Slow Reading Field Notes

We discuss reading methodologies. For both the text we will read and for each other. One of the challenges of a slow reading group during a pandemic: how to read each other if we are to read together. Extrasensory signals are not legible. A new sign language needs to be established. The nod, the shaking of the head, a facial tick, too subtle in a grid. We need unequivocal actions - the waving of hands to signify agreement, a thumbs up - so that meaning is transmitted automatically. When reading the group through the screen, we search for disturbances, anomalies in the field.

Reading between the lines, reading between the actions/unmuted words: What occupies that “between”? What does silence or inaction mean in this context? A bad connection? Hesitation? Uncertainty? I think about delays. The delay between thought and action. The delay of an extra stop because you gotta swing by the unmute button on the way to action. And when there’s the delay of bits transferred per second, so what you’re seeing has happened sometime in the past, how do you react to each other in a timely manner?

Glossaries: The roles of notetaker and glossary builder will alternate for each meeting so that those responsibilities are shared among the group. Each of us can experience a process of unravelling, unravelling the meanings that we attach to things. To note which words would mean different things to different disciplines requires an awareness of the languages we speak. Which words are notable, remarkable for their capacity to hold so many meanings? To do this “Live” seems like an extreme sport.

The etherpad. We work together, or rather (confession: have never used an etherpad) I mostly observe the etherpad natives work as brightly colored text bursts forth and an order begins to reveal itself. In a way, the etherpad seems like the more suitable living room: a spontaneous conversation between purple and chartreuse arises in the “Guests” corner, lavender and fuschia discuss examples as definitions in “Questions”. I wander through the emerging sections and hang out a bit in Glossaries. Watching this plan form through simultaneous collective effort is mildly destabilizing (am fine now) and fascinating for me as an architect: only one person can work on the (floor) plan at any given time!

How to go around and share in a circle in a video call? A relay! (Sieta’s our expert in the ways of meeting online.) So the chain is not determined by physical proximity, which is usually just an accident of our order of arrival; each link must intentionally find another link to create the chain. We recreate the chain multiple times.
Continuation of online reading (the group) methodologies: I’m kind of getting used to meeting online. We’re able to reference the etherpad and click on the links to see exactly which texts everyone is talking about. If we were doing this offline, we would be gathered around a table, each with our laptops open staring at our screens anyway. (I tell this to myself as a consolation.) You’ve got the text in one world and then you’ve got people in the other. Online, you’ve got both people and the text in one domain. Easy. At one moment during the show and tell, Michelle, when done presenting, asks Danae a question about what she meant. But Danae hasn’t said anything! What just happened? Oh, Danae commented in the etherpad under one of Michelle’s links. You think by paying attention to what’s happening in the video call (including the chatbox) you’re getting everything, but there’s another window where things are happening. Communication is not relegated to any one mode, sense or platform at any given moment. We’re just communicating. Creates little hilarious moments of confusion. Gotta keep up!

Technical issues: We keep losing Agathe. The ghost in the machine has created our own ghost in the machine. There’s a disturbance in the grid as it rearranges to let her into this world. You catch a glimpse of her for a second, only for her to disappear again, leaving behind a tr(A)ce before disappearing completely as the grid contracts again. Wait, she’s back. Oh no, she’s gone. These portals are so finicky; you’ve got to get the digital incantation (digicantation?) just right.

Meeting frequency: There’s so much good stuff to read! How do we fit all of them in? We have how many sessions left? Oh. Well, we’ll just have to increase the frequency. Is there work that needs to be done outside of our sessions? Not if we slow read the texts together during the sessions. Well, if there’s no homework (extra labour), why not meet weekly? We go from biweekly reading sessions to weekly sessions. If that’s not a testament to everyone’s excitement to nerd out, then I don’t know what is.

