trees are people too

The wiki is a creative project …playful, creative, exploratory, risky. We have to work out the questions and follow the ideas, rather than answer the question after fomulating ideas. This research should give rise to more questions, to an endless stream of ideas, and should encourage collaboration and further discourse – questions, ideas, answers, dissagreements.

Having realised all of that, however, and to be perfectly frank, I still am afraid of my wiki. I don’t really know where to go from here – the possibilities are so endless, the potential magnitude so limitless, where would one begin?? I guess this is the risk taking. Pick a direction and jump.

I am a control freak. I like mastering essays, starting with my piles of information and filtering it down down down until I have only the essentials, nothing peripheral. Working towards a goal which is, if not attainable, at least concrete. Reaching a conclusion, allowing for that ‘closure’. Predictable and safe am I.

But the wiki is wild. It has a mind of its own. Having laid down the basic elements (in this case, our subject, Tom Sherman) I am realising the beginning is the easiest part. From here things could go (gasp) anywhere.

Instead of trying to fit an idea to a form, I have to find ideas and discover where they go. I have to be intuitive, somewhat organic. With no specific ending I am working with hunches, metaphor, what is outside the ‘cone’ that reaches conclusion. I have to listen to the media, as well as the combination of my intention and the intention of the medium (the material aspect of what we are working with has its own properties: ‘Backtalk’) I have to let go.

Even though it is obvious that life itself adheres much closer to the wiki model than the essay model, still I am nervous. What I am realising is that my way of approaching this project, of thinking about this is going to have to change. I have to start getting creative about the way I view our subject and the endless offshoots of information that can be chased. Relaxing my grip on the need to control this information is already inherent in the media itself – the wiki itself is open to changes and contributions from others – but the key (for me) is going to be changing the way I process this information, freeing my thought process so the content is not constrained, using my intuition rather than instruction.

Hence this becomes a project about risk taking and exploration not just within the media, but also within my own personal creative constraints. And, as I now see, there are many.