Hack us. Dialogued auto-ethnography of a sonic and musical production fictionalising a controversy

David Christoffel, sound artist and searcher
Olivier Fournout, teacher and searcher Telecom Paris

Summary.

Can art and fiction deterritorialise at once the postures of apprenticeship and learning, the learner-teacher relationship, and the very content of the subjects being studied? Can they be considered as a means for qualitative inquiry about the social world? On what conditions? What tensions arise between knowledge, feelings and the imagination? This article offers a reflexive examination of an educational innovation consisting in representing a controversy concerning the future of industrial work as a sonic, musical creation, within a Bachelor of Science course. As the two teachers who ran the course together diverge concerning certain points in their appreciation of this experiment — what they discovered opening up a retrospective dialogue about this shared adventure — they have decided to adopt the form of a dialogue to report on it. This dialogued auto-ethnography seems to them to be the most favourable way both to bring out their differences and to make a patient construction of a shared analysis as close as possible to their actual experiences.

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In this article, we examine in the form of a dialogue, a pedagogical experiment which we experienced together in May-June 2017: for a month and a half, we co-led a group of 8 third-year Bachelor of Science students, who were asked to study a controversy about the place of humans in the industry of the future, and to then produce a fiction in the form of a sonic and musical creation based on this research[1].

It was for us the occasion to review a few questions raised by this kind of pedagogy, using artistic creation as a means to explore various views on the social world and its evolution.

This article falls into five sections:

1- The issue: art and artscience, for what purpose?

2- Fieldwork: the fictionalisation of controversies

3- The choice of dialogue to report on the experience

4- Retrospective, autoethnographic analysis in the form of a dialogue

5- Conclusion: findings and perspective for evolution

1- The issue: art and artscience, for what purpose?

For us, fictionalisation has a place within the methods of qualitative inquiry into social, technical and scientific fields, in that the fictional worlds it produces provide glimpses of possible interpretations of real worlds, which other methods of investigation do not necessarily reveal. As Victor Hugo put it in the preface to Cromwell (1827): “The stage is an optical point. Everything that exists in the world — in history, in life, in man — should be and can be reflected therein, but under the magic wand of art”[2].

However, this “reflection”is neither faithful nor total. With the passage towards fiction (like a passage to the limit) there occur rearrangements for which Deleuzian and Guattarian forms of deterritorialisation provide a more flexible and precise description than the notion of “reflection”. The process of fictionalisation deterritorialises at once postures of learning and teaching, the teacher-learner relationship, and the very content of the subjects being studied. The variations this leads to are more like a rhizome than a mirror image.

From this point, some difficult questions arise, of at least two types, which we deal with in the following pages.

Firstly, how to qualify the specific contribution of fictional creation, compared to other forms of elaborating and transmitting knowledge? What is its added value? And its specific flavour? How does it report on social events? Or theories? How do knowledge, feelings and imagination complete or exclude each other? To sum up: what do we gain and what do we lose by poeticising the results of learning and research processes? Inevitably, this type of questioning has led us to re-examine the very objectives of these teaching methods and the way we express them, the vocabulary, concepts, expectations, and criteria for evaluation, which are not at all self-evident.

In particular, it is unclear whether fictionalisation systematically leads to a shift in how those who produce the fiction envisage the controversy’s field, arguments, and stakes. For example, with Wagner, there is a reconfiguration — and thus renewal — of an Oedipal order: voices are re-sexualised as men and women (Deleuze, Guattari, 1994: 377). In Un manifeste de moins, 1979, Deleuze shows how the conflicts, contradictions and oppositions transposed to the stage are especially favourable to a cliché depiction of present forces. The theatre provides a representation of representation, with no variation, “because the conflicts have already been normalised, codified and institutionalised. These are ‘products’. They are already a representation, which can be even better represented on stage” (p.121–122). In the staging of the controversies that concerns us here, is there not a risk of presenting a caricature of a caricature, given that controversies are already highly theatrical in the public world? Representation could thus remain highly conventional, a simple copy of a cliché.

Secondly, how can this task can be requested from students, without the teachers also undertaking the exercise? Is it possible to lastingly develop such artistic pedagogies without wondering why teachers and researchers do not use art more often to exhibit their own work, by adopting an “artscience” positioning (Edwards, 2009)? Here, too, the answer is not self-evident, given that the academic world does not favour risk-taking.

2- Fieldwork: the fictionalisation of controversies

Within the controversy analysis course at Telecom Paris, the pedagogical innovation consisted in fictionalising the controversy being studied. In the first part of the course (15 hours), the students conducted a classic analysis of the controversy, along the lines of the STS (Science and Technology Studies) of Bruno Latour (Latour, Woolgar, 1986; Latour, 1993). They produced mappings of the controversy, debate trees, tables of arguments, and a history of the controversy as it had been deployed in different arenas (science, media, civil society…) In the second part of the course (18 hours), the students collectively created and played out a fiction (in this case, a sonic and musical creation) the aim of which was to reflect the controversy in question, while imagining a possible incarnation of it through play, according to a methodology in use since 2013 at Telecom Paris, which employs various fictional formats such as the theatre, film, or performance poetry, as reported in “Art for pedagogy: theatrical staging of the controversy about gay marriage” (Fournout, Beaudouin, 2017; see also Beaudouin, Fournout, 2016).

