Interview no. 1 Reflections:
My first interview was soothing as it made me realise, this is not hard to do. Yet I understood I need to plan more thoroughly before hand. The interview was semi-planned and audio-recorded, took place online and it was undergone with another member of staff that does not teach on the same course as me.
I asked my interviewee the following questions:
1. what is your experience of hot desking studios?
2. What would you call this space if it was not called a studio?
3. What do you think hot desking spaces can do very well and how can you use that in your teaching.
However, in retrospect, I do not think these questions were the best to ask. I did not get the answers I was looking for. In addition, I don’t think they represent my chosen lenses (object oriented ontology). In addition, I also became aware that I was not interested in all hot-desking studios, but specifically D305. Hence, I have decided to adapt my questions, by considering that In Indigenous cosmologies, the actual landscape does often have the capacity to name itself and uses the human beings to enact the self-naming. In this way of understanding reality, the human mind is a conduit for the consciousness of the land to be expressed in language. Yup’ik scholar. A. Oscar Kawagley (2003). Hence, I adapted my questions to the following:
- As the room D305, can you describe yourself?
- If you were D305, how would you feel about the current use of the space? What would you say to students? What would you say to staff?
- If you were D305, do you have any friends? Do you have any antagonists?
- What is your favourite leftover item?
- How did you feel talking as the room? ***this is a a reflection on process and methods
- Can you draw how do you feel like today, as D305.***this was inspired by Aboriginal ways of learning that relate to landscape https://www.8ways.online/about)
Anonymised transcripts of the following interviews can be found here
The following interviews were more intriguing than the first one.
Throughout questions 1-4, interviewees seemed challenged by the format. They often say the room, rather than I, correct themselves, apologise. After q.2, or q.3 they seemed comfortable: their answers seem less presumptuous, and maybe change tone (ex. some of the participants give very negative answers at the beginning based on their experience of the studio, while later in the interview they adopt a positive disposition). Some interviewees say things that would potentially be hard to address otherwise. Sometimes, after the end of the interview, they return to talking as the room. It seems like they have more to share once they access the mode of talking as another.
In addition, by using a method that involves a level of absurdity, it became clear that there was no right or wrong answer, and that the ‘truth’ or. ‘knowledge’ was something that we had to find together in the process…
Using question 5, as a way of assessing together the method of embodying a non-human entity, interviewees mentioned that is was confusing, unusual, playful and fun.. A lot of them mention they think they are ascribing their own thoughts towards the room and that it takes a while to break out of that mindset.
Most interviewees mention that after the interview they feel more empathetic towards the room and that they are more willing to engage with its potential and consider it an actant in learning, one with large effects to what is taking place everyday..
In addition, most of the interviewees offer clever and poignant changes that could take place to make the studio space a more hospitable environment…I am not sure yet how to format these findings. At the same time I have been reflecting on the Eastside Projects Manual no.5, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance Art Manifesto and it seems like it could be a list in the format of a booklet or a poster that can be shared with students of the course.