Evaluation by Narration

Narration can be a tool to provide context and perspective to a concept. An example was provided in the drawing of a snake that had swallowed an elephant from the book “The little prince”. Most would say they see a picture of a hat, but through narration we can shift the focus to seeing it as a snake. An other example would be picture of the Rabbit-Duck, as made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Storytelling can complement an existing image.

Exploratory play, Filtering and Media Archeology are three related methods. Exploratory play is the method of deconstucting story lines and rearranging the single elements. This can be used to find new inspirations, and is especially useful in future based design. Filtering describes putting a prototype into a situation to see if the outcome would be coherent. Media Archeology is based on the fact that, especially with planned obsolescence, disposed media products are omniresent, and these can be used to be reconfigure and experimented upon. Exemplary for this would be the process of circuit bending, used most in combination with music, where the circuits of often broken toys and gadgets are manipulated, short circuited and exploited in order to create new, often unpredictable results.

Storytelling can be important for selling ones Idea. In a corporate environment it’s important to recognise elements such as strategies, the politics within a system, corporate culture and the emotions of the individuals. Depending on where one places an argument and how prople are approached it can have varying results.

In a wider picture, it is important to remember though that presenting a narrative can have negative effects, especially when a story starts to replace the actual product. Generally, we live in an extensively mediatised and medialised society. The narrative is often a core component, even in fields traditionally distanced from media. This created a landscape that can be treacherous to navigate, and lines between complementing stories and straight up misleading content can be blurry.

New perspectives can also be found via tactics such as constructing alternate presents and speculative futures, asking quite simply “What if?”. The resulting oddness of a scenario can be enlightening to situations in our reality. Resulting material and prototypes are useful to present to professionals as also the general public, as they mostly play off peoples needs and desires. For instance, spaceX sells a potential future of space exploration, using what are basically large scale prototypes to spread their message.

I see a certain potential also in looking at complete utopias, and from there starting to base them in reality, approaching a narrative from the other end as opposed to starting with a product and then hyperbolically constructing a story how it could save us all.