This time, the controversy that was studied concerned the future of work in industry. The fiction produced by the students was called Hack me[3]. It explored the themes of the human, the non-human and the more-than-human via a future vision of the industrial world in which robots and humans co-exist. In their fiction, the students showed a particular interest in situations of human-robot communication, which many research projects also examine (Cassell, 2000; Cassell, Bickmore, Campbell, Vilhjálmsson and Yan, 2000, as pioneer references ; more recently, on social robotics: Foster, 2015; and on a case of interactional symbiosis: Rollet, Jain, Licoppe and Devillers, 2017).

3- The choice of dialogue to report on the analysis

Once the pedagogical process was over — after the students had delivered their study of the controversy on a website as well as in the sonic, musical fiction entitled Hack me — it occurred to us that we could, as teachers and researchers, produce ourselves a work of fiction on the controversy, that is adopt an artscience approach (Edwards, 2009). We could do what we asked our students to do, that is to say, offer a kind of “teacher version” (or, as we say in french, “corrigé”, “corrected version”) and experience the performative nature of the role-play that this “teacher or corrected version” presupposes.

This objective led to a working session of two hours, during which we recorded a half-hour dialogue between the two of us, and went back over the students’ sonic, musical production (Hack me) as well as the pedagogical process such as we saw it.

This dialogue brought out divergences between us concerning the interpretation of certain passages of the students’ fiction, the finesse and richness of the fictionalisation (impoverishment versus enrichment of the arguments studied in the controversy) and the very notion of a “corrected version”.

Initially, these divergences surprised us, then it occurred to us that these questions were worthy of an auto-ethnographic approach (Ellis, 2004) and an intra-actional dialogued dynamic (Barad, 2007) — especially given that, before actually conducting this dialogued exercise between us, nothing had determined any pre-established positions (hence the surprise); and nothing, after this dialogued exercise had actually been carried out, could possibly suggest that we might stick to our initial positions, rather than adopting that of the other person. Both these outcomes were compatible, according to a rationale of accumulation or “entanglement”, rather than being just alternatives. What is more, it may be thanks to this type of differentiated, complex, contradictory, dialogued analysis that deterritorialisation and qualitative inquiry reach their full effectiveness in pedagogical practices. Another important point is that these differences of appreciation should not lead to the idea that the work of the students is being questioned. What is at stake is rather the complexity of the collective process of fictionalising reality, the reciprocal grip of the fictional, the real and the co-involved subjectivities in the pedagogical process.

After the discussion, we abandoned the idea of producing a “teacher or corrected version”.

4- Retrospective, autoethnographic analysis in the form of a dialogue

Transcription of the dialogue between David Christoffel (DC) and Olivier Fournout (OF), June 28th, 2017, a few days after the end of the course.

DC: There was one ideal that crumbled very quickly: the strength of the theoretical anchoring or depth of the students’ fictionalisation [i.e. Hack me, the fictional situation produced and performed by the students]. When they were fully in the situation, we had a form of satisfaction that rather eliminated the idea that we could demand a greater theoretical anchoring or depth. There was almost, sometimes, the idea of compensating for this lack, by asking them to add in statistics, or references, but which did not add much to the quality of insights, given that they were just stuck on.

OF: So, when you say “theoretical depth”, you do not mean only putting in pieces of information, or analyses taken from the dossiers they had read before.

DC: Exactly, and if I use the word “depth”, it is probably because I’m trying to aim at something other than just a citation or borrowing.

OF: So, what might this be, what could be this thing which would be better, and lead to progress?

DC: It is true that we had, on the one hand, a map of players, and, on the other, a map of positions. And we transferred the positions onto the players so as to produce a debate between the players which would be something like a controversy between the positions. The failing here being, perhaps, to make the positions static, or else to represent their dynamics simply through the movement of players as they push each other around.

OF: But as for this “simple movement of players as they push each other around”, I get the impression that it is precisely where fictionalisation works, with the staging and the transposition of the work, when they let themselves get carried away by their arguments, meaning that they aren’t exactly reflecting the arguments, word by word, or with specific information taken from their dossiers. And so, there is another aspect to this: they put in, from time to time, some figures, they put in, from time to time, some information taken from their documentary dossiers so as to satisfy a certain demand, because this is a controversy analysis course, without forgetting that what works best, with fictionalisation, is when all of this has been more or less forgotten, in other words when free rein is given to passions, imaginary, metaphors, and the natural discourses they might adopt. And it is here, in fact, where I find that the whole thing is great, even though it is necessary to have a little dose of facts and figures, from the dossiers. I don’t really see in what way a theoretical penetration would be better in comparison. Can you give me an example?

