I continue to be intrigued by DaVinci's principle of Sfumato as it keeps coming into my life. Rereading Langer, I was amused by imagining my high school Chemistry teacher taking us through the Elements Table using phrases like "In most cases Oxygen is the 9th element of the... (I made that up - I also got D's in Chemistry). I'm sure I would have been much more engaged and learned more had we been able to play more in class and not memorize equations and other things that I truly believe ARE facts and not fodder for "mindful learning". I know I would have loved history much earlier had we been able to explore it and not memorize dates - or try to. But I see Mrs. Cates just seething if we answered her pedantic questions with "might have been" or "maybe"! Talk about a woman who did not embrace ambiguity! For several years I've been thinking what fun it would be to go back and do 6th grade all over again, this time learning and not memorizing. Between new teaching methods and the wisdom a creative adult could bring, it would be a blast! And it would open up so many new worlds.
I have a wonderful client who is letting us do a month long in-depth online ethnographic research project about 25-27 year old guys. The results are profound yet, as a typical client, he's chomping at the bit for results. "So what can we make of all this? What am I going to put in my ads? I don't think we're getting anything usable!" That was last week's concern. He's happy now - downright delighted - but you have to trust the process of research. You don't just open the can and insights spill out. Like facilitating ideation for new product work, you have to wallow in uncertainty and look for paradigms to break before the answers neatly fall out of your brain onto flipchart pads and computer keyboards.
I think this year instead of holiday greeting cards, I'll send my friends and colleagues a simple message... My holiday wish for you is....SFUMATO!
Chris
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3 comments:
I want to pick up a thread or two and pull it (them?) for a moment... if I do that right, then the ball of yarn unwinds and nothing's left so why start? Zen musings aside... following the trail of real research, not information gathering, but that 'where the hell is this leading?' research is indeed a sfumato existence and one that I think has as much or more emotional wrapping as intellectual... how willing am I to end up in the rabbit hole? how willing am I to hold the press of what is currently the knowledge at arm's length and not simply subordinate what I might find to the authority of what is already considered legitimate? how willing am I stay in a state of 'I don't know... yet' before saying I can't take it anymore? Paradigms don't just shift, they convulse first and if we're lucky we can see our way to another frame of mind that just might work better; if we're not so lucky, how willing am I to say I gave it a shot? I think these are all answerable questions... thanks for getting me thinking aloud about 'em.
the really great part is when your 1 + 1 = g when you're expecting a "2". and then you reframe the whole problem
It is interesting to think about research for your project and even for the annotated bibliogoraphy, as it feels safer to have specific action or results, then data and questions. Like you, I was a memorizer and wonder at what real learning in 6th grade might have looked like. Even now I find myself wanting to bypass process and go straight to the result, for fear that I will otherwise be judged as ineffective or lazy. Taking the time to search and ponder and believe that that will take you to the best place can feel like torture, until you reach that place and realize that it was the most perfect way to go.
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