The Start

The Midterm / The First Concept

Through our discussions and the practice classes we found that our main interest lied in the connection between language (linguistic diversity) and connection. That started with a diagram we made in class and after discussing this as a group, we decided to use it as a guiding thread in our work.

We were interested in the idea of a mockumentary or speculative fiction writing. Out of this flowed the idea to create a narrative around two alien researchers who are fascinated with human modes of communication. So they collect human artifacts to conduct experiments on. With this approach we had found a way to take on an outsider perspective on language. It also raised the theme of subjectivity, since as human beings, of course, we can never be subjective to our own language. Which is why this approach had to be speculative in our opinion.

Final Concept

We had a moment of struggle when trying to go through with this concept. We were not sure wether to go through with it as we felt the pressure of time.

The approach became more explorative rather than contemplative. We wanted to leave the option open for people to make their own connections between the works, rather than purely showing our findings.

In the works themselves, we followed our own interests in these subjects, which also fit our initial intent to work more individually and discuss our progress together. And the form of the archive gives the viewer the space to draw their own connections themselves.

Reflection

We think this last point would be best illustrated if this archive would be way more extensive, which was also our intention with this project. That if you would have a whole bunch of these, you can start to make connections you can really analyse what you see and maybe find a direction to take this further in.

In the end, we decided to go through with a slightly simplified version of the concept. Instead of trying to create a full narrative between these alien characters, we wanted to focus more on creating the archive, inspired by the Atlas Groups project.

For some time we toyed around with changing the project fully, focusing more on making a digital tool/game centered around language.

We found that it was already given in the approach of an archive that a research approach, and with that an outsiders look, was taken. But by lifting this layer, we felt we were a bit more able to get the experimentation going.

Excerpts from The Atlas Group's notebooks.

<-------- J's first attempt in an entry.

A revised first entry ----------->

<-------- The final scanned version of the entry.

Robin's first notes for entry from book -->

<-- first sketch

final version -->

↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ Jacob Geller's video essay "A Thousand Ways of Seeing a Forest" has also deeply influenced our work. It deeped our understanding of translation as something beyong translating from one language to another, and that translation isn't perfect. The translation tells more about the translator than the translation source.

A big narrative source for inspiration was Jon Bois' sci-fi speculative fiction web story What Football Will Look Like in the Future (or 17776). The distanced perspective of the point of view characters (sentient satellites) has inspired the choice to write from an alien's perspective. -------------->

Other references:
- House of Leaves
- War of the Worlds
- The Staircase
- F is for Fake

↓ THE PROCESS OF MAKING AN ENTRY INTO THE ARCHIVE ↓

<-------- An exercise during class during which we realized the interest and relevance of language as a topic.

Video exercise. During and after the exercise we learned to embrace the chaos of our topic. ----------->