Research Study #2: Embodying climate adaptation: a sensory performance lecture in the age of powerpointlessness
Opening touchpoint
This piece of research was specifically developed for the Climate Adaptation Team at Natural England who were interested in my sensory methodologies to explore more effective forms of storytelling. Exploratory conversations with the social science team revealed the ineffectiveness of constantly presenting statistics and figures. They also spoke of ‘analysis paralysis’ where despite the abundance of data or evidence it is somehow-never enough and somehow fails to move. In an opening conversation, Sarah, the Senior Specialist I was working closely with shared her frustration at constantly putting forward reports to decision makers that are too easily brushed aside asking “how can they see this and not act?” Therein lay a provocation - orderly, estranged, sterile numbers, conveyed through the ocularcentric or logocentric might be easy to dismiss. Complex webs of relations have been translated into tables of statistics and scatter plot diagrams, distilled into ‘natural capital’ and ‘resource management’. What if people could touch these numbers through their thermosensory or auditory systems and turn the provocation into “how can you feel this and not act?” I proposed turning the Climate Adaptation Baseline Training powerpoint, a frequently used series of online training slides into a haptic experience. This would attempt to re-sense-itise the data, create an embodiment of the information and inspire a muscle-memory recall to make the information more resonant and relational.
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Research discovery
The powerpoint is the frequent mode of delivery for online seminars and webinars, bringing people from multiple locations into one shared space. Referencing the ‘performance lecture’ formats of Sophie Seita, Mindy Seu, The Centre for Experimental Lectures and The Photography Gallery’s Screenwalks, Sarah and I collaborated on the creation of an experimental sensory performance lecture. Sarah selected slides whilst I led on how we might animate the information, with her collaborative input. We choreographed and scripted an hour-long online experience using the desktop screen as a stage to display different windows and cue in different interactions. Participants were briefed to bring a selection of easily accessible and close to hand objects from their home or office and participate on cue throughout the performance lecture.
The activities were inspired by the reality that many of the decision makers at Natural England are comfortably insulated from the effects of climate breakdown as detailed in Hannah Della Bosca’s excellent paper Comfort in chaos: A sensory account of climate change denial and events like “Room temperature, energy colonialism and history of comfort in the united states”. As a side note - MP’s will vote to cut energy support but are able to claim energy expenses…
To design performance lecture I drew on my own experience crafting online sensory seminars through the Squishy Sessions (hosted from April 2021 to present) as well as Laura U. Marks’ work on Haptic Visuality and Teresa Stehvilakos work on Cinesthetic Feasts exploring the sensitive and tasty possibilities of the screen-based space. I’d also reference Caro Vanderbeek’s Enhancing Virtual Intimacy and Sensory Engagement in Art and Education and Haptic Creativity and the Mid-embodiments of Experimental Life, by Natasha Myers and Joe Dumit, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
In brief: a pop up window invites participants to ‘take their temperature’ in any way they wish before being prompted to exhale and blow into cupped hands to feel the temperatures of their own breath. Placing a common place cedar wood pencil on your face reveals different temperatures, whilst people are invited to observe the weather outside and compare it to inside. A familiar temperature rise diagram appears on the screen whilst participants take note of the ways they are able to adjust their personal climate. As we run through stats on biodiversity, we cue up the in-build sound player and manually DJ the volume. Sarah begins by straining her voice over the volume before it diminishes. We land the concept of ‘extreme’ and ‘shock’ change by asking people to place their hands around ice cold and boiling hot cups in quick succession whilst clearly explaining that we can not possibly attempt to embody these extreme events, and it would not be appropriate to. We give people a few moments of silence to digest and take a breath. As we discuss possible actions, we ask participants to adjust, flex, adapt themselves in their desk chair. As a final, closing ritual we ask people to draw an online garden.
When we asked participants what the addition of these additional sensory techniques and tactile processes offered they commented: “it made me think a bit deeper about the reality of what change can feel like and how it can feel unusual/uncomfortable sometimes”; “it helped me connect with the information I was given and relate it to my work”; “the sensory techniques have really made me think about how I relate and feel about the questions and issues posed, rather than just watching on a screen and struggling to focus” whilst others remarked on the emotion and imagination activating-qualities of the experience. Another suggested that similar activities could help them connect with different stakeholders e.g. inner city, a low income rural household, a family farm, a developer. A few participants found the sensory activities distracting from the messaging around climate change or felt the sensory aspects were too prominent. Future seminars could benefit from reduced activity or more of a balance between traditional slides and interactive moments although a participant offered that you have to have ‘an open mind’. The team at Natural England are experimenting with integrating the tactile practices into future seminars.
Implications / inquiries to develop
It feels like there are more opportunities to deconstruct and reconstruct text based materials to make them relational but also give them a body so they take up more space. I am interested in liberating important information off the page of a digital PDF and making it more sticky. I am already thinking about this with auditory podcasts / audio collages but also through more haptic publication making.
The notion of ‘performance’ also feel important in drawing attention the way data performs but also the notion of the receive as an active participant rather than a reader or watcher.
