Twelve benches, one a week. The order is the same every week; the operation never is. Put the artefact down, say where it came from, then argue backwards to the process that produced it — by a method that belongs to that bench alone. Bring something, every time. A bench with nothing on it is a seminar.
Week 01 · 24 FEB
- Material
- one artefact each, unsorted
- Operation
- establishing the claim
- Leaves
- a provenance record in the shared corpus
Week 02 · 3 MAR
- Material
- three outputs from one lookup
- Operation
- reconstructing the entry
- Leaves
- a dictionary entry someone else can break
Week 03 · 10 MAR
- Material
- a citation chain
- Operation
- tracing it to the source
- Leaves
- a written record of where the chain stopped
Week 04 · 17 MAR
- Material
- signage from before 2016
- Operation
- locating the join
- Leaves
- a dated estimate and the reasoning behind it
Week 05 · 24 MAR
- Material
- input with no content
- Operation
- probing a closed system
- Leaves
- a dated log of what a system invents
Week 06 · 31 MAR
- Material
- the street
- Operation
- collecting
- Leaves
- four specimens and a notebook filled in at the scene
Week 07 · 14 APR
Read the standard against the sign
- Material
- a clause and a sign
- Operation
- reading one against the other
- Leaves
- the workflow step where the two parted
Week 08 · 21 APR
- Material
- forty seconds of video
- Operation
- annotating, then stripping
- Leaves
- two subtitle tracks and an account of what the clean one lost
Week 09 · 28 APR
- Material
- the whole corpus
- Operation
- excluding
- Leaves
- a list of what stays out, with reasons
Week 10 · 5 MAY
- Material
- one sentence
- Operation
- chaining to a fixed point
- Leaves
- a numbered log and the iteration it settled at
Week 11 · 12 MAY
Try the method on something fluent
- Material
- fluent output
- Operation
- reconstructing, and failing
- Leaves
- the exact sentence where the method stops working
Week 12 · 19 MAY
- Material
- the corpus, curated
- Operation
- exhibiting
- Leaves
- a wall a stranger can read without me