Exuberantly undisciplined

June 14, 2024 11:54 AM

But this isn’t really about the software. It’s about what software promises us—that it will help us become who we want to be, living the lives we find most meaningful and fulfilling. The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play. It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on ideas. from research as leisure activity by Celine Nguyen [Personal Canon]
posted by chavenet (19 comments total)

At the bottom there are some artists and projects that the author is excited about, FYI, in case the beginning doesn't catch your eye by itself.

When I clicked on this, I thought it was going to be about Obsidian, Roam, and similar projects. It does mention Andy Matuschak whose research is on (not just in) those types of products. I am not sure how Arena is different and similar from them. Is it simply more visual and more outward-facing by default? There's something about the interface and wording (and the name itself) that doesn't seem to stick in my mind.

I started using Obsidian (and the app Fleeting Notes) to organize all my web clippings. It has turned research into a hobby for me. I started out by merely writing a few notes about each web clipping, but now that I have a workflow, it is gratifying to work within that workflow. I dedicate time each day to my amateur thinking projects because it is fun. I don't have plans about publishing things; I don't know what that would look like. Some people like Andy publish the notes themselves, but to me it seems like that would require effort. Less effort than shaping an essay and shopping it around, but enough effort for the effort to reward ratio to be off. I have considered shaping things into Metafilter posts but even that seems to be mid-effort/low reward.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:14 PM on June 14 [5 favorites]

I always get scared away when you need a 100 bucks for things. I need another job for my apps and patreon and subscriptions.
posted by mayoarchitect at 12:32 PM on June 14 [7 favorites]

For anyone interested in computational art and design, Fluxus is one of the most interesting artistic movements of the 20th century. (The other one, I’d argue, is the Oulipo [& the mathematics of literature: writersknowhow.org] movement, which included mostly French writers and mathematicians.)
ain't arguing; adding Situationist International [theartstory]
posted by HearHere at 12:46 PM on June 14 [5 favorites]

Oh this is the exact spirit that got me to write 20,000 words (projects link) about the intersections between the latest Sondheim play and music theory, metamodernism and cognitive psychology (none of which I formally studied).

Guess I"m going to have to check are.na out
posted by gee_the_riot at 1:07 PM on June 14 [3 favorites]

My local brewery has discovered that I will absolutely chase rabbits through all the holes when I've got the scent and the time. There's a local defunct movie theater a few doors down from the brewery that still has original fixtures from the 20's inside. The brewer got a chance to tour it and sent me a photo of the curtain that has ads from ~1926 on it still with one of the ads being for a local supplier of brewing and winemaking supplies (woo prohibition loopholes!)

I sat down one evening and ripped off a bunch of stuff and gave rise to two different beers at the brewery. (second one coming soon) :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:44 PM on June 14 [7 favorites]

God, the thinks I would think, and the defunct movie theaters I would re-funct, if not for mortgage payments and whatever
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:05 PM on June 14 [9 favorites]

That being said, I am currently writing my personal dissertation on meditation (an expanded version of my meditation FPP from a few years ago) if anyone wants to read/comment/editor it later smack me up
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:13 PM on June 14 [3 favorites]

I've definitely set down thoughts and plans for how to revive that theater and turn it into a revival single screen theater with modern vaudeville acts as well (it still has the tiny little dressing rooms!) Noir nights! Burlesque nights! "Holy shit this movie is 40 years old" nights! Bring a beer from next door!

But the biggest problem with the dream is the landlord has it listed at $18-22K per month on a NNN lease which means there's a whole nut to spend out of pocket on repairs, renovations, taxes and insurance on top of that.

So instead it sits, empty of seats, devoid of entertainment and actual value to the community, partially filled with Persian rugs that the landlord squirrels away there for his rug store a few miles down Colorado.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:24 PM on June 14 [5 favorites]

Must research culminate in some output? I mean, I know that's often the vision--most of my research has been structured around writing projects that have or have not come to fruition--but the fun of it, the lesiure activity of it, seems to function better when there's less pressure to create something, doesn't it? Or am I wrong about that?
posted by mittens at 3:04 PM on June 14 [9 favorites]

nah, most of my research ends up just being stuff that rattles around upstairs until I need to pull it out and terrify someone with just how much random crap I have stuck in my head.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:15 PM on June 14 [3 favorites]

