Digital Visual Literacy

A conversation with David Winkelman about, what we call “Digital Visual Literacy” —  the skill of supporting conversation and remote calls with visuals to enable people to work more productively together. 

Together with David we discussed: 

  • our innate need for clarity
  • impact of visuals in communication
  • trust and rapport among meeting participants 
  • Importance of humour 
  • our online course: Visual Supercharge on Digital Visual Literacy

Listen to the conversation:

Watch the conversation:


Transcript

Bart
Welcome to the Core Concept podcast and welcome to the conversation with David Winkelman about what we call digital visual literacy, which is the skill of supporting conversations and remote calls with visuals. David has an established change manager and meeting facilitator who shares with me some of his magic that he uses to get people to work productively together.

I know David for years now, during COVID, we both recognise that all our remote conversations could be better supported with visuals. So we design an online course to help people out. We talk about that course during our conversation, among other topics such as eel recognise impact of visuals in communication, our human need for clarity, building trust among participants in meetings, and importance of humour. Together with David, I share a deep passion for tools and methods that empower people. I hope that our conversation proves that. By the way, we have used explain everything whiteboards to collaboratively exchange visuals during our talk. Therefore, for those only listening to this episode, I strongly suggest watching it instead on YouTube or another platform.

And now, I bring your mind discussion with David.

Bart:
Hi, I’m here with David Winkelman. Welcome to the podcast. Good evening, Bart. It’s always excellent to be with you. Although I should say it’s not a regular podcast, because as an expert in visual communication, and visual facilitation, you might probably want to show us a thing or two.

Yeah, yeah. David, there are few things I’d like to discuss today with you. Well, first of all, we’d like to learn from you how communication can be enhanced with the use of visuals. And this cause How can this be done remotely remote calls like this one. And that the and perhaps we could speak some more about what we have created together. But why don’t we begin from you introducing yourself, together with your background, shall we?

David:
I have been a management consultant to change management consultants in particular, and a visual facilitator for a number of years. And visual facilitation means that I can on a board or a surface of some kind, I can capture what people are saying what’s coming out of their mouth, and I can make it visual, I can create a visual tapestry in real time, so they can instantly see that I’m hearing and if we’re doing it in a group setting, everybody can see that whatever the thoughts and ideas are being captured, with nothing being lost, and then we can all work with those elements on a neutral shared a surface. So we can greatly accelerate and enhance almost any conversation or discussion. Because we have visual elements and to maintain a visual focus. I need to step back and unpack something for people because it’s not something that we normally discuss. And that is the very nature of being human beings and being thinking, conscious, often unconsciously operating creatures. So if we take a look at all the tools are that are available to us as modern human beings, tools, they’re inside us, and everything that we’ve created outside us. I would say what we start with is our mind, right? That’s like the basic tool. And so we are blessed to have two minds. One is a conscious mind. Okay, consciously pour things into. And the other one is our unconscious mind. That’s just filling up that we’re drawing from and it’s really the unconscious mind is, as most of us know, that does most of the heavy lifting. There’s so much in life that we don’t have to think about because we have unconscious minds. It’s it’s trained, you know, it’s all of our automatic, habitual functioning, all of our conditioned responses that’s automatic. You don’t have to think when we’re riding a bicycle. Our bodies just know what to do. So take the idea of these two minds and how they’re wired, how they’re set up. What we see is that our whole reality is based on being clear about what health what and how things are we and we are taking in most of our information visually, right? When we go to school, we don’t ever have to be taught how to see, or how to interpret a filter that just comes naturally. On the other hand, everything else, even speaking, certainly reading and writing, we go to school for for 15 years. So there’s a giant difference between this mechanism of seeing and the other forms of knowing, right. And so as part of being clarity seeking creatures, I think we have basically three ways of seeing things. Well, one is we see through the mechanism of our eyeballs in our sight. And, you know, light photon images are portrayed on the back of our eyes, and then we, we create meaning. The second way, is that we can visualise with things like this. We have symbols, we have words, and we have the ability to interact, and people suggest things and we design and we draw, so visualisation via representation is a huge way that we see in form reality. And then the third thing that has we have going for us as visual creatures, is that we have imagination, so we can create a thin air, there’s been a tremendous amount of research on the fact that we are clarity seeking creatures, and we need, we need those visuals, they’re essential, they’re critical to our operation. There’s some research that suggests that 75% of our reality comes in through our eyes, and is then, you know, interpreted categorised put into classifications, and our ability to see patterns which we’ve been cultivating since we opened our eyes and started looking at facial expressions. We have incredible ability to see patterns, to see details to pick out key details and to notice anomalies, for instance.

Bart
I think, that research finds is that we find things more memorable if we if we take them in through our eyes. There’s the just, it’s beyond comparison, even if you take verbal input, right, or any other in comparison to what you can pick in through your own eyes.

David
Absolutely. And there’s been further research done that suggests that when we see things, as well as when we use things, we literally have what’s called a forgetting curve, that if that if that image isn’t reinforced in some way, or we haven’t seen it, we’ll forget things in a matter of minutes.

And so you were talking about complexity earlier. And part of complexity is that we start with things that are general and conceptual and nonspecific, often invisible. And we cover a lot of this in our course. And it’s and because they’re nonspecific, or they’re invisible, or they’re conceptual, it makes it harder to visualise, if not impossible, so we have, we can attach a verbal label. But if we’re not spinning that around, and applying specific pictures to it, that conceptualization can break down in a matter of minutes. 

Bart
Was that the trick you’ve been using during those large meetings you were facilitating in the past? 

David
Absolutely. And when you say large meetings, I’m going to show you a picture, okay? Because these meetings featured a variety of methodologies and techniques with large groups of people that made it possible for these teams of people from one company. And typically they were from Fortune 100 or 500 companies to come in with the aim of developing or designing a strategic plan over a three day period, and I’m talking 50 6080 people coming together. So their time together had to be enormously valuable and have a big result. These these design sessions, as we used to call them, were very, very expensive, and sometimes they were betting the company on this group of people being able to accomplish their mission. And so the promise was that these techniques and this is

asembly could effectively accomplish six to nine months worth of work in a week’s time, or even less than a week’s time. And probably the key to that was making everything as visual as possible. So that people were always on the same page, they always have the ability to, to zoom in or out to look at the big picture, and focus in on details as well. 

Bart
I see a lot of clarity seeking creatures on that on that photo. But it gets me wonder what you mentioned before,  that your role was to lay those ideas on the board as pictures, right? Did it happen often that you asked participants to come to the board and represent something by themselves without them being scared of, you know, putting a picture on the board by themselves without your support.

David
After a while it happened. But initially, people were reticent. And that’s why they had a set of people who were skilled, so that our team of visualizers could be there on hand to do what was needed proficiently. But after a while, people got up and did it by themselves. And it was, of course, very empowering. And I think people will always remember that their first experience inside what we call an Accelerated Solutions Environment. 

Bart
Yeah, because I can imagine that’s scary to many, you know, to come to the board, just recreate something with a simple drawing. How do you deal with this? anxiety and fear?

David
Well, if you’re if you’ve got the spark of motivation in you, then you realise that it’s really critical to see this question as an empowering question. How do you see this right? Or what does this look like to you? And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a pretty drawing, and, and or beautiful. What, what matters is that you represent something authentically for another person.

Bart
Right. But then again, people can push back and I can imagine them saying: no, I don’t do drawings!

David 
Anybody can do this. And we all know that anybody can do that. And the magic of that visual brain that I was describing earlier, is that that visual brain instantly. And of course, recognises that as a human being. So we can either leave it at that, or we can start to you know, embellish it. Yeah, it represents it symbolises a person. But again, it’s not about being an artist, right? Not at all. No, not at all. It’s about coming from here to hear that other people can share it, and interact with it, and then modify it or ask questions about it. That’s the important thing is that we’re looking at something. And that is that becomes a shared common experience. 

Bart
What is important is that this community gets created during a workshop or a meeting, where people want to share and want to participate contribute to the board, right.

David
Yeah, I think that, that requires a certain safety zone, right, that requires a certain experience or expectation that people feel safe doing that.

Bart
And so let’s talk about that, that safety factor for a moment now. Because eventually what I’d like us to do is to arrive at conditions that are essential for creating this, you know, engagement and meaningful interaction between participants.

David
It’s really psychological and emotional safety, which is social. Right? Right. So if we, if we, if we break that down and look at what makes that possible, I think sort of three things make that possible.

The first thing is that who’s  at the table? (Draws on the whiteboard) that’s very sloppy. I’m sorry.

Bart
That’s fine, we have talked about this,  it’s just-in-time drawing, that’s fine. Yes. We’re not artists here, that’s not about it. Right? 

David
Right, we have a certain amount of rapport, or things in common, we may be from the same place, or we have the same aims or goals or intended outcomes, that we share the same overall context, we’ll come back to that later. So that’s, that’s one really important thing is that we have enough rapport between us. And the second thing I would say is that is do we have a certain amount of respect for each other, okay. Which means that we mutually think, well, that person has a right to be here, or I know why that person is here. Maybe I respect your skills, and you respect my skills, or respect each other’s time, there has to be that mutuality. Because that’s going to lead moment by moment by moment, layer by layer, action by action to the third, the third piece, which is trust, which is as, as we know, it’s a very delicate, fragile condition, trust, we, we do build that moment, by moment, and it can be erased in moments. And so I think the thing that we want to be aware of is the thing that erases trust or that undermines trust, is something we could call judgement, or specifically negative judgement. Which is, you know, criticising, making something wrong, dismissing it, not not being accepting of it. And when it comes to people representing things on the board, on a common space, or in a common Canvas, we need to be very open and very fluid and very non judgmental and accepting of whatever people do to encourage that trust, and therefore, that social and psychological safety. And there’s a lot of ways to do that. I have to laugh at myself a lot. That also is an element of creating trust and psychological safety is that we’re willing to be human, and make mistakes, and laugh at ourselves and be spontaneous, and not be constrained and rigid, because that’s not going to help you at all. But she uses humour a lot, right? During those meetings, also to help yourself building this safety. 

