Which i find so provocative. First, as a blooming anarchist, having been
cross-pollinated by J. the gardener, I don't understand why computer
modeling should be precluded as an approach. But that kind of serious
engagement in fertile methodological cultivation can wait for later.
Rather, I am interested in this artifactual thing again, and its relation
to object. I'll share some observations I made during play two days ago,
which puzzle me.
We own a rabbit, which we keep outside in a hutch and a fenced-in pen area.
The fence is primarily to keep potential predators out, although there is
good evidence that 'bun' would run away to her peril at any reasonable
chance. She was hunched there rather bored-looking as a bunny could be, so
I put a cardboard box in the pen area, against the stone wall that forms
one side of the pen. To my delight, she pushed it away from the wall, and
ran around it counter-clockwise for 1-2 minutes, stopping, I think, to
look at me. Where bunnies are actually looking is quite hard to tell,
since their eyes are on either side of their head. One eye was definitely
aimed in my direction. She rubbed her under-chin against the box, which I
understand is quite instinctual, her scent glands located there. But that
is something I read somewhere.
She ran around in her pen for a while, doing what I have read is called a
'bunny dance', hopping and kicking back feet in the air. She entered the
box, her back legs sticking out at first, then hopped around the pen, then
ran around the box again, clockwise this time. It pleased me to see such a
well balance rabbit! She did some more rubbing, then fully entered the
box, and finally tried some more one-eyed staring. I stared back, but
unable to equal her evolutionary form, I used both eyes.
I think of this box as mediating some rather festive activity, but I have
no idea what 'bun' thinks of it! It did seem to change her behavior from
her previously torpid state. And the interesting thing is that bun is
neither human, nor computer. What does that mean for distributed cognition
as we are thinking about it? And apart from being a floppy-eared rabbit,
which most certainly means generations of genetic engineering a.k.a.
domestication, she is not a creation of humans as we think most artifacts.
Yet she has certainly delighted and perplexed me. What was the object of
this activity? Did we share it?
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]