Oh but mittens my brain is so poisoned by capitalism and the fear of my own mortality
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:25 PM on June 14 [3 favorites]

Yeah, this is one of the first times my research actually ended with output, it's usually just stacks and stacks of pdfs lol.
posted by gee_the_riot at 5:07 PM on June 14 [1 favorite]

I’ve been looking into old Washington DC landmark and place names for about 12 years now and have ~300 pages of notes - I’ve learned a lot, and have enjoyed it. I doubt I will ever have the time or energy to shape it into something publishable, though, so relate to this.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:44 PM on June 14 [2 favorites]

"Research as leisure activity" is a really apt way of describing my constellation of hobbies that I find hard to explain to people. I think because it superficially looks like work and it feels like it should have some sort of hustle-culture end result. Why am I reading papers and making charts? Is it for my job? No, I just am interested in things for the sake of being interested in things.

Most recently I filled a notebook of research on a historical water pollution event in Edmonton (in the winter of 1953 the nascent petrochemical industry here polluted the river all the way to Manitoba, triggering all sorts of legal and political questions about the respective powers of the provinces and federal government) that I spent a good chunk of the winter gathering from various and sundry archives. I put it all together purely from my own interest and I keep telling myself that I'm going to write something from it someday...someday...But really, I would be just as content to open up a new notebook and fill it with the next thing to pique my interest. Also, reading old newspapers is a source of endless rabbit holes (did you know, in 1954, there was a windshield pitting plague?).
posted by selenized at 7:02 PM on June 14 [7 favorites]

This is exactly describes my interest in Egyptian furniture! It's research but not the kind of research that I wasn’t good at in highschool. During COVID, I wanted to make a copy of an 18th Dynasty stool but found no useful information on the subject…at least not enough to make a proper replica so I decided to start investigating for myself. I’m not an academic, which cuts me some slack but making wooden things to actually sit on demands a certain rigour of it's own. Enthusiastic/sympathetic museum people have taken my interest seriously and given me some amazing access to their collections. I feel so lucky to have stumbled onto this area of study.

I'm cutting and glueing wood but it’s worth mentioning that tech has been a huge part of my studies: museums have built searchable databases, there's free and accurate online translation software, I can book travel on mobile devices, document pieces with photos and photogrammetry apps, etc. I couldn’t have done it 10 years ago.
posted by brachiopod at 9:18 PM on June 14 [2 favorites]

mittens: Must research culminate in some output?
The standard model in science says that research only becomes useful when it is published. I was 40 years doing scientific research but I was far more excited starting projects than finishing them. There are probably as many questions which I solved-to-my-satisfaction and left in a drawer as I actually got over the line through peer-review and into the public domain. If I'd had better finish I coulda got tenure at Harvard ModestU. As it was my entire career consisted of short-term [six weeks to three years] contracts interspersed with rather a lot of 'resting'. I chipped away at problems through deliberate practice with a reasonably well-tuned crap-detector.

Eventually I twigged that the standard model didn't work very well for me. The last 8 years of my employed career were spent teaching in a technical college, with some very modest no-pressure research and bloggin' about my adventures. It's been pretty wonderful. Γνῶθι σαυτόν
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:09 AM on June 15 [9 favorites]

I've landed an odd place between industry and academia, which limits my research topics of course, but in which I could finish papers, or really hired other people who fish them, but more often than not I simply work stuff out until I'm convinced, and then explain the story to our developers. It's definitely more relaxing this way.

Oulipo sounds intereings, thanks HearHere.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:49 PM on June 15 [1 favorite]

The thread resonates for me because my careers came mainly from being a motivated autodidact, and because the researching itself is still a pleasurable part of most of my hobbies and interests, professional or otherwise.

So this post has led me to are.na. Seems like a public bookmark manager designed by people who majored in library science. I'm starting to dig into it, but any tips from power-users would be appreciated.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:04 PM on June 15 [1 favorite]

Research for play and fun describes what I have been doing for most of the past 20 years online. There's a place to put all this stuff and relate it together? Not just masses of downloaded files and bookmarks spread out across a half dozen laptops and external hard drives? How lovely.
posted by jokeefe at 11:43 PM on June 15 [2 favorites]