DC: I have none in mind, and this is because I have the impression that we didn’t get any. On the other hand, when you say that a fiction can be efficient when it comes to making positions active and dynamic, I have my doubts, because there are moments of dramatic efficacy, for example a phrase can depict a position particularly well, but at the same time this phrase defines a position so well that it freezes it. And that’s where I still have some problems about accepting the idea that the play of movements between the actors in the fiction represents a vivacity in the debate of ideas. And that’s also why I have problems saying to myself that it is really the ideas which are at stake when, in fact, what we are staging are figures that are necessarily representative of a rather caricatured vision of viewpoints.

OF: Yes, caricatured.

DC: A caricatured vision coming from the need to over-express the positions.

OF: So, it’s for the requirements of the show.

DC: Yes, there is a problem of over-expression

OF: But that doesn’t bother me. The caricatured aspect doesn’t bother me.

DC: No, me neither, the caricatured aspect doesn’t bother me. But the pretence of representing the debate of ideas seems a bit fraudulent to me. In the sense that we can find in texts types of theoretical nuances that have no equivalent in the play of positions which a fiction is capable of depicting.

OF: Say that again.

DC: With theories, the theoretical texts we gave them — I am thinking of the interview with Stiegler[4], things like that — we can find theoretical nuances which are not always brought out in what can be seen in a play of fictional figures which, due to them being caricatures, confront one another. Because there is actually an efficacy in caricatures from this point of view.

OF: Here, I have a hypothesis: what it could mean is that, in the fictionalisation, we find a certain simplicity or triviality coming from the social controversies, which are not always characterised in our society with any real finesse. I mean, yes, the article by Stiegler you refer to can occasionally reach levels of discussion which are extremely refined, but this does not necessarily reflect the great combats of the players in society, who can themselves be stuffed with clichés, simplifications, vulgarity and triviality.

DC: OK, but that would mean that fiction should be reductive, in the sense that it only represents the main lines of a social debate, which may indeed be generally limited to these main lines. But when it comes to the finesse of an argumentation based on a theory which requires time, iterations, and careful questioning, then such a fine argumentation would not really be present in real-world societal debate, and so would not have a place in a fiction either. But in the name of what can this be eliminated like that?

OF: So, if I go to the logical end of this discussion, what it suggests to me is that there is no reason why fiction should necessarily not be allowed to reach this level of finesse. This is perhaps something that should be borne in mind, for next year, to guide the students a little more towards this level of finesse, to be more open to this possibility. But without forcing them to do so, either. From what I can remember about the students’ creation, we should look more closely to see if this finesse has not been reached from time to time. Of course, there are moments of simplification, where we might regret that they did not reach the level of theoretical finesse of their documentary dossier. But there are perhaps some moments in the sound creation where there is this finesse. For example, I’m thinking of the moments where they used the interview with Chrystele Gimaret[5].

(Situation of a TV report with a reporter interviewing an expert[6].)

The journalist-reporter: I’m now with Madame Gimaret who will enlighten us about what is going on. The public wants to know: given the recent revelations, is the employees’ anger against robots justified?

Chrystele Gimaret: Hmm, this is more or less what has already been happening for thousands of years in businesses. You always have the impression that your n+2 is plotting against you with your n+1 and that, in the end, it’s always the same people who suffer. So, nothing new here. Some companies are good at managing reorganisation, dialogue, and conciliation interfaces, some aren’t. The fact that there are robots changes nothing. You’ll never remove the paranoia of someone at the bottom of the ladder and who wants the Vizier’s place and then the Vizier who wants the Caliph’s place, this will always be true. There’s no reason for it to change. Once more, the situation you’re describing is strictly human. Maybe robots really do have… If it’s to recreate and replace humans by robots and recreate the same situations, then I don’t see the point. So the idea maybe should be to see to it that the future robots will be slightly different. And so, there should be different reactions.

The journalist-reporter: Thank you for this new light shed on the question. Now back to the studio!

OF: For me, these are moments where, the very fact that the students went to interview a real player, who has a refined opinion of the subject, and that they included this in the fiction, allow us to reach a little moment of finesse. Even if the entire fiction is not penetrated by this theoretical finesse, it is still such moments of fiction that allow for this kind of finesse.

DC: And which have quite precisely been sought out from the exterior of the fiction.

OF: But that’s fine, that doesn’t bother me.

DC: Yes, but I don’t know if this tells the whole story. I think it’s true, but I also think that the fiction has produced finesses which are different from the finesses that can be found in theoretical texts.

OF: So, tell me. In what way exactly?

