Group Four: Death

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 didn’t 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 - wasn’t suitable because it wasn’t a “single” outcome, but rather a collection of many different outcomes (e.g. the dead body, the notes, the bible, the diary etc). Arguably, the “death scene” itself could have been a single outcome. I’m sure I would have seen this if I wasn’t 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 “dead body” 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 we’d drift away from our aims and the brief’s 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 didn’t know what each other were working on.

I’m 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 don’t 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 weren’t 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 “spirit” 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 - Dillon’s 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 we’d 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 Hackett’s art in my research! As the Qualitative member of the group, I was focusing on all the “fluffy stuff” 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 that’s when I found and was distracted by the Victorian Era death photography.

A friend of mine came across Caitlyn Hackett’s 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, Caitlyn’s 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 “fluffy stuff” 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 team’s blog.

I don’t 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,  from https://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkcgy96FL51qexsv0o1_500.jpg

Of course, we needed to create something to present on Monday; and whatever this was had to integrate the cross-disciplinary knowledge that we all had obtained through the process of our research.

Our first idea was some kind of “death scene” where we would have a “dead body” of some sort lying on the floor with elements of all our work lying around it. For example, broken objects assembled by Dillon [ Practical ] could be laid out around the dead body as though there was a struggle before the death. Notes resembling newspaper clippings could be pinned up on a wall behind the dead body, revealing facts and statistics about death [Anastasia’s quantitative work]. Something religious - like a book resembling a bible - could be placed beside the body containing information about various religions [Matthew’s theoretical work]. I could put together some notes from a diary belonging to the deceased, expressing the deceased’s feelings about things [ Qualitative ]. Jonathan’s work could be presented from a sort of “Sherlock Holmes” perspective, as his [ Analytical ] job was to connect all of our work together, much like a detective connects pieces of evidence.

We had a few different ideas regarding what should actually be used to represent the dead body; A manikin? A doll?

It was decided that a manikin might not be the best idea, because we certainly could not guarantee that it wouldn’t be damaged during the setting up of our death scene. We would have had to make it look dead, after all. So it looked as though we would be going for the doll idea...

I therefore offered to create this doll in such a way that it would look as though it could have died from a variety of different reasons; e.g. a crushed skull, a dagger through the heart, a broken neck etc.

To bring more focus to the theme of death alone, we decided to make the doll quite simple; creating one where it would be difficult to tell if the decreased was male, female, English, American, Chinese, Indian, three years old, forty years old... etc. Our artifact would represent death; which happens to everybody - not just a certain group of people.

I was inspired by the plain yet emotive style in which the cartoon characters “Pon and Zi” are drawn:

(Thomas, 2015)

Other Suggestions

It wasn’t long before other ideas started coming in. Dillon suggested that we use a glass head to represent the dead body...

[ Image sent through Facebook from Dillon ]

...however, how would we damage the head and make the person look deceased without smashing the glass? ( Thinking back we could have made it look like someone’s head was cut off, or we could have painted it to make the person look dead ).

Then came the realization - after taking another look at the brief - that what we produced had to be a single outcome / artifact; and we thus abandoned the idea of presenting a collection of things making up a death scene because we felt that this would be going against the brief.

I began to study the brief in a lot more detail; I knew that, within the Crossdisciplinary framework we had chosen, we needed to put together an artifact that legitimized a point of knowledge ( that there are multiple ways of looking at death ) using work done by all of the members in our team.

As a result I came up with a new idea; involving a pair of giant glasses and multiple “lenses” made of laminated pieces of paper and card, each with information or pictures on them from our work. Because our work has been about death, this artifact would represent the ability to “see” death from a range of different perspectives.

(Syls fashions, 2013)

As Dillon started looking into the Japanese art of Kinsugi; the practice of breaking ceramic objects - or collecting ceramic objects that are already broken - and sticking them back together using gold resin to create something that is often more beautiful than the original object before it was broken, he came up with the idea of perhaps using a ceramic plant and Kinsugi in order to create a final outcome with it.

[ Image sent through Facebook from Dillon ]

Freaking Out Just A Little

We reached the point where we were still discussing what our artifact should be - at 11 O’clock at night - on Sunday. It seems we just spent so much time researching without giving the outcome enough thought. As a result we took on the “survival” method of making whatever we could come up with and simply using whatever works.

I fell back to the doll idea and combined it with Dillon’s Kinsugi idea along with what I learned from the poem, “Thanatopsis” (Bryant, 1817). This resulted in a doll that I spent all night 11pm till 6 am, creating. It’s name is Jack Angel (angel because the name would seem comically ironic considering the doll’s slightly morbid appearance). It is a patchwork doll, and on each patch is written a quote or note from one of our blogs. This is to connect the doll with all the work we did; which can be found in our blog entries, as well as combining - in one body of knowledge about death - the different kinds of work we did depending on what role we were assigned.

I also created a wire flower that would stick out of the doll’s middle section; representing how - as in the “Thanatopsis” poem - the life from one, deceased creature is transported from them and into another form; “Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim thy growth, to be resolved to earth again” (Bryant, 1817).

This ended up being what we presented on Monday, after talking about our Manifesto, our overall goals and the roles we played in this project.

References

Bryant, W.C.B. (1817). Thanatopsis [Poetry Foundation]. Retrieved 16 October, 2015,  from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180813

Syls fashions. (2013). I Offer. Retrieved 19 October, 2015,  from http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/207/764/374/vintage-flip-top-clear-lens-round-sunglasses-black-gold-2ad17.JPG

The duration of this Multiple Worlds assignment has flown by and i’ve enjoyed what i’ve learnt throughout this role. I didn’t know exactly where we’d end up heading and what our final outcome will be in the end. I was a bit nervous about our presentation in front of the studio, however afterwards i believed me and the team pulled through and discussed our own individual process and information clearly to our fellow BCT classmates. I explained my process undergoing the Practical Role and how i approached the subject of ‘Death’, I am glad I worked closely with the Quantitive and Qualitative members in our group assisting me with facts and poetry which directed me on the right route to take in the end. 

