TheAssignment

The assignment is also intimately tied to TheStructureOfTheClassHasBeenAbsolved.

In our pre-assignment meeting on 10.04.2020 we analyzed our current situations and brainstormed possible approaches to the curriculum that could resolve them. Among the things we were afraid were:

• a "business as usual" approach to classes and assignments
• difficulty with creating routines
• difficulty with adapting the physical school routine to your current setup
• lack of motivation
• expectations of quality and productivity you feel you can't achieve in the current cirumstances
• confrontation with the relevance of your work
• the question if learning can happen in design without a specific end goal (a final, designed "object")
• and crucially, the lack of community you all currently experience.

At the school, most learning happens communally, the classes and space are merely scaffolding that make it possible. Right now, you might be communicating, but you're not in a community.

In this assignment you are relieved of individual responsibility. Instead, that responsibility becomes shared. There is no specific result or many requirements to attain yet, this will be defined organically together. But there is a backbone: we will explore what it means to build a community by way of knowledge production. What concepts, guidelines, agreements will be formed? What images and visual information can mark it? As it is a community, it will be defined by the personal relationships that form it. You also should also consider how to expand wiki logic by using design? How can a more careful consideration of wiki design (non linear, collaborative knowledge) enrich the information presented?

Directions in general:

• Start, on the wiki itself. Place a half-formed ideas online in the hopes that someone else may complete it. This is a benefit of wiki, the ability for collaborative thinking! Be careful though; cryptic information, difficult language and lack of intent can make it hard for someone to join in. Consider how to make your contributions inviting for edits!
• To achieve the above, listen carefully to what the other contributors make! Intently engage with the content and find constructive ways to expand, edit or branch from it. Strengthen existing centers, don't create new ones.
• Please, avoid being destructive for the sake of it.
• Help one another, if someone is struggling start creating infrastructure to support these needs. Ask for help and provide it too.
• Focus on spotting patterns and concepts! It's crucial to make agreements, that's what culture seems to be. Should there be a typology of articles? How is that typology expressed? Should the language be different depending on the information being discussed? Is there a strategy in images? How can you establish wiki infrastructure? It's crucial to organize a wiki, otherwise you risk making a spammy chat room. There are many ways to organize it.
• Keep the wiki clean and nice, like the studio. We all use OurWiki, so we all try to maintain it in a usable state. This means revisions should be made to old articles, to adapt them to new guidelines/agreements, for example.
• Even though we are changing how we approach it, remember that this is still is still a "classroom". Either sign off with your real name (like so -- MislavZugaj), or post anonymously (by signing with anon or not at all). Your account can be set in Preferences. Do not use a pseudonym. Identifying yourself with your actual name means responsibility, accountability and trust, integral to community forming. It's cosy, knowing who's around, and crucial to shifting the dialogue away from individuals (like social media) to knowledge.
• Work in projects. A project can be one extensive article, a vast catalogue of articles, or anything else that uses wiki. Because of wiki, every project should be collaborative, so it would be good practice sticking to a project when joined.
• You, group A, are the caretakers of the wiki. In case the wiki opens up to other users, you're captaining the ship.

Aims until the 8th of May (2 weeks):

• The current "design" doesn't exist (literally, there is no styling), but can be modified. For now you should focus on content, or design through content, and organization. After the 8th of May the code will become more accessible; before that you can discuss changes and additions. See OurWikiDevelopment.
• In two weeks the wiki should reach some mass, to get the ball rolling. What mass exactly means is up to you, i.e. you need to come to an agreement what mass is. The definition of mass should be high on the priority agenda.

Aims until the critiques

• How will you show "your" work within this contexts? The pages you worked on, the images you made? Or the infrastructure you created? Can you document phenomena that the wiki can't?