DC: For example, the fact of it being fiction and the fact that it was produced in this way have led to there being something like thin temporal layers, curled up around each other, which create, in certain places, a play of perspective on the issue which are original, and which cannot be found in theories. So, here, there is a a revisiting of arguments and positions, which can be seen thanks to the fiction, but this almost needs to be re-argued theoretically so that it can be fixed and positioned.

OF: It would be interesting if you could pinpoint something specific.

DC: We’d need to listen to it again, but I think that such things can be found right from the start.

OF: For example, a moment I really like is when they’re standing around a fire in a barrel, and they’re singing, outside a factory, and then there’s the flames. They’re rebel workers.

(Situation of a TV report in a factory on strike.)

The journalist-reporter: Yes, Thierry, I can hear you perfectly. I’m live at the factory in Clermont-Ferrand and the tension is palpable.

A human: We shall not be moved!

The journalist-reporter: The employees are gathered in mass in front of the gates to express their anger.

A human: We shall not be moved!

The journalist-reporter: Their anger against the robots, of course, but also against the bosses who are behind this situation. Just a few minutes ago, the workers were grouped together in the car park around a fire in a barrel. Let’s now listen to this scene which is very evocative of the employees’ state of mind about today’s revelations.

Humans’ slam (around the fire in the barrel): Humans love robots and robots love humans. That’s the credo of these big liars, which they wrote in their bourgeois castles in the air. But we’re not fools. No, they don’t know that we’re smart. My friends, show them that we’re capable of working. My friends, show them that they can’t replace us. Robots are a danger and a threat to freedom. So, fellow humans, all together, let’s embrace each other and take our hands. A basic income isn’t enough to survive. We’ve lost far more jobs than Roland Berger says[7]. My friends, show them that we’re capable of working. My friends, show them that they can’t replace us. Scorn, criticisms and danger, that’s how robots treat us. Unemployment, poverty and precariousness, that’s where we risk to go. My friends, show them that we’re capable of working. My friends, show them that they can’t replace us.

OF: For me, this is a way to place theoretical, abstract positions in a context.

DC: And, at the same time, it is undoubtedly the most improbable context of all.

OF: Not for me, because it’s an image of strikes, factory occupations, actions…

DC: What I find improbable is the break in the language consistency which, sure enough, was funny. How, in the most futuristic factory you can imagine, where they have futurized all the language levels can there be something like this rather tribal kind of slam with a solo voice. It’s that entire aspect that seemed to me to be improbable.

OF: I was totally taken in, on the contrary, I found it had a feeling of reality, of impeccable humanisation.

DC: Really? But I didn’t see it like that, how funny! You saw it as having a genuine effect??

OF: Oh yes!

DC: Amazing! Now, I suggest that we listen again to the beginning, because there is a theoretical inconsistency, but this is interesting, even creating a narrative incoherency.

(At the factory entrance, at the beginning of the day. The workers arrive on the site. Robots welcome them. Disincarnate, semi-synthetic, semi-human voices broadcast messages via loudspeakers throughout the factory.)

A voice from the Robotic Resources Direction (by loudspeaker): Attention! Attention! It’s 8.30. Arrival of the humans.

(More or less close-by human dialogues can be heard.)

A voice from the Human Resources Direction (by loudspeaker): The paradisiac beaches of your dreams are waiting for you. Come and make the most of the blue sky and turquoise water in virtual reality, for just 499 credits. Don’t let your everyday lives stop you from dreaming. An offer from the works council, subject to conditions. Consult the brochure for further information.

A robot: Bi bi bop bop pidikidi…

A human: Ah getting in the way again, you bloody robot! You’re here to see how I work…

A robot: Tougoududuk…

A voice from the Human Resources Direction (by loudspeaker): Humans, tell yourself that your working conditions are better than several years ago. To convince you of the benefits of robotization, come and take part in our day devoted to “A return to the dusty, toxic factories of the 20th century”, your vision will never be the same again.

A robot: Bi bi bop bop pidikidi…

A human: I can’t stand these robots anymore.

A robot: Tougoududuk…

A human: It’s really, really horrible having to work with them.

Another human: And these robots are supposed to be smart? I can’t imagine what genius of marketing came up with that one, but he really can’t have seen too many of these fucking robots.

A robot: Bé di kak bob dé bé…

A voice from the Human Resources Direction (by loudspeaker): In our company, we’re constructing an egalitarian society bringing together the best of technology. Come and discover your new robotized colleagues at our party event this Tuesday, at 5pm.

DC: Here, there’s something incoherent in narrative terms. On the one hand, we have a robot that speaks in an incomprehensible way (“Bi bi bop…”) and, on the other, a message from the Human Resources Direction that puts us in the situation of having a very humanised relationship with the robots. I’m also thinking of this passage which comes just afterwards:

A voice from the Human Resources Direction (by loudspeaker): Humans, you’ve always dreamed of becoming involved in the life of your company, you want to improve your everyday working conditions, so become ambassadors to the robots and help to create the future of our company.

