Framing workshop play

The use of play and co-constructing the structure of writing seem to chime with the informed ideas being expressed by Gregory Bateson (1978) in Steps to an Ecology of Mind in which he seeks to define a new epistemology or meta-science drawn from an observation of ecological structures and the natural organic world. In an interdisciplinary vein, Bateson (1978) worked at the intersection of many fields including anthropology and visual anthropology, linguistics and semiotics, social science and cybernetics. In the 1940s he helped to expand the usefulness of systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences. Steps to an Ecology of Mind begins by discussing the structure of culture.

All this speculation becomes almost platitude when we realise that both grammar and biological structure are products of communication and organisational process. The anatomy of the plant is a complex transform of genotypic instructions, and the ‘language’ of the genes, like any other language, must of necessity have contextual structure. Moreover, in all communication, there must be a relevance between the contextual structure of the message and some structuring of the recipient. The tissues of the plant could not ‘read’ the genotypic instructions carried out in the chromosomes of every cell unless cell and tissue exist, at that given moment, in a contextual structure. (Adam Kuper quoting Bateson in the Preface in Bateson 1978:14)

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This frees the structures of communication to be purposeful and to relate to the situatedness of the recipient, but more than this it seems to suggest that this is

‘natural’ and part of the embodied nature of communication.

Furthermore, Bateson (1978:69) discusses national groups and how they can be differentiated. He notes that by describing community in terms of bi-polar

adjectives, we ‘take the dimensions of that differentiation as our clues to the national character.’ Thus he offers a range of possibilities, such as

‘dominant-submissive, succoring-dependence, and exhibitionism-spectatorship’. He continues in a section entitled, Alternatives to Bipolarity, that most Western cultural patterns are differentiated in this way, for example political, educational, religious and sexual. This patterning extends to phenomena that are not binary in nature – Bateson cites, ‘youth versus age, labour versus capital, mind versus matter’

(1978:69). This would mean that the binary western culture, which one might suggest is intrinsically hierarchical, is not set up in a way that can deal with triangular, or tetrahedral and holarchic (Koestler, 1969) systems, patterns or structures. The structures used in my workshops are based on starting from

commonalities, similarities and strengths. Once these are identified a starting point for useful discussions around difference is laid out in the territory framings.

Bateson (1978) notes an interesting use of what he calls ‘ternary systems’ in English societies. He states these to be the relationships between, for example,

‘parents-nurse-child, king-ministers-people, officers-NCOs-privates.’ He notes that these systems are not hierarchies, in his terms. He defines a hierarchy thus: ‘a serial system in which face-to-face relations do not occur between members when they are separated by some intervening member; in other words systems in which the only communication between A and C passes through B’ (1978:70). In contrast, Bateson (1978) defines a triangle as a threefold system that contains no serial properties. He then shows that the ternary system, as he has defined it, differs from hierarchical systems. Direct communicational contact does take place

between all members. Thus it appears that the ternary system that Bateson (1978)

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describes, the central role may be one of indirect introjection, for example, in the educational environment where there are the roles of the parent-teacher-child, the role of the teacher is to instruct and inform the child in how he/she should address the parent (1978:70). Thus, Bateson (1978) suggests that the English character has in-built both bi-polar and ternary patterns. Interestingly, by setting up these two distinct alternatives and working within them, Bateson (1978) is also reinforcing a somewhat old-fashioned set of polarities.

Bateson (1978) then goes on to describe a set of symmetrical patterns in which people respond to circumstances by mirroring them. He notes that these patterns are competitive and explains that the term ‘co-operation’, which may be used as the opposite of ‘competition’, contains patterns that, when analysed, will provide a vocabulary through which we can define certain characteristics (1978:71). I have used these symmetrical and mirroring patterns to define themes in my analysis of articles in the JWCP (Chapter 4: Finding Opportunities).

