ABSTRACT
In 2005 I was invited to contribute to a small exhibition entitled Fieldnotes and Sketchbooks: Challenging the Boundaries Between Descriptions and Processes of Describing.1 The aim of the exhibition was to explore commonalities and contrasts in the inscriptive practices of artists, architects and anthropologists. The eleven contributors were drawn from all three disciplines, and, like my co-exhibitors, I was tasked with creating a display to fit within a large, wall-mounted and glass-fronted cabinet. For my exhibit, I divided the area framed by the cabinet into twelve panels, each roughly of the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and marked out by wooden battens in a grid of three across and four down. In each panel I placed a little display designed to reveal one of the many possible answers to the question: What is an A?