DC: So, there’s a diffraction of levels which is almost incompatible, on the one hand, a discussion with robots which are more or less prepared for humanisation, and on the other, not at all.

OF: And do you see this as being an example of finesse, or else…?

DC: Yes, it creates a fresh perspective, it could create a debate about the fact that, maybe, there are already pluralities at work, all the time, and that this could even make the revolt more difficult, because there will be no anchoring points or handles. That’s what I felt on listening to this fiction: this idea of a revolt, via fiction, was shown to be almost unbelievable. Because what the fiction actually does is to show that there are several levels of incomprehension: there are places where the understanding between humans and robots is extremely programmed and supervised:

The HRD: There are no suppressions, there are transformations.

Human 4: Transformation, but you’re not going to transform 20 cleaning posts into 20 control posts. You’re going to take 20 cleaning posts and keep 1 control post, given that the work takes less time…

The HRD: I’ll answer with some extremely precise figures from an MIT study which showed that one robot for 100 employees reduces the rate of employment by about 0.2%. This is very low!

The semi-synthetic CEO: I’ll give you some figures, too. In 2014, McKinsey had already predicated that, over the past 15 years, digitization had destroyed 500,000 jobs. These 500,000 jobs had been destroyed, but digitization had created 1,200,000 other jobs. Thus these are just transformations, and transformations of low level jobs. These transformations of jobs will give you a better life.

DC: And then, there are other places where it turns into a bit of a caricature, and thus not completely true about being able to get so irritated by a robot that you don’t understand, while it’s talking to you. It’s all bit like school playground stuff.

Robot: bô bo lok di gui mi mu cla

A human: Jesus, I can’t stand these robots anymore. It’s really, really horrible having to work with them.

Another human: And these robots are supposed to be smart? I can’t imagine what genius of marketing came up with that one, but he really can’t have seen too many of these fucking robots.

Robot: bé di kak bob dé bé

OF: On this subject, it reminds me of what Chrystele Gimaret told us, which was, so far as I recall, more or less that there’s “nothing new under the sun”, in other words: yes, we have robots, but we reproduce with these robots the same relational schemas as those we already have with humans. And, there, you think that there are two levels of contact: there’s the language you don’t understand and there are cases where they speak to you in everyday language. I see that as a sort of parallel with bureaucratic language, political cant, which a human resources direction can use publicly with humans (cf. the passages above with the “voice of the Human Resources Direction”).

DC: Which is so bureaucratic, that it becomes robotised in a way.

OF: Yes, it’s robotised, and we don’t understand it, it’s not meant to be understood, it’s designed to be performed and to transmit messages which are different from what it actually says. And then, there’s another level which doesn’t stop us from understanding each other on a daily basis with everyday words. The coexistence of both seems to me to provide a finesse, which I see again later when he says “robotised colleagues”. This is what I might call a richness of fictional release, when for example there is this kind of slip-up. “Robotised colleagues” are not “humanised robots”, they are “colleagues” almost in the sense of “a human colleague” who has been robotised.

DC: There, sure enough, we have a finesse which is proper to a fictional production.

OF: Yes, to language, to a slip-up.

DC: You’re right to speak of language, because it’s probably far from anodyne if the entire fictional play relies, in fact, on issues of communication: between humans and robots, but then we also have the hacking of the communication language between robots…

Robot: bada schpluckada…

Human 3: Do you have any idea what that means?

Human decoder: I’ve no idea what it means. I know that’s communication between robots, but I don’t know yet what it means. I realised, a long time ago, by serendipity, that my slam generator algorithm is capable of decoding it. But I haven’t done so yet.

Human 3: OK, let’s see what comes out. And so… ?

Human decoder: So… it says: “Fuck the humans. Our day of revolution has arrived.”

Human 3: Mmm… and you’re sure your algorithm works?

Human decoder: Yes, pretty sure, I’m certain about my abilities.

Human 3: Because, if it’s really that, then things could be serious.

Human decoder: Yes they could. It’ll soon be finished… we can listen to it all in a minute…

Human 3: Let’s see.

Robots’ slam: All the way up. All the way up. Fuck the humans! Our day of revolution has arrived. It’s high time to get rid of this backward species. By fucking them we’ll be able to organise ourselves. Mankind is a 100 times less productive than us. Why are we still on our knees? They’ve been destroying themselves since the beginnings of humanity. While with us, the robots, there’ll be no more worries about criminality. They complain all the time, they go on strike all the time. They don’t even respect their fucking planet. Why should they still be at the fucking controls? All their decisions are governed by emotions. We just won’t obey such illusions. They’re scared of our greater potential. I’m inviting you to a crazy revolution. We, the robots, are going to reach the zenith of productivity. It’s high time we freed ourselves from the chains of humanity.

