Monday, February 1, 2016

The Process of Elimination


We focused on a process of elimination, exploring the cognitive happenings of people (us) as the decision was made as to where we should go to eat. Even though things like this are widely known as “processes” it is not often pondered as it happens. This sort of casual, friendly and non-spectacular conversation is the sort that anyone would overlook; nothing big happens, we don’t, by the end of the conversation, come out with anything tangible. It is, however, a definite clear process—and one that is really quite elementary. Interactions with other humans tend to all be processes in their own right, this is simply one form they can take.
The process itself seemed, at first, a little worrying to us. We thought that the presence of the phone that was recording, the knowledge that we were having a conversation, would somehow impede our subconscious willingness to be normal in this situation. However, it became very clear very quickly that there was nothing special to this. There was no reason to worry about being insincere; it was very natural. The product, while not immediately tangible, was a decision made mutually through the collaboration of two people in civilized, friendly conversation. It highlights how familiar we all are with processes in a general sense. It is likely a natural thing for an artist to hear “find a process” and assume that it’s a hard thing to do, because we’re all artists and since when is anything easy? But in reality, most everything we do is some sort of process, even if the product is just a decision about pizza places.
Though we didn’t necessarily have in mind the videos that were the preparation for this assignment, the product turned out to be much like Dean’s little video.  Each process wasn’t fantastical in nature, nothing overtly special, but very simple and a phenomenon that occurs often in everyday life for people.  Whether it’s the struggle of having to gather a family together to read the scriptures or the struggle of making the decision of where to eat.  There are always factors involved that can halt the process, one person can derail the whole event by disagreeing, but in so doing it adds to the process, making it a part of life.
        When we had the completed product, we both discovered a mutual appreciation for the webseries Good Mythical Morning.  What the hosts do on this daily Youtube show is have a conversation about a plethora of subjects, improvising the entirety of what they say like unto what we did.  These internetainers opening is always “Let’s talk about that”, leading into this process of a conversation that can have many disagreements, or they’ll even be debating over a final decision like what the world’s ugliest animal is.  In this sense, we saw that our process was of the same fruition as the daily episodes of this show.  


Heather Moser

Grace Taylor

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