CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 11 Studio Session

14/10/2020

Discussing documentation with Andrew

• Everything doesn't need to be in it! Remember what Anne said back in Wk 1, that this will probably be bigger than a 1 year exploration, in a honours project.
   
• Documentation can either: work around a finished outcome that is completely playable, or is the thing that gets people to understand the concept, research, design processes and show a user journey around these spaces. 
  
  If the latter, polish up what you can in the website, and leave it. Document it as a final piece e.g. screenrecord and embed into documentation
  
  
• Experiments from semester 1 would be really good to put in, gives more context, sense and scope of this concept-world. And in different ways than you've focused on this semester. Also contextualises your work as a series of experiments, that don't necessarily have to be totally polished, playable experiences — especially the theatre. More about the world itself — as spaces to explore, move through, get lost in, be immersed. 
  
  Experiments that place you in the role of the performer, observer, voyeur. And think about the audience in those different roles, how their identity and lived experience comes into their reading of it, their knowledge/familiarity with these contexts and cultural references. 'Is the viewer important or is it more about the position you put them in, and their relationship to this space and the questions they ask about it?' Which doesn't need to be answered fully, or at all, but definitely something to talk to. 
  
  It is a playful and experimental space — trying to speculate around the boundaries / definitions / experience of identity. Something that we have lost the ability/freedom to do a bit, in our modern capitalist society ??? !? ! And everything here is looking at breaking from this rigidity. 
  
  
• Website form — keep it simple, should be something you continue to work with and on after honours. Templates are great! 
  
  
• Audience — going into industry, but with that academic grounding. Do a hybrid to show design, research and conceptual skills. Showing: contextual framework, material experiments and experiment outcomes, and demonstrate the trajectory through this. 
  
  Showing your trajectory through complex questions, around identity, with process and experiments as a response to these questions? 
  
  
• Also a matter now of curating this trajectory. What's in and what's OUT!
  
  
• Documenting research: yes. Polish it out of your dissertation. You do need this textual communication of the theory and ideas, can't communicate that purely through image. 

• Project feedback — tutorial aspect:
• Something like holding your hands up is about the least intuitive thing to do to a computer, could do this with pop ups and explainers, or have a separate scene as a guide into the interactions/rules/world
  
  Hands interaction — instruction should be fairly explicit. Don't need to tell them what will happen, but yes, like 'put your hands up' 

CRITIQUE

• I guess I've figured out a form! RIP zine :( but honestly why give myself more to worry about. 
  
  
• I think I need to map this out first. Go through what I've done this year, gather up the research and experiments and get a sense of this trajectory. Get a sense of how much I need to do. How to communicate the tone, materiality of the project. How I can make this project SING, be SHAREABLE, be MEMEABLE. How the research context can be communicated and structured. How everything can be structured. What bits of copy I need to have. And then how that might sit within a website format. 
  
  Then I have a better sense of how to use my time, and what bits of the theatre I can polish/when I need to do it to have the screen recordings for documentation. 

CRITIQUE SUMMARY — Wk 10 Presentation

 7/10/2020

Task 2 

• Setup / context: 
• Cyborgs and witches as performative 'other' figures/bodies. 
• The stage/theatre as a space for the body, and imagination of these intersecting possibilities
• Pitched performative website back in task 1, main shift is in the role of the user, now as the performer
• Materialising my own intersection through code / spoken word / speech recognition / machine learning poetry / motion tracking

• Talk through, process
• Project as an exploration of this theatre metaphor. Setup as opportunity to ritualise and introduce the experience, and place it in this code-as-theatre context
• Spoken word — collective power, prophetic narrative voice / guide. Macbeth tradition of witch-speak and the theatre 
  
• 3D as a space to explore the dimensionality of the theatre as space, and similarly, identity. Shift in perspective
• Stage as visual device, mechanism
• Poetry stage: speech recognition/cyborg love poems in materialising intersection
• Opera stage: gesture and desire, coded orchid-gestures in Chinese Opera + motion tracking = interactive opera
• Intersectional possibility — should I be more explicit in naming and pointing to identities outside of my own? 
• Feedback: wanted to get overall sense of project, too focused on details myself. But I feel like I know what I need to do, just not sure about time/how to prioritise. Similarly, how might I start pulling together the documentation.

