PowerPoint in Public David Stark. Demonstrations.

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.