In the beginning this studio was a blur, a slap in the face to the comfortable life. Adrian dropped statement after statement questioning this or that, things we’ve become accustomed to – stories, anthropocentrism, agency – buzzwords that would eventuate into whole thoughts, a reworking of synapses. Starting a new semester is always a difficult task given the new faces and new content, and finding one’s footing can be daunting. Crisis. Panic. Worry about the future – what the hell am I gonna be when I grow up? I’ve learned that, although you may aim for a single path, you are bound the hit a crossroads at some point, probably even two or three or four. The media program graduates X thousand amount of students who can do what you can do, so you’ve gotta get that one step ahead. Realise that the doing – the recording of the doing – is more important than the end result. Verbs, not nouns.

Ultimately this studio helped me challenge the world, challenge my perception of things – myself, mostly, and where and how I fit into the scheme of things – challenge narrative, challenge schooling. I fear that I will find it hard going forward without a teacher who understands things like Adrian does. I would like to continue this studio and this learning about agency and materiality maybe forever, or at least until I have properly comprehended these strands that are left fraying in my brain. This is starting to feel like a sappy ending to a rom-com. Side note: I should’ve taken more (better) notes. If I’m really dedicated, I should compile a bunch of notes on this subject, draw from the blog and get to the nitty gritty of what I really find interested. If I’m really dedicated I should take a look at that note-taking method that Adrian left a comment about on my blog. If I’m really dedicated I should hold onto these thoughts, these new ideas about relationality and find ways to import them into my work. I’ll miss this studio.

Step 1: bullet journal.

• Triage – doctors, Google
• Google algorithm is based on the internet being a meshwork, not a hierarchy (not based on traffic) – the most links into the site = the higher the rank in a search. Determined by relationality.
• Relations confer the value. The artefact matters, but you won’t get traffic because of your great work, but because of the meshwork of links that feed into your site.
• Skills:
  • Iterate, iterate your work in cycles. First drafts are rubbish.
  • Notice your strengths and weaknesses. Recognise weaknesses, spend your effort doing what you’re good at.
  • Dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty (exquisite corpse) – this is the studio summarised.
  • Revised: materiality, relationality, agency – posthumanism (like postmodernism, “what is now to think beyond the human”)
• Soft skills:
  • Blogging! is a soft skill. All the things we just read out (participation) are soft skills.
• Automation: IFTTT. Ok, cool. Don’t reinvent the wheel. I’m using this.
• Blogs are not for polished, finished things. They’re for works in progress (I’m a psychic! See: blog title)
• Perfection getting in the way of good. “Putting perfection ahead of everything means that nothing will get done, or started.” This needs to be put to the front of my brain.
• Sparkling wine ✓
• Aw man, last class. I get too attached to studios. It hurts to tear myself away!!!!!!!!

Documentary practice focuses on the specific. It may make general claims but it ties these to the specific. Contemporary documentary is usually ‘arty-sociology’ or ‘arty-politics’, according to Adrian.

Epistemological act of violence in taking someone’s story and creating one of these documentaries. Insistence on narrative arc is inherent in this person’s life (digital storytelling). Manipulation of subjects for professional gain.

Become more specific. Go more narrow. Break it down to its parts.

Better soundscapes played with voice, eg. alliteration. Treat voice as something to be manipulated, another part of the soundscape.

Ants are more or less communists.

Technology is not separate from the human as it is spoken about in readings. Humans have always been technological.

Take one (narrow) part of the German soundtrack and enlarge it visually – bring Qs and problems on Thursday.

Fix the problems from your first soundscape in the next one – redeem yourself.

Qs: How do you make a list, a video list? What makes a good list? What makes a good list visually?

Creativity requires restraints. A six string guitar can’t make every sound in the world.

Today’s lesson (yesterday’s lesson; refer to previous blog post(/s) about being slack, and attempting to find (and fail) the need to blog ASAP) taught me that our technical media (cameras, recording devices) are nonhuman, indifferent sampling machines which still leaves me with questions. Our devices may not be concerned with what they record and can’t discriminate based on this, but ultimately who presses record? Who sets the 5 minute interval timer that captures these whales? Who assembles the footage into an actual ‘documentary’?

Johnathan Harris seems like an incredibly interesting guy (I hope one day he comes knocking at my door and chronicles a story about how we are long lost relatives) and part of me aspires to create something as he has done.

Much of the theory that makes up this studio is based around removing the human from the centre. This involves recognising that everything has its own agency, and that we as humans are operating alongside an almost infinite number of other things. Our next project involves creating what is effectively a documentary about something: a locale, an item; something that has its own agency yada yada. The problem occurs when we think about documentary or the act of documenting. Aren’t these actions inherently human? The equipment we use, the cameras, the microphones, the computers (and all the hundreds of tiny parts inside each of them); are they not man-made things? How does one go about creating an ontography about something if by doing so we are intrinsically putting a human mark on it? Is the idea of ontology not born of human thinking?