Cultural Innovation In The Brain?

Neolithic stone arrowhead.

Anyone who follows this blog will know that I have been trying – amongst other things –to dismantle the idea that brains utilise inner representations, i.e. Representationalism. A recent discussion led to the following insights.

The story of the emergence and development of culture is the story of the emergence and development of representational practices. Representations are cultural artefacts. They are created by intelligent organisms for communicative purposes. Representations are tools of a fundamental kind but they are nonetheless products of cultural evolution, not biological evolution.

Whatever intricate processes occur in the brain, these cannot be the consequence of communication between inner organisms. Brains are singular organs, not communities of organisms competing in a hostile environment for available resources. So, the electrochemical impulses that shuttle around the brain and the structures that give rise to them must have evolved in an entirely different way from the many tools and technical artefacts of culture (computers being an obvious example).

Geneticists commonly speak of genes in representational terms (“encodings,” “information,” “signals" etc.) and this has been extremely successful in unravelling the mysteries of our most famous double helix. But no geneticist would ever seriously argue that DNA is literally a code. This usage is simply a convenience. Philosophers and cognitive neuroscientists, on the other hand, commonly treat anti-representationalist dissent with contempt and disregard.

There are no cultural innovations in your brain, and that necessarily includes representations and everything else representation enables, from images to computation.

The Delicacy of Instruction

How important is it that educational experiences be challenging? How challenging? And from where should the challenges arise? If such challenges can be just as easily provided by technological sources does this spell the beginning of the end for teachers as we currently understand them?

In the early decades of cinematography it was believed that film had the potential to completely transform education, Thomas Edison even went so far as to proclaim:

"I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. I should say that on average we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture, a visualized education, where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency."

With the benefit of hindsight we can see how misconceived this optimistic vision was, but how could Edison have got it so wrong? The most obvious explanation is that his conception of education was constrained by his meagre understanding of the ways in which knowledge is acquired. Following on from the work of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, it is now widely believed that the most effective forms of learning involve an active process of knowledge construction as opposed to simple passive absorption. All forms of information transmission (film, TV, radio etc.) are therefore necessarily limited in their educational potential since they do not adequately engage the active construction of knowledge.

This may take us closer to the truth but it nonetheless fails to explain why video games for instance, fare no better in their instructive potential (though many games companies are investing significant resources in order to increase the educational value of their products). It would appear that mediated experiences of this kind are simply incapable of providing the necessary form or range of stimulation necessary to generate effective learning. Something else must be required, something that perhaps involves a more acute understanding and application of the role of challenge.

“When parents decide to intervene when a young child is having a bit of difficulty learning to tie their shoes is an important tactical decision. If the parent intervenes too soon, the child may become dependent upon the parent. If the parent provides too little help too late, the child may become frustrated. The parents task – like the teacher’s – is to be tuned in well enough to make the right decisions about when, how much and how.” -Elliot Eisner

As Eisner’s characterisation suggests, this process is an extremely delicate one which may explain why the job of teaching is often such a demanding and unpredictable task. Teaching, it might be argued, can be conceived very simply as a process of creating instructive challenges - challenges that are neither too difficult that they become overwhelming nor too simple that they prove tedious. Between these two poles, lies the productive zone of learning. However, the judgement of how best to pitch challenges in order that they operate as near to the point of being overwhelming as possible without tipping over the edge is an extremely subtle skill. One of the risks with constantly aiming at the most demanding challenges is that students eventually become so fatigued that their tolerance for challenge quickly diminishes. Similarly, if a challenge becomes overwhelming it is likely that students will be all the more wary the next time and the benefits of pushing so hard will have been lost. Optimising instruction in such dynamic circumstances is therefore a highly taxing operation in itself and it is not surprising that most teaching occurs at a more sedate level and pace.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from overwhelming difficulty we find the tedium of undemanding monotony. But, there is another far less obvious hazard that permeates almost the entire spectrum of challenge - it is often forgotten or misunderstood largely because it frequently receives very positive feedback from students. This presents itself as a form of mollycoddling that, while it might seek to support students, neglects to develop both their independence and resilience in the face of the very challenges through which learning most profitably occurs.

