December Archive Highlight - An Informal Poll

Given the reading for the month, I couldn’t resist looking back on a research action for an old piece about “What Makes Some Love True?,” back from the era of the Institute for Internal Certainty. As I did, I realized this actually connected to something I’d spent much of the summer in conversation about (read: ranting over) in the Snack Track. And so as the year ends, and as I find myself back in the cyclical place of asking “how do I get all these half-formed ideas for new pieces out into the world?” I reflect on the uncelebrated act of taking tiny, clumsy first steps, and getting specific about what exactly we are testing in a playtest.

“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

- Leonard Bernstein (and more recently, the opening title of a biopic of Leonard Bernstein)

Way back in 2016, in the earliest experiment for the Institute of Internal Certainty, I set out to ask the question “What Makes Some Love True?” — which, looking back, I would rate as an B- question. It’s got a lot of power and depth, but may be a bit too clever for its own good, and requires one to already be at a certain vantage point on the question of love to really be comprehended, or to unsettle anyone. Even in 2016 I wasn’t quite sure how to make a delivery mechanism for this particular piece of trouble, and so before designing the interaction for the True Love Story Library, I decided to conduct an informal street poll to start getting some conversations about Love under my belt.

As you’ll see from my notes at the time, this was born out of a desire to really earnestly cosplay the “Creative Research Institute” angle of the IIC. But even then, I also was self-aware enough to identify it as a bid to just get started, and to leap out of the constant turning of the rubix cube that tends to happen when a project lives in my head alone.

Almost 8 years later, I have much the same needs, but I think about them with different language. Now I would call this Playtesting. But “Playtesting” what, exactly? Working with artist from the Cannonball Snack Track this summer, I and my fellow track-producer Jeff Evans tried to champion a few ideals around testing and experimentation that we really wanted to see artists in that production track (and beyond) embrace: specifying your experiments, testing early and often, and embracing super low-production-value experiments.

As we convened artists, we encouraged them to try to name what unknowns about their projects they hoped to actually answer within the process of preparing and presenting them to audiences, and to explain how they anticipated collecting/measuring those answers. For some, it was about gathering content; for others, testing technologies, or forms of engagement or interaction design. However, as we contended, when attempting to develop a piece before first exposure to audiences, every creator should focus on testing assumptions. These may range from the hyper-specific (e.g. “we assume that audiences will be able to identify where a loud noise comes from in a dark room”) to the basic (“we assume audiences will connect emotionally to this topic”). Jeff and I felt that playtesting was key to shake out these assumptions and help a creator’s initial impulses deepen and mature, and we advocated an incredibly accessible and cheap technology for doing so: a talk-through walkthrough.

Like a staged reading of a new play, committing to making your best effort to talk an unknowing tester beat by beat through your concept is an excellent and efficient way to gather data and sharpen your assumptions. If you commit to talking someone in real time through a chunk, a section, or even all of your piece in real time, you will very quickly figure out what components of your work you haven’t figured out yet, what sections make no sense and have little appeal to an outside participant, and where the emotional “heat” lies in a narrative or premise. Better still, similar to staged readings, applying a little creativity and imagination to your presentation can help you more strongly evoke full sections or components of the eventual piece, particularly when the audience has a participatory role. Asking your listener to audibly respond to prompts and role-play the eventual scene; presenting reference images or verbatim lines or moments of important text; even asking listeners to close their eyes or face away to replicate changes in lighting conditions or orientation: gestures like these not only let you get better initial feedback and data, they function as a jumpstart on your ideating process when designing the final engagements and production elements. And while it is certainly possible to debrief with formal questions after talking through, Jeff and I are strong advocates of trusting your read of a listener throughout the conversation; you’ve spent your whole human life training to identify when someone isn’t interested in what you’re talking about (and if you haven’t, I really recommend getting started)—using that sensibility while talking someone through part or all of your concept gets you real-time data (and puts you in the practice of always taking an audience’s temperature, which is helpful once you eventually grow your piece into full-scale interactions with the public and want to continue iterating from performance to performance).

Looking back to 2016, I wasn’t yet being too specific about what exactly I wanted to test, or how I’d know when I’d gotten useful data. Mostly I think I was hungry to see if the questions that were coming up for me around the topic of True Love were as haunting to others as they were to me—or at least, were half as interesting. Some responses were immediately affirming on that front (see the “I wish I’d never talked to you” finding below), but I’d contend that the more useful responses were the ones that surprised me, or shifted my relationship to the question: “How do you know (if Love is a Verb or a Noun)?” I asked one voter. Their answer: “I practice”

All in all, this exercise was a few shades more involved than the previously mentioned “talkthrough walkthrough.” Without a strong notion of what my eventual interaction with participants would look like, I had to cast a pretty wide net. That said, I think it shares the important qualities of being lo-fi, conversational, and exploratory—and is for damn sure preferable to sitting alone in a coffee shop for 4 hours staring at a blank word doc.

