15. Symposium presentation
So, after presenting the trial version in tutorial, I got some quite useful feedback about how to find balance between keeping things in the brain fog and clarifying them.
Instead of building the whole presentation up from quotes combined randomly with my visual work, I can do it for some time, and later explain it. So simple.
So for 4-5 minutes I plan to keep the audience in the intended confusion, then to introduce a twist (just like ten in Kishōtenketsu) and say that everything just said was not an actual presentation, and then in the last bit to explain what stood behind that decision, giving a quick reflection on my work throughout the term 2.
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Pdf file:
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Below the text for each slide:
2. ‘Seeing (…) establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.’
3. ‘We humans are very adept at drawing conclusions from less-than-all the information. When presented with less than the full picture, we (…) fill in missing information and form a complete image or idea based on (common or easily recognisable) patterns from our past experience and understanding. (…) It works to show us an image that does not actually exist before our eyes. (…) From these results we construct our opinions, assumptions, understanding …our reality.’
4. ‘A cognitive bias is a strong, preconceived notion (…) based on information we have, perceive to have, or lack. (…) [it] distorts our critical thinking, leading to possibly perpetuating misconceptions or misinformation (…) Biases can also cause us to see patterns or connections between ideas that aren’t necessarily there.’
5. ‘Because our well-being is tied to understanding, we begin to story our world. (…) We make a story an active process. Our stories are our provisional interpretations of what is going on and what it might mean to us.’
6. ‘Life requires life-supporting illusions; and where these have been dispelled, there is nothing secure to hold on to, no moral law, nothing firm. Lies are what the world lives on.’
7. ‘So much of what we do today is driven by or at least influenced by our internalised stories. Those fragmentary personal narratives, scripts that define who we are, who others are, and how we’re expected to relate to each other. Some of those stories are quite conscious, as we were specifically taught to think, feel, and behave, by our elders, our teachers, our societies. Others were quietly assembled by us. Day in and day out. Until one time they became who we were, or at least who we thought we were.’
8. ‘Our brains pay much closer attention to information when it’s in the form of a narrative. The more you can associate things you want to remember with structures you already have in your mind, the easier it’s going to be to remember.’
9. ‘Human civilisation begins with the creation of narratives that connect people to each other and to the world around them. Narratives help make sense of the unknown, fight the fear of nature and build ever bigger projects and aspirations.’
10. ‘The narrative is a story that functions to legitimise power, authority, and social customs. A grand narrative or metanarrative is one that claims to explain various events in history, gives meaning by connecting disperse events and phenomena by appealing to some kind of universal knowledge or schema.’
11. ‘The term grand narratives can be applied to a wide range of thoughts which includes Marxism, religious doctrines, belief in progress, universal reason, and others.’
12. ‘Traditionally, in the orthodoxies of popular faiths, mythic beings and events are generally regarded and taught as facts; and this particularly in the Jewish and Christian spheres. Historically, however, such facts are now in question; hence, the moral orders, too, that they support.’
13. ‘(…) such literally read symbolic forms have always been – and still are, in fact – the supports of (their) civilisations, the supports of their moral orders, their cohesion, vitality, and creative powers.’
14. ‘Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge, which I will call narrative.’
15. ‘(…) informal, unspecialised knowledge is as important as formal, learned knowledge, and it is in fact ‘personal theories’ that largely determine our social reality. (…) clusters of personal theories provide us with systems of thought and ultimately evolve into cultural patterns that we consider as ‘true’.’
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16. Alright, so all the words said until now were not mine. It was a cluster of quotes from different sources put together, left for your mind to make sense of it, and to create an impression of a presentation that was actually not there.
17. Instead of explaining the project to you, I wanted to perform in front of you my method of working, and at the same time demonstrate to you what your mind can do.
18. Throughout the term, no matter what topics I was touching on, my actual material were ideas and concepts. I was essentially designing with them. In the first term, I combined them into one when reflecting on my studio work.
19. In this term, in my research, I kept opening up, as I had more and more hunches, associations. This time, I didn’t want to bring it down to one claim or conclude it in any way. I wanted you to experience that like I did, and keep it in that space of hazy confusion of some connections forming in the back of your head, which your mind will inevitably do, as it keeps putting effort in making sense of what is put in front of it.
20. So I used the tendency that I touched on in my work – that we keep constantly explaining the world to ourselvesthrough creating fiction that helps understand the reality, by making connections between separate elements.
21. I tried to evoke that experience in the research paper through a structure allowing various ways of reading, and multiple connections to follow.
22. And now I put together the presentation, keeping in mind the same intention of simultaneity of information and leaving separate pieces for you to connect.
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Sources of quotes
2. Berger J., (1990) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Classics
3. Rutledge A., (2009) Gestalt Principles of Perception – 5: Closure, available here
4. MasterClass (2020) How to Identify Cognitive Bias: 12 Examples of Cognitive Bias, 8 November, available here
5. Hollis, J. (2020) A Life of Meaning. [Audible], available here
6. Campbell, J. (1972) Myths to Live By, Penguin Compass
7. Hollis, J. (2020) A Life of Meaning. [Audible], available here
8. ‘Memory’ (2019) The Mind, Explained, Netflix 12 September
9. Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability, Constructing the Grand Narrative, available here
10. AMU studying materials, Jean-Francois Lyotard: Grand Narrative, available here
11. AMU studying materials, Jean-Francois Lyotard: Grand Narrative, available here
12. Campbell, J. (1972) Myths to Live By, Penguin Compass
13. Campbell, J. (1972) Myths to Live By, Penguin Compass
14. Lyotard J. F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press
15. Vesters, Ch. (2013) The Anti-Encyclopaedia. From Poetic Disorder to Political Anti-Order, Metropolis M, available here