Writing a Paper

Here's the audio of the Process Piece.

Before starting our assignment, Benjamin discussed how the processes within our lives help define our identity and sometimes, even our humanity. As full-time students with jobs, our “processes” tend to lean away from the more fun moments life has to offer. If our identity were truly defined solely on the processes we engaged in, we'd probably relate more to shampoo instructions with a wash-rinse-repeat lifecycle than an actual person with fun activities or interesting lives. Our daily schedule is typically: wake up, go to classes, write a papers, do readings, and then work - hopefully fitting eating and sleeping in there somewhere.

Taking this into consideration, we decided to present a typical college student activity: writing a paper. However, we added a small twist to the project. Different people approach the same process is many different ways, as we see in the Routines series from this week's viewings. The videos all show fairly typical events that are apart of someone's daily routine, such as putting on a belt, shaving, flipping on a light, stamping an envelope. But, the way this one person does these things isn't the exact way someone else does it, although the action is the same throughout, the approach varies person to person. Even though all students have to write papers, individual students each have their own method for writing. This is why you will find a different recording on each blog. Both contain the process of writing a paper, the same exact way, except one student strays from focus and takes a small detour to watch some videos on Youtube. But in the end, both students accomplish the same task.

There were many directions we could have taken this project, however, we wanted to focus on the process alone, and how this process is typically done by oneself, so we decided to not use any dialogue in our recording. This is a method used in videos often, and example is the Google Chrome Speed Tests commercial. There is no dialogue (save for a song at the end) and so you are only focusing on the process that is happening before you. No one is telling what to look at or hear, so it is up to you to look and listen for what you see. So, we show that writing a paper is a very solitary and monotonous experience, hence the lack of voice, but we also show that in the monotony there is variation from person to person, in our two process pieces different steps lead to the same outcome.