Lab Journal

Lab Journal WEEK 1 IN CLASS

It’s been a long week getting ready for the first day of BB&A. I am remembering the nervousness I used to feel when I was teaching full-time. Also, the bone-tiredness of getting ready for a tightly-planned lesson. It feels nice to be at the end of the class, and that it went pretty well. 

I’m also wondering what everyone in the class is wanting out of the class—I know some people are interested in building their own makerspaces, and will be considering practical issues like how much stuff costs, curricular tie-ins, space, and staffing. Others are probably coming at this as artists and learners, interested in how their own practices can be enhanced by physicality. 

If there are nondominant discourses that are not being heard or honored in the class, I wonder how we can make time and space for them to be articulated. 

What did I learn through interacting with these media today? Definitely, learning Inkscape was big. I have at other times felt like there was some tension between a parametrized, fully-modeled approach and artistic expressiveness. But once you dig your hands in, the theoretical tension you had posited just evaporates. This is interestingly different from Luria’s findings (maybe?) that the illiterate Russian peasants were resistant to ideology. On the one hand, the materiality of the lab grounds us in immutable realities: if you mis-measure it, it’s not going to fit. On the other hand, Inkspace is not that. It’s an entirely mathematical space. Hmm. 

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A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. First, I have really appreciated having students’ surveys as context for supporting them. It helps to learn who has experience with what. 

I noticed Paulo bristle a bit when Katerina suggested people not use machines they’re unsure about during the safety talk. It’s a reasonable position (very standard in most labs), but it also goes against what is I think an intentional stance in TLTL of encouraging people not to ask for permission. 

Amanda posted photos of her test cuts with various power and speed settings. I think it’s great that we didn’t provide any of these settings this year—it’s an excellent learning opportunity for students to figure it out and then share with each other.