Project 2 Constraints

Although I’m not completely sure what I’m looking to learn, I know my work will definitely be a kind of research. I want to investigate memory and it’s influence on information. I’m interested in how memory transforms information, so I’m currently looking to work with information regurgitated onto paper. What I will do with these papers, I’m not completely sure, though I think this choice will become clearer once I have the papers.

1 Work with people from different fields: This comes pretty easy to my idea. The basis of this experiment is to gather lots of results, so I anticipate running this test on many different people from many different fields. At the moment, I anticipate working with blue collar workers, physicists, mathematicians, psychologists, gender studies researchers, artists. The more diverse my test pool is, the more potential I see this project having.

2 Adopt various professional roles: Specifically, I see my self adopting the role of a psychologist. The tests I’ll be conducting will deal directly with memory, so by nature, makes me a researching psychologist. Depending on how the results come back, I may run statistical analysis while creating the finished piece which would make me a statistician. Also, I predict this piece relating to entropy, so I may need to use my physicist side when constructing or writing about this piece.

3 Create small assignments along the way: Since there are many unknown variables to what I want out of this project, I’m setting small goals, so I can reflect on the work as it progresses. My first goal is to choose a source text and begin running the test on myself. After doing this, I will consider the outcome, and possibly proceed to run the test on other people.

4 Go for expeditions, surveys, investigations: Again, this is innate to the piece. My art will be conducting investigations into memory through a survey of sorts. These surveys will ultimately be the medium of the piece.

5 Create participations between subject and environment: My test subjects will be creating the papers used to construct the environment for the finished piece.

6 Photograph, document, collect: this piece is going to be great. How could I not document it? But for real, I think photographs, paper scans, and texts will be the majority of my documentation.

7 (Bonus) Work in the world: since my project is turning into a kind of research, I think it’s important that I work in the field of research. I should be aware of how researchers publish their research, share their results, and connect with each other. I think it’s important to try to tap into this world, and possibly become a researcher myself.