Bart
Tell us some more how you do that? 

David
Well, I think it’s sometimes humour but not necessarily making a joke. It’s being light. It’s being spontaneous. It’s being in the moment, you know, fluid with people so that you can grab a moment when it occurs. And Lighten up, you know, who doesn’t appreciate laughter?

We even have a diagram. Yes, that comes out of a book. And you know that diagram by heart? 

Bart
I can try to recreate it quickly. So it’s that you have an I’m going to do that with just my finger. Right? On the opposite side, you have the anchor, which represents the forces of gravity, and on the other side, you have a balloon, which represents what we call lightness, lightness, the levity. So you can offset the weight of the world, and what have you, with a bit of sense of humour that we call levity. And it’s actually a diagram that we took from the book “Humor, seriously”. . It’s a good one, isn’t it? Yes.

David
And I love how you got the movement in here as well. It shows how phenomenal these these tools are. 

Bart

Let’s talk about it. Because so far, we spoke about the importance of visuals during regular meetings. But what about those remote conversations like the one we have now? 

David
I think it’s always appropriate to start with a big picture or to seven context. Make this big picture. more clear. Yeah. When we start with a big picture, particularly because everybody understands a map, we understand the destination. And if we start using the tools right away, and we get into the visualisation, then it leaves less to wonder about because we know where people are going, and where they’re coming from. We don’t have to do such a huge job of interpreting and wondering, why is this meaningful to me? Why how is this relevant? How am I going to use this? We can get to those key questions faster when we show people the big picture, and we show them what our destination is in that big picture. 

Bart
So in a way, you’re creating a map for a conversation, right?

David
Yeah, because we, we all understand maps, they’re part of the toolset, right? As clarity seeking creatures. And whether it’s a map, or a spreadsheet, or a diagram, we can make sense of something faster. Because of our pattern recognition rock and make sense of something faster, we can retain it more meaningfully, we can classify we can do so much more, when things are in visual form. Right. And that isn’t to exclude anything verbal. I mean, I always need somebody to tell me, you know, here we are over here. Because it could take a while to find out. But if somebody says we’re over here, or that’s our destination, and here’s where we’re coming from, then I can zoom right in. I mean, sometimes figuratively, sometimes, literally. And I could see all the detail in between. And that builds credibility and trust. And it helps people move, get forward faster. Well, a lot more momentum can be built that way. 

Bart
Being devil’s advocate, I’d say you know, you’re a pro, and you know how to use those tools, and you’re very proficient, creating or recreating something on the board during a call like this, but others might not be so good with their computers or tablets they’re using during the conversation, and how do you engage them? So they’re not only passively taking in information during the call, but also contribute to the board?

David
Well, if we start with, you know, we start with that, that question of what does that look like to you? Right? That encourages people to either represent something for themselves, even if it’s simple as as, as writing a word. Because we all can do that, right? And we can all create a circle, right? We can all create a triangle, when we put these things together, we can all draw a line.

With these basics, we continue to ask the question, what does that look like to you? Okay, what’s your big picture? What are the elements that make up what you think of are the conditions for this journey, let’s say, right, you know, part of what makes us human going back to clarity seeking creatures that we are, we’d love to tell stories, we love to make things up, we love to provide ourselves with explanations. And to that degree, we need those stories. They help explain our, our world and our behaviour and what’s happening when we can’t always see what’s happening. So we can fill a board very, very fast once we operate on the basis of I want to hear from everybody, we need to hear from everybody, even if all you’re doing is highlighting a word and saying yeah, I agree with that. It’s easier to do.

Bart
So when you are with someone in the same room and you’re using a napkin it’s easier than using computers or tablets. With them it’s a little bit more difficult. So how those skills can be learned telling me, Davi?

David
I think you’re hinting at the course that we created, called, called Visual Supercharge

Bart
Yes, yes, we did. So tell us about it? 

David
Well, this course is only four and a half hours long, roughly in length. It’s divided into 17 really easy to watch episodes. And it’s a it’s a demonstration and exploration, something like what people saw here today, of all these concepts and the tools and the skills and various situations that we suggest the tools and skills can be applied to because really it’s all about application. You know, the tools by themselves won’t do anything for you. The skills have to be applied to real world challenging situations like how can our meetings be more engaging, more productive, more, more fun, more creative. Those are real challenges, because we’re all annoyed, frustrated by a meeting or a conversation, even that is unproductive, and doesn’t really allow a deeper authentic connection, where we’re just maybe going through the motions and throwing out a lot of terminology and a lot of concepts. And we’re not fully tracking with each other. And that, you know, that that ability to follow along and get somewhere is really important.

And if we don’t feel that at the end of a conversation, we say to ourselves, Well, that was a waste of time. Yeah. And when we do start someplace and end up in a different place, and we feel like we’ve made progress, we think, and we feel that was great.

Bart
What I like about the course is that it was created remotely. The entire course we it’s, it’s something we recorded over the course of a few months, without even meet each other. 

David
We certainly didn’t share our geography. We clearly aren’t the same age, you speak three languages I speak one. There were a lot of things that were fortunately we shared English. And I appreciate the fact that English is your third round 

Bart
And we share language of visuals. 

David
That’s what we shared, we share this deep passion for for using visuals, but I think was I think it’s also a deep passion for and I’m just gonna write that word. Uh huh. For empowering people. We can look at the visuals but  I think it’s the empowerment that comes to people when they use this ability that we have — our ability to see to visualise and to imagine amounts to almost a superpower. It is under utilised. And I think we both feel that. 

Bart
And  I think you’re right, and that the report is the key word here. So yes, we just decided at some point that we need to do this, we need to share what we know about the techniques, the tools, the ways methods and record that for others to use. So here’s the address — dvl.expert

If you’d like if you’re interested in the course that DVL dot expert for you the courses. That’s the title visual supercharge online course. Because as you just said, we think of using visuals as a form of super power. 

David 
Yeah. So join us, share a canvas, let that spark come into you. Because that spark, when you’re empowered, will probably change your ability to become even more effective influencer. 

Bart
Right, David, thanks for sharing your thoughts on that topic. And it was great not only to listen to you, but also to see your thoughts laid out on this board. So thank you one more time. 

David
Well, you’re welcome 

Bart 
It was great to work with you on that course. 

David 
For us it’s play. And that’s really what we want. Everyone listening to feel like this power is meant to be explored and experimented with and, and, and use as much as possible. 

Bart
But shouldn’t conversation really be more playful? It’s easier to convey your points that way don’t you to think. Yeah, so we encourage you trying that and let us know what you think. But for the time being. Thanks, David, for sharing your thoughts with us. 

David
You’re entirely welcome

Resources

Here are the resources we discussed during our conversation:

