenged, it is an uncharted territory filled with possibilities.

Within "The Constitution" (see project proposal), I am hacking my own mind and my habitus. I believe that the constitution of my own methodologies will (when done with devotion and over time) afford me to overcome the implicit indoctrination into the systems that produced me. In my practice I wish to be propositional, to provide options to existence - not only to myself, but also to my kins, collaborators and the public. The insights that I might obtain, I will share, no matter the medium of exchange (this thesis, the works that I will make, conversations and workshops with others, ...).

In the thesis, I wish to explore and expand on my own understanding of improvisation and its implicancies in the broader context of the (social) world. Write down my insights, articulate them and make them publically available. This will serve as a basis for my future (collaborative) trajectory of my improvisational practice in different media.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

[I]

  • Donna J. Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto
  • Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari: 1000 Plateaus [multiplicity, BwO]
  • Karen Barad: Agential Realism: On the Importance of Material-Discursive Practices [intra-action]
  • Ulises Ali Mejias: Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World [paranodality]
  • Marc Auge: Non-Places
  • Roland Barthes: From Work to Text
  • ...

[II]

  • Ursula Franklin: lectures [prescriptive technology]
  • Marcel Mauss: The Techniques of the Body
  • Judith Butler: Gender Trouble
  • Reza Negarestani: Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
  • ...

[III]

  • Italo Calvino: Cybernetics and Ghosts
  • Konstantin Stanislavski: A Students' Diary
  • Pauline Oliveros: Deep Listening
  • Antonin Artaud: The Theatre and its Double [the theatre of cruelty]
  • Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle
  • Amelia Jones: Body art/Performing the subject
  • Boris Groys: The Loneliness of the Project
  • Simon Yulli: All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved By the Masses
  • ...

............................................ END OF THESIS OUTLINE & PROJECT PROPOSAL

Session #5

15-11-20 significantly updated project proposal and thesis outline

12-11-20

  • at the session we spoke about the project proposal (added comments, lines of improvement), the thesis outline comments were received on 14-11-20 via email.

References received on 12-11-20 (project proposal)

  • Derrida on "constitution".
  • John Crary: The fortunes of the performative
  • Andrew Pickering: The cybernetic brain (performative theatre)
  • Catherine Hayles: Unthought ("Non conscious thought". When do you make it conscious? Meditation, focus on non-conscicous thoughts.)
  • "murmur of birds" = flocking
  • think of different models, self-institutionalizing, making my own institution. bureau. administration of information. artistic movements outside of the mainstream. a way of institutionalizing (eg surrealizm.). a coherent discourse.
  • naturalizing artistic activity (fish). category of art is in itself an institution.

...

Comments received on 14-11-20 (thesis outline):

Your graduation project, The Constitution, makes a performative record of your output, it fosters spontaneity and keeps a record of it; this helps generate subsequent works (feedback=cybernetics).

The thesis should follow a similar procedure {= set parameters in which things can happen} the thesis should reflect that: the number (three) and the form(s) (chapters) are given, and there is room for spontaneity within those parameters.

Paradoxically, the more the structure is clearly defined, the more room you have to play (the outcome is not set by the the parameters - it is not deterministic- the possibilities of what happens within the perameters are very open (take the alphabet or the musical notation system, for instance).

If the thesis outline is without form or structure it is very difficult for the tutors to assess whether it is going to work. The terms you set for yourself for success or failure are also unclear. At the moment the text you propose can wander any way, following any passing instinct. If you lack precision at this stage, that is exactly what the text will do (wander where it will). ]

response: What if I want that? What id I don't "believe" in failure? Again, it is a matter of framing, contextualizing and also the preparations of the state I am in before/while writing and researching. I believe intention is crucial, and the editing process refines the moment. (Making a work and then putting it into the space, this refines it, defines it, gives it meaning. How things are framed, exposed, exhibited, published.)