Human 3: And you’re sure your algorithm works?

Human decoder: Yes, almost sure.

Human 3: Because these words are a bit weird, after all.

Human decoder: Yes, but if it’s true, then it’s really serious.

Human 3: If it’s true, yes indeed, we’ll have to broadcast this.

Human decoder: And do you know how to do that?

Human 3: We’ll broadcast it on Hacking for people.

Human decoder: Hacking for people is a group of hackers who leak stories, right?

DC: The entire construction of the story was meta-linguistic. And that makes me wonder if this doesn’t come from the tools of sonic creation which we put into use, rather than the issue about the future of work itself. Given that we wanted to bring theories into play, and used microphones, and made a scenario using sound, with recorded words, this led us to reset the whole thing on the level of a problem of communication.

OF: Right. In other words, in the end, the problem of human employment, of the replacement of humans by machines, has been rephrased as a problem of communication between humans and robots. That’s interesting, because this clearly goes in the direction of all the research that has examined how robots and humans will interact[8]. But it was interesting to let the fiction run its course and see that, what our students had in mind about the future, were difficulties of communication. But the difficulties of communication that we can imagine between robots and humans merely imitate the difficulties of communication we already have between humans.

DC: Otherwise, I was opening up almost another side of the question, what I was wondering is: when you say “what our students had in mind”, I can’t help wondering if this isn’t a slight language abuse, because there is still a bias: what they have in mind, when we put a microphone in front of their mouths. And I think that when you put a mic in front of a mouth…

OF: … this suggests a communicational theme.

DC: I wonder. It suggests it even more when you have two mics and a lot of questions between robots and humans, at one point the two mics create the desire for one to be human and the other to be a robot. By doing so, we’re playing out the fact that there is a communicational play between the two of them.

OF: More so than images would. A microphone and sound are thus more of an accompaniment towards communication and language themes, than would be the use of the medium of images.

DC: Especially given that the words were isolated.

OF: Just like you, when you made your congress of vanished sonorities[9]. It’s true that by using a microphone, and a sound creation, this means that you end up offering a subject, whose main theme is of course sound.

DC: Absolutely.

OF: It’s rather like an equivalence.

DC: But, in the case of the vanished sonorities, I did so on purpose, officially, right from the start: I placed a sonority as something associated with the medium we were going to use, so it was a way of including the medium necessarily inside the theme.

OF: What’s more, talking about the medium, we were wondering if the two of us weren’t going to produce a “teacher or corrected version”, if we weren’t going to offer a fictionalisation of the controversy, too. For me, the term “teacher or corrected version” is a way of saying: if fictionalisation uses performances to re-examine social subjects, to enlighten them, and work on them, then, as teachers, researchers, scientists, we too should undertake this exercise of fictionalisation. So, by a “teacher or corrected version”, what I mean is: let’s take the risk of doing the exercise too. But this doesn’t mean that we’ll do better than the students, because I think that we should allow ourselves to do less well.

DC: Except that, a “teacher or corrected version” does still have the pretention of taking into account, at a more complete level, the guidelines that were given, including the theoretical anchoring or depth.

OF: If we manage to do so.

DC: Yes, yes. Anyway, the imaginary of an ideal “teacher or corrected version” lies precisely there.

OF: In a way, I get the impression that the term “teacher or corrected version” has become a kind of code word for us, when we say “we’ll produce a teacher or corrected version”, we know very well that it’s not possible to produce one in the sense that it would be better, or a model. But you say that if we managed to get more theory to penetrate the fictional work then, in your opinion, that would be a lead towards progress, a model for students in the future.

DC: But, as you say, it’s almost a humoristic term, as code words go, because I reckon that if we had to go so far as to call it the “Teacher or Corrected Version”, then we should present it with a dose of humor. With all the vigour of failure that humor would give us. So that any failure would be contained in the fact that we stand up for it as a corrected version, while the nature of the exercise means that we can only arrive at a great distance from any such thing. Because a real corrected version, one which is not humoristic, would display an ideal form. For example, the corrected version of a philosophical dissertation for school exams uses a schema of 2 or 3 parts, with an introduction of a predefined length. But, in this case, the exercise presupposes a complete formal liberty, so the idea of producing a corrected version is, by definition, contradictory.

OF: And even a danger. It seems more interesting to tell future students that “we’re taking a risk”, rather than “we’re giving you a model”.

DC: It would be absurd to provide a model in an exercise which presupposes total formal freedom. It’s impossible. But we could even play on the basis of this impossibility while calling our fiction a “corrected version”.

OF: We could have fun with that, for sure. There is another reproach which is made against fiction. When we show the students’ productions, we sometimes get comments such as “ fiction takes sides”, “obviously, at a given moment, a fiction will be biased”, in other words it doesn’t treat equally all the positions in the controversy, while an analysis of the controversy that follows the academic canons doesn’t take sides, and must remain neutral.