First week: We were given our roles and split into our groups given by the lecturers. Instantly, we had to decide on what concept we wanted to look into as we only had two weeks and a half to complete this project. As soon as we decided that our concept is going to be on Death, we gave ourselves homework for the week - mine was to research into Death, looking at different various facts and statistics.

Second week: We went through a lot of research, and a lot of discussions on what our artefact could be. Ideas ranged from a glass head statue to a puppet, however we liked all of the ideas we came up with so it was hard to choose what we actually wanted to use. I looked at many different statistics and facts for my task, trying to get information from a wide range of perspectives of death. Death is a very broad subject, therefore it was hard to find the answers to the questions I wanted to find because everyone had different answers to the same question, even websites that were run by the government? I found that weird. This is what I focused on for the rest of the week as this was my role. There was a lot of communication during this week within the group, and everyone had to agree on whether they liked the idea for us as a group to cooperate, but all in all I think our group did really well and was cooperative and I would love to work with these wonderful human beings again.

Wabi Sabi Symbol 

Imperfection

Impermanent

Incomplete

[ Dillon : Navy ] Practical

Final outcome of my practical role: 

So what do different religions think? to fill the massive void in our existential crisis that is; WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?! Turns out, lots of theories have been brewed up to help legitimize the death and its meaning. Here are some examples from my research:

Christianity:

As a whole Christians believe in a afterlife, both a heaven and hell as such. How who’s decided to go to heaven or hell varies between different types of Christianity but essentially, if you believe in ‘god’ and you've been good, you go to heaven, a place where everything is perfect, a utopia if you will. but if you're bad you go to hell, a place of eternal torture. fun. better be good then right?

Buddhism:

Now this one gets interesting, it’s intriguing the stuff we seem to come up with to fill our desire to know the unknown. interesting, but hey, they could be right, try prove what happens after death and i think you’ll find it somewhat impossible. Essentially what Buddhism believes is in a death/ life cycle, where the worthy are reincarnated and live on a different life in a different body entirely after they die (essentially their consciousness is reborn later). The only way to escape this cycle to ultimate freedom is to release any feeling of desire for worldly things,  Hence, the goal of getting off the Ferris wheel of reincarnation necessarily involves freeing oneself from desire.

Islam:

According to the beliefs of the Muslim faith, death is the complete end of physical life, where they go till rest until the day of resurrection when Allah judges the living and the dead. Some Muslims believe the ‘righteous’ see visions of God after death and that the evil see visions of hell. Aside from these visions, they believe their souls go into a metaphorical ‘deep freeze’ until the final day of judgement

Dillon : Navy - Practical

Brief Update:

After a last minute chat with the team, we’ve decided last minute to bring in our own unique findings of our research in the morning; we’ll blog about our own products and finalise this together.

 In the Brief Clint and james have linked us to New Definitions For Intermedia article by Holly Pester and ARJ by Alexander Refsum Jensenius. I’ve made a mistake of reading to late in this practice, however I did get a chance to actually go out and do some of the things picked up from the articles mentioned. Holly Presters definition of intermedia have shaped the role of media in her work being the art of poetry. In a way I’ve used poetry as a base for the beginning of my research. I was intrigued by the intermedia chart; the “process of work between spaces of media” shares its own distinctions and boundaries, relating to the work of different views on death. Stass focusing on the statistics side behind this case, Kat focusing on the emotion, belief and history behind it, Matt on the theory behind death and Jonathan summing these conclusions up. Presters example of cross pollination help sets a pillar behind our cross-disciplinary path. [although this may be a tad late]

When is the precise moment that death occurs? Scientists struggle to define this and now consider it more of a process opposed to an event. The subject is considered ‘’dead’’ once its:

I’ve noticed that I'm doing most of my physical projects and research on the objects side of things. Our finalised disciplinary is the Cross-Disciplinary or approach which is linking two or more fields of study (looking at the outcome from two different perspectives). Out of all the roles in the the qroup, qualitative has given me a greater understanding in terms of qualities, emotion and the relief after death. I still don't know what the outset behind this project will be, but i can’t help feel like incorporating the kintsugi method into place, then explaining the thoughts behind this process to the studio and symbolise the ‘afterlife’, I’ve been getting carried away with my physical approach leading more into a theory approach. I have outlined a brief earlier in the blog for me to stick behind but i feel as though my communication between members is quiet. My final product from the Kintsugi method is too small and will not be sufficient for a final artefact. Will have to talk to the rest of the team about this “out-come”

[ Dillon : Navy ]

The final part of my method to achieving this art, however, it may have been of smaller scale due to size and materials of the project. Before i started this project i feared death in my own way, but researching into William Bryant Cullens poetry i was able to find reassurance and natural orders in his poetic style. The re assurance that death is a cycle has changed my views completely.

My so called failure of the Kintsugi art. 

Resource [1] http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Faux-Kintsugi/?ALLSTEPS - DIY - Kantsugi - Biskies - [2013].

I’d just like to state, the instructables process helped me illustrate this technique at home using basic household items:

- Ceramic piece

- Gold Glitter plaint to act as the powdery dust they used back in the 15th century for the art.

- Craft knife - Edge the resin

- Epoxy Resin - Glue the pieces

Everytime I come back to this procedure i learn new things from it, how it relieves people and brightens their views on death eliminating the fear involved and most importantly to have faith after death. Part Two will be up soon