Pedagogy & Experience

The introduction and the following four subcategories to Places of Learning proved to be a thing “in the making” itself. The beginning of the introduction seemed to be a theoretical-- as opposed to scientific-- explanation of the psychological and physical aspects of learning experience. Ellsworth talks about pedagogy as the impetus behind the particular movements, sensations, and affects of bodies/mind/brains in the midst of learning, as an example. It seemed at this point that Ellsworth was leading up to a series of tested reactions and experiences to different environments. This idea expanded further when she begins to explain that discourse in the process of learning should not be restricted to narrowed down binary relationships of concepts that have a determined beginning and end, but that a relationship should cause an investigation of other relationships-- setting up a matrix or a complex web of interrelationalities.

This reminds me of an article that I have read recently called Precise Indeterminacy, an interview with Mark Goulthorpe on his work with dECOi atelier and his experience as a professor. He explains his use of new digital technology and generative geometry and parametric modeling as a way of determining and analyzing a series of different relationships that create series of results or emergences. Just as Ellsworth is saying contemporary social, cultural, and aesthetic theories are marked by the search for ways to rethink the terms of these binaries (the binary predetermined relationships mentioned earlier) that have been so strategic to social, political, and educational thought-- Goulthorpe is saying that new digital technologies are allowing variance to be modeled as such, thus shifting a determinate, linear, casual mode of production to an indeterminate exploration of the implicit variables within any given situaltion. The digital tool and the changes in social, cultural, and aesthetic theories, as Ellsworth has mentioned previously, implicitly suggests less determinate modes of open-ended experimentation and poses fundamental questions, not only of aptitude (whether the architect or the person forming the relationships-- the student, if you will-- is able to loosen his or her creative determinism) but also of education and pedagogy:

How do you instigate open-ended creative processing?

Ellsworth plans to provide ideas of material and space, refering to particular spaces or buildings as it relates to pedagogy and experience, in order to begin an exploration of interdisciplinary relationships, concepts and emergent pedagogical qualities and elements.

One set of diagrams for a building in particular came to mind instantly as I was reading this portion when Ellsworth talks about memory, recognition, or cognition, and the learning self of the experience of the learning self. The event-space-time sections diagram hierarchical relationships of program and space, the forms and physical spaces of the building, the procession and movement through the building, and all of the events within the space. It shows a visual relationship between physical form, location, and experience.