  • A Thousand Brains
    Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know, and the origin of high-level thought
  • Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
    “The ultimate guide to using the magical power of funny as a tool for leadership and a force for good.”—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author
  • The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
    How computer scientists and philosophers are defining the biggest question of our time - how will we create intelligent machines that will improve our lives rather than complicate or even destroy them?
  • Data teams
    How to integrate data teams into organization in an effective way, enabling executive data science practices.
  • Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History
    An account of the cultural and intellectual history of how Americans have lived with image and information since XXI century. It blends historical synthesis with insightful orienting narratives of eras, analyzing particular dimensions of them.
  • The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
    A grand narrative of human history in which knowledge with is multiple facets serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution.
  • How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now
    An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them
  • The Next Enlightenment
    The Next Enlightenment argues that most of humanity’s problems are the result of a limited level of consciousness. It is both a political manifesto and a practical manual on how to create social conditions that will allow each of us to achieve our true purpose
  • The Study of Language
    Introduction to the study of language, its origins along with linguistic relativity, cognitive and social categories.
  • Zero to One
    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1.
  • The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business
    Based on long-term research and testing of the creative thinking process, The Creative Thinking Handbook helps to generate more ideas and find brilliant solutions for any professional challenge.
  • Strategic Intuition
    William Duggan has conducted pioneering research on strategic intuition and for the past three years has taught a popular course at Columbia Business School on the subject. He now gives us this eye-opening book that shows how strategic intuition lies at the heart of great achievements throughout human history.
  • Make Yourself Clear
    Make Yourself Clear explains the many parallels between teaching and business and offer companies, both large and small, concrete advice for building the teaching capacity of their salespeople, leaders, service professionals, and trainers.
  • Skin in the Game
    "Skin in the Game” provides a meta guide to risk exposure and how the fragility works. It’s not so much exploration of strategies for dealing with uncertainty, it’s more of a deep intellectual dive into origins of thinking about risks and its impact on politics, businesses, belief systems - across different magnitudes of scale.
  • The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
    An insightful exploration of the relationship between technological advances and work, from preindustrial society through the Computer Revolution.
  • Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects, Rights
    The book explores how data has acquired such an important capacity . Expert international contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims.
  • Theory of the Image
    The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The current „Age of Image” author calls a „Copernican revolution in our time”. Theory of the Image offers the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition.
  • Superminds
    Superminds shows that instead of fearing the rise of artificial intelligence we should be focusing on what we can achieve by working with computers – because together we will change the world.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Group Creativity and Innovation
    The book covers recent theoretical, empirical, and practical developments that provide a solid basis for the practice of collaborative innovation
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity
    The handbook introduces creativity scholarship by summarising its history, major theories and assessments, how creativity develops across the lifespan, and suggestions for improving creativity.
  • Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
    How our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. A synthesis of history, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, sociology, economics, epidemiology, statistics, and more
  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
    Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues that the left brain makes for a wonderful servant, while the right side takes the position of the more reliable and insightful master.
  • Possible Minds on AI
    Intellectual impresario, John Brockman, assembles twenty-five of the most important scientific minds, for an unparalleled round-table examination about the mind, thinking, intelligence and what it means to be human.
  • Surveillance Capitalism
    The book delivers an abundance of information, insights, and counsel on, what Shoshana calls, the darkening of the digital age. It is about the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, and un unprecedented new form of power.
  • Humanomics
    Smith and Wilson show how Adam Smith's model of sociality can re-humanize twenty-first century economics by undergirding it with sentiments, fellow feeling, and a sense of propriety - the stuff of which human relationships are built.
  • Team Human
    Douglas Rushkoff wrote this book to help as many people as possible who now struggle in the world of today. It feels as if civilization itself were on the brink, and that we lack the collective willpower and coordination necessary to address issues of the very survival of our species." He then asserts, "It doesn't have to be this way."
  • When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures
    A set of practical strategies to embrace differences and work successfully across increasingly diverse business cultures. Publication coming from a chairman of an international institute of cross-cultural training with offices in over 30 countries and founder of the quarterly magazine Cross Culture
  • AI superpowers
    On how China caught AI fever and implemented government goals (with benchmarks) for 2020, 2025 in an attempt to become the world center of AI innovation by 2030.
  • Living in a Real-Time World: 6 Capabilities to Prepare Us for an Unimaginable Future
    We have less and less time to think, less and less time to get in sync with what's happening. We cannot trust conventional wisdom to guide us. The book explores explores six conversational capabilities that we can cultivate to navigate uncertainty
  • Visual Consulting
    Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change shows how visual practice can combine with dialogue and change methods to get more creative and sustainable results. The practices can be applied to organizational and diverse, cross-boundary consulting projects.
  • Postmodern Theory and Progressive Politics
    the postmodern moment was a necessary one, or will have been if we rise to the occasion to arrive at a new and more textured humanism.
  • The book of Why
    The subject of causation has preoccupied philosophers at least since Aristotle. The absence, however, of an accepted scientific approach to analyzing cause and effect is not merely of historical or theoretical interest. The book covers how understanding causality has revolutionized science so far and will revolutionize AI.
  • The Meaning Revolution
    Bringing together economics and conflict resolution, counselling and mindfulness, Kofman provides a leadership framework that is counterintuitive to the regular MBA practices but based on a very firm foundation - the meaning.
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook For Business Leaders
    A practical guide for business leaders looking to get value from the adoption of machine learning technology.
  • Measure What Matters: OKRs
    One of the best books on management, tasks, goals and their measurement. Full of stories from successful companies (like Google).
  • Data Science
    Data science primer explaining its evolution, relation to machine learning, current uses, data infrastructure issues, and ethical challenges.
  • Cultural Evolution People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World
    Regarded as one of the most important works in the social sciences in decades, Cultural Evolution argues that people's values and behavior are shaped by the degree to which survival is secure.
  • Reinventing Capitalism in the age of Big Data
    Data is replacing money as the driver of market behavior. Big finance and big companies will be replaced by small groups and individual actors who make markets instead of making things
  • Enlightenment Now
    Steven Pinker argues that humanism (a reasoned commitment to maximizing human flourishing), science, and democracy have resulted in substantial, measurable human progress over the last 500 years.
  • Human-in-the-loop Cyber-Physical Systems
    An essential primer on a rapidly emerging Internet-of-Things concept, focusing on human-centric applications. An indispensable resource for researchers and app developers eager to explore HiTL concepts and include them in their designs.
  • The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life
    The Qualified Self offers a new perspective on how social media users construct and distribute 'self-portraits' through media technologies. A truly original revision of 'mediated memories' and a much-needed update to the age of connectivity.
  • The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
    The book brings together research on various topics of limited reach that, when combined, speak to the outrageous gall of the mind in recreating reality to its own liking, and then covering its tracks.
  • The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts
    Scientific management asked us to be efficient. Now, we are asked to be agile. But what does this mean for the everyday lives we lead?
  • Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts
    The book investigate how visual and material features of early English books, documents, and other artefacts support - or potentially contradict - the linguistic features
  • No ego
    The book challenges the traditional beliefs on employee engagement and traditionalist leadership. It explains why it is time to move on and take on alternative takes on employee engagement.
  • Visual Thinking: Empowering People and Organisations through Visual Collaboration
    The book provides an informative, easy to follow and fun introduction into the basics of visual thinking and drawing. It is unique by applying these visual thinking and drawing techniques to everyday business settings.
  • The Cultural Dimension of Global Business
    The book provide an essential foundation for understanding the impact of culture on global business and global business on culture.
  • The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment
    Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction.
  • How to Take Smart Notes
    The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique.
  • From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
    In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could, in fact, have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection.
  • Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters with Cultural Difference
    A collection of dialogues on interpreting conversations from the founder of intercultural communication training and consulting firm. 1998 text revised as second edition
  • The Real Internet of Things
    The book provides a view into our future reality. The amount of data we have today and will have in the future will be leveraged to augment our daily lives.
  • Whiteboard: Business Models that Inspire Action
    Hand-drawn by the author, this creative collection of illustrations, inspirational quotes, and savvy business models shares one purpose: to spark conversations and evolve companie
  • Utopia for Realists
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  • The Master Algorithm
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< Back to conversations

Empowering students with technology

A conversation with Michelle Williams, the ignitED teacher about technology adoption in schools and how digital devices in the classroom are essential to close achievement gaps.

Core concepts we discussed:

  • Why technology is a necessity in the classroom
  • What the benefit of putting students into their teacher’s shoes are
  • How to succeed in getting the devices for students
  • suggestions for teachers who have so far avoided technology

Listen to the conversation:



< Back to conversations

Visual Storytelling in Health Literacy

During this in-depth conversation with Dr. David Grew, a radiologist and physician, we explore how the innovative art of visual storytelling can support communication between medical professionals and their patients.

Core concepts we discussed:

  • Importance of Health Literacy
  • Using visuals to get to the core of complex issues
  • The paradox of using computers and software for more human connection
  • Visuals as shortcuts to understanding
  • Prioritizing authenticity over polished perfection

Listen to the conversation:


And here’s the map of various concepts we flagged during our conversation. Use controls in the lower-right corner to zoom-in.


< Back to conversations

The science of visual storytelling

Exploration of the science behind how we learn. A conversation with Reshan Richards, educator, writer and co-founder of Explain Everything whiteboard.

We humans are storytellers. It’s the stories that carry ideas no matter what technology we support ourselves in the process. In the conversation we look into five pieces of scientific research to explore correlation between the nature of representation and clarity.

Listen to the conversation:


Transcript

B.A. Gonczarek

I’m here with Reshan Richards, welcome Reshan. 

Reshan is a researcher, educator, and a writer of two books on technology and leadership, with the last book titled Make Yourself Clear on how to use a teaching mindset to be understood. Reshan also co-founded a whiteboarding platform used for teaching in many schools across the glob and it’s where we teamed up. And this cross-roads of technology and education is something that I’m sure will be inspiring for our listeners when we discuss the science of how we learn. Was my introduction of your background accurate Reshan?

B.A. Gonczarek

I’m here with Reshan Richards welcome Reshan.Reshan is a researcher, educator, and a writer of two books on technology and leadership, with the last book titled Make Yourself Clear on how to use a teaching mindset to be understood. Reshan also co-founded a whiteboarding platform used for teaching in many schools across the glob and it’s where we teamed up. And this cross-roads of technology and education is something that I’m sure will be inspiring for our listeners when we discuss the science of how we learn. Was my introduction of your background accurate Reshan?

Reshan Richards

Oh, I think so. It was a very kind and generous introduction. Thank you. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Great. So, to begin, let me confront you with this thought. We humans are storytellers no matter what technology we use in the process. The stories are very efficient keras for ideas, would you agree?

Reshan Richards

I would absolutely agree with that statement.

B.A. Gonczarek

There are two interesting avenues to explore: On the receiver’s end – there’s the question of “how we learn”, on the presenter’s end – how do we provide stories?  The right combination of both is essential in education, to learn things, it is also essential in persuasion outside educational realm. The better we tell our stories the more we improve chances for being understood. Right?

So my goal for today is then to explore with you the scientific foundations of visual storytelling. Let’s try to provide for the benefit of our listeners. What are the underlying facts of storytelling, we gathered scientific papers were inspired with and we’ll use those for our discussions will be doodling and sketching while exploring the papers. So if any listener would want to see us doing that, please use YouTube link provided with the podcast. 

Now we’re Reshan, we have five stunning articles to discuss and I’m looking for a good starting points, maybe let’s cover the difference between the verbal and textual first. 

