In the beginning of the week I had a meeting with Mirjam Steiner who previously studied German language and literature studies. While discussing, we discovered some very interesting contradictions of the project. For instance, of how emotional those single stories of births are and how they are opposed to this schematic depiction, firstly in the visualization and secondly within the data analysis itself since this procedure is a method that is based on quantified points of view as well as the whole research proceeding of Corpus linguistics. Additionally, it is necessary to collect and analyze these statements in order to derive an underlying pattern of language usage. The questions that are coming up are for example «Is this way of translating individual emotions into words and further into a data model correctly depicting the meaning of these statements?», «What happens to these fragments of statements when this translation process is used?», and «What is happening with the whole character of these statements in my process of translating these words into the data model and back to an analog way? Is it helping it? Or rather abstracting it?»
Another interesting contradiction is the fact that these feelings and mentions are mostly so strong that the women are nearly unable to express these or make others understand what they felt in this moment. According to Elaine Scarry who wrote «The body in pain», this is a particular phenomenon of pain as it is only happening in your body and if you feel it, it is in most cases not possible to make the others understand how this pain really feels. This is the reson why we speak in metaphors to express what we feel but these metaphors can never precisely describe how it feels. They are rather an alternative image of something that is known commonly and that we use to give our listener a hint how it could feel like. This unexpressable pain, also occuring in the process of giving birth, extremely contrasts with the linguistic research of exactly this moment.
Some more contradictions we discovered, also in discussions with others this week were the following:
emotional event vs. clinic and cold surroundings, schematized procedure (geburtsbehilfliches skript)
stories are recap of the birth vs. installation both, a recap project in terms of data interpretation and a live experience of this moment.
Since these contrasting concepts always have something in common (otherwise they would not contrast with the other), they create an area of conflict that is worth to discover. These discoveries can as well help to formulate a visual language for this installation to cover some of those contradictions or, more important, communicate that there are these contradictions.
While reasoning about these contradictions, I particularly focused on the matter of the location. For that reason, Mirjam and me made an appointment with Stefan Kreysler who is the head of the diploma exhibition. We met together with Martin Dusek and visited the available options. Due to their commitment, we were still able to find some appropriate ones and ended up with the 5.G02 and 6.K02 which are booked but there are options of changing rooms and rescheduling. All three did a lot of replanning to establish these rescheduling process in order to make it possible for me to have a room for the installation that fits and also pleases the needs of the exhibition preparation team. The final decision will be made at 6th of April when the responsibles are having a meeting about how to arrange the needed space within the possibilities.
Timetable for this week also stated a mentoring with Daniel Hug. We talked about possibilities to embed sound or how the dataset could generate a sound that helps to enhance the immersion and thus, understanding of the installation. Our main findings are that I should cluster certain sound areas logically and thus, achieve a simplification of the visual impression. Therefore, visitors are enabled to perceive the overall pattern in this short amount of time of walking through the installation. In another mentoring, Clemens stated that I should really try to understand and see the possibilities of the contradictions Mirjam and I discovered. Be more open and more practical, he said. Stop trying to find the right side of data-driven and emotional representation. Focus on these contradictions, work and play with it.
These discussions, the mentorings, and the findings and insights I gained this week helped me in terms of finishing my thesis. Additionally, I sent the last week's draft to some fellow students and tutors, their fields ranging from design to language, who read it and made annotations to what is not clear to them and gave tipps how to restructure or formulate it. Based on these findings, I rewrote and cleared the conclusion, added some more explanations of terms, and a more clear layout in terms of providing foot notes and adding images to make the sources more available. On Friday, 23rd at 5 pm, I delivered the current state of Part A on the server of Interaction Design. If you wish to have a look at the thesis, maybe becuase you can provide some additional information or just interested, feel free to contact me.
