First of all, we hope everyone is in good health and good spirits, despite these unprecedented conditions. We understand the situation is also likely to cause some anxiety and distress—not to mention extreme distraction.

In the spirit of the Observational Practices Lab we want to encourage making room in the middle of this situation for experimentation and playfulness, as well as attention not just to the outbreak & isolation, but to your everyday life.

We cannot control the scope of the pandemic but we do have agency about what we choose to focus on—and where and how we place our attention. We hope you can use these next few weeks to employ observation as tool to draw out another way of looking at the world, one that is different from what the media is covering.

A note on your objects: If you just want to keep focusing on the current situation, it is ok to choose an everyday object associated with the current conditions in order to continue your observations.

Here is the work we’d like you to do:

Go to the OPL’s Archive of Observation Scores.
1. Select 5 scores to enact

2. Set up a free are.na account: https://www.are.na/

3. Create a channel to upload all the visual outcomes of your observations

4. Share the channel with all class members

5. Comment on three visuals of each of your peers

Comment prompts: What did you first notice about the image? What do you see/ experience as a result? What questions do you initially have about the making or meaning of it? Can you tell how it was made? Is there new insight that emerges about the object? If so, what?

Here is an example of an online Atlas (in progress):
https://www.are.na/pascal-gman/atlas-of-object

You will be able to print your online archive easily at the very end of the semester.
To see how this will work go to: https://print.are.na/

Copy this link into the Enter Channel field:
https://www.are.na/pascal-gman/atlas-of-object

Hit RETURN

This creates a PDF you can download and print at home or send to an online printer like lulu.com