Though the title is still up in the air, the book has moved into the copy edit stage, and will be available in two weeks as a free PDF and a print-on-demand book. Check back here for links to both options.
I have joked that a book sprint is an experiment in giving perfectly healthy individuals a form of instant, collective ADD, coupled with the sensation of waking sleep, short term memory loss, the need to continuously chew, snack, imbibe, mumble to yourself, and write run-on sentences that are structurally awkward. The past few days have all blended together, as have the broadly organized art/science/technology typologies (Designer/Technologist, Philosopher/Visionary, DIYer/Maker, Hacker/Co-opter, Citizen Scientist, Artist Researcher, Scientist Artist) that we began writing about on Monday. But as of this moment we have what is beginning to take the shape of a book.
Reviewing "the spread" (Photo: Claire Evans)
In the last three days we have visited with Garth Zeglin at The Robotics Institute, Lowry Burgess within the College of Fine Arts, Rich Pell at The Center for PostNatural History, and Dawn Weleski and Jon Rubin at Conflict Kitchen and Waffle Shop. Over lunch at the STUDIO yesterday, we received very helpful feedback from Patricia Maurides, Burr Settles, Natalie Settles, Jonathan Minard, Amisha Gadani, Marge Myers, Astria Suparak, and Garth Zeglin.
We also have a rogue contribution from Michael Pisano and Jonathan Minard, to be detailed later (they have been in the room for most of the sprint, and all the while contemplating a separate, as yet uncovered entry).
So what is the book? It is a compendium of work at the intersection of art/science/technology, made within the last five years, with contextual essays, a subjective chronology that telescopes back to 25,000 BC (who let that get so out of control???), and WILDCARDS for items relevant but not obviously related.
Book Sprint in situ (Photo: Jonathan Minard)
And on a happy field trip to Waffle Shop & Conflict Kitchen (Photo: Jon Rubin)
Based on what I know about group dynamics, I was prepared for an outbreak of cabin fever on Day 3, however, the day was pleasantly focused and productive.
For the majority of the day we all worked in cloistered silence on our sections about methodology. Another more discursive section has evolved, and will telescope back in time, finding past correlations to current practices in art/science/technology.
Cloistered book sprinters in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
To break up the day, we took a walk to Phipps Conservancy for lunch, where three of us had vegan sweet potato soup that tasted like warm fruit juice. (The meals have been spectacular otherwise!)
We are now fully aware of the benefit of working with designers in real-time as the content is written. Seeing “daily design rushes” (as we are calling them), is helping us shape our writing, and is a visual reward at the end of an intensive day’s work.
This was my favorite found image of the day. It was discovered by our work study student, Audrey, who was adding Radio Shack to our timeline.
Photos: Jonathan Minard
Today started with a field trip (a rare treat in the book sprint paradigm) to Golan Levin’s solo exhibition, “Looking at Looking at Looking” at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Golan’s work is reactive, so we got to play, make weird sounds, use our bodies, and touch lots of things before lock-down at the STUDIO.
Once on campus, we began writing independently on self-selected subjects from the outline. Claire Evans, our resident science fiction enthusiast tackled the speculative side of A/S/T, while Régine Debatty wrote about artists as researchers, I about citizen scientists, and Pablo Garcia about hacking and co-opting. Once we had sketched out these various methodologies, we began to see major overlaps that made the lines between the approaches less distinct. All the while, Thumb’s Luke Bulman and Jessica Young were working on ways of visually organizing the material we were producing into single page layouts that would accommodate the blurriness between boundaries.
Miller Gallery work study students were in and out of the process, helping to assemble a timeline of A/S/T landmark events, technological and social milestones, related interdisciplinary initiatives, political events, inventions, and so on. At one point, about ten people were working on the same Google doc– including the sprinters, the work study students, and STUDIO staff Amisha Gadani & Johnny Minard– and the document was shape shifting before our eyes. It was very exciting, and fulfilled my book sprint fantasies of the Ray Kurzweil variety. We actually had to encourage people to stop working on the time line, and get back to the harder-to-define narrative section of the book.
Lunch break in Gates Hillman Center (Photo: Pablo Garcia)
The first day of the book sprint was a marathon session of getting to know you, hunting and gathering of publications from the library and faculty offices, rearranging of the furniture and equipment in the STUDIO, and finally tackling the outline for the book. It was 3:00PM before we broke away to research and write independently, while the designers (Thumb Projects’ Luke Bulman and Jessica Young) began creating structure for our contributions. Pictured here is Régine Debatty introducing herself and her blog. An explanation of the hairless cat can be found here.
Régine Debatty. Photo: Luke Bulman
Click to Watch Video on Vimeo