So, this one comes from knowledge Media Research Center in Germany, and the article asks what improves learning results, text or pictures, while the bulk of existing research is focused on the sequence in which text or picture is provided in learning. This paper, however, operates under the assumption that it is not the sequence rather the function of text or picture in the process of learning. So they look at the function and they defined text. It’s actually in this part here. Then define text as verbal coat in a short or long prose Or instructions, let’s say. However, pictures come in different forms as less or more abstract representations of objects that still contain some similarities. So pictures in the research can be a photo, but also a doodle, or a map diagram, graphic organizer, or let’s say concept map. And the conclusion the way I see it is that the type of information to be learned dictates the way it should be presented. Basically, some materials are better one learned when provided us text other if they come in form of a picture, or they also suggest that the complexity of information is the key. And they conclude, acknowledging that their work is more of a guideline for future research server. Reshan, what’s your perspective as a teacher and a graphical facilitator at the same time, what your experience tells you about using pictures versus text?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it’s a great kind of area of thought. And I’m chuckling as I’m looking at the closing statement from this research, because to degree, almost all new contemporary research on emerging phenomenon always include this idea that hey, well, this should now be extended into a further study, which it’s, it’s so true, right? Like not, nothing is conclusive yet. And I think what’s also interesting about what you shared in thinking about the, you know, that it’s about choice, right? So if you’ve got an idea or concept or some bit of knowledge or understanding that you’re trying to convey or build in somebody, you’re certainly going to make choices about, you know, either the sequencing or even the more binary choice of text or image as like, well what’s the best medium to convey that, but I think, you know, that that’s still to a degree one directional so as a teacher The other thing that we’re also going to be thinking about is about the receiver. And the reality and kind of the emerging research that validates it that people have different modalities that depending on the concept or content that they might be more dominant in. So for example, you know, there might be some people who for certain types of topics or disciplines that are much better auditory listener, so we’re and then some people, while they might be highly visual, they might be visual towards text and reading narrative. And another visual learner might also be much more into photo and imagery. So ultimately, as as people who are trying to communicate to teach trying to persuade, as you mentioned before, there’s just it starts with a baseline understanding that you do have to be really intentional about the format that you’re presenting the content information in. And then you also need to be really thoughtful about the learning styles and channels of that audience member.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when looking from my perspective, when I learned complex things, I like picture to form a structure and then leave the details to sit inside of a picture inside of picture as a text. So it’s essentially the same idea as infographics, where we, we mix graphical form with textual content. So  this “blending” thing is it’s something that there is no clean part between one modality and the other that you suggested is rather at blend to convey an idea, isn’t it?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. Blended media, mixed media, mixed modalities. I think anybody who’s interested in, you know, the types of things we’re talking around here. Those would be those would be good. words to describe it like and, you know, yeah, this blend this mix of, of a representation or presentation of information.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. So let me present you a second piece of research that discusses the suitability of medium again, pictures of loads when communicating with either people we know, or strangers. It turns out that we’re inclined to use different medium. When sharing thoughts with someone that is known to us and different when we communicate with someone we don’t have much in common. So the authors here, they describe six experiments to build the evidence that it is, in fact, the distance that sets our preference for choosing between using text and pictures. And again, in this paper as before authors looking to unique characteristics of both pictures and text. Pictures are defined as concrete representation as analogies of the real world. While words nearly always are abstract, with arbitrary relationships to their corresponding subjects. They even stayed that the word is actually a category that refers to a broad range of concrete objects. Words carry the essence of an object, but usually not its properties. So in result, it turns out that pictures are more often use among friends. And the use of words translated better over distance. What’s your reaction to that?

Reshan Richards

That’s so interesting, because I would have expected it to be the inverse and mostly because when trying to have the challenges of distance and proximity or lack of process activity, you would think that the more concrete representation would be helpful for kind of eliminating misunderstanding. So this is really interesting that it’s actually, at least for people’s preferences, what they measured in practice, that those who were working with known people tended to use more images. But part of that also, I’m so curious that like, in their work, is it also that familiarity means that in one ways, you’re being concrete but you’re also not doing some of the formalities as far as supplying kind of preamble or context for the thing that is sent. Whereas with a stranger or across distance, you almost do have to use more words to kind of set up somebody for whatever is trying to be communicated. I also thought about you know, I’ve done a lot of work and teaching across distance and having meetings and conversations and you know, small and large video conference. rooms. And I have found that those types of meetings are always more effective when either there’s an existing relationship that you have had some closer in person time with the parties so that your first meeting isn’t the one that’s there, or if it’s going to be like a regular ongoing thing that you you find a way to blend it together. And I what I mean by this is, you know, a lot of companies are certainly looking to do more sales motions, more customer service, customer success types of things online, but I almost I think it becomes a mistake based on like, some of the things you’re describing here to think it can be 100% substitute for that real kind of close on connected engagement. And I think the companies who are succeeding are realizing you can be more selective about when you do have those in person content. But then you can still do a lot of the other work using digital media light, like, you know, video conferences or what we’re doing a collaborative whiteboard to still like maintain and strengthen that relationship. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. I think in that setting, you would want to find a solution to close the gap to get you closer to the to the recipient of your information. And I agree that the findings here are kind of counterintuitive, but there’s a good reason why is it so. The authors  refer to CLT (Construal Level Theory) that states that people increasingly use more abstract representations when communicating with those they don’t know that match. And the reason for that is that people seem to be afraid to provide too much personal information to those that are not yet considered friends. Therefore, they use disembodied  linguistic representations of text while leaving concrete contextualized pictures for communicating with those that they have already. something in common? You see the point here?

Reshan Richards

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when you describe it that way like I can, I can fully relate that there’s this, this the psychological element in in detaching any potential clues or to specific or to accurate details because of not being too familiar with the audience. So that’s that that makes sense, even though as you said it on the surface feels very counterintuitive.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. The visual representations seem to be more appropriate when we already share a piece of reality with the person on the other end. That’s, that’s basically what they found.  But I wonder, in teaching environment, I guess being specific and being clear, is the goal, right?

Reshan Richards

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that that’s the thing, can you not only you know, transmit or share some idea or concept but clarity comes from confirming understanding, and that with the most efficacy or efficiency, that that understanding was built. I mean, that’s really what what clarity happens, like I have something that I want to convey or to build in somebody else. And clarity comes when that is done with the least amount of friction.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. But does that actually says the preference for using pictures instead of woods?

Reshan Richards

 I think that anytime you can be more concrete… Let me let me rewind that. I do believe there could be a correlation between the concrete nature of a representation and clarity. I think so. So here’s, here’s an example where the mix of pictures and words in a professional setting can can often get to get in the way of that clarity. So often when doing kind of employee or, you know, supervisor evaluations and review comments are often left in text, right? So, a supervisor might write text comments typed up in a narrative added to a file, dot, dot dot. And so it’s immediately already a couple of degrees away from the actuality of the work, right? Because it’s the supervisors interpretation of what might have been observed and communicated, but then re re put out in text form. Whereas if somebody just had a simple snapshot, or a video of that behavior, action, or whatever somebody being, their performance is being evaluated in you almost removing all of that abstraction. It’s like super concrete, like, how does someone so lead a small group meeting? You know, I could write a narrative about it. Or I could just make a 32nd clip of here’s how somebody kicked off their meeting. And that concrete thing will actually get to that greater clarity of the situation. But I still as a supervisor, would want to be able to comment What’s interesting or important about that thing, but if I’m both describing it and then commenting on it, it’s immediately a few degrees of separated away from what you might have been trying to look at in the first place.

B.A. Gonczarek

 I think that’s a, that’s a great example. So moving on to the two pieces of research that you provided it on memory and meaning making, which one you think should come first, which one would you like to tackle?

Reshan Richards

So I find that that this picture of superiority effect body of research is really important because I want I think it’s connected to the two studies or articles which you referred to, and what I like and it took so first of all, it’s already building off of previous research that to a degree validated, you know, in in pretty controlled experimental studies where somebody was given just an audio representation of some Something, something that had audio plus text, and then something that had audio plus image in these controlled experiments, the retention. So this is really about like recall and memory call. But the audio plus picture almost always outperformed any of the other two groups, right as far as people’s retention and recall. So that’s interesting, right as a baseline, but you can’t make too many generalized conclusions just based off of you know, these kinds of experimental studies. This particular one that I selected and pulled out that builds deeper into it was looking between correlate or looking for correlations between the sorry, it was looking for correlations of the extent of this effect and age. So as you get older, how much more pronounced is this picture superiority effect over the other two modes. And this particular study did find that there is absolutely a correlation, we’re not going to call it causality. But as people get older, this picture superiority effect actually escalates and gets reinforced even stronger. And it’s because when you add your days and months and years of life experience, you’ve had time to reinforce these mental images or mental models or visualizations of different things that you’re capable of having certain retention and recall in a greater degree because of all your prior knowledge. So while it was still present in younger people, it was the the difference of the the extent of this effect was far less pronounced than in their older subjects. 

B.A. Gonczarek

You know, that’s quite fascinating, you know, it also proves how much we learn about the picture superiority effect recently. You know, the last time I checked her there were like 40 articles on the subject and the number is growing rapidly these days, too. So it shows that this area still needs further inquiry to what I personally like about picture superiority effect is its linkage with our spatial memory where location of elements help understanding and I was taking by illustration explaining the historical logic using just one picture I don’t know if you if you know that one.

Reshan Richards

Now tell me more about that.

B.A. Gonczarek

It’s the picture that describes the entire logic of Aristotle. Once you familiarize with it, the beauty of that is that you can literally close your eyes and the recall by location each bit. It’s a breathtaking example of how of how this effect works yet, we don’t know for sure still, why it works and in what age group would work the best. Let the quickly pull the example of this illustration real quick to our whiteboard here.

Reshan Richards

Yeah, I’d love to see that. Yeah.

B.A. Gonczarek

Okay. That was something that was used for teaching students a long time ago, though, but it’s still a real life example of using picture superiority effect. I don’t know for which age group, but still, I still love more of those visuals and photographing being used in schools for stimulating retention and recall of information. I’m sure you’re on the same with me on that. 

Reshan Richards

Yeah. This is a really cool example here.

B.A. Gonczarek

And the other material that you provided to the canvas was on doodling, right?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, so this one is  connected and it’s actually a little bit more about both the the presenter, but also the idea of inviting other to kind of doodle and visualize along with you. Now in this study, which also again, it, it has its limitations because of its experimental nature. But it was, it was having people listen to the audio, and that the group one was, as they were listening, they weren’t doing anything else. And then they had to do kind of like a rent attention and recall. And the other group was doing, as they were listening was also just asked to draw and doodle on whatever like notepad they have. And somehow, the kind of externalization of, of just kind of like sketching, jotting things down I believe some of their notes were relevant. Some of them were just kind of like random, like the things that you might see in a in a middle school, child’s notebook. But there was still a measurable effect on retaining When other kind of expressive channels were active at the same time that somebody was hearing some audio. And what’s interesting to me and the things that I like to dive into is that this in this study, there was no real guidelines around the doodling. But in thinking about situations where you’re trying to build understanding and somebody and you presented some information, having them activate more channels, and then just their listening and their visual, cognitive channels, but actually starting to a little bit of like haptic or even kinesthetic action, and at the same time and this so I put this notice here about random versus purposeful doodling that I think there’s so much to be learned and considered that when you’ve got people engaged, that you’re trying to trying to help them learn. Have them activate the same positive principles around visual visual storytelling in their own note taking and reception and consumption. The information right so it shouldn’t all those benefits that we’ve kind of highlighted and talked about from the delivery standpoint to me have just as much value in the recipient or participant and I felt like this study in particular is kind of a stepping stone or starting point in considering how the recipients channels can be activated towards building that  greater clarity and understanding

B.A. Gonczarek

Right, but you know, for me, this shape-shading task also reveals something that is counter intuitive, you know. How come one might recall better if the thing he or she is drawing is not directly connected to the subject of the discussion, right? I find it surprising and I would wish to know more about what was at work on the cognitive level. 

