Here in Minnesota, we’ve survived a period of intense cold. Three days of bitterly cold temperatures well below zero (Farenheit) made it a good time to make a pot of tea and reflect on things the work I’ve done over the past month, and make plans for the next 6 weeks (when spring might arrive in the North).
My challenge for January was to pick up where I left off in Finland, and translate the media explorations on paper into textile sketches in larger scale. I wanted to fill my wall with samples, experiments, and models. My big question is still “what does a conversation look like?” as I work with words and also tone and cadence.
A three-hour conversation is written out on a length of cotton.
Spooled neatly.
referencing audio tape
Is a conversation linear? Sort of.
The exchange between two people is back and forth, and can be round-about or straight to a point, static or fluid. According to a software designer:
“Conversation is a progression of exchanges among participants. Each participant is a “learning system,” that is, a system that changes internally as a consequence of experience. This highly complex type of interaction is also quite powerful, for conversation is the means by which existing knowledge is conveyed and new knowledge is generated.”
Now that sounds like a piece of art I’d like to make!