MFA starts...HERE

Today is the start of my MFA…PROPERLY.
I need to start generating research. I decide to create a questionnaire that will probe people’s perception of “truth”, how it is they obtain and filtrate information, where sources matter, where context and scope matter…
Firstly I decide to write to a few people to ask if they would be willing to participate in a questionnaire…and out of 15 email, I instantly get 9 back. Which makes me think that I am onto a winner, I then start to cast my net further – emailing more people, I specifically think of demographics, I start to target my “audience” with ideas of nationality, religious and political opinions…I in no way want to direct outcomes (I have no idea what the responses will be anyway), but I do know that I want all bases covered.

I also start to open the possibility of “unknown parameters” within the responses, by requesting participants from a local web forum www.aberdeen-music.com, where I have a great response from an initial post by many “anonymous” people – I have no control over my trust in these people who are eager to be a part of my research. I am starting to see a possible angle of research, where “known” and “unknown” participants potentially have the freedom to lie when filling in the questionnaire. I do not want to pre-empt the outcomes, but I have a suspicion that my “anonymous” group (people who do not know me, nor I them) can potentially respond with complete fabricated lies – and I would have no basis to disbelieve them, as I have never met or been a part of their lives – whereas the “known” participants, I have some semblance of knowledge of their lives, and ideologies...giving me some frame of reference to doubt or accept what it is they tell me.

The questionnaire needs to be considered and written, to create the right conditions for the participants to convey to me, what it is that they understand and perceive, when thinking of “truth”, “honesty” etc.

I aim to ask questions in several areas of personal, public, community, national and international ramifications of information dissemination and presentation. I need to be aware of brevity, a questionnaire that is too long, will turn people off from filling it in! If the questionnaire is not “deep” enough, I will have no qualitative information to base my research on!

I am also toying with a section of the questionnaire which will be collated anonymously – I would like to obtain deeply personal information from the participants and let them know that specific questions will NEVER be associated with the respondent – giving them the freedom to be absolutely honest with their answers (sexual, legal, desires etc). These statements might form a striking body of work, exploring human truths, honest wants and needs…

I go to bed after collating several lists of agreed participants – my brain is spinning. I can not get to sleep and spend 4 hours thinking about potential avenues of discourse, research and possibilities…I think about how the dissertation can be presented (alphabetically, graduating from black and white to white and black, lists of titles to which I would respond in paragraphs to…) I think about the MfA show (sculptures and installations that might appear from my research, the use of anonymous “online personas” as badges, invite lists of participants, how these participants could become part of the work “on the night”, directive posters, signs and information…) I think of the expansion of my “hearing aid for a shed” work (using this to convey confession through the trust of given anonymity) I think of diagrams that explain the physical and psychological systems in place, when using the “installation”, I think of a name for the emerging imagined work “This machine will change lives” which I morph and change into “This mechanism can change lives” by arguing with myself the semantics of the choice of words. Machine and mechanism I mull over for a long time – it will not be a “machine” (a mouth piece, a tube and a speaker, situated in a far off room – a confessor and an audience) this will be a ‘mechanism’ – an opportunity for systems and processes to come to life through a physical and mental application of action. The physical process is for the “confession” to be spoken into a mouthpiece, which travels down a tube to a room where it is broadcast to an audience (“unknown” to the confessor). The mental mechanisms are far more complex, the necessity of the “confessor” to muster the courage to speak a confession (or “truth”) into the mouthpiece, the choice to tell a truth or a lie, to believe they are safe in being anonymous when confessing, the “audience” believing that what they hear is true, false, fiction fact, do they “care” are they affected (emotionally) by what they hear? The opportunity to set up partnerships to “spy” on who is confessing (reporting / communicating between people, organising “spy and listener”) – trust dynamics…so many parameters and possibilities that could arise from two cones and a tube…and a little instruction from me. The argument to change “will” to “can” was simple, “will” implies that the mechanism of confession has an absolute function, that the confessor’s life MUST change, because of their actions, the listeners life MUST change because of what they hear - where as “can” offers possibility, not absolutes – an essential in art, if we EXPECT things to happen, then why do it? If we already “know” the outcome, there must be no point in proceeding with a course of action.

I think I drift off at around 4 am…and I still don’t think I remembered all I thought of last night…no unseen scribbling or whispered annotation would have been able to capture my blunderbuss of thought last night, so one can only hope that the mechanism of remembering is actually a filtration too – evicting the mundane or forgettable ideas out – survival of the fittest…ideas.