Reshan Richards

Yeah, and you know, like for me as somebody who you know, does practice graphic facilitation or sketch noting or however, visual note taking all these different terms that it can be described it I do find sometimes that even when I’m trying to be a very active listener, that I will do some random doodles or shapes, kind of in the meat in the midst, or in the middle of maybe some things that were a little bit more purposeful or relevant. And sometimes they’re just these kind of, in between or bridge moments between like, big concepts. And it’s almost this like, continuation instead of like being like, on off on off. You’re just constantly like in a flow. And yeah, sometimes they just become things of the background or filling the page. But in, in your, in my own review of the things that I might have taken notes on. I remember when I see like a random structure like this, oh, that was an in between moment. And I don’t have to admit, I’ve actually visualize something that I know I don’t have to worry about later, which is kind of almost like how often do you take notes on things you don’t want to remember? But but it brings back recognition of the like the setting or the scenario. So like, I don’t know, in some weird way, maybe maybe this is like the words of a maniac, but like I actually find it helpful to have useless notes, but be able and like they actually helped me filter out the things that are more meaningful on that same page.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. So actually font something that is related to this, but actually speaks about drawing representations of concrete scientific phenomena instead of just, you know, shading something or, as you mentioned, doing useless drawings. This is an inquiry wood drawing does when we learn science, and it’s an article that comes from August 2011 issue of the Science Magazine, and the authors here… they make a point that visuals are crucial for learning. They suggest that the proficiency in science requires learning to develop representational skills. And I don’t know about you but I’m easily persuaded by that as I cannot imagine how anyone could cope with, let’s say, a concept of particles or chemical reactions without abstract visual representations, right?

Reshan Richards

I mean, what’s so interesting is I think we could probably like do a little bit of like historical digging that any kind of scientific phenomenon or principles, it was probably easier to pass those down in Britain, because of like the printing press, the printing press can much more easily replicate, you know, the written or the printed form word than it could have with graphics, right? Because you didn’t have type sets to pull from to create, you know, highly complex visual drawing. So, you know, the original researchers and publishers from back in the day probably had to default to very text heavy ways of transform, transferring and scaling out information and then it just became a default. I think maybe only in recent times has the technology. And the formats of publishing become a little bit more accessible to let’s call, let’s call them lay people that, you know, these visual representations as a dominant form as far as impacting science proficiency, like you said, I mean, seems obvious, like, of course, how could it not?

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah. I also remember that from from Dürer’s perspective, Albrecht Dürer’s. During his times, were the times when the printing press was brand new, and he was already trying to find a way to incorporate those hand drawings into the printed materials just to inspire thinking, you know, to inspire this  mode of exploration. What is interesting in this article, though, is that it mentions the surveys that indicate that those students that drew to explore to coordinate or to justify understanding where more motivated to learn in the end. So basically we can improve understanding, in other words, by working on graphical representations of what we start to know or what we already know. So that’s something that I actually really like –  stating that the drawing is in fact, way of reasoning. And it’s a different kind of reasoning than, let’s say, argumentation. It’s the creative reasoning to engage and explore ideas by refining your drawings of concepts. So instead of looking at the picture, as some sort of fixed universal illustration, we begin to see it as an artifact of cognition. So I’m sure Michelle, that this is essential from the perspective of a teacher, isn’t it? What are the opportunities for having such a window into students thinking?

Reshan Richards

So the thing that was resonating or stirring curiosity in me as you were sharing that were these connections between drawing As a form of reasoning, but the the embedded layer which I jotted down in my margins here is around intrinsic motivation. And I think through reasoning via drawing, I think I would surmise that the reason that students might be able to perform or share or achieve greater proficiency might be because the process of drawing as a form of reasoning is like an intrinsically motivating exercise. There’s a reward in being able to communicate and demonstrate understanding and kind of untangle complex things. That’s kind of harder to do in a more abstract setting, like trying to use the constraints of text and paragraph and sentence structure and all of the other elements that are part of printed text that again are separating the learner from you know, The true expression or representation of what is being thought. And it doesn’t surprise me. And I absolutely think there’s connections to what we’re trying to as what as teachers were trying to achieve in classrooms, which is to instill this kind of love or intrinsically motivated joy around learning, so that it’s not seen as transactional, but rather, it’s it’s fundamental. It’s pure and natural curiosity. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah. Yeah. And what is also astonishing that drawings actually lay a foundation for future learning. So it helps students to discern key features and also understand challenges as they go. Right.

Reshan Richards

Yeah. And I mean, there’s, there’s some like really interesting, like papers and articles that talk about how drawing traditionally in schools and I’m talking about K to 12 schools, and I mean, certainly even higher ed, that there’s a perception that Using imagery using doodle sketching things out, is childish or juvenile and not academic or scholarly enough. I think it’s exciting because of conversations like these and pulling scholarly research and really trying to surface all of the values and true like cognitive benefits of visualization and doodling that it might contribute to changing that perception that, hey, I can write my dissertation in the form of a graphic novel, right? And somebody has done that before. And you and I have talked about some somebody who went to who did their doctorate at Teachers College at Columbia University, in that form. Now granted, that person may have been purposefully trying to brush up against norms, but it was completely valid and you want you need kind of pioneers and people to do things like that. To set the example like there are other ways to convey excellence to convey scholarly work to convey findings from research that don’t have to fall into kind of these traditional formats. I mean, all of the articles that were pulled up here, if you look at them, they look like very traditional papers, right? Because that is kind of the societal norm for conveyance of knowledge. So that almost brushes up against what we’re talking about here, which are the many other ways that people are able to transfer into to receive information.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re spot on here Reshan. Before we close. Let’s try to briefly summarize what we’ve learned from those papers that we discussed. I can try to do that unless you’d like to start first.

Reshan Richards

All right, let me try to zoom out on the big picture here. Okay. And so, let me try to think of like three overarching cues, thoughts that that anybody who’s engaging in this, this conversation might take away. So the first is, there is a growing body of contemporary research. that’s helping make clear the links between visualizing information and better proficiency and understanding it exists and it’s increasingly valid. Second would be that people who have the job or charge the responsibility of communicating to others have to consider the ways that people learn and receive information in their design. There’s never going to be one strict way. But there’s going to be many modalities and modes and today there are far more tools and choices for being able to do that kind of communication. And the third one would be around kind of challenging traditional constraints and norms around what professional what academic communication is supposed to look like, when in the end. It’s really about being clear and getting to a point of under Standing as effectively as possible.

B.A. Gonczarek

Well, I think I fully agree with you. One additional thought to the second point that you mentioned. For me, I’m most excited about this concept of drawing as a form of reasoning. And the reason I’m excited about is that because technologies now are so good at broadening concept of growing with, let’s say, motion or ad-hoc provided animations. The technology makes it easy to transform existing digital assets into something I like to call “smashing bits & pixels” to represent what you need from what you have in your documents or photo library. So a collage, a digital collage is one example of that, but also, our use of the whiteboard here during this conversation is  another example. I just think that the phenomenon of Visual Thinking is empowered by the use of digital medium. So before to be a digital thinker, one needed to acquire at least basic drawing skills, right? But now with digital tools that we have, that seems completely optional, as instead of drawing, one can rearrange existing representations to perform, as we call it here, creative reasoning, and be open for all benefits that we discuss here. Would you agree?

Reshan Richards

I agree. Absolutely. And I would say that so many people, when they think about having these kinds of open ended visual experiences, say, Well, I can’t draw so I can’t participate, but all you need to everybody, if they’ve got, you know, you know, their, their, their hands and arms or whatever else they can manipulate to create something on a piece of paper or on a screen, can draw a line can draw a circle can draw an arrow. These are not advanced, you know, you don’t have to go to art school to be able to construct those things. And because as you said, the technology helps make it easier to bring in different types of visual content. This isn’t about being a great artist. This is about putting visual information together in order to help things make more sense.

B.A. Gonczarek

Well, Reshan, thank you for sharing your perspective. I’m positive that are many ways we could further explore the scientific foundations of learning and visual storytelling. So let’s pause here for now here the reaction of our listeners and perhaps continue in the future, shall we?

Reshan Richards

That sounds great. Thanks very much.

