midterm reflection

Our fascinations started at the notions of spontaneity and coincidence. Inspired by Miriam Rasch’s writing (and interview), especially the quote “A wholly predictable future is not a future but a continuous present.”, we wonder(ed) if the phenomena of randomness and coincidence also have a place to exist in the world of data.

We started our research out by giving ourselves small assignments. We decided on a few search terms (coronavirus, graphic design, volcano) and started looking. We first turned to Google’s I’m feeling lucky button, expecting a randomised result, but (to our slight disappointment) as it turned out, the output is the top search result. We then continued to look at YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, always clicking on the top suggested videos to see where the recommended path would take us and how much we would deviate from the initial topic.

These experiments then led us to explore methods of information-finding. We wanted to do both an online and an offline search for information, to see what the differences or similarities would be. So Geeske went to a library to look for information, while Mia took to Wikipedia.

At the library, it was easy to access the information and get an overview of what is available. Geeske took the time to look at the content and didn’t move from book to book too quickly. She spent around two hours at the library but didn’t notice the time that’s passed until later, due to falling into what’s called a flow state. (From Wikipedia: In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.) While Mia’s experience was different in some ways, it was very similar in others. She started her exploration on one Wikipedia article and clicking on just one permalink per article, but soon enough found herself clicking on more and branching out, having multiple tabs open at a time. Overall, she looked at over 80 articles on the topic of volcanoes in about an hour. She didn’t fully take in all the content, rather scanning than reading it, but she too fell into a flow state for a while.

Our mutual observation was an unexpected one, but we both found it very interesting how that happened. We certainly did not set out to prove or find out anything in particular, but we both had a similar mental experience (flow state), albeit very different physical ones. These experiments showed us how some experiences (in our case finding information) have already been made digital, but now we wonder what was left behind and what is missing in the digital environments.

Although the aforementioned experiments lead us slightly away from our initial fascination with spontaneity, it is something we would still like to look into more. We also want to research the topic of the flow state further, seeing how it differs in online vs. offline environments. We have defined exploration, flow state and getting lost in exploration, and stumbling upon information by chance as topics we would like to continue exploring. We also think an interesting point to look at would be the way we engage with the content in online vs. offline environments. We have formed the following questions:

? Does the phenomena of randomness and coincidence (while exploring) also have a place to exist in the world of data?

? How do the online environment influence the flow state (what enhances it and what interrupts it)? Are there parts of the flow state that are undigitisable?

? Do we connect more with physical content than digital content? How do we translate from one medium to the other? What is it that makes the difference between the two?