Prototyping Pedagogy

Jentery Sayers | UVic | MLab | @jenterysayers
Literary Audio Symposium | Concordia | 5 December 2016
Slides Online: jentery.github.io/litaud/

How to teach and learn with technologies as negotiations, not just validation machines?

Validation machines say, "You're here." "It's there." "It happened."
"You're correct." "All of you have the same data."

Thing is, every technology is already quite a few.
Consider a gramophone, e.g.

Material Technology (It)

Shapin: "embedded in . . . construction and operation,"
where a "machine constitutes a resource that may be used
to factor out human agency in the intellectual product"

Social Technology (We)

Shapin: "collective performance and collective witness,"
where "the production of knowledge [is] visible
as a collective enterprise"

Literary Technology (Text)

Shapin: "the expository means" that "supplement[] the
public space of the laboratory by extending a
valid witnessing experience to all readers of the text"

Not just a report; a social relation and aesthetic

Problem: Media (e.g., Audio) Become Virtual Witnesses

Modest Observers (Merely Present)
Containers of Information (Ready for Processing)
Disinterested Matters of Fact (Simply Push the Button)
Prolix or Elaborate (Representing the Circumstances)
Managing Dispute, Securing Assent (Just Trust Them)

Shapin: obviates the necessity for either direct witness or replication

How to add some texture to our literary technologies?

Repetition, Resistance, Feedback, Friction, Tension . . .
Or, Stitching, Stretching, Warping, Grasping, Bending . . .

Sedgwick: "How did it get that way? and What could I do with it?"

McPherson: In and
Through Objects

Rosner: Design
as Inquiry

Shipka: Negotiating an Interplay

Kraus: Conjectural
Criticism

Anderson: Audio Fiction

Listen to "Our Time Is Up"

Prototyping Pedagogy

Negotiating "We"/"I"/"Them"/"It" with "Text"/"Media"
Participatory Observer (Not Detached)
Emphasis on Boundary-Making (Not Function)
Matters of Contingency and Interface (Not Fact)
Entanglement of Language with Materials (Not Division)
Iteration and Inquiry (Not Delegation or Validation)
Multimodal Composition (Not Re-presentation)

Types of Prototypes
. . . with Examples

Hardware

Building, Bending, Hacking, Modding . . . (see Collins)

"Glitch Controls"

By Nina Belojevic + Jon Johnson

Rather than engaging videogames primarily through the screen,
hardware hacking offers a tacit form of interaction
often resistant to symbolic or graphical logic.

Consequences for Research

Demands Attention to Manufacture (see Belojevic)
Prompts Tangible Awareness of Audience (see Johnson)
Critique through Repair Techniques (see Rosner and Ames)
Ground Glitch Theory in Material Particulars (see Kirschenbaum)

Patches

Rehabilitating, Remaking, Conjecturing . . . (see Fuller)

"From Grain to Glitch"

By Patrick Close

Continuous movement from the ephemeral click to the stochastic mass
to the pure sine tone and finally to white noise (and back again)

Study of Xenakis’s "sound particle":
any sound with a duration between 1 and 100 milliseconds
"What are the possible restrictive limits of human psychophysiology?"

Consequences for Research

Executability of an Abstraction or Model (see McCarty)
Demonstrate and Share Concepts (see Drucker et al.)
Learning through Repetition and Process Modelling (see Close)
Understand Systems by Accelerating Relations (see Molleindustria)

Indie Games

Designing, Drawing, Intermediating, Personalizing . . .
Games are zines (see Anthropy).

"Right"

By Danielle Morgan

In a world of right angles, you search for acuteness.

Consequences for Research

Manifest Critique through Experimentation (see Flanagan)
Game as Gift and Value (see kopas)
Game Design over Programming (see Fullerton)
Test How Processes Are Persuasive (see Bogost)

Design Fiction

Narrating, Speculating, Projecting, Performing . . .
Use of diegesis to suspend disbelief about change (see Sterling)

"HyperLit"

By Nina Belojevic + Jon Johnson

Interactions encourage audiences to become aware of
how gamification renders them productive subjects.

Consequences for Writing

Imagine Tech Beyond Instrumentalism (see Lukens + DiSalvo)
Create Conditions for Narrative and Experience (see Roesler)
Hermeneut Inhabits the System (see Drucker + Nowviskie)
Literature as Source for Cultural Criticism and Humour

Case Study: Prototyping Impressions of Sound

Problems-Based Approach

Contingencies (Not Reproduction or Reenactment)
Negotiations (Not Virtual Witness)
Feedback and Variance (Not Ideal Form)
Contexts of Use (Not Homogeneous Consumption)
Expanding the Lab (Not a Restricted Space)

Thank You

Jentery Sayers | UVic | MLab | @jenterysayers

Special thanks to Jason Camlot, Clara Nencu,
Vanessa Cannizzaro, Jessica Tucker, and Max Stein for hosting;
also to SSHRC for supporting this research;
and to Nina Belojevic, Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan,
Patrick Close, Katherine Goertz, Jon Johnson, Maasa Lebus,
Evan Locke, Danielle Morgan, and Victoria Murawski
for contributing to the MLab's research.