But what were the entirely unscientific results of this experiment? Let’s ask 2016 Yannick, who very earnestly took notes on the experience:

Informal Street Poll Results – Oct. 6th, 2016

Question: Is Love a Verb or a Noun?

Research Associate(s): Yannick

Summary

Someone introduced this to me once as “the most important question.” I can’t say I quite agree, but I do definitely find it to be important and it freaks me the hell out, and I wondered how other people would respond.

I prepared some index cards to be used as ballots, asking participants to choose either “Noun” or “Verb,” and to optionally answer “How do you know?” and their 1st name or initial. I made two envelopes labeled “Noun” and “Verb” to be  used as ballot boxes, and then I went to Washington Square Park, put out some signs, and took an informal survey.


Data:

“ Q: How do you know (if Love is a Verb or a Noun)?
 A: I practice

— Vasilis Peppas Crtv-frstrtr ”

Total Responses: 18

Noun: 7.5*

Verb: 9.5*

* Two separate participants believed strongly that Love is both, and so they tore their votes in half to vote twice. One participant tore his vote to pieces and walked away.




Findings:

“I wish I’d never talked to you
—[ ]”

“Verb”  was more popular by a small margin, but with such a small sample that cannot in any way be considered a definitive answer. I was far more interested in the strength of some responses. The man quoted above initially said he thought it was a simple, “stupid” question, and cast a vote for “Verb.” I began to talk to him about why he thought that, and what that meant, and after 5 minutes he grew very quiet, stared at the ground for a moment, then looked up. “Oh, I wish I’d never talked to you.” He stayed for 45 minutes, continuing to talk to me and other participants.

As a young couple was walking by, the woman read the sign and shouted “oh let’s do this!”,  pulling her boyfriend by the arm. They each took a ballot, and hid their responses from each other. “Okay, on three, alright?” They prepared to cast their votes. “One, two, THREE!” They both picked “verb.” “Good,” said the girlfriend, and as they strolled away she turned and looked me directly in the eyes; “You almost destroyed our relationship.”

Not all results were this dramatic, but most participants (even the ones that vacillated for a while about their answer) were pretty vehement in their responses; the distinction, it seems, matters a lot in determining how we should love/be in love.

Personal favorite response? “I Practice.” It’s so simple and confident, I instantly wondered why the hell I hadn’t thought of it (and wondered how far out of practice I may or may not be). This inspired the concept for a series of potential research actions, interactive scenes and installations, all centered on the question: how can we practice love?

Also, the torn response reading simply “Biblical” would be the beginning of a recurring pattern of religious responses.

Meta-Data (Hows and Whys)

Where: Washington Square Park, in front of the Garibaldi Statue

Why: I wanted a public space with a lot of foot traffic, and it was a nice day, so I knew WSQ would be crowded. Also, it’s a pretty art/performance dense area, so I thought people may be more open to participating. It’s a trade off, because it also means people can be harder to engage/less surprised or curious (“oh, another student project.”) I sat by Garibaldi because I thought I might be more approachable if sitting, but I wanted the envelopes/materials to be higher than ground level so people wouldn’t need to stoop. We should definitely invest in a table. )

When: October 6th, 2016, midday. 2 hours (set up inclusive)

(Why: I thought lunchtime would be busy, and had free time between two meetings)

“Raw Data”

Ballot responses (optional)

NOUN

Q: How do you know?
A: NOT REAL
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: MR
——
Q: How do you know?
A: It’s something I have to give & receive (recieve srry)
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: Rachel
——
Q: How do you know?
A: NOUN
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: Viet Nguyen
——
Q: How do you know?
A:  [ ]
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [ ]
——
Q: How do you know?
A: you do things to show them, so the doing is a verb The love (noun) causes actions of that love.
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: Lucy
——
Q: How do you know?
A: Noun. A state of being.
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: HAK
——
Q: How do you know?
A: Because it is something that is shared
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: Forbes
——

VERB

Q: How do you know?
A: [ ]
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [ ]
——
Q: How do you know?
A: It’s a Choice
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [ ]
——
Q: How do you know?
A: [ ]
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [ ]
——
Q: How do you know?
A: [ ]
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: DK
——
Q: How do you know?
A: [ ]
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: HL
——
Q: How do you know?
A:  I PRACTICE
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: Vasilis Peppas Crtv-frstrtr
——
Q: How do you know?
A: Its an action, Not to be taken for granted, […] It exists but via catalyst experienced
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: TJ
——

“I wish I’d never talked to you”

——
Q: How do you know?
A: Love requires action, anyone can say they are in love, but you need to prove it.
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: mm

BOTH (torn in half)

——
Q: How do you know?
A: BIBLICAL
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [unreadable]
——
Q: How do you know?
A: to love —> Action I love my __
         love —> noun the love is
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: IRMA

NO VOTE (torn to pieces)

Q: How do you know?
A: I don’t
Q: Your 1st name or initial

A: [ ]

~ ~

That's all for this month's Highlight! Unless of course, you'd be willing to answer:

Is Love a Verb or a Noun?