from Jody: the sky

I love the idea of making our focus alternative ways of viewing (doing, having, experiencing) the conference (or conference session) itself. I’m curious though to think and hear more about the idea of using the program as a/the text, theme, or material—I think I really, really love this idea, think it would provide us with a focus and want to hear and think more
about this potential. I’m not sure how far back they go and/or if we could get our hands on old programs [I think when I left University of Illinois we had a pretty good number of them] but we could certainly offer views through time.

In thinking about skies being the limit, I’d love to find a way to have the installation up and running for a couple of days—not sure if we could swing this though. At first I was thinking of a scoring a space in the area where people check in and the book publishers meet. I do like the idea of focusing on the participatory and collaborative aspects of the presentation—having people make or do something (too little of this is happening now). Again, if anything were possible, I’d love to offer people the option of moving things around, adding to the display, over- or re-writing it using many different kinds of materials. In terms of what people would have to interact and/or make things with, we might offer a graffiti/response space (wall), computers, moveable text and images (magnet and/or felt-backed) maybe a Polaroid camera, materials for scrap-booking. (I’m trying to think of technologies that are inexpensive and easily transportable.) Another option would be to provide
participants the option of audio- or videotaping their responses to the questions we pose, folding this into the presentation. Having the display up for more than 75 minutes would allow people to encounter it, and perhaps revisit after having had time to think about how/if they’d like to respond. In short, I like the idea of creating something dynamic, something people would want to revisit to see if/how it has been changed by other participants, to make still other changes. My concern, however,
is that people (having been conditioned to do otherwise at conferences?) might not be inclined to add, respond, alter experience, etc.

Another sky-is-the-limit idea would be to hold the installation/performance/presentation someplace other than in a hotel
conference room—someplace near the hotel but not in the hotel. [I’ll likely be attending MLA too, Anne, so we can scout places together.]

I like the idea of documenting our process for this and was wondering about the idea of setting up a blog or website where the three of us could post ideas, upload photos, sketches, audio or video. . . That site could be featured as part of the installation or we might select, recombine and feature aspects of the process in other ways—a video or scrapbook that focuses on outtakes—detours, ideas proposed, risks imagined but not taken, etc.