• My evaluation
• I approached this presentation almost as a first pass at the documentation side of things, telling the story, going through some of the process. I don't know if that was totally accurate to the purpose of it but I think it was helpful to me. 
• I think even the design of the slides, in the context section, could be something to bring into / develop further as a visual language for the documentation. I think it sets the ideas of intersections, dimensions / space and possibility up well, and nods nicely to the visual language within the project. 
• Doing the presentation helped to bring the themes and narrative forward e.g. this project is essentially testing and experimenting with the idea of a theatre, giving a structure to the process and content
• I think what I asked for feedback on was not super well directed and clear, but again, I think I have a sense of what is missing, just not where they sit in overall significance. The question about the broader intersectional possibilities I think was good to put out, so I don't keep questioning it and being unsure about it. I think it also was a way to test my framing of intersectionality, which I did get excellent feedback on. 

Ali:

• Documentation will be important
• Screen-recording — UNCLEAR: what is preset and what is determined by the user? 
• The interactions themselves need more setup — some kind of tutorial element, example of what to do? How to get user to sit with the interactions and spend time with the ideas/content? 
• e.g. This is the gesture space, model/tutorial it. 
• The fake code in the entry is a good framework, maybe bring that in to each interaction? so it's more direct.
• Stage — the metaphor of the user (through the webcam feed) as the actor/performer is not completely there. They're not positioned on the stage, but as a part of the wall...? What is the stage for — the user and their "body"?, or the output of the performance. How might you position the webcam differently to set this up more clearly. Or shift how you're framing the idea of the stage/theatre. 
• As part of the stage — takes on a fluidity/threshold status? ? 
• Be strict and consistent with this metaphor. The storytelling + metaphor is setting up so much of the meaning, think of it as the rules of this world. 
• Isometric working well
• Documentation: 
• Catergorising your findings (e.g. designing for digital materiality, personal identity, etc) will help, give yourself a structure to work within. 
• Andrew — will be a bit more text based, to contextualise research
• Intersectional framing/setup
• Listing, naming, labeling, separating --> conveying identity as something that is more formulaic?? And can be pulled apart and dissected, instead of complex and more dimensional. Especially on a surface level and without context. 
• Andrew — Important to speak from your own position and not for others. (yes absolutely !!!!) Also just speaking from your own position opens up the space for other people. 
• Project aims/tone: 
• And the performativity you're speaking to is so much about ambiguity, the doing and being of a person in a very particular way. Attaching, locking in these descriptors doesn't allow for that fluidity. 
  
  But also recognising that sense of possibility I'm trying to point to may not be as apparent otherwise.. 

CRITIQUE

• The points about the metaphor/stage are really interesting. If I am saying that the stage is for the output/result/materialisation of the performance, then is that output a sort of stand in for the body? Are you entering into this space where the body itself is reimagined not in terms of a body but what it performs? What are the implications of this? Stage is for embodiment? ?? Rather than the body itself. 
  
  I think that's what Ali was getting at when suggesting the webcam screen should go behind the stage / be really deliberate about the positioning. That way the presence of the user is less clearly defined as the webcam, and there is more emphasis on the actions and interactions.
  
  I'm not completely sure if that is my intention, I just think that visually and interaction-wise, it makes sense for the user-as-a-virtual-2D-plane to not be on the stage. Because that limits the interaction — you're not just watching yourself. It's not performance for the sake of performance. The speaking, the gestures are a way of embodying your own being, and the interactions materialise the possibilities of that. Possibilities outside of societal norms and what we're familiar with. 
  
  OR if you look at it another way, the premise of the interaction itself is an invitation to occupy this space, and in this context, this intersection. Occupy as in enact your agency and presence within the theatre. And the fact that it's performative situates the user even more within their body/identity, to literally occupy them. The "stages", these interactions that play with voice and gesture, are almost experiments to imagine / expand / materialise the richness and possibility? stories? experiences? that sit within these intersections. That are made possible because of them? 
  
  So then the stage is for this possibility. Almost as a device/metaphor to realise it, to will/speak/make it into being, through the being, embodying of your intersections. The theatre is for performing possibility. I think that sits well with the idea of the theatre as a space for imagining, and imagining through bodies. 
  
  So then, does it make sense for the user-webcam to be a part of the walls? The stage itself? I think in terms of the context/scene-setting of the stage screens, sure. To have the user sitting in the same space as essentially, the machine learning, or the opera context. They are of these intersections/substances. These entities/ideas/processes that hold their own layers of references and cultural context. 
  
