When we travel together, the members of the group will see the same landscapes, eat the same food, and very often our thoughts ponder on the previous meal we just had or about the same person we met on the journey – our conversation together is fairly arbitrary. Sometimes, it can be quite surprising to find out that everyone saw or felt different things and took in completely different information and at the same time, the most casual conversations within the group might lead to some kind of chemical reaction that creates a new understanding or bring new ideas to the group.
We have tried to search for different ways to identify and document and these specific moments of chemical reaction that occurs in the group, and not only focusing on the kind of expression that is employed in the end but before the idea takes shape.
In the first year of our research trip, we tried to record our conversations and take videos as much as we can but we quickly felt the limitations by doing so. It is almost impossible, or we realized that it was quite a tough task to go back to listen or watch these clips while we travel or even after the journey. In the end, we tried to keep a dairy in the form of a timeline, where all the members write down what they discovered in the day before going to bed. We would write down what strike to be most memorable to us, and sometimes it sparked new conversations when we read about the discoveries of another member. However, this way of recording is still very far from having any edited materials, and unfortunately, there were again limitations in sharing the information with a third party without editing the original resources.
After that, we tried to create a radio show (podcast) that not only records our conversation, but we tried to talk based upon an imagined group of listeners in order to word ourselves better as we speak. Of course, the contents were about the happenings in the daytime so the quality and how interesting the topics were vary from day to day. From this point of view, it was quite difficult to prevent missing out some important facts when we try to largely summarize what happened in the day. However, by employing the method of recording a radio show, we were able to create a natural flow of procedures that would happen during the day. Firstly, the group would summarize what we individually was aware of during the day, and then we would try to pick out the topics for recording. The next step is for the two directors to document the moments when we find different things connect with each other by creating a similar situation – time and space – to the journey itself, and try to document these moments in real time when we discover new ideas and connect the dots. These conversations are further edited to produce an output that has both the qualities of “simultaneous note-taking” and “way of expression”.
This experience has been used till now, and recently, sometimes we would tell each other “oh, let’s record this down” when we talk between the team members. We would go back to the very beginning of the conversation in order to do the recording, and also at meetings where we try to brainstorm new ideas, our consciousness of speaking to the recorder changes by putting on the voice recorder, and anyone can be the moderator and we start editing our conversation. This is not something that we publish openly, but we could use this as a byproduct to update the members who were missing from the meeting. An iPhone is sufficient. It’s even better if you have an external microphone.
