contextual distance in the padlet portfolio

In my crit group on 2/10 I offered my For Cover portfolio for a crit (I had last put some work, a mix of padlets and the instructions materials, to the group in early Spring this year). I had asked alongside two questions: how about archiving and how about engaging? We talk for a bit over an hour and I take notes. I copy these notes here and want to draw out a number of points as to the questions over contextual distance, what constitutes the work and where the work is. 

The discussion quickly moves towards the platform, padlet, and how much everyone hates it: how clunky and intrusive it is, how it stands in the way of the work; but then really, how it mediates (my words) and poses those questions of navigation and access, of ensuring completeness or the worry that something may be missed.

There is the argument that it scaffolds the work too much..

Much after the discussion, where I am still surprised by the force of some of the dislike being put forward, I realise that the notes also tell me something different:

• that the work is rather beautiful
• that the distance to the work becomes uncomfortable to endure
• that the work and the site cannot be touched while the work implies it should, could, perhaps even ought to
• and then there is the wider sense of how padlet as corporate platform seeks to manage and facilitate that distance: of becoming more and more corporate; of inviting us to add more and more; of presenting every changing interfaces and post modalities to remind us of innovation
• so the platform is an intrusive mediator: of wanting to be known for itself, not just an invisible interpreter
• it also points (this image contravened against our policy) to the fact that it can and does remove items it dislikes (without notification, without recourse, without me knowing what the item actually was); so my presence and the works presence remains precarious: it may disappear sooner than even my institutional access disappears.

I come away thinking that padlet may after all be the right platform for this work if the work is interested in that distance (see SYP tutor report 1).

I also come away thinking that the work is effective here to encourage access to the audience’s emotional registers around longing (and its frustration of lack of access)

So, the work is present but somewhat out of reach. There is an institutional frame that governs part of this, it catches some of the frustrations.

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Stromverteilen: a drawing/contact practice as research portfolio

In the process of designating material for assessment, this portfolio for the Research module needs to go here (again). I will have posted it (likely, possibly) earlier when I used it to explore the links between BoW and Research; I also find an earlier padlet to take an earlier role, a body of work: a core, https://oca.padlet.org/gesa492645/rthyyn7qr5iz1zak), and the later Ariadne thread to point onwards into SYP (https://oca.padlet.org/gesa492645/p8217c8jsc8rx4h8).

This padlet served as digital meadow, forest/village edge to situate, explore and reach out to and beyond the various works that were emerging around the site of Stromverteilen. I also then organised towards the resolution of the For Cover BoW while this padlet held onto the numerous enquiries and abandoned (or lost) sites that preceded the village/forest edge.

I am adding pointers forward as well as any missing works that I understand Research objects into this form and link here (and on menu sideline) as key post for understanding the reach/resonance of my practice as research.

spatial praxis play (2: kaleidoscope)

further explorations of the spatial praxis concept map:

i take this on the way to the shop on 31/12: liking the single leaf in the middle of the road and the fog. i want to pair it with the indoor selfie: the hues but also an inside/outside. >> the oak tree with the ivy looks delicate and gothic.
i try to combine through the layout app and discover the rhythm when flipping. i am not sure the portrait with it works but i keep it. later i proceed with more flipping and mirroring but without the selfie.
>> there is something about the space it constructs: both on the digital image but also what it does to my sense of that track past the house that is well-known: the tree becomes a delicate kaleidoscope, in further processing it becomes darker, with tentacles, the road is lost. i use it for a FB cover photo and it is rather dark at that point.
on the last day i take the Voigtlaender and shoot c15 exposures on the oak tree and the apple tree with an idea to use these to construct similar imagery from them.
doubling and mirroring moves it into a fantastical scene; it continues to read as tree and outside but then quickly takes on different meanings too. (cf cinematography of new Sabrina)