Weak Method is a phrase that turned up at the very end of TeachBack in 2014. It seemed a good way to describe the field in which we had been working, one that used modest and absurd tasks to generate constructions of material and conversation that we did not see coming. I am curious about this so I am giving this workshop. This class will invest its time working with methods that are so feeble that they will never have the strength to reach their undefined goals. Weak method is a way to do a something that will forever remain elusive and unachieved. Generalizations and barely defined tasks are the name of this game. The Weak Method opens a terrain unfettered by projection filled with results that astonish and delight and then slip away. If we would like to imagine a way of working that is not already so familiar that we know what it will produce, then weak method may be the way to go. Spending time in the eminent productions of an unambitious process can be very refreshing. Weak method may gently allow us to do something excised from the projection of trying to do something.
As it turns out weak method is a term operating in the field of artificial intelligence, it is a way of going about knowledge gathering that is general and wide, used to manage uncertainty in the face of an undefined problem. It's an accident that this term is the same as mine but a happy accident. Underlying this, I think, is the question of what should work feel like when dealing with an ephemeral form. If what we make defines itself poorly as a consumer product, then what is our work? By doing work without a goal we might know more about the possibilities of our form and our engagement with it. It'll be fun.
Jennifer Lacey
