Replicate
Copy exactly; change nothing.
Levine: Evans's photographs, rephotographed.
Seen in Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981
Try it on your work
Make an exact copy of one thing: same materials, same steps, same order, no improvements. Every place the copy differs anyway is a place the original was carrying undocumented skill.
Repeat someone's request or instruction back to them word for word before acting on it, for a day. Count how often the read-back alone changed the instruction.
Reproduce a result your project already achieved once, from the record alone: no memory, no shortcuts. If it stalls, the record is the deliverable that needs work, not the result.
How it has been used
Duplicate faithfully, without improving: the museum copyist, the reconstructed experiment, the covered song played straight. The move forbids the upgrade: every deviation you can't account for is a finding about your hand, and fixing the original's faults destroys the data.
Where it leads
Grouped under Make it something I can try again