Sam Harrison / Expressing the inexpressable

I’ve got my work cut out! On one hand, and i think you’ll agree, these blogs give a window into an amazing and stimulating experience for all of us, on the other there will always be the struggle to communicate the deep heart of the experiences we have had. Everyone is finding their way through that challenge. For the research it is doubly interesting: I have the privalidge of recording a lot of what people say and do during the workshops (though leaving the notebook outside of the personal sessions), i also get to bring this together with all the blogs and look at the progression and change that shines forth from them. Somehow though i have to unite all this together into a report that will do justice to the life of this project - the beating heart - the group process, and experiences of all of us. Hmmm - its going to be tough

Capturing the a series of instants in the research - a flash photo

There are a series of instants - blogs, words, actions, and these are recorded to the best of my ability - with time put aside for the participants to make sure they are happy with what i have recorded. In some ways these might capture the inexpressable.

a slow exposure - capturing the flow of change in the research

The changes in language, actions, feelings, the changes in the focus of the blogs, the evolution of the word cloud (that series of words down at the bottom right of your screen gives an indication of the topics of interest - the bigger the word the more important) - all these things indicate change and flow - where we have come from and where we might be going to.

uprising - currents welling up from under the surface

This leaves lots of interesting questions - can you do justice to experience in words? Should all experiences be easily describable? How much are we interpreting the land and how much is the land speaking through us? How do you say what is happening mid-way through a process? Getting under the surface of the issues of sustainability, of ecology (the pattern that connects), of relationship, puts us into an evolving river of meaning which might lead to many places. Even a year later we might not have understood the full impact of the project. All these are good reasons to do things we can’t quite find the words for…

So instead of writing a report maybe i will just submit this video!

I am only joking, but it does raise the question of what constitutes a record of a project - why do we need words and what type of words would be best?