One very interesting question to my last post asked about possible
examples of multi/mixed media art that could serve as metaphor to
help decipher information technology...
We create systems using technology to process and communicate our ever expanding amount of information to each other. When the systems become increasingly sophisticated to keep up with the complex amount of information, we risk alienating the human element that we are trying to communicate with. Those who are most able to incorporate how we understand information into their technology are the ones who will succeed in communicating their message. I think it starts with narrative. When the bundle of information is organized to tell a story, people get it. Steve Denning's Leader's Guide to Storytelling is a persuasive description and analysis of how people are wired to follow and remember narratives. Moreover, a story has tremendous impact when it reflects (to use as leverage) or challenges values that the audience relates to. In a traditional narrative, a dissonance is created, and the audience is riveted by how that dissonance is resolved. Successful art offers narrative in many forms, from highly structured, to the very abstract. Art succeeds if it stimulates a conversation to understand and resolve the tension created by its existence. I think the recent New Yorker cover that portrayed Barack and Michelle Obama as an extreme stereotype provided us with a dissonance for conversation. Who was this aimed at? The Obamas? The rumor mongers? The media who legitimized these rumors? I thought it was poking hilarious fun at anyone giving credence to the archetypal imagery of them being anathema to our country. In any event, it provided dissonance for the conversation about who the Obamas are, and helps us organize our thoughts by skillfully deflating false perceptions. The resolution to all of this innuendo provided even more fun, watching the responses of indignation from all corners.
What does this have to with information technology? The narrative provides us with a structure to contextualize the information for the wiring in our brains. We're ready made for this, so the narrative gets our attention.
I was thinking about narratives in relation to helping my five year old son get to sleep at bedtime. He has a sensory integration disorder called Dyspraxia, which involves difficulty in motor planning. Normal things that most children his age take for granted, such as organizing one's actions to put away toys, getting dressed, eating with fork and knife are elusive for him. In his case, it also includes a high sensitivity to motion and sounds. Relaxing in one's thoughts towards nothingness and into sleep are similarly elusive. We visit an occupational therapist whose prescription involves swinging, spinning (in the swing) and listening to carefully modulated music on special headphones. It is hypothesized that all of this activity is cumulative towards building the myelin fibers that insulate the connections between the neurons of his brain. The theory goes that this will shake out the sensitivity in his vestibular and auditory systems. In other words, getting him organized. Perhaps it is no coincidence that what helps him fall asleep at night (when he is having trouble) is a bed-time story, with tension and resolution, which again, gets his mind organized, so he can turn it off...
What does this have to do with art? There are no epidemiological studies that prove whether all of this swinging and modulated headphones will cure his condition. Anecdotally, its really working. My son's occupational therapist observes his condition in a systemic fashion; in conjunction with (my wife) Liz and me, she constantly works to develop an evolving template for his daily therapy. Is it possible that her art form is the creation of this therapy to help his brain organize, which provides him with a smoother interface with the world? In a sense, my son is her canvas. She is also his IT consultant. The multitude of information he needs to process is the environment he moves in, and she is helping to re-engineer the signal processing in his evolving brain. There is a semi-predictable tension and relief pattern to his behavior when we do his therapy. The swinging,spinning and modulated headphones provide a controlled tension and stimuli that allows him to build his neural pathways, contrasted with the natural development of normal childhood play (which would overwhelm his system.)
I can think of my own artistic output; whether I'm cutting out the scores of string quartets into the shape of abstract cellos, pasting them on canvas and splattering, squeegeing, and brushing paint to provide texture and color relief from the cello figure. The interaction of the paint and musical score are supposed to represent my emotional and visual representation of how that particular string quartet moves me. It gives people who see it a different sense of how to listen to a complex string quartet.
My Quartet Approach program is a multi-media organization of how four musicians process the complex score of a string quartet in front of an audience. When I facilitate conversation about how we do this, I am providing a musical narrative for how we employ our skills to organize this information. Tension is created when the skills are missing, or are not applied in a coherent fashion, relief when we do, demonstrated with a sublime performance. More relief, and hopefully realization, when the group articulates, and takes away a working understanding of how to apply these skills for themselves. Ultimately, this narrative is about quieting our own thoughts so we can listen to each other. Isn't that why we're producing all this information in the first place, to communicate better with each other?
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