Interactive Documentary » writing

the never ending PhD

Sandra — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:30:58 +0000

Gosh… I had hoped to finish my PhD by December but… it looks like I will have to write some more!!! Damn… I am starting to run out of steam… and I am so busy in between teaching and preparing a new website for i-Docs 2012 that the last thing I want to do is to write another chapter for my PhD!

Anyway… apparently I need to add another case study… oh well, it will have to wait for September then.

It seems now clear to me that completing a PhD is not only a question of research, argumentation and knowledge… most of it is about endurance and patience. The ones that arrive to the end of it are the ones that managed to keep going… in spite of everything…

My problem is that I am a curious person and that I am constantly attracted by new adventures so… I would really not say that patience is my strength… Yet, this is maybe what I really have to learn out of all this!

My new chapter 6 is now online…

Sandra — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:59:19 +0000

My second in depth case study of interactive documentary is now online: it is all about Rider Spoke (a locative experience by Blast Theory, UK) -which I see as an example of Experiential documentary. If you have already read my other chapters you will know that it follows a case study of Hypertext documentary – the [LoveStoryProject] by Florian Thalhofer. Now… I think those two chapters are interesting if read together (but unfortunately for you they need the theoretical framing of Chapter 4 to make some sense!). [Go to me & my PhD section, scroll down and you will find all the PDFs of the chapters].

Basically I claim that the interactive documentary should be seen as a relational object, and therefore it needs a new metodology of analysis that is not film related. In my chapter 4 I coin the term Live Documentary explaining that the interactive nature of idocs gives them carachteristics and behaviours that are not graspable though film theory. I see in idocs levels of autopoietic behaviours (Maturana and Varela) that puts them in-relation with their user and their environment, and that changes both. I claim that assemblages theory (Deleuze, Guattari, Latour, DeLanda and others) can be useful to see idocs as layers of interconnected elements. Finally I establish four questions that I then use in my case studies to unfold both their autopoietic and assemblage nature.

Ok… this is a bit abstract and concise… but if you read chapter 4 it will hopefully be clearer…

If you do ever end up reading those chapters I would be very grateful if you could send me some feed-back on them. As you know all the material that is on my website is work on progress and it will need several re-iterations before finding its final PhD shape… I am happy to open up my research, and my thoughts, if this helps to start an interactive process of dialogue… if it stays only a one way process I think I would feel a bit cheated…

Also… feel free to use, but do not forget to quote!

writing process

Sandra — Thu, 05 May 2011 10:17:37 +0000

Ha, ha, ha… I think this 60 seconds film about “the writing process is excellent… well, at least it made me laugh…

A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process [In Less Than 60 Seconds] from chel white on Vimeo.

Moving on to case studies

Sandra — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 23:25:26 +0000

I am now writing my case studies. One chapter for each type of interactive documentary: hypertext, conversational, participative and experiential. This is actually quite good fun!! To see the theory fit with the practice is very exciting. At time I feel as I am blabbing on… or maybe forcing things so that it fits my argument… but over all I am discovering the finesses of the case studies that I have chosen… and this I enjoy very much!

fresh help

Sandra — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:17:04 +0000

I have been re-writing the same chapter of my PhD for 6 months now… I am totally sick of it. This is the case study part of my PhD, it should be the “fun” stuff for me, but since my theoretical ground, and my approach to the case studies, puts me in disapproval with my tutors I am somehow… on a still point.

Bizarrely when one hits nausea sometimes thing happen… a discussion with a friend, an indepth chat with a philosophy specialist can became illuminant… like a new horizon in a dark sea… I am now back into writing, and this time full of enthousisam and exchitement! May this mood last for a while, as I have not finished my chapter… May the sea drift me towards new directions, and the flow fill me with novelty, may justice thank the people that with a little push propulse us far beyond what we can see.

