Following on from the Conference, keynote speakers such as Eric Parry and Rosie Key have both been interviewed by different members of the editorial team. The interviews were held to capture themes of Festival and Genesis, Festival and Performativity and Festival and Conflicts. The interviews were held to generate interesting conversations around the themes of a festival and off the back of research questions which the edit/or team had put together prior to the interviews taking place. The interviews have now been transcribed before further editing to extracts key components from the discussions to be used in the journal.
Once we had produced several good research questions for our keynote speakers they were checked by the editorial team. The interview with Eric Parry was held by Christian Frost over a Skype call as Eric Parry is currently lecturing at the Harvard University School of Design. Both Christian and Eric have built a rapport over many years after Eric was one of Christian’s tutors while he was studying at Cambridge University. A few days prior to the interview, Christian had sent the proposed research questions to Eric so that he could familiarise himself in preparation for the interview. This allowed the conversation to follow between the two while generating a riveting conversation.
The interview lasted approximately one hour, and the first half was transcribed by another member of the Edit/or team. I tackled the second half of the interview and after finding the transcribing process difficult and first, I found myself enjoying both the process and the conversation. Transcribing an interview was a first for me but the stop, start nature of the process was quite compelling as it really helps to break down an understanding of what the two were talking about. Eric Parry had referred to many projects of his own or related back to personal reflections on work with artists, sculptors, and photographs. His use of examples to answer the questions evoked interesting thoughts, responses, and reflections of Christian’s own experiences, which not only encouraged a more dynamic conversation but has forced me into extended research to help grasp my understanding further.
Not only has the extended research helped my understanding on the content from the interview but it has inspired my own interests in the way in which we think about architecture in the city and the process of observation to enable a better design process when creating exciting architectural projects which respond to both function and landscaping of context. I believe this inspiration has come out of the second half of the interview as it was very heavily focused on Eric’s approach to design and how he responds to context from a socially cultural view or a physical condition. The discussion then leads into the use of materiality and its quality in the design process, right through to an interesting topic of communicative space which came out of the original keynote talk held at the Conference in November. This sort of conversation was interesting while consistently relating back to the festival in the city.
Reflecting on the transcribing process, I feel as if I have gained a new skill which can be implemented in a professional work environment. The process has been rewarding as well as very professional, in terms of detailed conversation back and forth with academics such as Christian Frost before and after the interviews. Moving forward with the second half of the transcribed text, I will now begin to edit the text by picking out keys parts which I felt were most important. The most interesting parts of the conversations will allow an enjoyable read within the journal.
Lewis Buckley
Edit/or – Editorial Team
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