Discussing messiness

Today we went to Lake Votomos that used to feed the water supply at the archaeological site Gortyn, where we went yesterday. Andrew, Henry and James had described methods for collecting samples by focussing on an archaeological grid to collect and excavate everything in a certain square and analysing the finds. The pile of earth we were standing on was a likely excavation heap. Lots of Roman pottery kicking abut but too much for a museum.

The discussion this morning again was really interesting - I have captured some of what other people said in the text below (we also discussed authorship). We discussed assemblages of the Roman Pottery shards at Gortyn being placed together like a mosaic, during a field walk. This was an abstract pattern but we recognised that graphs are abstract, exact and abstract at the same time, graphs filter out the noise. Grids and graphs can hide complexity, simplify or obfuscate knowledge and insights.

As makers we may build something up, break it down, make wrong turns, fail and try again and this might equip us with a way to face uncertainty, unknowns or failure. Failure, uncertainty, blurriness can be an intentional method. An undercurrent that also creates form. Erin Manning discusses the major key being reliant on the minor for definition.

What does failure mean?

How do we represent failure?

Are failures scrubbed from design?

Measurements are layers of uncertainty especially in complex systems - messiness exposes complexity.

Scientists define failure as the invalidation of a hypothesis.

The photograph is of Gortyn - looking towards Lake Votomos where the water supply would have been - I'm pretty sure James said 15km away, by means of an aquaduct.