Learning Aesthetics

What happens when reality meets conference keynote ? Stephen Downes used an interesting setup for his first presentation at AECT; the final result was very like performance art for a non-art audience. I think it’s safe to say that everyone involved learned something about learning and most interestingly each one something slightly or radically different…

The Board:

One presenter, center stage. Main presentation screen on stage left projector controlled from presenter laptop; Back channel screen on stage right, projector display controlled from instant message web site. Wireless connectivity for the audience.

The Setup:

After being introduced the speaker puts up the Back Chanel URI and explains that the audience can submit comments during the talk; these will stay on screen for 10 seconds and then fade but that they will be recorded and archived. He also points out that because of the screen position, he will not see the comments. About 10% of the audience gets out laptops or iPhones and login to the back channel.

The play:

The delivery style is conversational rather than declamatory; accompanying presentation graphics are content rich, occasionally information dense, and appropriate. The topic at hand is the “definition” of “reality” in terms of the current moment including MOOs, MUDs, avatars, social networks, school, government, control, etc. Stephen’s background is in philosophy but the approach is more pragmatic than theoretical. The back channel becomes active almost immediately (the archives are here in reverse chronological order).

Somewhere between “He Canadian… so yes, it was probably the finger,” a reference to a previous question about Stephen’s hand gestures as he tried to demonstrate the rabbit/duck illusion, and “c = (f- 32) * 5 / 9″; Stephen violates his own rule and turns and reads the back channel. He makes a couple of off hand comments and returns to his talk, however the fourth wall is down and in the words of my esteemed Canadian colleague Eugene Kowch, “Stephen enters his own neural network.” That is “neural network” is the approximate presentation topic moment when Stephen’s response to the back channel moved into what might be called “apperception“. This wasn’t merely a case of being distracted, or losing track, but rather of actually thinking about what what he was saying or, as things developed, trying to say, might actually mean. In a phrase Stephen seemed to be trying to learn something. The audience was supportive, extremely so, but Stehen was only vaguely aware of that. What I found truly interesting was that embarrassment seemed to be trumped by thought. He was struggling not with the presentation or the audience, but with the ideas, with the uncertainty of reality, which was, as you may recall where he started and, wondrous delight, where he himself and ourselves with him wound up. We arrived not at a concept, an intellectual insight, but at an event, an experience take away and treasure.