Preparing a
Spring 2020
Logbook
New Media Writing
“You might find that ‘getting practical,’ then, requires a
greater engagement with the sprawling relations,
networks, and worlds that materializes along with
instruments.”
—Jennifer Gabrys, How to Do Things with Sensors
Introduction
The logbook (2,000 words) should meticulously
describe the how of your research. The logbook
can be understood as an augmentation of the
issue survey. It is the issue survey with more
theoretical depth and practical breadth. But
preparing a logbook isn’t simply adding more stuff
to the survey; to augment is also to transform.
The logbook isn’t merely a longer issue survey, but
a more sophisticated version of that survey. Or to
put it another way, the logbook does not survey
your issue; it constitutes your issue as such.
Jennifer Gabrys writes,
How is the world-making process that traverses
ways of life, modes of politics, registers of
experience, and integrates of relations. It forms
subjects and environments in its inclination
toward engagements. (78)
Again, the logbook is not only describing your
issue; it is constructing your issue in a
consequential way through the choices that you
make in media res.
Retooling
The core of this assignment is retooling the ten
questions that Gabrys articulates in her “How to
Build Networks” chapter (73-86). You do not
necessarily have to end up with exactly ten
questions, but you should be intensely thinking
through what these questions want from you. Here
is a rough and ready translation of Gabrys’s
questions in terms of a research project on
accessibility.
1. What pollutants should be monitored?
What particular environmental conditions and
outcomes am I interested in?
2. Where should monitoring take place?
At which locations do I monitor these
conditions and outcomes. Where do I think
these conditions and outcomes matter most?
3. Who is monitoring?
Who am I and who am I in this location,
amongst these actors? Who else am I
enrolling? What risks does this entail?
4. What monitoring practices are citizens
already undertaken?
Who or what is already monitoring this
location? A university official in charge of EPA
compliance? Security cameras?
5. What exposures have been noticed or felt?
In what locations has environmental damage
(e.g., water pollution, lead poisoning) already
been reported?
6. What is difficult to monitor or can’t be
recorded?
What aspects of environmental damage are
hard to sense: the personal, embodied
experiences of it or the ambient, for example?
7. How should citizen data be used?
In what ways can and should I make use of
the sensitives of those at risk or otherwise
disproportionately experiencing the impacts of
environmental damage?
8. What does a day in the life with fracking look
like?
What work is accomplished or tasked by/for
citizens (as activists, for instance) in the
locations I am monitoring?
9. What monitoring scenarios should be
tested?
Describe tools to be used: time lapse
photography and soundscapes.
10. What additional observations can be added?
Here I would note that I might also need to
consult EPA facility reports.
It is through and with these questions that you’ll
prepare your logbook.
“We should be aware that even with extensive
preparation, researchers’ own sensory experiences will
most likely still surprise them, sometimes given them
access to a new form of knowing”
—Sara Pink, “Preparing for Sensory Research”
Rivers | ENGL 4010