As the end of the term is approaching, today was the last day of my work at the library. I had a meeting with Karen to share my experiences of working in VIVO. It has been really great time working there, and the project that I have done with those amazing artists was something more than I expected to engage with out of this learning experience. Karen gave me a positive feedback, saying how this kind of research project is important for the organization because it usually takes a lot of time to do that and certainly is not easy to get done. We also discussed ‘now what’ part; now I have the recordings of the interviews with six different artists, so what do I want to do with them? Karen suggested that my project could be up on a page under the research project on VIVO’s website. I thought that was a good idea to put my project up in the online archive so that the ideas and voices of the artists in my semi-personal research project could reach to wider audiences. I also thought that I needed to think more through how and what I want to present the project, so I told that to Karen and we decided to have another meeting for that (and also to wrap up everything) sometime in December.

After the meeting, I was editing the recordings of the interviews of Brady and Crista. Listening to the artists talking with my headphones feels very intimate, and I feel like this phase of editing after the actual conversations with the artists is another layer of learning because I understand the ideas discussed in deeper level by chewing word by word that came out of the artists. Then I started taking notes of the words that resonated me or stood out in some ways, like things that I thought maybe it was important for understanding the development of the media art.

When Karen asked me what I was going to do for the creative response, I didn’t have a concrete image of it, but I knew I wanted to use the materials I have -that is the voices of the artists from the interview. I also wanted to make something speaks directly to the library and archive and the importance of the prints in there, so I asked Karen if there was extra archive box that I could use for the response, and she generously spared me a box and a plastic bag to cover that to protect it from rain on my way home! I’m still thinking, but basically, my idea so far is that stuffing the archival box with the artists’ words.

Now that I got great materials to remix and make something with, I’m ready to get my hands on and actually start making!

Photo: stacks of archival boxes