Task 1: What’s in My Bag? Gear. And More Gear.

This bag and its contents are both things I carry around a lot, and things I carried with me to a very specific place at the beginning of the term. Let’s start with the specific place. I’m originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and due to the pandemic that has of course affected all of us in varying ways, I wasn’t able to visit my parents for just over three years. The first week of our course I flew there from Vancouver for two weeks, which was an inconvenient relief. I’m currently writing to you from a Starbucks in the only full-sized town on the island because there is so little Internet servicing my area. The bag above is my carry-on bag that contains most of my daily necessities and a few extras to keep with me for safekeeping during the flight.

What’s in the bag?

So, what is the daily need for these items? First, the X-Box controller from sometime in the oughts is not at all necessary, I just like the position of the buttons and thought I might play a game during my layover (which I didn’t end up doing). Everything else performs a variety of specific functions. The camera gear is always with me. I shoot regularly when I’m out and about and I frequently stop and pull out the camera when I see something interesting. The hard drive backs up my files and this little red one quite honestly contains my whole life. The laptop I use for my job as a curriculum developer/online course designer and it stays with me the majority of the time. The iPad is for coursework here with all of you. I used to take handwritten notes but it became difficult to read from the laptop screen while writing by hand and I adapted to reading and writing concurrently on the iPad which has been a significant improvement. I always have notebooks for recording photography notes, class notes and deadlines, and my own teaching notes and ideas. Finally, I have some just ‘stuff’ such as hand sanitizer, lip balm, and a USB key, likely as most of you do.

Text Technologies

Most of the contents of this bag are in some way a text technology. From the pens and notebooks to the electronic devices, each item records or stores information textually (visual, written, and oral depending on your definition of text).

• The camera equipment records visual data and also audio/video though I don’t use it for this purpose. Each time I load the images into my editing suite and export them, they are titled and numbered according to the date, location, and place in the sequence of images shot on that camera. The camera acts as its own record-keeper but the computer encodes the images’ forever-names while the hard drive stores the images for future use in designated files that are also named by year and location. I think these actions speak to our need to classify and sort information by name and number using text-based systems of organization. I can see a clear progression from using a card catalogue at a library to how Lightroom photo editing software stores image imprints in a sort of virtual  card catalogue. If an image is missing from its location, Lightroom will assume it is lost in the stacks (or from your hard drive) and alert you that it’s missing. The naming system reinforces the position of the image and can make it more easily retrievable. Any information not archived according to this system will be lost eventually.
• The pen and paper is another text technology, no matter how old-school. You’ll notice I am particular and use a specific type of pen and notebook. I think this reflects that no matter how much I move to digital tools, I’ll always want the exact feeling in my hand that those tools afford me. It’s comforting to pull them out and write in smudgy ink that is unintelligible to anyone else. I get the ink everywhere and somehow that makes me feel better. I also think that they are nostalgic in that they show how I started out. I’m from a really rural area with limited access to technology, and even traditional school supports that one might find in an urban area, like library or computer lab access. My mother was a teacher and taught me to read early. She would draw lines in a notebook for me to practice making letters with, and taught me phonics in the same notebooks.  I became a language teacher, so these experiences influenced me tremendously.
• The iPad and laptop perform similar functions but offer different affordances as text technologies and communication devices. I use the laptop for work and it’s my primary tool for course design, media arts work (as I don’t often draw), and doing the Vox online crossword. The iPad is for schoolwork in the MET and I use it for reading, note-taking, and using the Canvas app. I spent the large part of my day in front of one or the other and without them I wouldn’t be able to earn my livelihood. This is actually a massive irony. I used to be nearly entirely computer illiterate and it became a serious issue in my first Masters at McGill because I couldn’t easily grasp how to use statistical software. To avoid future embarrassment I quietly asked a librarian for help and she showed me how. A decade later and here I am.

Me and my bag

The striking thing about the contents of my bag is that I have no real love for anything in it. Not even the camera. I feel it sells a disingenuous idea of who I am and boils it down to sleek, black and silver gadgets that don’t say much about me. I’m compulsively neat so there isn’t even any trash that can humanize the pile. It’s important to know that what’s special is not what these things are on the outside, but what’s on the inside. They are simply containers for a much richer view of my life. The most important thing in the bag is my little red hard drive. For as long as I’ve been taking pictures I’ve been carrying around a hard drive. It’s maybe the only thing that you’d recognize if you looked into a past bag of mine. The cameras change, the technology advanced, but what I love doing and how I collect memories of experiences in tiny, clearly labelled files has stayed the same.  Anyone looking at the hard drive would know everything about me, through the small text labels, but largely through the vast series of sequential images.