This human element, in particular its dimension of fallibility, may provide an alternative explanation for Edison’s grandiose claim. Perhaps he felt that by reducing the human element we might free education of one of its most fickle and uncontrollable aspects. Where human to human instruction is concerned, one hundred percent efficiency would appear to be nothing more than a fantasy. Nonetheless, without a capacity for perceiving and adjusting to the finest details of challenge and motivation it seems unlikely that artificial forms of education could ever reach the pinnacle of efficiency either.

Through the proliferation of online tools and networks it is now possible to engage in an enormously rich and edifying range of informative and educational experiences from the comfort of your own keyboard. Many of these also involve a significant portion of social communication and participation, a variable and adaptive mix of the formal and the informal, the social and the artificial. In this context the role of the teacher would appear to be increasingly threatened. But from a more nuanced perspective it is clear that teaching may not be quite as expendable as some might have us believe.

Since the days of Edison, recorded music, film, TV and the internet have become primary forms of mass entertainment, yet most people continue to value the uniqueness of one-to-one experiences to a far greater degree. Manufactured experiences are rarely as powerful and enduring in memory as those encountered individually and at first hand. Such experiences speak to us directly as the individuals that we believe ourselves to be and we place greater emphasis upon such experiences as a consequence.

Education can neither afford to dispense with the teacher entirely nor place them so centrally that they distract from the goal of learning. Distractions, like so many incidentals in education, need to be avoided as much as possible. The authoritative, domineering or even the nurturing presence of the teacher can become just as much of a distraction as anything else – perhaps even more so. If education is to be truly useful it surely needs to encourage students to generate their own challenges and to pursue them without fear of failure. Challenges that are sought for their own sake in this way are infinitely more rewarding than challenges sought for the transient thrill of institutional approval or a teacher’s praise.

Education then, becomes a process by which students are led to identify and originate their own challenges and to evaluate their progress as they accumulate new realisations and new skills that enable them to tackle yet more challenging tasks. And the teacher’s job? The teacher’s job, in Higher Education at least, is to lead the student to the point where they have no further use of the teacher.

“Science has to catch up to art”

Sticking with the science theme started in my last post, Ted.com just posted this video of Charles Limb talking about some preliminary research into what happens when musicians creatively improvise in an fMRI scanner:

It’s interesting…ish but somehow comes across as a rather naïve attempt to split atoms with an elaborate vacuum cleaner. So far the findings are pretty meager, to say the least, and the questions based on these are very unenlightening:

Just for the fun of it, let’s make a cursory stab at providing some answers to these questions (without the aid of an expensive bunch of wires, magnets and electricity of course):

1: What is creative genius?

Extremely open minded focus.

2: Why does the brain seek creativity?

Because it’s pleasurable, solves problems and has a selection advantage.

3: How do we acquire creativity?

It’s in our genes, but is often inhibited and/or underdeveloped (see next question)

4: What factors disrupt creativity?

Stress, fear, distraction, poverty etc and in some cases their opposites ie: affluence, success, achievement etc (and possibly lying down in fMRI scanners)

5: Can creative behavior be learned?

I've argued in the past that the answer should be Yes, but to a degree this depends on what we mean by “creative” and “learned” and also on not getting too fussy about the difference between "creative behavior" (as the question asks) and creative ability (which seems likely to be influenced by a whole wealth of factors).

And lastly, if creativity behaves in any way differently when you're lying down as opposed to when you're standing up (as anger does¹) then the whole experiment will need to be repeated.

Hmm, it seems like there are probably better uses for an fMRI scanner at this time. Perhaps in the future, with finer instrumentation, better data gathering techniques and more sophisticated questions we might actually get some useful information. But despite this, I’m reminded of something Richard Feynman said about thinking processes and the ways thoughts are generated by different individuals.

