Friday, April 10th I am a participant at a Factual Storytelling and New Media Symposium at the University of Canberra. The timing is rubbish so I apologise for that.

What I would like to have happen in the studio is:

general discussion (can be in groups, or as a class) that is an explaining to yourselves what you understand ontography, ‘materialism’ and the various ideas in the readings (Bogost, Frankham, Latour) to be, questions you have (any and all questions, this is an open gathering of all questions) about what it is, their purpose, point, what to do with them. The emphasis here is on discussing and defining amongst yourselves to find all the gaps (which become questions).

These questions are to be documented (just write them out as a list in a GoogleDoc that you share with me or on a blog post). This should take at most an hour.

Then everyone is to take one of these questions (they can be different questions, it does not matter if several people want to use the same question) and use that as an interview question (what we call a prompt) and interview everybody else in the room to get their answer. Do not include the question/prompt in the interview. The interview will be video or audio. This should be done quickly (pair up, I interview you, then you interview me, then next person, repeat). This is quick sketch media making. Edit all the material together into a single audio or video piece. Upload to vimeo.com or soundclound. Embed in your blog.

This is an exercise in a) knowledge mapping, b) problem discovery, c) vernacular media practice, d) sketching, e) listing, f) using what we call a pattern language, g) how to make a microdoc.