User:Tisa/GRS tutorial

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]:

• {Maastunnel: South-Middle-North fieldrecording}: https://soundcloud.com/tisaneza/maastunnel-south-middle-north
• {Radar prelet, radioplay}: https://radiostudent.si/kultura/r-a-d-a-r/1-prelet-tnh
• {Meeting of meeting places, radioplay}: under construction
• {infinite list, poem and performance}: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/list
• {Birds making travel plans, field recording}
• {Space, research on strategies of being in the public space}: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Tisa/pending#Space
• {Elasticite, collection}

[II]:

• {nets and ropes, material works}
• {Cable performance}
• {cTrL, sound duo}: https://soundcloud.com/control_tower_ctrl

[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

• Expanded project proposal here, thesis outline in the previous pad.
• got comments from Steve on 4-11-20

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:

• second-order cybernetics
• divergent thinking
• inductive reasoning

Homework

Hackpackt:

• infinite list performance
• ch: Stand Your Ground and Hold Water piece
• archival book in the making - printing out October images. Physical object.

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?

• [1000 Plateaus]
• [Off The Network]

...

• [Cyborg Manifesto]
• [Posthumanist Performativity]
• Konstantin Stanislavsky - A students' diary

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.

• comments on the answers to questions

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