I am still fairly obsessively following instructions, particularly with the 100 journal/sketchbook ideas. I gave away something I loved which was a tin of tomato soup. I drew it first though. I have made diary entries in various ways; flyer, encyclopaedia and in very big letters etc. I like the list of things I have bought and I am on the third week of listing my consumerism. 

Amy has started a project with her year ten group using these ideas and they have all got journals and experiment folders and so on. They area also making up their own activities and giving themselves instructions which is obviously a good idea. What Smith lacks is a sense of how you might ‘develop’ the work and that is fine, it isn’t really her point. These books are full of ‘starters’, instigators of something that might become ‘works’. I have obviously been taken with some ideas and I have carried them on into various riffs.

What I haven’t done as yet is make up my own instructions. What has been interesting to me has been that lack of control, that surprise element held in this little envelope of idea tickets glued in the back of the sketchbook. What will Keri have me do today? I have been interested in that receiving of the mantra aspect of the process, that giving in to it. I spend a lot of time inventing things for other people to do in various project ways and I am pretty good at designing that sort of activity. It is a nice holiday from that to have someone else tell me what to do for a bit. 

I like the pulling out of the slip of paper and that OMG moment followed by the ‘oh yeah, I know how I could do that’ which is, of course, that little flash of creativity in the moment of the restriction, the criteria. So many founder in a sea of ‘free expression’ which is such a mistake. Creativity needs a constraint to work against. Much more productive.