Who is the Documenter? #2

The Documenter is in the room, she is present as the groups are working on their pieces but she is not directly part of any of them. She wonders what it means that she is in this role of observer? She finds herself sitting behind a desk – hiding behind her computer for a moment, when really what she wants to do is to make herself visible – to become integrated/integral to the making through her processes of documentation.

As a way of coping with the situation she finds herself in she attempts to work with it. But how? She recognises her point of view, that she has a particular point of view and she works from there. It’s what she sees, what she hears, what she thinks that will invariably become the document. She knows the pitfalls of attempting to work from objectivity and instead she wants the document to become something (an artwork?) in its own right – a spring-board, a space to work from, a space to work with.

Recycled Documents

1. Here are some documents/artefacts that formed part of the performances during Ross Brown’s workshop.

THEN

2. Ross then used them as part of his presentation “16 Essays”

THEN

3. ???

The Group

Exercise:

1. Walk around the room

2. Stop together

3. One person start walking

4. The rest of the group start walking

Pages

On the right hand side (over there → → → and down a bit ↓↓↓) (up here ↑↑↑↑ and across a bit →)

is a section entitled PAGES.

From here you can navigate the various pages which are called – notebook, text, images, audio.

This is the best way to do this as when you click the tabs at the top of the blog they don’t seem to give you a way to access the other pages.

Workshop Words #2

MAATP Workshop – with Hannah Ringham | Liveblog

Click here to go to the feed:

http://tinyurl.com/yjb9nxp

Process Gestures

You begin a short project, collaborating with people you have only known for a short while.

How do you work in these circumstances? What ways do you discover to work together? What strategies do you employ to make your voice heard? How do you listen to the rest of the group? How do you listen to the work?  How do you make a collaboration?

“We pay as much attention to the process of making our work as the work itself.” Goat Island Performance Group – Small Acts of Repair (Routledge, 2007)

Below are a series of images which were taken as a spontaneous response to the processes of collaboration during a workshop with sound designer Ross Brown. These images began with the Documenter taking a photograph (from the edges, from a distance) of one member of the group who was (probably unwittingly) performing a gesture that the Documenter felt reflected or showed a particular point in the collaboration process. The Documenter has become interested in how these gestures (both in proximity of the face) performed something of the difficulty of collaboration.

From these initial photographs she approached the group and asked the other members of it to perform the same gesture but this time for a portrait. Through this process the Documenter wonders how the dissemination of the gesture might affect the group? How, by giving other members of a group the opportunity to ‘step into the shoes’ of one of their collaborators, the collaboration might shift, and the potential ‘fraughtness’, which the Documenter witnessed, might be made more fluid? Here are the two initial photographs of the gestures:

1. Hand on chin

2. Hands clasped on head

Below is the gallery of portraits, where other members of the group (including the original person) re-present themselves and the gesture:

Workshop Words #1

Keywords from Ross Brown's workshop "How do audiences hear in the theatre?"

Entrance Recording

The Documenter might make audio recordings of a process she is documenting. She might do this because it resonates with a workshop ‘on sound’ and also because she is drawn to a certain reduction that audio (alone) appears to facilitate. This is particularly the case in comparison to video, which is a more complicated and technically more demanding medium, which the Documenter resists using for the time being.

The Documenter might begin her process by recording her entrance into the building where the workshop and the documenting will be taking place. She thinks of this as a way in.

You can find more recordings here.

Links

On the right hand side (over there → → → and down a bit ↓↓↓) (up here ↑↑↑↑ and across a bit →) are some links to various websites around the subject of digital documentation.

Do have a look…

Silent Tools

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, dang dang dang dang, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, dang dang dang dang dang dang drrrrrr drrrrrrrr drrrrrrrrr, rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiii rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiii rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiii, dzjjjjjjjj dzjjjjjjjjj, clunn clunn clunn clunn clunn

CIRCULAR SAW, HAMMER, PNEUMATIC DRILL, TILE/BRICK CUTTER, 3/4 TON DIGGER – some of the tools which The Documenter photographed (she was given a hard hat and a high-vis jacket by the foreman on the site to do this). She has been thinking about how the noise of these tools is silenced by the process of taking photographs and conversley how, given our knowledge and experience of the sounds they make, noise might be implied?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Silent Tools”

1 Minute Photos

Here The Documenter has set up a camera which is programmed to take photos at one minute intervals over 15 minutes.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Sound Workshop“, posted with vodpod

Who is The Documenter?

The Documenter is trying to work out who she is?
The Documenter is trying to work out how she is?
The Documenter is trying to work out when she is?

She will try things out, experiment as she goes. She will let the plans that she thought she had bend and flex, according to the circumstances. Bend, flex, flow, adapt and/or evolve? She wants to work with you and from you, it’s a collaboration.

She doesn’t know the ‘best’ way to do all of this but she know when she feels a little bit of heat in a moment, a charge, that might contribute to her activities. And it is from this place that she is working – from and with the charge. She might call it ‘intuition’ but likes to think that it is grounded in more than ‘a feeling’. Although she can never be quite sure. She wants to see what its like to work from a place of uncertainity or ‘not knowing’.

Who is the Documenter?

When is the Documenter?

How is the Documenter?

You are invited to contribute thoughts around ideas these questions – a beginning to a conversation.