Interruption

Sandra — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:11:32 +0000

I have been away for a long easter break and I need to go back to work as quickly as possible! The problem is that once I get out of the mood, and full immersion, of writing it takes me a good week to get back into it… oh gosh… going on holidays is great, but coming back is really hard… Motivation, routine, jog, ideas, concentration… please do come back soon! At the moment what I have in my mind is the sunshine of Italy and lots of good moments with my kids, my students and my family… I think I need a quick change of state of mind… or I need to learn to keep my PhD always in my mind -as opposed to be fully on it and then fully outside of it. Balance… this must be the key…

writing mode

Sandra — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:54:15 +0000

I am writing.

7.00 am, alarm clock. 7.30, get the kids ready. 7.45, breakfast. 8.00 kids to school. 8.30, I do my jogging. 9.00 shower. 9.30, cappuccino plus start writing till the kids are back from school. It is not exactly a 9 till 5 job, but nearly… I have to say that there is a nice feeling to this kind of monastic rythm. The days pass by one after the other. I have blocked this time for writing so I am not taking anything else on… suddenly the days seem easier, smooth, with no attached complications. My moods go from total frustration to total excitment. Illuminations and flat stagnation rythm my days. The fact is that I am slow. I am such a slow writer… how could I ever had decided to do a PhD? It takes me forever to decide what to write, and how to formulate it… I suppose I have to put my head down and just persevere…

The rethorics of PhD writing

Sandra — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:02:58 +0000

I am reading DeLanda and Deleuze because I’ll might use the idea of “assemblages” to analyse interactive documentaries. I know that if I use such concept I will have to defend the way I use it – to be inspired by it is not enough. This is what I find very difficult in PhD writing: the game is to use theory and to persuade through it. This is an exercise of rhetoric not an exercise of becoming. At no point one has to be vague. One has to constantly be sure and directive. One is supposed to be the leader… but leader of what? I see my PhD as an exploration, as a trip that counts more than the arrival. I find it particularly difficult to fake an assertive style which is not mine.
The more I think about it the more I see the PhD as a ritual of passage. It has to be difficult. It has to be painful. It has to be absurd and not questionable. This is the tribal way to create clans and elites…
But I do not want to be part of an elite. I want to be part of a debate and I want this debate to be open to everybody – especially people outside of academia.
Isn’t it strange that academia, where some people are so bright that they can re-think the world anew and foresee the future, is probably the more ritualistic and archaic place that one can imagine?

post Xmas blues

Sandra — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:50:53 +0000

I bizarrely seem to remember about my PhD blog after every single holiday… this is probably because it is the only moment I take the time to think about what I should do (as opposed of just beeing late on my to-do list). Post holiday time is a moment of wireframing: see the big picture and re-think your schedule, at least for me. The first day the kids are back to school I sit at my table with a cappuccino and I think: “where did I leave this at? Where shall I start from? What do I want to achieve in those 6 weeks (before kids are back on hols again)?”…

So here I am: cappuccino in my hand: where next?

There is always a moment of blues in this… all is possible, but all is to be started again… it is half joy and half an effort… is is about starting motion…

Last trimester was great! I had a great time going at conferences and meeting up people. Now I know I am back into reading and writing. I also have to finish marking my students’ essays…

OK: Phd: I am back!

back from hols

Sandra — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:14:41 +0000

It is September, I had a lovely month of family holidays… now back to work!

The thing with having kids is that they are constantly on holidays!!! Believe it or not I find it very hard to swing from holiday mood to working mood every 6 weeks (which is on average how often the kids have a break from school). One side of me believes it is incredibly civilised to have so many breaks and to remember that there are others things in life than work, school runs and house organisation… but the other side of me finds it very painful to switch between completely different lives all the time.