Bateson’s (1978) ideas about play and its place within communication led me to formulate the territory framing tool in which imagined territories are co-created and retold as a move from ‘me’ to ‘we’ or from ‘me’ to ‘us’. Bateson (1978:152-153) believes that human communication exists on many different levels of abstraction and that one of these levels is ‘the paradox of play’. In play it is possible to

communicate that certain actions stand for certain other actions, but are not, in actual fact, those actions in actuality. They are play. This notion of play is communicated on many different levels:

- Denotative level (e.g the cat is on the mat);

- Metalinguistic, i.e., implicit or explicit messages where the subject of the

discourse is the language (i.e., ‘the sound ‘cat’ stands for any such class of objects’

and ‘the word ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch’) (1978:150);

- metacommunicative (i.e., ‘my telling you where to find the cat was friendly’, or

‘this is play’) (1978:150).

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However, Bateson continues, most metacommunicative and metalinguistic messages are implicit (1978:151). My territory framing tool can lift this level of communication beyond the implicit and towards an open explicit statement of emergent fact through its explanation and mapping within a conversational and visual framing. This can be related to what Alfred Korzybski (1941) coined, in Science and Sanity, “the Map -Territory Relation”. This suggests that language bears a relationship with that which is communicated as does the map to the territory (1978:153). It is not the real territory, but by representing it forms a

relationship with the real, which begins to exist symbolically. Thus by inferring the territory as a starting point, a new imagined territory can be mapped from the workshop discussions and drawings. But, because this territory begins in the imagination and is brought forth through shared values and playful imaginings, it acts as an anchor for the team. It is a mental world, but not simply a map of a map – rather it is a co-defined world of words drawn from the purposeful imaginings and discussions of the team. As their co-defined anchor it allows them to write these shared ideas beyond the workshop. In this aspect the workshop and its outputs act as a touchstone for the team.

Though the final outcome is co-writing through a series of co-defined words, play is important in defining the route. Play allows for the participants to define their route to the outcome and also removes the stresses of undisclosed rules or what would be called in EAP, academic conventions. An atmosphere of play sets up the circumstances for new conventions to be created to suit the purposes of the brief and also allow for conventions to be inserted as one of the possible routes rather than as the only way to ‘do’ writing.

It was through Bateson (1978) that I was first introduced to the notion of ‘frames’

which I later converted into my territory framing tool. Bateson links his notions of play to frames; these are everyday experiences within which specific behaviors are expected (1978:160) so if you go to an interview you are expected to use a

particular kind of language and role related behaviours that may not continue when

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doing the job. For Bateson (1978) these frames are used within therapy, but I have found them useful in understanding human interaction in my workshops. Bateson notes that frames are set in order to discuss certain things within a set context and in a logical way (1978:159), in order to disregard other things (1978: 160), and they may give rise to analogies and metaphors (1978:160). Thus, Bateson asserts, a frame is metacommunicative (1978:161). This suggests that there is a ‘meta’ level to these rules and that they contain communication about change. Bateson (1978) notes that the parameters of games call for a discussion of the rules by the

participants. When doing this they adopt a different logical type of discourse from that of their play. They then return to playing but with modified rules. This is a similar level of abstraction to that summoned in the relationship between written and spoken language. As Street observes (1984: 21) spoken language stands for something, whereas written language “stands for something that stands for

something”. This game of written symbols may be less obvious or intuitively

understood by those who think through imagery and thus may need to be explicitly explained or examined. My workshop process of territory framing offers up these transitions as a slower process and makes it obvious without being remedial. This then becomes a tacit understanding allowing for the brain to develop short cuts.

As previously discussed, the designer is perfectly placed to read patterns and products through their materialities (Cross, 1982). Thus, through territory framing the materialities of this ‘noise’ the designerly mind is in a strong position to create new patterns for writing which will be formed from the ‘mindfulness’ and

‘sensemaking’ that is brought forth from what Weick (2007) calls the management of the unexpected. As mentioned in my introduction, Weick’s important contribution to my research is discussed in full in my methodology section.