Studio Project
Thinking about blogs last week gave me an idea for my studio project. One of the things that occurs to me is how blogging and the web could make for a very interesting and transparent research process. For example, if I am conducting research on how the web and ubiquitous computing affect archives, then the combining the use of a blog on a website could essentially serve as a documentary of the research writing process. In other words, if I were to use a blog as a recording device for thoughts, resources, and other material and also included uploads of drafts of what will eventually be the final product, then I believe I would essentially be left with a documentary about writing a research paper. This could be particularly interesting and useful for a composition class because we could use something similar to make our students' writing processes more transparent to ourselves and to them. Moreover, the website would serve as evidence of how electronic media change and affect archiving. I would have an archive of my research process.
Despite my interest in this project as such, I also don’t have any delusions that it hasn’t already been done or that it this isn’t the use that people are already blogs to. In this case, the blog fills the role of what researchers would typically think of as a research journal: nothing new there. Likewise, I would still be working on a final conference-type paper: nothing new either. What I have not seen, however, is an explicit discussion of how new media makes it possible to see and do both at the same time. Perhaps a useful analogy here is the current concept of a director’s cut or DVD with special features. The audience can view the finished product or the work that went into it. Now, imagine that you could see snippets of both while the movie was being made and then email the directors to give them feedback and influence the ongoing development of the film.
As a final piece to my project, I may recruit two or three individuals to serve as direct responders to the information I post. While the website would be open to anyone, direct responders may provide an interesting twist to the development of the project.
Many thanks to Mark Pepper for pointing me in the direction of Intellagirl's research blog as an example/model of how this has been done in the past. I would be grateful to anyone else who has ideas, examples, or other feedback on this project.