I suppose that working from home does not help. When the kids are on hols they are there: right in front of me waiting for me to take the lead. Shall we go to the park? Shall we paint? Can we have a play-date? I might be limited but I find it impossible to do my PhD work while my kids are painting in the kitchen and probably messing up all the walls of the house… call me a control freak, but I am either with them or at my desk working… I can’t do both together… The good news is that when they will grow up they will NOT want me to organise their day… but we have time for that…

So here I am: kids are back at school and I have 6 weeks in front of me to try to remember what my PhD was about. Probably by the time I will have remembered the kids will be on holiday again!

layers of writing

Sandra — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:02:05 +0000

I have been quite silent recently… this is because I am writing like mad for the PhD panels that we have at Goldsmiths every year. Deadline: end of May.

I am a bit frustrated not to work on my website at the moment, but I have no choice. The writing process is taking every single free moment that I have. I must be a very slow writer… it takes me for ever to write: I concentrate on the precise word, on the reference, on the logical link between one sentence and the next one… Sometimes it is extremely frustrating, other times something emerges from the paper (actually, the computer screen) and it suddenly “makes sense”. My head seems to be like a huge pot that contains loads of ideas and intuitions. The praxis of writing is like a filter that orders the confusion that is in my mind. There were so many possibilities, yet one has to be chosen. Why is it so satisfying to have order?

The process of writing is for me a long layering process. Each reading reveals things to be changed and each writiting reveals new ideas, but also new incongruences… Like waves that layer rocks, the hours of writining and proof-reading smooth the nature of my discourse… and slowly, a shape emerges.

I am a bee

Sandra — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:38:36 +0000

I am a bee stuck into a glass with a book on top. I see what is outside but cannot go there. To be frank I am convinced that if I knew where I wanted to go the glass would disappear by itself. My frustration does not come from the fact that I am a prisoner, but from the fact that I am not sure of where I should (would/could?) go if the glass was not there. My strategy is to keep looking outside and try to imagine how I could get there and ponder if it is worth it.

The frustration is increasing: since I do not decide anything I stay trapped, and now I am panicking because I realise that I’ll might not go anywhere.

I step back for a moment: how can I decide where I would like to go if I do not try it? How can I decide on theoretical ground, without experiencing it?

I realize I trap myself by not engaging with the process, but trying to control where I will go before going: this is mission impossible.

I am doing the same with my PhD: before writing the 20,000 words I need to produce for in a month time I would like to know what I am going to say and why. I need to know before I start. But then I realize I do not know, I never have the feeling of “knowing enough”… so I freeze and go back to the safe position of “I should read more to be clearer”. Back to square one: I read more but things get more complicated instead of being easier…

I need to engage with the process. Go for something that “feels right” and then discover things around it more than trying to “know that it is right” before starting – because this will never happen.

back to writing after going to Rome

Sandra — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:14:15 +0000

The holiday in Rome was way too good: I felt free, loved and warm… the return to my studio in London and my writing is pretty hash…

What makes me panic is the absence of boundaries in a PhD. Everything is possible, it makes me spend more time thinking about the possibilities than about what I want to do.

I suspect I need to be contained. Whether it is by someone, or by a limited scale that allows me to see where I am going… but this endless freedom of the PhD freezes me and sends me back to my deepest fears… how to deal with freedom? How to know what I really want? How not to fear other people’s judgment? How to know if I am going into the right direction? And what is right anyway???

I need to accept my fears and stay in my anxiety… can I learn to know that I do not know? Can I accept to be unclear?

If I don’t I’ll spend my time banging my head on the wall and whishing that I were different…

I think it is a question of survival: learn to be lost.

the bee is writing

Sandra — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:05:04 +0000

I have started the writing process for the June assessment.

I am writing, painfully, but surely.

I am the bee now. I do not fly with ease. I am still scared of taking the wrong direction. I would like to know where I want to end up to be able to decide the best itinerary from the start. That would make me feel secure. The reality is that I do not know where I want to end, so I do not know how to get there either. Each flower is a starting point that leads me to the next. This temporal exploration mode petrifies me because I fear not arriving in time. I have a deadline for end of May!

I am a bee that flies with half wings and is not enjoying the flowers it encounters because I am too occupied looking at my next possible flower.

Something will have to change.