EJournal Volume 8 Number 1 (APRIL 1998)

Charles Taylor

Holzwege and Feldwege in Cyberwald:
The Multimedia Philosophy Lecture

Charles S. Taylor
Wright State University
ctaylor@wright.edu

The title for this essay comes from the distinction between two kinds of paths. One of these, called a Feldweg, is as its name says "a path to the field." Since the traditional field for teaching is the classroom,Feldweg in this context means those obvious ways of using the classroom. Martin Heidegger found another kind of path, a Holzweg, far more thought-worthy. Holzweg is used most commonly today not to refer to any physical path but rather to the metaphoric "being lost on a Holzweg" which is something like "being on a wild goose chase." The word does however have literal connotations. A Holzweg is a path in the woods made by foresters. It may refer to the space cleared to allow a large tree to fall unrestrictedly to the ground: it may also be the path created as the cutting of trees progresses ever more deeply into the woods. In both of these forms, a Holzweg is a "path that leads nowhere." Most important, however for our purposes here, is the fact that in the beginning the experience of following a Holzweg does not entail thinking one is lost at all. Heidegger believed that we can learn much about our work in the field not only by studying the path to it but also by finding oneself in the unexpected places one eventually encounters on a Holzweg. Ending up in one of these places is like finding oneself in the middle of the woods and having several paths to choose from but not knowing whether any will actually lead to a familiar place. This essay is an exploration of some intertwined Holzwege and Feldwege which can be followed in teaching with technology.

One of the most thought-worthy contexts of Holzwege and Feldwege in teaching is the use of the multimedia computer in the classroom. My first use of a computer in the classroom took place while studying Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. In trying to help students understand what Nietzsche is thinking in his discussion of the Dionysian I decided to spend some class time looking at Van Gogh's The Red Vineyard.via multimedia display. This particular lecture, however, actually originated several years earlier. Its first form entailed bringing a slide of The Red Vineyard to class, turning off the lights and lecturing in the darkened classroom for 75 minutes (without notes). My lecture that day drew upon Walter Pater's "A Study of Dionysus" from Greek Studies and numerous other sources. I remember that class well. One reason, perhaps, is that I had never lectured without notes before. But neither had I ever had students look so carefully at any image. In that lecture the painting was an essential (indeed, the exclusive visual) feature of a 75-minute class. I also remember that I sensed an intensity of involvement on the part of the students. We were there in that classroom together in a way we had not been previously. One indication of the gathering of meaning that happened that day is that a student wrote a poem afterwards (that subsequently won the annual poetry contest on campus) reflecting the intensity of the class, carefully examining what one sees in Van Gogh's painting.

And so it is not surprising that when I first began to try to imagine how I might use computer-based multimedia in the classroom I took a path to the field that I had already taken. I had no idea then that I was in any sense embarking upon a Holzweg. My first multimedia lecture centered on The Red Vineyard (now digitized). The class was, however, as different from its slide-lecture predecessor as that slide-lecture had been from the days when I lectured on the Dionysian with words alone. On the computer display in the classroom I presented a few key phrases from Pater interwoven with images. I used several Van Gogh images (of various plants) to work our way through plant worship to the greater significance of two plants, corn (grain) and the vine. And them I used other Van Gogh vineyard paintings before turning to the detailed discussion of the Dionysian and The Red Vineyard. It can of course be noted that the previously-used low-tech slide-lecture also allowed the display of multiple images. The question thus arises as to why one would not make the effort to develop additional slide-lectures following such a clear success but one would continue with the far more time-consuming development of multimedia lectures. The answers are not immediately apparent.

One of the essential features of a walk in the woods is that one does not necessarily have a defined agenda that must be completed in a fixed time. Likewise this discussion of teaching and technology need not in haste pass by several points in what has just been said. One of the elements of a Feldweg that seems to apply so well to teaching with technology is that one makes repetitive trips to both field and classroom. Further, it is very likely the case that many of the first things one imagines doing with a computer in the classroom are going to be repetitions of what one did in the classroom with earlier technologies. The farmer may take a newly-designed hoe to the field and proceed to "weed the potatoes" just as had been done with the old hoe. This path of familiarity actually turns many ways. The initial push at many universities to use multimedia in the classroom came from idea that teaching in large class sections would be enhanced by the impact that multimedia presentations can produce. Those who teach such sections have subsequently confirmed the value of multimedia in the large classroom. The operating assumption seems to have been that new innovative teaching methods are desirable (and financially justifiable) because teachers cannot keep doing the same "old things" in those large classes that they were used to doing in smaller ones.