"I am intrigued by the constitution of the world, the structures that we are a part of (as bodies effected by the mediated environment of sociality), I wish to grasp this and juxtapose it to the world as I experience it with the practice of disobedience to its chains: improvisation. I consider improvisation a domain where habitual behavior and social contracts are questioned and challenged, it is an uncharted territory filled with possibilities." [later in the process we need to discuss this negative definition of improvisation you have, but for now the priority is getting a short, direct, precise thesis outline]

[III]: I think you have to be serious about a cybernetic approach to improvisation =1) set perameters; 2) test limits of those perameters; = it is at those limits where new meaning is produced (see Italo Calvino, Cybernetics and Ghosts (1967). )


(what process and project and research mean to me) I don't conduct my practice using the term of a "project". It is rather a continuous process during which works in different mediums emerge, intuitively interact with each other, forming unpredictable bonds and frictions.[ They function as reference points in the process, as static snapshots of the flow. I observe them, study them, analyse them. Eventually they become dynamic, mutate and transgress their material existence. They afford me to think further, beyond the expected points of arrival within my research.

I do not know the work yet, I let the work present itself to me, if I give attention to it, it uncovers itself (like Rodin - sculpture is already there, hidden in a piece of stone). Letting my work tell me something that I don't know. Self-generativity + analysis. Anything that I do could be of crucial importance (I perhaps just don't know it yet. It all depends on framing and conceptualising and TRUST/belief.)

Self-generativity, intuition and flow are crucial premises for my process and my network of methodologies. I have read and understand this. It is in the nature of research that we do not know the end result, but it is nessessery to describe the terms in which you wish to engage. You are clear about what you do NOT want to do, so the question is, how do you engage with what you do in positive terms? Improvation can be more than the avodence of norms, it does not have to be fugitive. You can hold your ground and dictate the terms.

LIST OF WORKS (specced out in sub-chapters):

[I]:

[II]:


[III]:

  • {Modri kot, space}: &&&
  • {Radadia, radio+spatial installation): in the making
  • {Sense smithing sessions}: &&&
  • {temp.tc, ORL+, curatorial projects}


...

  • updated project proposal here and thesis outline here 10-11-20

Session #4

29-10-20

solo tutorial w/Steve

transcription and annotations of the tutorial on the pad.

Edited, reviewed, updated Thesis outline & project proposal.

Crucial insights from session #3:

  • knowledge is all around me, no need to rely on/reference dead authors too much > shift conceptual research more towards kins, collaborators, people that inspire me. > Making a series of interviews. Shaping my research into questions. Posing them to myself. Posing them to others. Asking other people to interview me.
  • learn from experience and practice > write down key insights that happen. keep a diary/log of shifting perspectives. (fragmented already on pads).
  • learn from self-generated data > make an overview of my works, write about my works, about composition/approach/process/crucial.

> all this while keeping an eye to my research interests/topics outlined in session #3.

The nature of my work process:

Homework

Hackpackt:

Session #3

15-10-20

Thesis outline

Wrote this outline today. Important insight line 14 - 54!

Outline of the thesis:

  • Include annotated bibliography.
  • Write: What kind of thesis do you want to write & what do you want your thesis to be about. Why and how.

Homework

Annotated bibliography. Which five works/texts/... are key to your research?

...

group session

introduction w/Steve, Natasha, Marloes

pad As long as the criteria (on the pad) are met, the form of the text is up to us.

  • What text form would be best appropriate to the content, context of our work?
  • "The ability to make work and to be able to articulate the reasons for the choices you made; to think seriously about the implications of the work you've made and to respect it as a serious contribution to a discourse."
  • "Writing articles that compile a thesis, breaking it down into manageable pieces."
  • "Use the forms you know work for you: If you write articles, poems, scripts, polemics, diary entries, stories, field reports, academic essays, observational essays, description of family video footage, use those skills in making your thesis."
  • "The fancy term for describing what you do and why you do it is methodology."
  • "There has to be in your thesis, whatever form it takes, some space to reflect on why you are asking these questions; and an account of the means by which you set about answering them."
  • "Be clear about these things before you go into writing the thesis think carefully about why you want to write this text and why it needs to take the form that it does."
  • MY QUESTION: "How to respect the unpredictable ways that the process might take when deciding on a form, even content. If breaking down to separate pieces, how to assume the development?" > By December, finding a structure. Having an exploratory process - the content can be experimental. Structured in such a way that allows the development of the project.

