PowerPoint in Public

1. PowerPoint in Public David Stark

2. Demonstrations

3. 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.

4. 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).

5. Architects’ case: WTCThe PowerPoint presentations of the 7 Architectural finalists

6. Colin Powell’s case: WMBPowell’s UN PowerPoint Presentation

7. 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?

8. 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

9. My gloss on Tufte’s critique of PowerPoint 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.

10. The scripted format pre-forms the performance.

11. However valid, Tufte’s critique ironically ignores that the cognitive style of PowerPoint is as a medium that combines words and visual images.

14. 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.

15. The grammar of PowerPoint example: exact over-image, the “fill-in effect”

21. The power of association

33. “Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you’re about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored”.

36. Powell: “Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts”.

37. Powell (repeatedly): “Here you will see...”

38. PowerPoint is a transportation system Import to transport. Take the audience “there” as eye-witnesses. Powell: “Here you will see...”

39. “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

40. Click to add title... But also, click to add text, images, animations, databases, sound.

41. Norman Foster demonstrates the structural engineering of his tower.

42. Who’s demonstrating?

43. Architects demonstrate

44. In this digital rendering architect Norman Foster demonstrates the viability of his design for memorial voids on the WTC footprints.

45. PowerPoint performativity

46. Architects demonstrate that their project is ...

47. Inspired

49. Already a fitting historical subject

50. Easily evacuated