But what about multimedia in the small classroom? Here we encounter a possible a Holzweg. While the use of multimedia is justified in the minds of most for use in a large classroom, it is also said by some to be nothing more than a "glorified overhead" when used in small classes. The phrase "glorified overhead" has enough richness to warrant our lingering with it a while. What does one see in the adjacent photo? Do we not have here a horseless carriage pulling a horseless plow? It is quite likely that both plow and carriage were also once called "glorified," although the glory of the automobile's self-mobility was far more quickly understood than was that of the horseless plow. Horse-drawn plows remained standard on many U.S. farms until after World War II; the horse-drawn carriage had long since disappeared by then. Those who consider multimedia in the regular classroom a "glorified overhead" judge it to be a worthless expense, unjustifiable via cost-benefit analysis.

One has to ask at this point why it is that the same multimedia materials are justifiable in the large classroom but not in the small classroom. There is a simple answer. If the same multimedia material is used in both kinds of classes and they presumably cost the same to develop then that cost is distributed over more students. If only things were so simple. The complexity here begins to appear when we return to the arguments for multimedia in general. Multimedia is presented as fundamental innovation in education. But what is the nature of this innovation? We can start to examine this question by recalling the response many have on first seeing multimedia demonstrated for classroom use. The response is typically, "But I don't sell ideas!" What one sees in these demonstration is the kind of effective persuasion one finds in TV advertising. The language of the names of software packages that are typically used in multimedia presentations is suggestive. Podium™(an acronym) was one of the earliest applications of this kind. But even its goal was much more clearly expressed in the names of newer packages: Astound™, Persuasion™, Compel™ and Power Point™. It is slightly amusing to think that one is "astounding" one's students - rendering them speechless with thunder (as the origins of "astound" suggest). The context here might be the unexpected loud boom of thunder which opens a sudden summer downpour - or grabs the attention of a classroom of 400 first-year students at the start of class. In the current campus climate of political correctness, "compel" seems even more at home.

Under whatever title, multimedia software allows one to integrate text, still image, video, animation and sound into classroom presentations. Generally there are two responses to this account of multimedia. While everyone understands the description as such, the vast majority of university faculty also seem to say, mostly to themselves, "But how am I going to 'integrate text, still image, video, animation and sound' into my classes?" As a professor of philosophy I am asked "what I really do" constantly. The associate dean of my college once said to me, "You are the last person anyone around here would have expected to become the campus leader in using multimedia!" After participating on a panel discussion on technology and higher education with the president of the local community college, I was approached by him and strongly encouraged to continue my efforts in using technology in teaching. "Especially you!" he said, and I knew he meant "especially a philosopher." When asked to explain my own involvement with multimedia I usually point to my use of multimedia in aesthetics classes. Such use makes sense to others in that while talking in class about works of art I would also want students to see the same works. It also reinforces the already-mentioned familiar Feldweg of using the computer to do those things you have already been doing. The fact is, however, I very seldom showed slides in aesthetics classes prior to my use of computers in the classroom. Instead, I talked about paintings I assumed were very familiar to students' visual memory ­ Van Gogh's Sunflowers Leonardo's Mona Lisa, etc. It is far more rare that I mention multimedia lectures on Heidegger or the Pre-Socratics or Descartes in responding to inquiries about "just what do you do?" I give the latter kind of multimedia lecture far more frequently than I give multimedia aesthetics lectures.

The second response to the phrase: "the integration of text, still image, video, animation and sound" is to see multimedia as neither mere familiar Feldweg nor as mysterious Holzweg but rather as the creation of an entirely new kind of path. At an IBM conference on computers and teaching in 1991 a standard phrase was, "If you're not part of the steam-roller, you'll be part of the pavement." It is clear that while the basic elements - text, still image, video, animation, sound - are named virtually always as the defining elements of multimedia, it is also true that some of the elements are, as Mr. Orwell said, "more equal than others." A cliche from the time of the earliest discussions of multimedia in the classroom praised multimedia because it allows one to escape being merely a "talking head." Text accordingly occupies the lowest level on the multimedia hierarchy. At the top is full-motion video with integrated sound. Full-motion video accompanied by sound is the "thunder" that astounds in multimedia. Animation with sound seems to be a very close, but still second-level multimedia approach. Still images by themselves are of course better than mere text but pictures are even better if they have background sound. This hierarchy can hardly be surprising; it is simply an expression of the media of the culture in which we live. On this thread, multimedia may well be a new path to the field, but it is primarily the path for those who would otherwise be directors of movies or creators of MTV videos.