Thesis formats:

  • Report of research and practice (linked)
  • Analytical essay exploring related artistic, theoretical, historical and critical issues and practices that inform your practice, without necessarily referring to your work directly.
  • The presentation of a text as a body of creative written work.

Examples:

  • available in the Bootley library.
  • writing a thesis in the form of an archive (of the research) - going in diverse directions in writing, without restricting oneself. It can be personal, matching the process.
  • analytical essay of the process of reading the file (below) on the computer + interventions that critically reflect on it.

REF: Kittler: There is no software

  • creative writing. Choosing an appropriate mode of address. +meta context, explanation

Research basics:

  • Research sources (JSTOR)
  • Referencing and citation (Harvard system of referencing)
  • Using research to inspire you.
  • Beware of research rabbit holes.

Session #2

29-9-20

w/Marloes: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/GRS290920

&transcribe the recording

Homework

Hackpact Prototype #1

Transcription of the presentation

  • I'm thinking about how structure is something that is always present in all kinds of systems, even if they are not human-made.

(showing my prototype)

  • It is a collection of images. [Beehive, bees have a very clear structure.]
  • I am interested in these dynamics that happen because of certain structures. Improvisation is kind of on the other side of it as something that is something that is not predefined and pre-structuralized, but can also be (through composition, certain rules, protocols, regulations).

(max helping me hold up the prototype. "this printer is great, i didn't expect this effect".)

  • [humans inspecting weather. chaos. butterfly effect. trying to understand what is the sublime structure of weather.]
  • [a grid of streets, one square is misplaced]
  • [root systems, connection to the rhizome (Deleuze, Guattari), the notion of networks and systems - they are not even horizontal, there is another set of rules that regulates a certain system, way of being, way of construction]
  • [a bookshop Bukvarna in Maribor. no taxonomization, books all over. Something usually very straight-forward, categorized, not necessarily always. And you find crazy things in there. M:"a surrealist, structuralist experience of a library".]

(turning around for 180)

  • [How tool effects the body. Foucault: bodies of humans are being regulated. Notion of the power, governance that regulates. Orthodontist. Foot deformation. How the social structure/regulation, expectation (beauty standards). Applies to a lot of things > the common denominator: there is an internalized way of how we perceive something to be done in a correct/right/done in a certain way - the social contract basically. And it effects the bodies. Sitting behind a computer for 8 hours a day will probably lead to back pain in 20 years, if not now already.]
  • [human inside of a theatrical and acoustic space.]
  • [robocops and a person reading the constitution. The development after this picture was taken was quite brutal. Repressive organs of the society that govern our behaviour.]
  • I want to understand structure more, know where it comes from and how it effects the everyday life of people. It's quite abstract and theoretical.
  • What is the role of improvisation here? Perhaps (performance, sound, text) is a testing field, a space where blueprints for another kind of structure are suggested/tried out. I think that no-structure never exists. The absence of structure is almost impossible. If there is structure that is made in the flow, in the dao, in the undictated sorts of behavior, as an opposition to something that already exist - even this is structure. How to analyse it, how to perceive, which patterns are just copy-pasted into the structure.
  • M:"Improvisation is your method to analyse the topic of structure, or is it also about improvisation - is it your method AND your topic?"
  • T:"It's both. I always do this thing where I put structure into topic, and then it all mixes up. It is like the root system. ... And I don't like labels too much, therefore I try to dissolve it."
  • M:"Sometimes I have to put labels on things, in order to understand, to see if I recognize it correctly."
  • T:"That's the catch - how not to label something too fast, in what way to make the labels into variables. So it is not fixed and structuralized, just because the world says it has to be. Sometimes one thing goes under a lot of categories."
  • An anecdote from my performance (ctrl+p): In the moment when I was improvising lyrics/poetry, I was digesting all of the material that I was reading and researching. Improvisation for me is (in a strange way) also some sort of a composition of thought. A tool that materializes all of the conceptuals into reality, into language, into something that is shared with others."
  • M:"Method and medium."
  • Yes. Improvisation = topic, method and medium.