Resources

Here are the resources we discussed during our conversation:

  • A Thousand Brains
    Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know, and the origin of high-level thought
  • Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
    “The ultimate guide to using the magical power of funny as a tool for leadership and a force for good.”—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author
  • The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
    How computer scientists and philosophers are defining the biggest question of our time - how will we create intelligent machines that will improve our lives rather than complicate or even destroy them?
  • Data teams
    How to integrate data teams into organization in an effective way, enabling executive data science practices.
  • Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History
    An account of the cultural and intellectual history of how Americans have lived with image and information since XXI century. It blends historical synthesis with insightful orienting narratives of eras, analyzing particular dimensions of them.
  • The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
    A grand narrative of human history in which knowledge with is multiple facets serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution.
  • How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now
    An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them
  • The Next Enlightenment
    The Next Enlightenment argues that most of humanity’s problems are the result of a limited level of consciousness. It is both a political manifesto and a practical manual on how to create social conditions that will allow each of us to achieve our true purpose
  • The Study of Language
    Introduction to the study of language, its origins along with linguistic relativity, cognitive and social categories.
  • Zero to One
    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1.
  • The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business
    Based on long-term research and testing of the creative thinking process, The Creative Thinking Handbook helps to generate more ideas and find brilliant solutions for any professional challenge.
  • Strategic Intuition
    William Duggan has conducted pioneering research on strategic intuition and for the past three years has taught a popular course at Columbia Business School on the subject. He now gives us this eye-opening book that shows how strategic intuition lies at the heart of great achievements throughout human history.
  • Make Yourself Clear
    Make Yourself Clear explains the many parallels between teaching and business and offer companies, both large and small, concrete advice for building the teaching capacity of their salespeople, leaders, service professionals, and trainers.
  • Skin in the Game
    "Skin in the Game” provides a meta guide to risk exposure and how the fragility works. It’s not so much exploration of strategies for dealing with uncertainty, it’s more of a deep intellectual dive into origins of thinking about risks and its impact on politics, businesses, belief systems - across different magnitudes of scale.
  • The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
    An insightful exploration of the relationship between technological advances and work, from preindustrial society through the Computer Revolution.
  • Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects, Rights
    The book explores how data has acquired such an important capacity . Expert international contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims.
  • Theory of the Image
    The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The current „Age of Image” author calls a „Copernican revolution in our time”. Theory of the Image offers the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition.
  • Superminds
    Superminds shows that instead of fearing the rise of artificial intelligence we should be focusing on what we can achieve by working with computers – because together we will change the world.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Group Creativity and Innovation
    The book covers recent theoretical, empirical, and practical developments that provide a solid basis for the practice of collaborative innovation
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity
    The handbook introduces creativity scholarship by summarising its history, major theories and assessments, how creativity develops across the lifespan, and suggestions for improving creativity.
  • Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
    How our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. A synthesis of history, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, sociology, economics, epidemiology, statistics, and more
  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
    Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues that the left brain makes for a wonderful servant, while the right side takes the position of the more reliable and insightful master.
  • Possible Minds on AI
    Intellectual impresario, John Brockman, assembles twenty-five of the most important scientific minds, for an unparalleled round-table examination about the mind, thinking, intelligence and what it means to be human.
  • Surveillance Capitalism
    The book delivers an abundance of information, insights, and counsel on, what Shoshana calls, the darkening of the digital age. It is about the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, and un unprecedented new form of power.
  • Humanomics
    Smith and Wilson show how Adam Smith's model of sociality can re-humanize twenty-first century economics by undergirding it with sentiments, fellow feeling, and a sense of propriety - the stuff of which human relationships are built.
  • Team Human
    Douglas Rushkoff wrote this book to help as many people as possible who now struggle in the world of today. It feels as if civilization itself were on the brink, and that we lack the collective willpower and coordination necessary to address issues of the very survival of our species." He then asserts, "It doesn't have to be this way."
  • When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures
    A set of practical strategies to embrace differences and work successfully across increasingly diverse business cultures. Publication coming from a chairman of an international institute of cross-cultural training with offices in over 30 countries and founder of the quarterly magazine Cross Culture
  • AI superpowers
    On how China caught AI fever and implemented government goals (with benchmarks) for 2020, 2025 in an attempt to become the world center of AI innovation by 2030.
  • Living in a Real-Time World: 6 Capabilities to Prepare Us for an Unimaginable Future
    We have less and less time to think, less and less time to get in sync with what's happening. We cannot trust conventional wisdom to guide us. The book explores explores six conversational capabilities that we can cultivate to navigate uncertainty
  • Visual Consulting
    Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change shows how visual practice can combine with dialogue and change methods to get more creative and sustainable results. The practices can be applied to organizational and diverse, cross-boundary consulting projects.
  • Postmodern Theory and Progressive Politics
    the postmodern moment was a necessary one, or will have been if we rise to the occasion to arrive at a new and more textured humanism.
  • The book of Why
    The subject of causation has preoccupied philosophers at least since Aristotle. The absence, however, of an accepted scientific approach to analyzing cause and effect is not merely of historical or theoretical interest. The book covers how understanding causality has revolutionized science so far and will revolutionize AI.
  • The Meaning Revolution
    Bringing together economics and conflict resolution, counselling and mindfulness, Kofman provides a leadership framework that is counterintuitive to the regular MBA practices but based on a very firm foundation - the meaning.
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook For Business Leaders
    A practical guide for business leaders looking to get value from the adoption of machine learning technology.
  • Measure What Matters: OKRs
    One of the best books on management, tasks, goals and their measurement. Full of stories from successful companies (like Google).
  • Data Science
    Data science primer explaining its evolution, relation to machine learning, current uses, data infrastructure issues, and ethical challenges.
  • Cultural Evolution People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World
    Regarded as one of the most important works in the social sciences in decades, Cultural Evolution argues that people's values and behavior are shaped by the degree to which survival is secure.
  • Reinventing Capitalism in the age of Big Data
    Data is replacing money as the driver of market behavior. Big finance and big companies will be replaced by small groups and individual actors who make markets instead of making things
  • Enlightenment Now
    Steven Pinker argues that humanism (a reasoned commitment to maximizing human flourishing), science, and democracy have resulted in substantial, measurable human progress over the last 500 years.
  • Human-in-the-loop Cyber-Physical Systems
    An essential primer on a rapidly emerging Internet-of-Things concept, focusing on human-centric applications. An indispensable resource for researchers and app developers eager to explore HiTL concepts and include them in their designs.
  • The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life
    The Qualified Self offers a new perspective on how social media users construct and distribute 'self-portraits' through media technologies. A truly original revision of 'mediated memories' and a much-needed update to the age of connectivity.
  • The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
    The book brings together research on various topics of limited reach that, when combined, speak to the outrageous gall of the mind in recreating reality to its own liking, and then covering its tracks.
  • The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts
    Scientific management asked us to be efficient. Now, we are asked to be agile. But what does this mean for the everyday lives we lead?
  • Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts
    The book investigate how visual and material features of early English books, documents, and other artefacts support - or potentially contradict - the linguistic features
  • No ego
    The book challenges the traditional beliefs on employee engagement and traditionalist leadership. It explains why it is time to move on and take on alternative takes on employee engagement.
  • Visual Thinking: Empowering People and Organisations through Visual Collaboration
    The book provides an informative, easy to follow and fun introduction into the basics of visual thinking and drawing. It is unique by applying these visual thinking and drawing techniques to everyday business settings.
  • The Cultural Dimension of Global Business
    The book provide an essential foundation for understanding the impact of culture on global business and global business on culture.
  • The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment
    Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction.
  • How to Take Smart Notes
    The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique.
  • From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
    In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could, in fact, have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection.
  • Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters with Cultural Difference
    A collection of dialogues on interpreting conversations from the founder of intercultural communication training and consulting firm. 1998 text revised as second edition
  • The Real Internet of Things
    The book provides a view into our future reality. The amount of data we have today and will have in the future will be leveraged to augment our daily lives.
  • Whiteboard: Business Models that Inspire Action
    Hand-drawn by the author, this creative collection of illustrations, inspirational quotes, and savvy business models shares one purpose: to spark conversations and evolve companie
  • Utopia for Realists
    The book provides set of new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable
  • Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe
    The book investigates the evolution of scholarly practices and the transformation of cognitive habits in the early modern age with the use of technology
  • Small Giants
    Wonderful book about belief systems and how bringing in personal beliefs and values into a business can positively affect the success and impact of businesses.
  • Self-tracking
    What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking.
  • Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation
    An illustrated version that conveys the main ideas of the original book "Reinventing Organizations" that shares many of its real-life stories in a lively, engaging way.
  • The Qualified Self
    The Qualified Self offers an excellent overview of the breadth and depth of issues related to self-tracking cultures.
  • Introducing Multimodality
    An accessible introduction to multimodality. Illuminates the potential of multimodal research for understanding the ways in which people communicate. Key concepts and methods in various domains while learning how to engage critically with the notion of multimodality.
  • e-Learning and the Science of Instruction
    4th edition of essential reference for evidence-based guidelines for designing, developing and evaluating asynchronous and synchronous e-Learning for workforce training and educational courseware.
  • The Master Algorithm
    A comprehensive overview of the entire field of Machine Learning that is better than most of the book on the topic. Author also explores an idea, related to his scientific research, of a master algorithm which could explain everything given enough data.
  • Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy
  • Nonviolent Communication
    If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then judging others, bullying could indeed be called "violent communication." Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things: Consciousness, Language, Communication, Means of influence, Empathic Connection and Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit
  • Data-ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
    Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field
  • Unflattening
    Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge. A dissertation in a form of a comic book.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
    The publication integrate three interrelated literatures on Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. Chapters were provided by the leading scholars in these research areas.
  • The Nonhuman Turn (21st Century Studies)
    The first book to name, characterize and consolidate a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches in decentering the human in favor of a concert for the nonhuman in the humanities and social sciences.
  • Spatial Semiotics and Spatial Mental Models: Figure-Ground Asymmetries in Language
    The interplay between culture through language and practices presents new insights in the importance of combining cognitive semantics with cognitive anthropology
  • Seeing Ourselves Through Technology
    A goldmine of historical and contemporary case studies with which readers are invited to visualise the complexity of self-representation practices and artefacts.
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology
    The volume systematically presents cultural-historical psychology as an integrative/holistic developmental science of mind, brain, and culture.
  • The Philosophy of Perception: Phenomenology and Image Theory
    If perception is real - what this reality means for a subject? Wiesing's methods chart a markedly new path in contemporary perception theory. As part of the argument, he provides a succinct but comprehensive survey of the philosophy of images.
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning
    A comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of research and theory in the field, with a focus on computer-based learning.
  • Superintelligence
    In the longer run biological human brains might cease to be the predominant nexus of Earthly intelligence. It is possible that one day we may be able to create ʺsuperintelligenceʺ: a general intelligence that vastly outperforms the best human brains in every significant cognitive domain.
  • The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
    A book that illustrates the misunderstandings that can arise from clashing cultural assumptions
  • The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge
    A timeline of capsule biographies on key figures in the development of the tree diagram containing more that two hundred tree diagrams
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
    Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup
  • Reinventing Organizations
    Probably the most influential management book of this decade, inspiring to take a radical leap and adopt a whole different set of management principles and practices.
  • Crossing the Chasm
    Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers. The book illustrates existence of a vast chasm between the early adopters and the early majority in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle
  • The Second Machine Age
    The explanation of the technolgy revolution that is overturning the world’s economies.
  • The Sketchnote Handbook: the illustrated guide to visual note taking
    On how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process--regardless of your artistic abilities--to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing, and to actually have fun taking notes.
  • Mapping Scientific Frontiers
    An interdisciplinary examination of the history and the state of the art of the quest for visualizing scientific knowledge and the dynamics of its development.
  • Managing Information Quality: Increasing the Value of Information in Knowledge-intensive Products and Processes
    The book examines ways in which the quality of information can be improved in knowledge-intensive processes (such as on-line communication, strategy, product development, or consulting
  • Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
    Using a list of more than 2,000 successful innovations the book explores these insights to diagnose patterns of innovation, and to evaluate how firms are performing against competitors. The framework has proven to be one of the most enduring and useful ways to start process of transformation.
  • Who Owns the Future?
    How the concentration of data and distribution of risk by those who own the data creates a significant risk to our capitalist based economy and over the long term to the very companies that create the situation.
  • Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
    Big data is about predictions. Academic Mayer-Schönberger and editor Cukier consider big data the new ability to crunch vast collections of information and draw conclusions from it.
  • Turing’s Cathedral
    On how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of the WWII, the nature of digital computers, an how code took over the world by storm.
  • Outliers
    An intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
  • Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners
    Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.
  • Student Successes With Thinking Maps
    The research, experiences from the field, vignettes, and work. A book that links research and practice and shows the true impact of a specific instructional approach on student learning
  • Imagery and Text: A Dual Coding Theory of Reading and Writing
    The first book to take a systematic theoretical approach to all of the central issues of literacy, including decoding, comprehension, and memory
  • Your Life, Uploaded
    The book explains authors' thinking on Mincrosoft MyLifeBits project predating the "Quantified Self" and "Internet of Things" movements
  • New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics
    Collection of essays on new thinking about matter and processes of materialization centered around reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges.
  • The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
    The introduction to Senge's carefully integrated corporate framework, which is structured around "personal mastery," "mental models," "shared vision," and "team learning."
  • The Race between Education and Technology
    A masterful work by two leading economists on some of the biggest issues in economics: economic growth, human capital, and inequality. There are fundamental insights in the book, not just about our past but also our future.
  • Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth
    A comprehensive perspective on the micro- and macroeconomics of innovation. The book breaks new ground in identifying and analyzing the key ingredients driving economic growth.
  • Universal Principles of Design
    The Universal Principles of Design is a resource to increase cross-disciplinary knowledge and understanding of design. The concepts broadly referred to as “principles,” consist of laws, guidelines, human biases, and general design considerations.
  • Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory
    A collection of studies on the image offers both a case for the importance of image studies and a broad introduction to this area of philosophical enquiry in which author implies that "the image opens up a view on reality liberated from the constraints of physics"
  • Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge
    The book recognizes that the future of economic well being in today's knowledge and information society rests upon the effectiveness of schools and corporations to empower their people to be more effective learners and knowledge creators.
  • The Ego Tunnel
    The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the conscious self, explaining it as the content of a model created by our brain.