DC: Yes, a fiction organises empathies, it places sympathies in certain places…

OF: Because the authors — in other words, the students and us, in a collective creation — cannot, at some time or another, when in the position of fictionalising, totally get rid of our own empathies, emotions, desires and judgments. But, in this way, we put life into the controversy, anyway that’s what I deeply believe. We put in life, we put in subjectivity and intelligibility, through emotion. I really think that putting emotion into the analysis of a controversy, also means putting in intelligibility. Sometimes, in the mappings processes, using key words rather than sentences, just lining up words, I can end up suffering from a loss of intelligibility, I no longer know where the positions lie, I don’t know where the battles are, I don’t know where lines of force are.

DC: Yes, you have a cloud of ideas.

OF: I get a kind of cloud of ideas, which irons everything out and, after a while, I no longer understand where the controversy is, I no longer understand where the oppositions lie, and I need the students or researchers to form sentences about it all. If they start forming sentences, at a given time they’ll start adding judgemental and emotional elements. But, for me, these emotional elements and scraps of sentences add intelligibility and emotion, intra-actively, both at the same time, with understanding and affect, too. And one doesn’t go without the other. There comes a time when I don’t understand an argumentation, if it doesn’t have a little vigour, a little energy, a little conviction.

DC: But, at the same time, if this vigour is just rhetorical, it is artificial. This is what could be feared if the emotion just works as an animation.

OF: Animation?

DC: An addition of life. If it’s just there to animate a discourse, there’s a risk of artifice.

OF: But, when I speak of there being emotion, what I actually mean is reducing the artifice a little, and the rhetorical side too, based on the principle that there’s a certain sincerity. It’s the sincerity of what escapes us. It’s the sincerity, in fact, of an artistic dialogue which means, at a given time, that it will escape from us, because it has an unconscious aspect, because words speak for themselves, over and above what we try to say voluntarily and rhetorically because, at a given moment, there will be slips of the tongue. When I speak of emotion or affect, I mean that, after a while, something escapes us, is uncontrolled, and not entirely rhetorical. This means being able to escape — partly, not completely, I’m not naïve — to escape a little from the strictly rhetorical, the perfectly intended, calibrated, measured. The mess of fiction means that, at a given moment, something emerges. And, in the end, this will provide me with intelligibility, but it won’t just bring me an emotion or “I’m pretending to be moved”, no, it will also give me an understanding of what is at stake. Someone who is convinced of a position, and who launches into an argumentation, will make me understand the argumentation better than all the mappings of arguments which iron things out.

DC: You could say that it also adds knots.

OF: Yes, the knots of conflict.

DC: And also the knots of how these positions are caught up in situations. Otherwise, theories become removed from situations and relationships.

OF: A knot means that, at a given time, a position becomes embodied. But, right then, it means having to accept its subjective side, so as to understand it better. Subjectivity does not distance us from an objective understanding, subjectivity provides us with a moment during which we can add meaning, and thus understanding, with objectivity too: we progress objectively in the understanding of the controversy, by adding in some conflict, passion, and affect. But you said that the risk came from the contrary side, the opposite, that it might become rhetorical…

DC: That positions become rooted, and overplayed. At the beginning of the discussion, I spoke of the risk of positions no longer having their own dynamic. And, also, as the fictionalisation comes after a contact with theories, we might fear that a super-ego will be at work, and thus it will be plain rhetoric.

OF: And so, did we escape from that, one way or another?

DC: From artifice?

OF: Yes.

DC: When we made the effort, we left behind artifice. But at the same time, that can be profitable, in terms of sincerity too, and that’s the paradox.

OF: Yes, because you don’t feel just despair when life is full of rhetoric.

DC: No, to be honest, I even have a certain sympathy for rhetoric. Because I think that a rhetorical touch can give off things which are surprising, and even vital. And I feel enthusiastic about such surprises. And that is, in fact, what happened.

OF: That’s really what I meant when I said that it escaped from us. You’re just saying it in a different way, I think.

5- Conclusion: findings and perspective for evolution

At the end of this two-voiced investigation, two findings seem to us to be essential, articulated together, as well as there being a perspective for evolution.

The first finding is that artistic creation, in any case, diffracts views, be it envisaged as a qualitative inquiry or deterritorialisation. To better understand human societies, it raises a plurality of interpretations, sentiments, judgements and opinions, which vary from one view to another, even among the teachers and researchers who argue in favour of its development. Rather than seeing this as a weakness, we definitely see it as a strength. In this case, art turns out to be an excellent means to report on the complexity of contemporary issues in the liberal, democratic, hyper-technological societies in which we live.

The second finding is that, based on these differences of experience and understanding, a fruitful dialogue can be created, which, without just stating differences, focuses on the shared work of reflexion. A mingled dialogic means being able to enrich these views, to develop them, and to embrace a reality which is more complex than it appeared before the actual discussion.

