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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.
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PowerPoint in Public David Stark
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: WTCThe 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
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.
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”
“Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you’re about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored”.
Powell: “Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts”.
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
Click to add title... But also, click to add text, images, animations, databases, sound.
Norman Foster demonstrates the structural engineering of his tower.
In this digital rendering architect Norman Foster demonstrates the viability of his design for memorial voids on the WTC footprints.
