Data noise #3
In class we were discussing what an experience was and the relationship of it with data. We began by trying to understand what an experience by looking at factors which evoked an experience such as effort, chance, the first time trying something, care, intent to enjoy and emotions. After discussing these factors we came to some sort of an agreement that experience was a deviation from your own standard experience.
Can we experience data or information?
Yes. When we see data or information it evokes emotion and can change one’s own perspective of that subject that the data or information is representing.
Can sound help us to have these encounters or experience?
Yes. Sound can emphasise this information (or even emphasise the importance of the information) and change our behaviour. When Rap music emerged people experienced a social and cultural change. “Hodges’s articulation of the “agonized compromise” of participation in a community, where her participation is like complying or taking part despite feelings to the contrary, is simply not expressed. The “felt life” is not engaged in many socially oriented or culturally oriented explanations of people’s participation in the community, including the technologically mediated community. If we are not to hover above the human ground, we must engage with the felt life, “which might as well be called experience.”(McCarthy, J. Wright, P, 2004, p.49)
Why might this change in our understanding?
“The openness of ‘experience’ is likely to become confusing unless we do some ground clearing, and that is quite hard to do for a couple of reasons. One is that experience is ever present. We are always engaged in experience even when we are trying to stand back from it to describe it.” (McCarthy, J. Wright, P, 2004, p.50) However, John Dewey (1934) argues John Dewey ” Experience occurs continuously because the interaction of live creature and environing conditions are involved in the very process of living. Under conditions of resistance and conflict, aspects and elements of the self and the world that are implicated in this interaction qualify experience with emotions and ideas so that the conscious intent emerges. Oftentimes, however, the experience is inchoate. Things are experienced but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience.”
This session has made me think of experiences of those who don’t get to use all their senses like the blind and deaf. My grandma being a person who is currently experiencing hearing loss as she ages, it would be interesting to see how I can benefit a person experiencing hearing loss or deafness.
Reference:
Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience in Art and its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory. Ross, Stephen David (ed). State University of New York Press; 3rd Revised edition edition. Accessed from:
McCarthy, J. Wright, P. (2004) Technology as Experience. United States: MIT Press