In this exercise, we look at various forms of representation. We are looking at those representations that help us think. The canonical representation that aids thinking is sketching, but there are many others. We are going to be focusing on those representations that help us think about how we experience events.

For Tuesday (10/1), please prepare a presentation of an experience. You must abstract and represent the experiential qualities of some event. Some possible experiences are: driving on a twisty road, chopping vegetables, walking in a forest, reading in a library, or riding a roller coaster. Simply capturing an experience with a video camera is not enough; you must be able to show the particulars of the abstracted qualities, such where your attention is directed, the feeling of wind on your face, emotional responses, etc.

There are 3 parts to this exercise:

1. Representing the experience.
2. Using the same representational media, show how the experience might be modified.
3. Write a paragraph describing how your choice of media and constrained/aided your ability to manipulate it. (This part due on Wednesday, Oct.2, following class review of the exercises.)

PICKING AN EXPERIENCE

Experiences have a number of qualities: they unfold over time, they are perceived, they often evoke emotional and/or physiological responses, and sometimes they are referential: that is, the meaning and the emotional and physiological responses are because they remind us of other things or experiences.

Some other example possibilities, in addition to those noted above: seeing the photograph of a loved one, listening to music, chopping wood, studying late at night, sipping a good cup of coffee, getting a good neck massage, waving good-bye, brushing your teeth with your eyes closed, walking down Telegraph Avenue between Durant and Haste, hearing the phone ring while you’re in the middle of a conversation, folding laundry, carrying a big box up a flight of stairs, waiting for a bus, fishing.

REPRESENTING THE EXPERIENCE

This is not a test of your drawing abilities, but of your ability to abstract. You may use any media or combination of media that you are comfortable with and works to explain the salient quality of an experience.

Some media that you might consider:

1. drawing (after all this exercise is called "sketching")
2. storyboards
3. video
4. still photography
5. Photoshop (and other photo montage techniques)
6. text
7. theater
8. foam core or clay models (and other hand-made models)
9. Stereo lithography (and other 3-d physical renderings)
10. VRML
11. Quicktime
12. Labanotation or Eshkol (choreographic representations)

You may feel you have very limited representational skills. This is your chance to try some. Your term project will give you ample chance to work on your representational skills some more.

You should be prepared to give a very brief (5 minute maximum!) presentation in class. This is particularly important if you have a time-base representation such a video or theater!

Hint: Are there some scientific representations that are appropriate to abstracting the experience such as velocity, temperature, or displacement? What media should they be represented in?

ALTERING THE EXPERIENCE

The next step is to envision a change to the experience and represent it using the same kind of representation. For example, if you have storyboards showing the experience of chopping vegetables with a knife you could show a few panels chopping with a laser knife.

Hint: try to think about the ways in which the intervention you imagine changes not just the result, but the experience.

REFLECTING ON YOUR CHOICE

Please write a couple of paragraphs discussing how your choice of representation affected your understanding of the experience, constrained or directed your choice of possible interventions, and skills you found useful and/or need to develop more.

We are asking that you write this AFTER the in-class review on Tuesay 10/1. We want you to incorporate what is said about your work and what you learn from reviewing the other projects.

We plan to share these reflections across the class; we’ll announce whether you should just e-mail the entire class or if we’ll have a website to post them at.

REFERENCES