What is a "Learning" Space?

How do we learn? At the start of this unit, we were given the following quote:

"An object of an encounter is fundamentally different from an object of recognition. With the latter our knowledges, beliefs and values are reconfirmed. We, and the world we inhabit, are reconfirmed as that which we already understood our world and ourselves to be. An object of recognition is then precisely a representation of something always already in place. With such a non-encounter our habitual way of being and acting in the world is reaffirmed and reinforced, and as a consequence no thought takes place. Indeed, we might say that representation precisely stymies thought. With a genuine encounter however the contrary is the case. Our typical ways of being in the world are challenged, our systems of knowledge disrupted. We are forced to thought. The encounter then operates as a rupture in our habitual modes of being and thus in our habitual subjectivities. It produces a cut, a crack. However this is not the end of the story, for the rupturing encounter also contains a moment of affirmation, the affirmation of a new world, in fact a way of seeing and thinking this world differently. This is the creative moment of the encounter that obliges us to think otherwise. Life, when it truly is lived, is a history of these encounters, which will always necessarily occur beyond representation."

O'sullivan, S. 2006. Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p1.


As a group, we felt that in many ways this quote inspired our approach to the idea of learning. From the beginning of time human beings, in fact all living organism, have evolved, grown and learned through adapting to the environment. 

First Encounter

We expand outside ourselves in order to drive a car, we may trip over a bump in the road the first time we ride over it but through repetition we learn to stay upright. Growing up we learn the functions of a chair, a door etc. We learn from our mistakes. We learn from encounters. 
More and more however, we have designed our environment to adapt to us, therefore rather then experiencing encounters we are faced more often faced with objects of recognition. A vertical wall and a horizontal floor.

Our aim therefore is to create an installation that in some way plays with the idea of recognition. To perhaps present a recognisable object that does not perform the way one expects it to. To force those who encounter the installation to adapt in order use it.

Create a space that forces users to ADAPT.