my blogging activity has been a little slow recently because i didn't think anyone was reading, but doug assures me that he, at least is keeping up-to-date, so here goes...
having spent loads of time reading and scribbling over the summer, i feel like my practical and theory work has come back together again, which is really exciting. In fact, it has merged so much it gets hard to talk about the two separately, but to clarify i will try...
theory - my working heading (which needs some serious editing - more of a description at the moment) is "investigating the construction of cyberspace as a virtual reality through the performance of the journey". I know it doesn't sound like it, but i have spent the last few days on a major mission to narrow down my field(s) of interest to get to this! But there it is, I've planned out my certificate stage hand-in and am trying to get it written before term starts so i have the whole term to edit and re-edit and to lay it out beautifully! I've split the cyber-journey down into five areas of discussion: preparing to leave (home, anticipation, desire, preparation), departure (crossing boundaries, delegation to cyber agency), moving/travelling (navigation, motion, vehicle), anticipating arrival (negotiating the process of arrival, separation from the cyber-body), arrival (destination, ending). Central to the whole thing (at the moment) is an idea I am working on about the nature of cyber-space as an extension of self (cyber-self?), so the whole cyber-journey as a construction of space-self. hmmm... need to think this through some more, I have time though - for a change. What a relief not to be doing things at the last minute.
practice - had a break-through over the summer, found an old notebook where i had drafted a methodology of my practice for an application form. It was great because I have felt so lost about what it is that I DO, now that I am not doing architecture. But reading this thing, I realised that the whole reason I am tring to get out of architecture is that I never really did architecture in the first place and that there is nothing wrong with the way i work, just the context I was working in. So following this methodology, I have found a site in Brighton that I love and am in the process of documenting and researching it. I am planning to use this as a virtual site for a workshop performance in November. I will build onto it, a collage of 'real' and virtual forms. I don't want to say too much more right now because I am still formulating it in my head, but here is a picture of the site:
ok, that's it for now. See you soon Doug and anyone else who might be reading...
