Research. Practice. Methods.

I had the gift of spending  two weeks traveling around Lake Michigan in June. Stops included the HASTAC Conference, seeing family and friends, searching for lupines and doing research for the upcoming residency and the coming academic year.

I've never minded traveling alone and I certainly love driving.

This coming Fall I will be teaching a course with people who are just beginning the journey through the labyrinth that is college. I know that on oh-so-many levels they are going to have experiences that will stretch them in ways they can't begin to imagine yet. I look forward to the day in a few years....which will feel like tomorrow ... when they walk across the stage, having earned the diploma that signifies their accomplishments. (Notice my assumption that they all will do well, be engaged, and graduate).

Traveling around Lake Michigan. Yes - I consider driving around the lake RESEARCH.  There are all kinds of research - and people can become entrenched in what kinds they feel is more valuable than others.  All kinds of research can be valuable.   The trick is not to get mired in one form over others.  If you only read physical books - or looked the physical archives of historical societies or libraries - you would miss a ton of discussion and access that you can only get online.  If you only look online - you are missing the joy of holding a written letter, or a beautifully bound book (or the one next to it on the shelf that you weren't even thinking about).  And if you only read and explore archives and libraries - whether in the physical or the online world - you are missing conversations, great cups of coffee and pieces of pie and fields of flowers and apiaries, the smells of lakes and woods, and the bustling experiences of walking through a city - large or small.

Thinking about research this way - opening yourself up to everything as fodder for your practice - can be overwhelming.  Filtering all of this "stuff" is a large part of my PRACTICE and sometimes it's like riding a bike....something I learned at one point and now will be able to do without really thinking about it at all.  It doesn't mean that there aren't times when I need to turn a laser beam onto a particular idea or solving a particular problem.  Mostly, I trust that it will work itself out one way or another - because I have the skills to make that happen.

 cast concrete piece from TELLINGS, Math Monohan 

 

 

 

 

(MFA Exhibit, 2015, University of Michigan)

For me, working in book arts is appealing for this reason. The considerations of object, page, double-page, type, paper (or not), media and presentation - these must all be seamless to really work.  This appeals to me.  It is a place I feel comfortable.  I have about seven different "projects" going at the moment - and when I get stuck in one I just turn to another...giving the knot of the first time to work itself out. Over years, one develops METHODS for making this happen that work for them.  Mine include a lot of writing about the ideas before I begin, a lot of sitting with an idea, and some false starts.

Wrapping up a sabbatical year begs for reflection - expect a fair amount of that coming up.

Trouters

Currently have the honor of spending some time at the Trout Lake Limnology Station as artist in residence.  The station is an active place - doing year round limnology research with undergrads, grads and doctoral students.  Housed in a little cabin on the edge of the "village," I work all day and have no obligations of any kind other than that.

Last night I was invited to attend the weekly Seminar held every Wednesday - I knew that there were other people at the Station - as there are cars in front of all the cabins and occasionally I see a young person walking to and fro.  But I was surprised when the room filled up with about 40 people!  Where did they all come from?  It's so quiet here - I generally assume no one is about.  Even at night, the call of the loons across the lake is the only noise I hear.  Last night I meant to go out and see the full moon - but fell asleep to those lovely loon calls.
 
The seminar yesterday was about a project called FLAME and another about freshwater mussel ecology with a walk to a mussel shoal near the station to see mussels in the field.  The FLAME project reminded me of something I had listened to while driving up here on  RADIOLAB.  The June 18th podcast is called EYE ON THE SKY.   The description of the program: 

Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?  In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast “Note to Self” give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.

What does this have to do with FLAME?  I can't remember the acronym - but the gist of the research is a way to look at an entire lake and see the changes in temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide.  How this is much more effective than doing a reading here or there --- or inserting a buoy in the middle of a lake and expecting that to give you an overall picture.  (Remember this is my take away with no real understanding of the science behind it).  The research Luke explained (sorry Luke I didn't get your last name, I'll insert it later....) reminded me of EYE ON THE SKY.  Lake surveillance - not with cameras, but with this little gizmo (how is that for a scientific name) that clamps to the end of your boat and uptakes water on a second by second basis as you zip back and forth across the lake.  This, in turn, gives you an overall picture of what is happening on the lake at any given time.

Our ability to capture time and move back and forth through it is amazing to me.  Boggles the mind.  Another thing for a solitary artist to muse about alone in a cabin in the woods.

Oh, what is a TROUTER?  That is the name given to those of us staying at the station by Tim Kratz, Station Director.