< Back to conversations

The nature of digital image

A conversation between Thomas Nail, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and the author of the recently published book “Theory of the Image,” and B.A. Gonczarek, your host.

A philosopher’s perspective on the nature of digital images, their material roots, and various consequences which escape our consciousness. Why the digital is more analog and material than we think and how the origins of this revelation go back to Rome. How viewing a painting makes us a part of it? An attempt to explain communication on a more fundamental level than the cognitive. How we’re progressing with the development of technology, how new frameworks can support our understanding, and how we continue to risk missing the point with existing frameworks.

Listen to the conversation:

Transcript

B.A. Gonczarek

I’m here with Thomas Nail,  the Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of recently published book Theory of the Image, welcome Thomas.  I must admit I was really looking forward to our discussion. When preparing to our conversation I did my research online and I was taken by how well you’re received by your students. You students describe you as very knowledgeable and approachable. Your openness is something I experienced myself, so thank you for the opportunity of doing this podcast together. And to explain to our listeners  – what we’re trying to do here is to (possibly) bridge the gap between abstract thinking and acting, between thought and execution by an exchange between you, as a philosopher and me, as digital toolmaker on a topic of digital image. 

My main goal for today is to hear your point of view on the future and possibilities that technology gradually unlocks.  Now, I’m aware that the digital image is only a short chapter of your recent publication but I believe that limited scope of our discussion is enough to inspire our listeners. After all, we’re all users of digital devices don’t we. 

To begin, describe to us, if you will, your way of working. What is New Realism and what is your method of approaching problems? 

Thomas Nail

If I had to sum up main findings of the book that guides the whole project is that the image we often think about as a mental representation, something as in our brain (in our minds) which is a copy or resemblance of the world outside. I think that’s not right, there’s definitely something going on but that’s a very narrow way of thinking about what an image is. 

An image is a real thing, it is something that happens in our eyes and in our brains, that is related to the external world, but that is a tip of an enormous iceberg. That’s the part that we see on the surface.  Below the surface of the water is this enormous process of the rest of the world, of the enormous processes that we don’t actually see which are part of the fabric of the world and forms and media that we use, and it’s very active. What we have in our brains is not a copy of the world, it is the world itself just by other means. It is a continuation of the world inside of us just. It’s not a question of resemblance but interactivity, of performativity. We are interacting with the world when we see, although we often experience vision as a passive thing that sort of happen to us, but that’s actually very active both in our bodies (in our eyes the way they seek out, move and follow and respond to the world). One of the main takeaways was to think about much larger context what an image is but also what the world does. Whether are humans there, or not, there are images, as they sort of they engage each other. The way we interact with the world those images interact with themselves and that interaction is what produces an image. That’s a broad definition of an image but the shift is from thinking about images as representation to thinking about images as processes with their own habits, cycles, they sort of interate and respond to each other to produce meta-stable states. They are flowing and moving, but they are also stabilized, so they look static. If you look at an object on a table – it looks like it is just sitting there but it’s not. And even when we weren’t looking at it, the image is still because the image is real and material whenever we think about that. We’re part of it when we view it.

B.A. Gonczarek

As you describe in the book the image is a process by which matter twists, folds, bends and reflects itself into sensations and affections. What was the inspiration to arrive at such viewpoint on the image itself? 

Thomas Nail

It’s an old inspiration actually, it goes back to the Rome and poet Lucretious. We only have one book of his philosophical poetry – De Rerum Natura. In the book, inspired by Epicurus, who said that the earliest Theory of the image as a material process that we have in the history of the west and it’s since been transformed by other ideas, but I do think there’s something to go back to. For me the inspiration was his poetry and ‘Simulacra’ – Everything in the world is radiating out images. Images are bouncing off each other, eventually they get to the exterior and fly off to collide mid air with other images. Some people interpret it as there’s ghosts flying off of things, but that’s not what he says at all, it’s actually closer to modern physics and light. He didn’t use the language of photons, he used language of simulacra but that’s essentially what it is  – that things inside of themselves are vibrating with photons. Photons are heat, photons are light, they are constantly vibrating and release waves of photons, and photons collide in mid-air. And for that reason at every stage they actually are making something, they performing and producing. There’s no resemblance, but no genuine copies, no originals, there’s just these singular processes that refract  (like you drop two paddles into a pond and the ripples would key each other and make a new pattern – at every stage you’re always looking at some specific pattern of the photons  interact with each other. So it’s a very materialist way of thinking about what an image is as opposed to the idealist way, which is – it’s an idea I have in my brain. And if that’s what you think an image is then only humans have them, only humans can sort of talk about them and they always will fail in representing the original image. There will always be some poorly construed copy of what’s out there. If you think of an image of a real, material, singular process, then it changes the way you think about what an image is. What an image is is what an image does. It doesn’t represent anything, it moves, it does. So the question is – what are the patterns? That’s why I think the visual aspect makes a lot of sense because to understand what images are you need to have an interactive and visual tools to map out what that image is doing. 

B.A. Gonczarek

And I believe that’s also applicable to the digital world. I found it actually fascinating of how you’re shifting perspective here.  You name three features of mobile nature of the image and I’d like to ask you about hybridity that you list as one of those defining features. You call it a pinnacle of fragmentation, I’m curious what opportunities fragmentation opens`?

Thomas Nail

When I say fragmentation I don’t necessarily mean complete isolated fragments. They are little knots and pieces of strings, always related and connected with another pieces so that the pieces are never fully cut off from one another. This is the way people tend to think about digitally as just fragmented bits and bites, ones and zeros – but there are no fragmented ones and zeros that are fully cut off. That sounds opposite to the definition of what we think of binary. The truth is if you just dig below that level – is a signal on or of (basis of digital communication) and look at the material structure of transistor – it doesn’t work like that. There is a constant flow of electrons and photons moving through that transistor and they do not always stop at the gate when the signal is supposed to be off – they jump the gate. It’s a quantum effect called tunneling in which electron movement actually passes the barrier. The smaller technology gets, the more data we can store, the tinier the gates get. And the tinier the gates get the easier it is for the flor of electrons to pass through the gate and then you get an error, and your computer crashes. And these are happening more often than used to because of the technology. When your computer crashes there’s a good chance that’s because of the quantum effects of the material movement of the electrons. So thinking about all these pieces it really draws your attention to the creativity and the agency of the matter itself that we’re dealing with. We try to represent things of ones and zeros but what we’re often encountering is this very fascinating resistance of the matter itself and that opens new possibilities of working with that matter as opposed to trying to dominate it and trying to stick it into a binary code. Oneinteresting question for the digital age and XXI century is what new things might we discover? What new visual or communication aspects if we let the materiality, if you will, to play a role and speak instead of trying to silence it or make it your bidding. What might it say to us? How might we use it by working with it as supposed to trying to master it. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Absolutely. I remember from your book when speaking of hybridity you touch the digital foundation of the image saying that 

Anything that can be coded can be transcoded and then turned into a hybrid of something else.” So the beauty of transformation and allowing for new thing to arise from something that preexisted before opens a lot of new possibilities. 

