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Survey Notes

Created: 2018-12-31 (12:00:00) — Modified: 2024-06-04 (19:01:22)
Status: in progress

Midway through the year working on Field Notes on Trees and Hollows, I tried to set up a more routine way of taking notes. As it happened there was not much further opportunity for fieldwork, so these survey notes have since gone unfinished.

Workflow

Things to take: a charged phone with GPS and myTracks, a stack of index cards, pens, water.

  1. Cycle out to Black Mountain reserve to do some field work. Resume the walk based on where the previous myTracks file ended, where the last tree was indexed.

  2. Start recording a new myTracks file and begin the walk.

  3. At each hollow-bearing tree you come to:

    • take a wide-shot photograph of the tree, so you can identify it later on if needed;
    • on an index card, assign the tree a unique id, then record the date and time;
    • for example, T99 2018-07-24 (12:30:00) may be the first tree of the walk, but the ninety-ninth tree recorded overall;
    • record observations, including the number and estimated size of hollows, if the tree is living or dead, its diameter and any evidence of habitation;
    • ideally it will be easy to code these numbers and observations into the Twine code later on.

  4. On ending the walk, save the myTracks file.

  5. Back in the studio, add your index cards into the slipbox, save the myTracks file and documentary photographs into a separate folder, and add numbers and observations into the tracking spreadsheet and Twine code.

The aim of all this is to create a dataset that you can refer back to for artmaking, coding and writing. It should be easy to extend. If you take more photos of a hollow tree, or produce a detailed drawing, or write down more observations, it should be possible to link it to the ealier data without utterly breaking everything.

A design document will expand on this process in even more TEDIOUS DETAIL.

Storage

The overarching directory is called BMTN.

Subdirectories are organised around trees, for example, T99.

Files are organised by tree, date and time, for example, T99.20180724.123000.md, T99.20180731.091500.jpg, and so on.

Endmatter

Tags: @archival @cybertexts @in-progress

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