Stage 02 of 9
Research
What already exists in this territory?
Any spark lands in an occupied field. Someone has made adjacent work, in another century or another culture. Find them. Standing on this history is not derivative — it's literate.
Prompts to sit with
- 01Who are five artists who have circled this subject before you?
- 02Which historical movement most resembles what you're feeling?
- 03What non-art fields (science, ritual, craft) can you steal from?
- 04What is your work NOT — the neighbouring work you want to distinguish from? (For example: 'about grief, but not sentimental,' or 'documentary in method, but not journalistic in tone.')
Small practices
- Assemble a visual reference board — 20-40 images, quotations, artifacts.
- Read one primary source: an artist statement, an interview, a manifesto.
- Write a one-paragraph lineage — the chain of earlier artists your work descends from: 'This work is downstream of ___ and ___.'
Follow one project throughAn interactive daf — A contemplative reader that keeps the argument — traced through all nine stages, in progress.A running example, one entry per stage. Click to expand.
Three lineages, held in parallel. First, the daf itself — the Vilna page, its typographic choreography of Mishnah, Gemara, Rashi, Tosafot; why the eye trusts it. Second, contemplative interactives that set the bar: Bret Victor's explorable explanations, the Pudding's long-form, Are.na channels as slow reading. Third, the Grammar of Meaning corpus itself — what it can already do that a static page cannot. I am reading, not deciding.