  From the user's perspective, how does that read? To be part of the stage? Literally the wall... I think there is a disconnect there? If you're invited, and asked to take on the role of the cyborg-witch, and there's going to be a stage for you, you would assume you would be on the stage. Like if this is the 'Cyborg Witch Theatre', then you expect to see cyborg witches performing? But I think there is a cyborg witch performativity that is not as tied to the body. It's sort of a more detached speech/gesture, as a process of being and occupying. I think framing the theatre as a space for this process is important. Because the aim is not to realise a Performance. It's to get a sense of this process, of what it means and how it feels to perform your intersection, and grasp these possibilities. A 'cyborg-witch becoming', that in/ex-ternalises these possibilities? I think it's important that the body is not the thing being transformed and cyborg-witchified, it's your be-ing (not as a what, but a how). How you occupy the theatre and your body and your intersection to tap into, connect with, materialise these stories and these possibilities.
  
  I think in summary, I need to reframe the idea of the body to more of an embodied be-ing. Then the stage is for this process, a space to reimagine worlds to serve our intersections. (???) Still don't know what this means for the placement of the webcam. Diagram it out.

• User/webcam as part of the structure. 
• Takes on a threshold status???? As in you're not on or off the stage, but part of it
• Stage as a threshold device????? 
• Stage as container for the interaction, cyborg-witch becoming..,? 
• I think it's specifically that there is a sort of window that the webcam screen pops into. That lets you see through the screen/stage and again, understand this stage as constructed. And when you, the user, fills that space, sealing the wall, acting as this inbetween element, what does that mean? 

• The theatre is a space for reimagining, and reimagining through performativity as a process for becoming. Reimagining through occupying your identity through a cyborg witch performance, through voice and gesture and interactivity. This is a performativity for resistance. That asks you to embody and occupy your identity. So, resistance itself is performative, and embodied. 
  
  I think it's also worthwhile to acknowledge the processes involved in the interactions (the code, motion tracking, speech recognition, machine learning) as performative themselves. As processes themselves that are in flux, responding and feeding back to their context and environment. So in a way, are the stage walls a way to reference all these processes, including the performative being of the user. A way to bring in all these 'actor/actants', not onto the stage per se, but into the space and interaction.  
  
  The stage is a more explicit construction, a spatialised arena for these processes to come together and materialise in relation to each other. 

• Documentation. I think it would be really useful to think through how I might structure this, into findings like Ali suggested. Especially for tomorrow's session. I think doing this will also help to do some of the reframing in a way that is more useful and directed. (And also, I need a mini essay! ok.)
  
  
• Identity / intersectionality. 
• I think it was really interesting to hear Ali's take and reading of intersectionality, and also how that's coming through in my project. The use of words like fluidity and ambiguity are not ones that I've really used myself, or really consciously tried to embody in this project. So it surprised me, but I do see it. I see it in the intermingling and conversations that are happening between the queer context and the cultural context, and the combined materiality of the interactions and the space. 
  
  And the speaking of, the labelling and declaring of my identity in this particular way, that defines my gender/race/sexuality, is not something I feel totally comfortable in. In some way, I thought that directness and explicit speaking of, was something that I was expected to do? And necessary in defining this space. But also I do want to claim the specificity and power that can come with this naming, and identifying with. And I think that's all ok, these feelings can sit alongside each other. But when it came to materialising that, beyond the words themselves, it does become more ambiguous. I think I was so concerned about whether or not the content would be read as queer, or Chinese, or feminist, etc., and the representation rather than the embodying of. 
  
  And I was very fixated on the intersecting and how to materialise this possibility of that action. But I guess what Ali picked up on, that is there in the project is the fluidity of lived experience. And the dimensionality of the intersection, as a space that you occupy and move through. I think really consciously shifting into this idea of dimensionality feels richer and more complex. And truer to my aims. It centres it back on my experience, and possibilities within that, rather than a surface level, formulaic, hypothetical (from my singular perspective and research so far) possibility of other identities. And I think it is more reflective of the stages and interactions, the real body of the project. 
  
  The 'dimensionality of lived experience' is a phrase I've articulated a lot since Wednesday, and I really like it. I think it expresses the richness and yes, possibility of identity in a way that is simpler, more approachable, and just more open and less academic jargon-y? 

• Tutorial suggestion — modelling the interaction. 
• I really like this suggestion and can't believe it never occurred to me! I think the general feedback to get users to spend more time in the space, and acclimate them more to the rules/conventions/functions of the "world" is a really crucial one. I think it's the overall narrative and ...paratextual grounding? that I haven't been able to assess very well myself. 
  
  In terms of actioning this feedback though, I'm not sure exactly how... especially if it's more of a traditional tutorial? Like for the opera stage, how would I model that. I can see it being done with the poetry stage with a voice recording.
  
  From 14/10 studio session: maybe it's about having more of the speech bubble-esque pop ups and overlays. Like a walk through of an interactive experience.