///

Marloes' questions

*Why do you want to make it?

I consider improvisation as a domain where habitual behavior and social contracts are questioned/challenged, their liminalities explored. The aspect of "hacking the human mind/the human intelligence", finding strategies that overcome habitual behavior /indoctrination, systems that produce us/, enhancing sensibility, exploring subconscious modes of operation as a proposition, opening up options to each one of us, and the way we are intrinsically intertwined.

*What do you want to make?

Does it have to be ONE thing that I make? How does this work? How interdisciplinary am i allowed to be? ... Rather than making one work, i want to make a myriad, mutually informing each other, linked to theory (testing out theoretical claims in practice, with others).

I want to facilitate workshops and other forms of interactive situations (such as sound walks), or this and this, continue performing (alone and with others) in the field of sound improvisation; write and compose (scripts/compositions/exercises for humans in flow), build machines that help me think this one for example, and theoretically research the field of my interest: the friction between structure/form/composition/systems and improvisation/flow/subconscious.

A system for a structuralization/archivation of my research and practice will also be constructed "on the go", its final form will most possibly be a website.

*How do you plan to make it?

Here is a list of my research strategies.

*What is your timetable?

Practice and research simultaneous. Weekly overviews of the work made. Daily arrangement of thoughts. Prototyping continuous.

*Who can help you and how?

Collaborators, partners in communication, theoreticians and practitioners, tutors and classmates and friends and random encounters, meaningful debates.

*Relation to previous practice

Obvious and full. hehe.

*Relation to a larger context

See: why, and see references. &spell out the links.

*References/bibliography

See a list of references here, and my research log here.

First project/practice/research description

Graduate proposal guidelines > making a proposal for yourself, scope and content, methods and formats. Short, precise, practical outline.

In my research (theoretical and practical) I derive from my previously established practice of improvisation in a variety of mediums (sound, text, interactive, visual ...).

My theoretical field of interest is the friction between structure+composition+form+system(s)+hegemony and improvisation+flow+subconscious+collective+chaos+empowerment.

I am intrigued by the constitution of the world, the structures that we are a part of (as subjects/bodies in a mediated environment of sociality), I wish to understand this better and juxtapose the world as I experience it with the practice of disobedience to its chains: improvisation. I consider improvisation a domain where the liminalities between structure+composition and flow+improvisation are explored. Habitual behavior and social contracts are questioned and challenged.

I will theoretically explore the notions of: tool, script, protocol, habitus, normalization, rhizome, intra-action, structure, power, improvisation, composition, daoism, cybernetics, ...

[Here] is a list of my references, and [here] is my research log (annotations).

In my practice of "hacking the human mind/habitus", I will constitute strategies that (done with devotion and over time) overcome the implicit indoctrination into the systems that produce us, enhance intuition, sensibility and awareness, explore subconscious modes of operation, empower, enable choice ... I wish to be propositional, to provide options to existence - not only to myself, but also to my kins, collaborators and the public.

Practically (formats, mediums, ideas): I want to facilitate [workshops] and other forms of interactive situations (such as sound walks), or [this] and [this], continue [my practice] in the field of sound improvisation; write and compose ([scripts/compositions/exercises] for humans in flow), build machines that help me think [like this one for example]. A system for the archivation of my research and practice will also be constructed "on the go", its final form will most possibly be a website. My research strategies are outlined [here].

...

Dramaturgy of thought (possible chapters):

  • The conception of a tool, the externalization of human intent
  • Structure as something that is not human-made, but organically grown (Deleuze'n'Guattari), also ritual, composition, notation.
  • Hegemonic control over human bodies (Foucault, Mauss)
  • Industrial revolution: influence of machines/technology on human bodies and mind (Franklin)
  • Social contract, habitus, performing (Butler), structures of control, bio/necropolitics (Foucault, Mbembe).
  • Contemporary effects (dopamine, illusion, matrix, disembodiment, attention economy)
  • Strategies of interrupting the scripting, normalization, disobedience/opposition/return to the instinctive, sensible, ... (practice+Stanislavski)

Session #1

17-9-20

w/Steve, Marloes, Natasha: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/GRS_session1_20_21

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