This ICFAR notebook space is just that - a place to note what comes in and goes on. As I start this notebook off I find myself thinking about connectivity, about the varied forms that art conversations now take, and about the profound way in which the form of practice has inflected the way research is done. I'm thinking about the way the table - coming to the table, round tables, convivial tables - have become so much part of art in the last year or two, or three - the shortness symposium at Tate, and Hannah Hurtzig's Mobile Academy are two projects I really like. A table is a space of exchange and also a kind of temporary shelter - and that idea, which I see in things like Ruth MacLennan's Archway Polytechnic, as well as the loose, democratic events run by Critical Practice - is one that seems to have taken hold more and more, even in the past few months. The British Library is full of tables of kids talking and showing each other things, to the annoyance of everyone who wants to call up a book, but it's somehow a perfect example of the new 'occupation', and then, every art event I go to is packed - home has become just a place to stow your stuff before taking off again, and the internet has provided the means to know where things happen, rather than a substitite for them, which for a long time was the dystopian notion of what web connectivity would do. It is beginning to feel pretty much like the 1970s to me - in many ways - except that the network of connections is now much more integrated throughout the culture, and not just subcultural. The oral and performance drawing are the modes du jour, with pencils, sound recorders and notepads taken on walks which end with everyone sharing something to eat over a fire. The ways in which cultural form changes - and the ways in which ideas that begin in one context move to another - is fascinating and, though this might seem trivial, in other ways in makes me think about the whole notion of how the way we do art, and the way art thinks, moves into and through social practice. I'm thinking aloud about ways of doing, and, possibly, about ways in which walking, drawing and coming to the table, can inform the way we do our thinking about the future of the art school and the place of research within it.