[ Katriel : Turquoise ] Reflection
Things I Could Have Done Better
While completing my documentation of the creation of our artifact - now that all the madness is finally over - I was surprised to find how badly thought-out some of my own decisions and inputs were. I feel that - again - I was far too worried about sticking to the brief - word for word - to really explore all of the possibilities open to us. I should have known better because, after all, so far during Integrative Practice we have always been asked why we didnāt break the rules, after a project has been handed in.
A prime example would be when I suggested that our original idea - the death scene - wasnāt suitable because it wasnāt a āsingleā outcome, but rather a collection of many different outcomes (e.g. the dead body, the notes, the bible, the diary etc). Arguably, the ādeath sceneā itself could have been a single outcome. Iām sure I would have seen this if I wasnāt blinded by stress due to so many fast-approaching deadlines.
Another effect of stress I believe was the fact that I also failed so often to see the potential of ideas that others in my team had, like the simple idea to replace the ādead bodyā in our death scene with a glass head. We could have actually done a lot with this; pretending that this was the victim of a guillotine perhaps? A person murdered and their head just left somewhere as a warning? It could have been painted, written on with pens, any number of things... And yet all I thought about was how it seemed impossible for us to stick a knife in it to imply that it was dead. I suspect this silliness was just a mindset thing. I had started to despair a little and became unhelpfully negative. Sorry guys.
Decision-Making & Communication
[ I came across this on Facebook after Steven posted it to the BCT1 20015 page, and found it extremely relevant to many of the group projects I have been part of this year, including this one (Vital, 2015) ]
As a group, we found it really quite difficult to make decisions together due to not so much communication going on. We did make an effort a couple of times to have meetings regarding what we were doing, and our progress, and talked regularly on Facebook; however it felt like when it came to actually deciding something, one person had to take charge. Sometimes there would be only one idea, and sometimes there would be far too many, and weād drift away from our aims and the briefās requirements.
This lack of communication showed in the fact that some of us were having difficulties - without the rest of us knowing - with joining the Tumblr blog that we were using, for an entire week after we started the project, and that we often didnāt know what each other were working on.
Iām also not quite sure that we met up and talked with a lecturer nearly enough as we should have. The brief stated that we should do this every week. I think we did - stress typically messes up my sense of the amount of time passing - but either way I donāt think we brought up the right questions. I should have asked whether the brief meant that we should pick a framework; like intra, inter, multi, cross and transdisciplinarity - rather than assuming this was the case. However, I did see other members of my team talking with James about their roles and what they were expected to achieve, which was great.
The Research
I was very impressed with this side of our project. The research was fascinating and I enjoyed finding things out within my Qualitative role, as well as reading posts from the other members in my team. I feel like we definitely discovered things that we werenāt expecting to find; such as the Victorian death photography trend, the fact that plastic may contain deceased pets, the fact that William Bryant wrote an incredibly powerful poem on death, that South Africa has the highest death rate and that - scarily enough - 60% of all suicides occur in Asia.
Seeing as we needed to form connections between our work and the work of others in our team, I was pleasantly surprised when my own research started connecting itself naturally with that of Anastasia [ Quantitative ] and Dillon [ Practical ]. I found, for example, that many near death experiences have potential scientific explanations, and that Dillon - who was investigating the breaking of objects - could relate to my notes on the āspiritā of objects, because many objects are made up of things that were once alive.
Methodology
In one of our Integrative Practice lectures, we were told that Methodology is the study of methods; involving thinking about how we do things, and how this affects our results.
I feel that our method could have been improved with more teamwork, and better management of time. Communication and motivation around this project was hindered quite a lot by feelings of despair and high levels of stress (because it was the time of year where it feels like everything is due at once, and with our three current projects being worth 60% or 100%, the stakes were high). Many of us were focusing more on Studio II work, which is due next week. Dedicating more time to talking to each other about Integrative Practice - and particularly the final outcome / artifact - would have been beneficial.
I also noticed - far too late - that we could have suggested a different work method for Dillon, who - as the Practical member of our team studying death - found it difficult to figure out what exactly he could do to contribute to the project. Because we struggled so much with coming up with an artifact - and because actually making something is indeed actively doing things in order to generate understanding - Dillonās job could have been to look at the work the rest of us were doing and continually try to represent this by making artifacts. That way weād never have had any problems with coming up with a final outcome, and Dillon would have always had something to do.
And... I realized after our presentation that I should have included some of Caitlyn Hackettās art in my research! As the Qualitative member of the group, I was focusing on all the āfluffy stuffā surrounding death; such as music, music videos, experience reports, photography and poetry around this theme. I was even looking for death-themed art at some point, but thatās when I found and was distracted by the Victorian Era death photography.
A friend of mine came across Caitlyn Hackettās artwork about a year ago, and I was fascinated by her morbid yet beautiful pen work:
(Hackett, 2015)
As you can see from the example above, Caitlynās work does have a prominent death theme in it, making it perfect for our project.
The Manifesto
How I tackled each part of our Manifesto...
I worked to understand the frameworks that were listed in the brief, as documented here: http://team4investigatorsofdeath.tumblr.com/post/130849219374/katriel-turquoise-5-disciplinarities When we chose to work within the Crossdisciplinary framework, I did my best to make sure that my work was relevant to this framework. The post below explains how I did this: http://team4investigatorsofdeath.tumblr.com/post/131338021734/katriel-turquoise-crossdisciplinarity-my
By researching all the āfluffy stuffā and focusing on emotions and experiences rather than explicit facts, I did manage to stay within my designated role of Qualitative.
The artifact that I ended up making does - I think - at least symbolize all of our work; the complete collection of which is here, on our teamās blog.
I donāt think I marginalized the disciplines in my effort to work Crossdisciplinary. The framework we chose made this fairly easy to avoid; seeing as in order to work within a Crossdisciplinary framework, one must be able to first acknowledge what each discipline is before they can consciously view one from the perspective of another.
I indeed found out that there are both positive and negative ways of looking at death; it can be an extremely morbid and disturbing thing, or it can be an adventure or something that leads us to treasure our lives even more than we would if we had the ability to live forever. This happened through a range of disciplines such as music, film, poetry, photography, psychology, philosophy, thanatology, etc.
References
Hackett, C.H. (2015). Tumblr. Retrieved 20 October, 2015, Ā from https://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkcgy96FL51qexsv0o1_500.jpg
Vital, A.V. (2015). Facebook. Retrieved 19 October, 2015, Ā from https://www.facebook.com/designtaxi/photos/a.10152210281895061.925101.422897905060/10156210215155061/?type=3