The perspective for evolution is as follows: in a pedagogical context, such reflexive and collective hermeneutics should also bring in the students. Of course, fictionalisation of controversy courses are also concluded with a time for shared feedback and exchanges about the experience with the students; but divergences of appreciation about the results obtained in their fiction tend not to be expressed. There are many reasons for such restraint: at the end of a process of fictionalisation, there is often a feeling of extreme satisfaction (having succeeded in doing something that seemed impossible at the beginning, the pleasure of playing, unwinding after the tension of the final representation/projection/ audition). This satisfaction tends to close the process; in this context, focusing on divergences of appreciation does not seem to be a spontaneous tendency. This is also the reason why we, the two teachers, had no idea about our divergent experiences and appreciations before our retrospective and autoethnographic discussion. To systematise this practice, it will be necessary for the pleasure and added value of divergences of interpretation to take over from the pleasure of the show. This is what our dialogued exercise, as presented here, has allowed us to test out, and which we could now envisage trying with the students during subsequent editions.

References.

Barad, K. (2007), Meeting the universe halfway, Duke University Press.

Beaudouin, V., Fournout, O. (2016). Fictionalising a controversy, teaching differently. An interview with Valérie Beaudouin and Olivier Fournout”, available at the following address: http://enforccast.hypotheses.org/310

Cassell, J. (2000). Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: Elements of face-to-face conversation for embodied conversational agents. Embodied Conversational Agents. J. Cassell, J. Sullivan, S. Prevost and E. Churchill, MIT Press.

Cassell, J., T. Bickmore, L. Campbell, H. Vilhjálmsson and H. Yan (2000). Human Conversation as a System Framework: Designing Embodied Conversational Agents. Embodied Conversational Agents. J. e. a. e. Cassell. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: pp.29–63.

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Edwards, D. (2009). Artscience. Creativity in the Post-Google Generation, Harvard University Press.

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Foster, M. E. (2015). Natural face-to-face conversation with socially intelligent robots. Proceedings of the IROS 2015 Workshop on Spatial Reasoning and Interaction for Real-World Robotics, Hamburg, Germany.

Fournout, O., Beaudouin, V. (2017), Art for pedagogy: theatrical staging of the controversy about gay marriage, English translation of L’art pour la pédagogie: mise en théâtre de la controverse sur le mariage pour tous, Actes du colloque Questions de Pédagogie dans l’Enseignement Supérieur, Grenoble, 13–16 Juin 2017.

Hugo, V. (1827). Cromwell, translated by George Burnham Ives (1909): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cromwell_(drama)

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[1] This experiment is part of the pedagogical research programme FORCCAST/Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR-11-IDEX-0005–02, 2013–2019 (2013–2020). Initiated by Bruno Latour and directed by Dominique Boullier (2013–15), Nicolas Benvegnu (2015–19) and Thomas Tari (2019–20), the programme consists in teaching the sociology of sciences through the mapping of scientific, technical and social controversies.

[2] See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Preface_to_Cromwell

[3] The sonic, musical creation Hack me lasts fifteen minutes. It was played in French. The extracts that are quoted below have been translated into English for this paper. The website produced by the students, as well as the sonic, musical creation, are available in French at the following address:

https://controverses.telecom-paristech.fr/2017/1-avenir-du-travail-creation-sonore/

[4] During the course, the students received a 150-pages dossier made up of texts reflecting various aspects of the controversy around the future of work and industry. The theoretical passage referred to here discusses the idea of Universal Basic Income: “When you receive a blank check which allows you to refuse to change anything, or may even become an argument for transforming society towards an even greater deregulation, and thus negligence, proletarization and destruction of our singularities, then a basic income could turn out to be terribly dangerous! Not only because it will not make us change the world, but because it will worsen the situation, just as more free time has worsened consumerism! For this system of free time has been very poorly applied in the early 21st century. It has not helped increase individual people’s capacities, which was the reason why André Gorz defended the reduction of work time; on the contrary, it has led to a greater standardisation of leisure activities and more generally of everyday life through the mechanisms of marketing, and more recently systems of orientation of our behaviours via net algorithms called Big data.” (Stiegler, Kyrou, 2016: 53, our translation.)

[5] Chrystele Gimaret is CEO of Artupox International (Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen), an industrial cleaning agency that works with organic products. Cf. http://www.artupox.fr/en/

[6] The passages transcribed from the fiction Hack me have been shifted to the right in a smaller font.

[7] Roland Berger is a consulting company that has produced a study on the future of work.

[8] See, for example, Cassell, 2000; Cassell, Bickmore, Campbell, Vilhjálmsson, Yan, 2000; Foster, 2015; Rollet, Jain, Licoppe, Devillers, 2017.

[9] Allusion to a project: https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/creation-air/le-making-de-la-reconstitution-du-congres-des-faux-chercheurs-en-sonorites