powerpoint in public david stark. demonstrations
TRANSCRIPT
PowerPoint in Public
David Stark
Demonstrations
In an era when policy decisions involve complex technical questions, demonstrations are more likely to marshal charts, figures, models, and simulations than to mobilize popular movements in the street.
To study demonstrations in the digital era
we focus on the most ubiquitous form of digital demonstration: PowerPoint, with over 30 million presentations every dayParker (2001).
Architects’ case: WTC The PowerPoint presentations of the 7 Architectural finalists
Colin Powell’s case: WMBPowell’s UN PowerPoint Presentation
Our questions:
What is the cognitive style of PowerPoint?
What is the morphology of a PowerPoint presentation?
What is the new topology of demonstration when digital tools support it?
The cognitive style of PowerPoint?
• Edward Tufte 2003
• Main culprit– AutoContent Wizard
• Bullet points– Deteriorate
• Reasoning– Verbal– Spatial PowerPoint
Slide 39 of 115 David Stark, Collegium Budapest, May 23, 2006
The ready-made templates are prescriptive.
Because they format the very process of writing, they are pre-scriptive.
The author is co-authored, shepherded toward a certain, quite minimalist, frame of mind.
My gloss on Tufte’s critique of PowerPoint
The scripted format pre-forms the performance.
However valid, Tufte’s critique ironically ignores that the cognitive style of PowerPoint is as a medium that combines words and visual images.
The distinctive morphology of PowerPoint
Its digital character provides “affordances”
1) that allow heterogeneous materials to be seamlessly re-presented in a single format
that 2) can morph easily from live demonstration to circulating digital documents
that 3) can be utilized in counter-demonstrations.
The grammar of PowerPoint
example: exact over-image, the “fill-in effect”
The power of association
“Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you’re about to hear is a conversationthat my government monitored”.
Powell: “Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts”.
Powell (repeatedly): “Here you will see...”
PowerPoint is a transportation system
Import to transport. Take the audience “there” as eye-witnesses.
Powell: “Here you will see...”
“Through sight the soul receives an impression even in its inner features. … It has happened that people, after having seen frightening sights, have also lost presence of mind for the present moment; in this way fear extinguishes and excludes thought.”
Gorgias
But also, click to add text, images, animations, databases, sound.
Click to add title...
Norman Foster demonstrates the structural engineering of his tower.
Who’s demonstrating?
Architects demonstrate
In this digital rendering architect Norman Foster demonstrates the viability of his design for memorial voids on the WTC footprints.
PowerPoint performativity
Architects demonstrate that their project is ...
Inspired
Already a fitting historical subject
Easily evacuated
and that it is, already
on a monumental
and a human scale
... a fitting postcard.
Where is the demonstration?
Where is the demonstration?
Digital demonstrations
are available to the public in many venues.
“Click here >>”
Harry Collins (1988) distinguished
experiments – testing
demonstrations – showing
“displays of virtuosity” – lock in.
No. The more the “display of virtuosity” is virtual, the more it can become a generalized experiment. That is, the more freely it can circulate, the more it can be utilized in counter-demonstrations.
The more the virtuality, the more the virtuosity (Collins 1988)?
The distinctive morphology of PowerPoint
Its digital character provides “affordances”
1) that allow heterogeneous materials to be seamlessly re-presented in a single format
that 2) can morph easily from live demonstration to circulating digital documents
that 3) can be utilized in counter-demonstrations.