Session 2: 9 February 2021

Linda's Slow Reading Fieldnotes:

Reading methodologies (part one): In the previous session (Session 3), we each read aloud an objection in the Turing text, our “different female voices holding this man’s words” (Renée). We read all the way through and at the end we discussed what we had just read, making it about half-way through the objections. The initial plan this time (Session 4) is to start with two different texts and do an adjacent reading of them, but the texts are deemed too dense and there isn’t enough time to split into groups to read and discuss and then come together. There is a conversation around reading methodologies: are we experimenting with reading methodologies or are we trying to comprehend through annotation and discussion? (or both) Due to time constraints and the goal of trying to comprehend the text, we read one text (Autopoesis) and decide to read aloud each paragraph, stopping to annotate. Questions: Which texts get this type of close treatment? Which do not? Which factors determine how the text will be treated by our reading group? Length? Legibility/density? Familiarity? Seminality? Which texts do we deem not so “sacred” in its totality and original intent, and therefore, open to experimental interpretation, fragmentation, stitching?

Reading methodologies (part two): There are a variety of entry methods into the text before the official methodology is enacted: familiarity or pre-engagement with the text beforehand, in which case the act of reading aloud is ritual and performance (?); encountering the text for the first time through the act of reading aloud, in which case the act of reading aloud and listening to the text read aloud by others are methods of trying to understand the text. After this second reading aloud session, I have to echo Cristina in that reading aloud with the group as my first encounter with the text does not work for me. Since I like to sit down in sentences and feel the grass a bit before moving on, I end up in a perpetual state of falling behind. Are there other slow reading methodologies for reading together when reading and trying to comprehend new text? If the text is read beforehand so that when we come together the objective is to discuss our interpretations of it, would this not be the classic reading assignment? What then is reading aloud? Are we reading aloud to comprehend, interpret, commune, perform? (Bravo to those who can do all at the same time!) Is there a desired outcome with the different reading methodologies? And if neither an objective nor outcome is desired, is it the degree of engagement that matters?

Big Blue Button: We have moved to Big Blue Button. Seems like the best option, although a couple of us lose our connections for a bit. (Weird that you can be in the meeting, but not have your presence shown on the grid. More geared toward lectures and panels? Allows you to be an audience-member or a participant. Also lurker-friendly haha) Our meeting this time is recorded, and as our meeting draws to an end there is a question of where that recording resides and who can access it. Does it belong to the agent who started the recording (Renée)? Does it belong to the host of the meeting (Agathe)? Who has access to it? Does it live on TU Delft’s servers? Is it saved locally? We’re nervous about leaving the meeting for fear that the audiovisual record will be lost forever.

Reading (as Invocation): Renée suggests that we all read the last sentence of Maturana and Varela’s ‘Introduction’* out loud. We charge ahead and begin on the same beat. What will happen in the middle and how will we end? We’ll see, for this symphony will be improvised. I assume a slow speed but cannot determine whether or not I am synchronized with the others. The sounds I hear are both echoes and reverberations, the voices - mine, another’s, others. Mesmerized momentarily by these rolling waves of words, I lose my rhythm and place, but I can make out someone’s “reproduction” and latch onto its tail end, riding the rest of the way focused on my own voice. Somehow we all end together and it is awesome.

* “We are asking, then, a fundamental question: ‘What is the organization of living systems, what kind of machines are they, and how is their phenomenology, including reproduction and evolution, determined by their unitary organization?”

Session 3 & 4: 16 & 23 February 2021

Session 6: 9 March 2021

A case for slow reading: Unlike reading the text individually to then later discuss together, taking turns reading slowly out loud infuses the words with a vital energy propitious for a lively discussion. The breath of the reader and the heat of group attention seem to animate them, causing them to tendril out and wrap around us before unfurling back to the page.

Improvised adjacent readings and play (jam sessions): We take turns playing a paragraph or two of the main text. Someone may follow with a piece from a related classic, or they may play a few resonating lines from a completely different genre. Each person has their own repertoire of references and catalogue of fascinations. Each adjacent reading is a surprise and a snapshot of someone’s earlier or present-day journey. There’s a key change with a question, and we play those notes for a bit before modulating back to the main piece. And on we play, sharing and improvising our way into new compositions of knowledge.