work-in-process: the end

November 23, 2020 Hannah Perner-Wilson

process never ends, but this process now comes to a point from which to reflect briefly where it went.
over the last six weeks i had as many very informative and also simply very nice conversations with our first round of S&&O masters students.
here direct links to the individual conversations:

leading these conversations was a learning-experience for me, in how to ask questions that get at aspects of process without getting distracted by content. to ask: HOW are you working? and not, WHAT are you working on?

what is so fascinating about process? it is HOW we spend our time. since time is limited, HOW we choose to spend it and WHAT we spend it with/on become an incredibly valuable currencies. while i believe that the HOW and the WHAT are intricately connected, and i’m not totally sure it is possible or good to tease out the HOW without the WHAT…. i did so in order to draw attention to the means/methods/techniques of technology. I tried to ask about the HOW without the WHAT.
looking back, i think i let the conversations meander somewhere in and out of process-talk and there were some lovely things said along the way.

FURTHER READINGS

if you are nerdy about process like i am, you might enjoy some of these things.

Around here this is how we do things…..”
in the social sciences technology is a way of doing things! Ursula Franklin gets at this really well in the first part of “The real world of technology” she talks of “technology as practice”.
https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-of-technology/

the magic show
in this episode ira glass interviews the magician teller about his trick, and captures what i had in mind when i set out to talk with people about their project processes….. to get them to reveal HOW they make…. and how ideas and tricks and human relationships evolve through process.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/619/the-magic-show

diy IS entertainment
simone giertz makes things and makes the process the point.
https://www.youtube.com/c/simonegiertz/featured

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failure IS the point
this exhibition drew attention to failure as a feature of making. is failure undesirable, or is it part of any successful undertaking?
http://trials-and-errors.com/carpet_garden

live studio
bart hess is an artist who works with showing (off) behind the scenes processes and involving audiences in making work….
https://www.showstudio.com/projects/punk_bart_hess_and_ruth_hogben/ruth_hogben_and_bart_hess_livestudio?autoplay=1

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critical technical practice
Philip E. Agre wrote a lot and i found a lovely reference in one of his writings (https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/)… i think it was in this one (https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html)…. to a text about process….. i need to find it again and post it here!
it might be this one:
Living thinkwork by Mike Hales – “This unique ‘analytical autobiography’ is a travelogue of journeys in what the author calls class geography, of academic radicalism and professional employment in industry in the late 1970s: life in the Rationality Factory.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310937194_Living_thinkwork_-_Prologue_introduction

following the material
tim ingold also writes a lot about making and a style of craft process that positions the maker as a follower. this short eassay is easy to read and summarizes his book titled “making”:
http://sed.ucsd.edu/files/2014/05/Ingold-2009-Textility-of-making.pdf

microphenomenology is a new scientific discipline that enables us to explore our lived experience very finely: what’s happening when an idea comes to us?
https://www.microphenomenology.com/home

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