May Archive Highlight - “Eventually Something Will Become Clear” (Patreon)

All this talk in the news about AI and “datasets” has got me thinking about the way I relate to “Creative Data;” when I helped build a BFA at Tisch Open Arts, our conversations about Creative Research became a major force in shaping how I approach projects. Some of this data can be fairly straightforward; you can see the exhaustive “Pay Up” series for a glimpse at what I do with “hard numbers” on payment.

But in much of my work, I find myself collecting “data” before I know what it could be used for, or even what kind of story it tells. Sometimes I have an image in my mind of the final form or presentation of what I’m gathering; with IF WE WIN, I knew I wanted a physical gallery of spent lottery tickets displayed next to a spending plan from the losing player, though I wasn’t at all sure how it would feel to stand inside it. Sometimes I document many different parts of an experience to see what trends emerge; tracking participant choices in Fair Trade, I severely doubt we’ll find some significant, definitive correlation between small game actions and ultimate outcomes, but I do think noting what most players seem to do can teach us a lot about how we design the game.

Often enough though, I’m recording “just in case,” and only realizing what might happen or be possible much later—like The Telelibrary, where I got through a beta-testing, launched the show, and was at least 25-30 Users in before a User comment inspired me to begin folding call recordings into the experience.

I believe that a practice of documenting and looking curiously at what accumulates can be a powerful tool for experience designers, allowing them to deepen the meaning of their work over time. Of course, this emergent value can’t be banked on upfront; If I’m asking participants to do something, it has to have enough value and purpose for them in the moment to be worth their time on its face. But I find that when you’re intentional about the record you keep, and how you keep it, participants can immediately feel an increased sense of stakes and investment in their input, and often are inspired to engage with the creativity and vulnerability that makes finding what data can “become” easier.

So what if I was both the designer and the participant?

Well, long before I had all the language to express these thoughts or any shows to provide as evidence, I had the impulse to collect and “see what happens”— which is why since 2014 I’ve been taking data on myself once a year. As a piece of work, it still has very little shape. Even the working title is mostly just a reminder to myself of the week I decided to start: “From This Day Fourth.” As a process though, I’ve had some consistent constraints:

Each year, I do at least the following within 7 days of May 4th:

-  Ask someone to take or make a portrait of me
- Note down whatever biomedical or financial data is available (bank statement, annual check up,
 etc.)

- Ask someone to interview me in a set format

Truly, I have no idea where this is going. I think at the time in 2014 I was thoughtful about all the ways my life was about to change, and wondered what I might see over time. There’s also clearly a fascination with the difference between how I see myself and how others see me. For the “portrait,” I just instruct a friend, collaborator, or artist I admire to capture some part of what they see. For the interview, I have a set of 13 questions (5 short, 8 long) that I ask the interview to be sure to include, but I also welcome them to add any questions they like. Sometimes it’s a longform, free-flowing conversation. Sometimes it’s a bit of a monologue. But gradually over the course of the past decade, it’s started to feel like I’m getting better and talking around the questions I ask myself.

My interviewer this year challenged me to revisit some past years, and to consider changing up the questions for the second decade of operating this strange time capsule.

Here’s the questions I’ve been asking myself for the past 10 years:

Short Answer Section:

Where are you?

What do you do there?

How long have you been there?

When will you leave?

What's the best thing to eat there?

Long Answer Section:

How are you?

How do you keep yourself busy?

What are your plans?

What do you want?

What do you need?

Are you happy?

Are you taking care of yourself?

See you next year?

Looking at these questions and listening back to the 2015 interview, I’m struck by how much they are defined by an anticipation of constant change. When I first drafted these questions, in the past 4 years alone I had moved thirteen times through nine cities in seven countries. In May of 2014, I was in NYC, already there 7 months longer than I’d anticipated and on the eve of leaving the city. At the time, I didn’t know that I’d be back in less than 6 months, and staying another year thereafter.

In a lot of ways, I don’t know that the person who wrote these questions could have really imagined what it meant to stay somewhere consistently, and build a life there. I think I was framing this set of questions as a sort of assessment of “is it time to leave again yet?” While the intervening years haven’t knocked all the wanderlust out of me, I find myself wondering which questions might help me spend the next decade thinking about what I’m building, rather than when I’m moving on.

I guess I’ll find out next year. Maybe you will too —  See you next year?

~

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien

As pictured in 2015 by Brock Johnson, Director of Photography for  “Better to Live”—my first job out of University.
Washington Square Park. May 4th, 2015