This is extraordinary from a couple of perspectives: 1: the contestation of genius and 2: the evidence of, not exactly learning styles² as such, but different cognitive functioning leading to the same result but involving different cognitive load and therefore having differential influence on other cognitive functions (it relates closely to what is called "The Split Attention Effect"³). If Feynman was right, and there seems little reason to doubt it, then the hope of finding a neurological formula for creativity seems likely to be fanciful at best.

External References:
1: The Split Attention Effect
2: Learning Styles
3: Anger behaves differently in fMRI whilst lying down as opposed to standing up.

Homage

Ceci n'est pas une skype

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the Wings of Technology

It's 110 years today since the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French writer, aviator and author of “The Little Prince”. A few days ago I stumbled upon the following quote from his book about airplanes "Wind, Sand and Stars":

"The central struggle of men has ever been to understand one another, to join together for the common weal. And it is this very thing that the machine helps them to do! It begins by annihilating time and space."

This is a futurists vision which in many ways continues to prevail in a world where its actual realisation is reaping havoc with the environment. The problem is not so much our wish to be together but rather our more traditional technologies for achieving this and the attitudes we've developed as a consequence: our desire for the annihilation of space in particular (most often under the auspices of conserved time).

We've all noticed that the faster we travel, the more energy is expended but have we really noticed that the faster we travel the smaller the windows of the vehicle we're travelling in and the more reduced our connection and concern for the space we're passing through? Landscape is becoming something which we no longer wish to dwell in but which we wish to diminish or overcome.

Whatever happened to the idea of being in the moment, of enjoying the journey rather than the destination? Why the great rush and impatience?

A couple of months ago I was due to give a public talk about my art practice in a museum in northern Germany. Unfortunately I was unable to make the journey because of the volcanic ash cloud floating over northern Europe. The curator of the exhibition asked me if I would be able to catch a train instead, but the thought of a long train journey to London followed by an overnight stay and a trip across London to catch the plane followed by another train journey to the museum didn't exactly fill me with excitement. Instead I suggested presenting the talk via Skype and this is what eventually transpired. It wasn't perfect by any means but I'm in little doubt that in future we will see a lot more of this kind of thing because it simply makes sense. If it's really an annihilation of space that we desire then we should probably avoid those polluting little high velocity capsules we travel around in as much as possible.

Timeless Technology

Is there a technology more contemporary yet timeless than sheet glass or mirrors?

A Poetics of the Digital

What I would like to read is a poetics of the digital - a phenomenology of the electronic - reflections upon copper and silicon, aluminium and lithium - a treatise on the caress of digits and luminescent phosphors, rippling codes and fluctuating voltages. Something in the order of Gaston Bachelard’s book The Poetics of Space.

The Mexican poet and writer Octavio Paz has written similarly about how objects gain meaning and significance through use and familiarity.

“The pitcher of water or wine in the middle of the table is a point of convergence, a little sun that invites everyone present. But my wife can transform into a flower vase that pitcher pouring forth our drink at the table. Personal sensibility and imagination divert the object from its ordinary function and create a break in its meaning: it is no longer a recipient to contain liquid but one in which to display a carnation. This diversion and brake link the object to another realm of sensibility: imagination.”

Later, when comparing this relationship with our use of technology Paz is scathing:

"Technology is international; its constructions, methods, and products are the same everywhere. By suppressing national and regional particularities, it impoverishes the world. By spreading all over the globe, technology has become the most powerful agent yet of historical entropy. The negative character of its action may be summed up in a phrase: it makes things uniform but does not unify. It levels the differences between cultures and national styles, but it does not do away with the rivalries and hatreds between peoples and states. After transforming rivals into identical twins, it arms both of them with the same weapons. The danger of technology does not lie solely in the death-dealing nature of many of its inventions, but in the fact that it threatens the very essence of the historical process.”