The other defining feature of Digital Image that you write about is the Kinetic feedback. The way I ready it, is that the matter interacts with itself to form of a feedback loop. I kind of understand that when thinking of computer software opening greater degree and range of aesthetic transformation, but what about a kinetic feedback when, let’s we say passively consuming content, by looking at a paining?

Thomas Nail

One of the interesting things in the book that I figured out by researching material structures is that some of the features of the digital images are common to the analog things, there not really this absolute division. If you think about digital culture as immaterial, in the cloud, virtual – it’s not. It’s fully material. A “cloud” is a huge building filled with hard drives. This vast Internet infrastructure all have material basis and in that sense it is still very analog. And in that sense analog still has many of these features as it has aspects of hybridity. An collage is an instance where you can break things up and reassemble it. You have a kind of hybridity in analog things. But as just in your example in looking at a painting there’s a feedback that happens, but we don’t often think of it as a feedback. We think of it as a noisy signal on a digital level, a negative feedback loop where we don’t want it to go. But that’s partially what interesting in analog and digital feedback is that it is taking us somewhere. There’s a feedback happening between two systems where both are sort of in control but neither are in total control, and the result is something genuinely unique (kind of simulacra experience, simulacra are meeting, refracting and making something new. When we think about looking at a painting we think of that as a passive reception of an external object. But the viewer is participating in that work of art just by being in that room, even if we’re talking at basic photodynamic level of photons radiating off your body as heat, and they are heating up at a very small level that painting. Light is reflecting off that painting and degrading it. By looking at a painting with light we’re destroying that paining at a very low level and over time it ends up totally destroying that painting and that’s why we have curation. Curators are in this unique position to really see and feel and understand the materiality of works of art. That’s a lot of what museum goes don’t think about. They feel like these are preserved work with ethereal structure to them. But the preservation process never ends, it’s ongoing. It has to constantly struggle agains the effects of decay, heat, and light-destruction of the painting. So I think they realize that the paining is more of a feedback loop that you think it is. And it’s also affecting you that you’re not fully aware either. Its light and coloration is making you more sensitive to subtle differences in light and coloration. Even if you think that you’re thinking about the symbolic meaning of such and such. A man by a river or something like that, or narcist looking at himself in the pond were thinking about symbolic representation of the paining yet there is a material basis that is also working on you that you might not be even thinking about, but it’s affecting you. And it is the same way with digital culture and the studies are now accumulating on that for sure. What is the Internet is doing to our brains? What is digital culture? How is it changing us? We’re using it for symbolic and representation purposes, but there is wast iceberg of material consequences to the environment, to our bodies, to our brain. To undergo the performance and the feedback that we enter into when we look at the screen and use some kind of digital device. 

B.A. Gonczarek

When speaking of affecting and changing us by exposure to images, you see I’m in a business of supporting understanding, you can call it knowledge communication with the use of interactive whiteboards. And I have a front seat view on feedback loops and transformations of the content. I see how those work as a key to unlock human understanding.  In the past the knowledge or concepts were conveyed by text paragraphs and static slides. Now those turn gradually into more visual forms, animation,  ad-hoc drawing, into whatever works. So the way I see it, is that we’re on a path of getting away from the rigid, formal representations into a realm of smashing bits and pixels, so to say,  to form new perspectives and gain new insights. I guess that’s in line of your thinking? 

Thomas Nail

I think that’s right, I think that communication has significantly changed such that it is absolutely much more about feedback and with that feedback comes novelty. Feedback isn’t always what you want it to be. And with that what is interesting to me is that when images and words and material structures of how those are communicated – when you get all of those mixed together, when you have text, with digital speed of social media and users – when you get all of that together you’re getting some serious feedback transformation in which all of those are kind of pulled out of their original context and make possible new ideas that aren’t necessarily what we originally planned them to be. I think the feedback, even being explicitly interactive process, the interactivity makes us realize that we’re performing, that we’re doing something, not passively consuming. Even if we think that we’re passively consuming you’re actually generating something to. I think it makes us think deeply about the participatory nature that has always been the case with communication, visual or text-based that we’re involved in it, and that makes us responsible for intentionally shaping it, and not thinking that it’s this big structure and we cannot do anything. The mutability of communication is higher and more diverse that has ever been. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Absolutely. The way I see feedback is that we always thought of the feedback on the cognitive level what worked? What triggered understanding? Was it a (so called) picture superiority effect where visuals work better then words, or spatial processing evolved in understanding of a concept or visual metaphors. But I guess thanks to your insights, I see that it’s possible to go deeper, beyond sensations to see the inner-working of three distinctive features of the digital image that you list: kinetic feedback, random motion and hybridity.  So I wonder, from your perspective, do you see technology a one-directional enabler that gets us closer to the understanding of reality? Is it so? 

Thomas Nail

That’s such a great question. On a one hand I want to say – it just depends on how you define digitality? But I think that the other definitions are typical ones of binary structure, so let me give you two answers to that question:  Yes, digital world gets us closer to objective knowledge, more communication, transparency, more accuracy. Our pixels get so close now. The term ‘Retina’ it’s such a great term because that’s the limit where they eye can no longer distinguish the pixels. So what you could say on that front – yes, we’re definitely getting closer. Look how small the pixels are now, we are getting higher resolution and better accuracy on the world. If that’s a description – I disagree with that, i don’t think that’s why digitality is getting us any closer to reality or anything like that. 

My answer would be – yes, I do think that it actually is but not in that way. I think that the thing that getting us closer to really thinking about reality in a different way, is that it’s forcing us to realize something that always been true about the nature of the image (whether analog or digital). The closer we get the closer we drill down to that binary structure of ones and zeros the more non-binary processes we start to discover. That’s what’s interesting about digital. It’s the actual conclusion that if we push it far enough we see it break down and see that below that it’s actual continuous fluctuation of quantum processes that are not under control. And this reveals to us something novel about matter itself. Something that always been novel, but we haven’t comforted it in that precise way. The history of art and media is typically Humans trying to control the world and make it look their way, and do it certain something. There is a minor history to be said there, but for the most part the western history of media and use the technology is to control the nature. But what’s interesting to me is that we’ve reached limits of that control and we’re forced to realize that it is impossible project and what we’re really have been doing is not successful domination to completely get access to objective reality but that we’ve been engaged in this kind of feedback look where materiality of media has shaped our bodies, our senses, our brains just as we’ve been shaping the world thought all of this media – and that’s what I think the truth is to be realize in the digital age. It’s not the superiority of the digital image but precisely what the digital image is exposed to us explicitly. So we have to confront that fact. 

B.A. Gonczarek

 It’s certainly getting our thinking less infantile, but do you see any risks that we might not be aware on this path? 

Thomas Nail

For sure, the risk is that we will keep trying to find the ultimate way to bypass material processes and the performative act of interpretation. What I mean there is that if you think you can break down the world into totally discreet bits and bytes – that’s the danger, because it will drive you absolutely mad trying to produce a clean-cut distinctions between ones and zeros and not realize that there is this material process that will always spoil this effort. The danger is to use technology and media to try to control and essentially dominate meaning and leave out interpretation. Some philosophers that really herald the digital age they imagine – oh, we’ll just put jacks into our heads and we will just communicate with binary code, and that we’ll bypass all of the messiness of the language. I said this word that might mean something different to me than it means to you and we have base for this messiness which is, in truth, the beauty of poetry and literature. We can just get rid of all of that and just have purely objective truth with binary code. And I think that is the danger, thinking that you can avoid the material and what we call ‘an interpretation’ but it’s essentially performative, collective feedback that is generating something news not understanding some objective state of the world 

B.A. Gonczarek

Before we close, what you see as a possible outcome of increasing software capacity in transforming digital images? Given the nature of digital image, what do you expect to happen in the near future?  

Thomas Nail

Guess this depends how pessimistic or optimistic I am. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Give us your best shot. 

Thomas Nail

I’ll give you both. What I expect when I’m feeling pessimistic is that we will continue with quantum computing to try practically to keep pursuing to break world down into ones and zeros and master quantum flaws and erase any errors, any noise, any fluctuations which we don not want to happen in electron flow. That we will keep on that path and try to continually break things down in an attempt for absolutely non-interpretive objective reality. To think that we’re getting closer to that is to me absolutely the danger when I feel pessimistic.

Optimistically I think that technologies that emphasize and take seriously the materiality of the media that they using, (not just as a neutral media to facilitate communication, but as itself a creative thing, something that is changing the world).  To recognize the changes that it’s having both on the environment, on material world, but also changes that it’s producing in us, in our bodies – and to take that seriously and ethically to treat it more as a work of art. The sharing of images, the sharing of text is not neutral communication, it’s transformative, it’s doing something to us. I think that if you think that’s its neutral communication that’s subjective you’re going to miss that ethical moment. So you’re really need to think about that ethical moment. We’re responsible for what we’re doing to ourselves and what we’re doing to each other, and what we’re creating. So taking ownership of that essentially and we supposed to be being serious and intentional of what that is the optimistic outcome

B.A. Gonczarek

And I join you on this optimistic end. Listen Thomas, it was a great pleasure to talk to you today. It certainly helped me in my exploration of verbal-visual field of communication. But I also believe that your perspective is fresh to anyone that is trying to understand the direction that technology is taking. Many thanks for sharing your insights with us today! And good luck shaking off human’s immaturity of perception!

Thomas Nail

Thank you. 


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