These are damning words indeed. And in the shadow of their and multiple other critical opinions it's very difficult to seriously consider a poetics of the digital when technology is universally either despised or wantonly and obsessively pursued. But surely someone is able to look into Medusa's eyes and capture a glimpse of something more nuanced and revealing than a petrifying enraging danger or menace? Surely a mirror can be held up that can reflect something other than a phobia or philia of this Gorgon we call the digital?

Which is the more terrifying, the Gorgon or the dazzling shield and sharpened sword which severs the monster's head? Digital technologies are in many ways a conflation of the two; the mirror which mediates fearsome imagery whilst being simultaneously fed by a slithering tangle of cables, each with a different head and its own potent but indecipherable venom.

In some versions of the Greek myth, Medusa's severed head is mounted upon the polished shield whereupon it continues to petrify all foes. This is a more telling vision of technology: an image of terror and captivating attraction, of wild nature harnessed and encapsulated in seamless, reflective, impermeable and understated alloy. It's an image that either fascinates or repels, but little in between. But if we are to truly understand digital technologies we need to step aside from these opposing positions. An entirely different approach is needed: one that brings together an understanding of materiality and myth, phenomenology and history into a scholarly but poetic dialogue which is as formidable and potent as the subject under discussion.

Interactive Art

Balls are pretty interactive things aren’t they? Many of us spend a substantial amount of time interacting with balls of different kinds – mostly through games and sports and frequently with the participation of other people. We kick them around, bounce them on the ground and other surfaces, catch them, chase after them and generally attempt to predict and control their complex motions and interactions. Is this really interaction though, and are these balls really acting “with” us or simply reacting to our physical input or will, as Kaspar Hauser’s benefactor would have it (see previous blog entry: "Ein Kluges Apfelchen")?

There seems to be a lot of debate at the moment (for obvious reasons) about what actually constitutes interactivity and many theories emphasise the evolving nature of the term in relation to the increasing sophistication of technology. Human to human interactivity seems to be the easiest aspect to define and is certainly the most sophisticated and familiar form of interaction we experience on a day to day level. I would argue that it’s also the measure by which we gauge all other interactions. Interestingly though, if we take this as the benchmark, every other kind of interaction simply pales by comparison.

Above all else, human interaction involves intelligence. This highly developed ability, even in young infants (and animals for that matter), facilitates levels of interaction which can only be dreamed of in the most sophisticated computer games. This doesn’t make computer games any less engaging nor does it diminish the value of ball games, but as a way to think about it from a different point of view let’s reverse the situation for a moment: imagine a ball starts to play with us. This would be great wouldn’t it? Perhaps not though – maybe the ball wouldn’t be clever or skilful enough and we’d loose interest or perhaps it would be far better than us and we’d become frustrated by our lack of ability. It’s quite clear therefore that there needs to be a certain equilibrium and reciprocity to maintain our engagement and understanding of what’s going on. This has nothing to do with technical expertise but rather with intelligence: our ability to anticipate and to strategise, to challenge and be challenged by our opponent. This is what makes play “interesting” and it’s also why we quickly become bored whilst playing games on our own, no matter what the level of technical challenge.

So what does this mean for interactive art or more specifically, what does this mean for digital interactive art?

Much of what passes for digital interactive art is actually little more interactive than a ball game: you click the mouse and something changes, you move across a room and a video plays or something revolves, or rises and falls or a light switches on or off. This is not to say that the associated artwork cannot be edifying, enlightening or inspiring but this significance invariably has precious little to do with interactivity as such.

This is the challenge - because without intelligence dynamically feeding it, digital interactive art will always be little more than a novelty in terms of its interactive capabilities. As ever “content”, rather than the means of delivery is paramount. I don’t doubt for a moment that the relationship between content and form is a highly complex one (far too complex for discussion here) but if digital interactive art is to genuinely engage us, then it needs to construct it’s significance out of something quite different than interactivity alone.