We cross here a path already begun earlier. I described my first multimedia class (the first at my university) as the display of a few paintings of Van Gogh interwoven with a few lines of text. If asked to describe a multimedia lecture given this past term in a course on Heidegger I would say simply, "a few still images interwoven with many screens of text." I would quickly add that on two occasions I played sound files (not accompanied by images) of Seamus Heaney reciting one of his poems. Obviously I have, on the basis of the hierarchy just outlined, failed to realize the potential of multimedia in my teaching. I am not really doing multi-media, using one media at a time. It is obvious that many would consider my use of multimedia to be following a Holzweg. I think the sense one might have had of what I was doing originally was, "Well, that's not real multimedia - but he'll get there slowly." I have never created a QuickTime™ movie or an animation. The closest I have come to video is to show a video sequence from a laser disk (Voyager's Michelanginolo ) in which a camera moves around the David or pans the de Medici Chapel. Thus one may ask, "Where has he strayed to?"

An attentive listener may have noticed that I have spoken of multimedia lectures only in reference to my own multimedia teaching whereas I refer to others' uses of multimedia as "presentations." This is no accident. I stopped for a while using "lecture" as a pedagogically incorrect term because it seems to refer to the also pedagogically incorrect "talking head;" but I now see the differing terms as referring to fundamentally different teaching activities. To explore this distinction we need to turn more carefully to the experience of what is being called a multimedia lecture. It is, first of all, clearly a lecture in the sense that it is speaking that provides the explicit unity of what takes place. Accompanying this speaking is a showing of some pictures and some accompanying words. The pictures are to be looked at more seriously than students are perhaps accustomed to looking at pictures. I say pictures, but as already indicated I mean primarily digitized reproductions of classical paintings. In a lecture on Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art" Van Gogh's Old Boots with Laces (which Heidegger discusses in the text) can be visually studied in class. In that same lecture a digitized picture of the shoes I am wearing at that time is shown. I ask my students to look at the picture of my shoes and at Van Gogh's painting in the context of Heidegger's discussion of tools (which both pairs of shoes are) and in the context of gaining access to our essential relation to the tools we use. This includes their relation to their own shoes and our relation to the tool ( the computer ) we are using at that moment in the class. The real question is to see if we can make sense of Heidegger's proposal that we get closest to thinking the essence of tools not while wearing our own shoes, nor while talking about them but rather, we get closest when we stand in front of Van Gogh's painting of shoes (tools).

It is quite likely that more than a few users of multimedia in the classroom have followed a path like the one just described. This is a path on which one does not at all feel lost. One is simply doing traditional classroom things in a new manner. Once the computer is being employed to display images in class, however, it is only natural to experiment with the other possibilities of this tool. So one begins cautiously to intertwine text on screen in a lecture which also uses images. This transition from the previously in-class spoken word to the printed word seems at first a normal Feldweg. It's not. An experiment in an aesthetics class on Kant is illustrative. Kant's abnormally long sentences have words one might casually give a variety of usual meanings but which in fact have for Kant quite precise meanings. A multimedia lecture on Kant's aesthetics demands many words on screen interwoven with a few images (of paintings). It is necessary to be quite careful here in explaining exactly what is meant by "many words on screen." Let's start with what is not meant. One of the most common mistakes beginning users of multimedia make in the use of text on screen is to put too many words on each screen. This practice derives from previous usage of an overhead projector and its accompanying transparencies filled with words. It is instructive to observe how rare it is to see one of these overhead presentations which visualizes that the print one can read on a normal sized page at normal reading distance might not be readable on the overhead by readers out in the classroom. Then, to prevent readers (who can) from reading the whole page and not listening to the presenter, a blank piece of paper is placed over the lower part of the transparency to control the (reading) audience which, contrary to its name, will not otherwise listen. This procedure can be mimicked now by presentation software -- with sequential display of "bullets" (text) replacing the sequential sliding down of the covering sheet. Far more important in all of this is how the entire process is understood by presenter and viewer-listener. Most presentations are understood as the dispensing of information. Teachers who think of teaching as dispensing information are extremely vulnerable to the desire to be as efficient as possible in that task. This gets translated into the "more words (information) per page is better" syndrome. The multimedia philosophy lecture being discussed here is something quite different from dispensing information and so our path turns once again.

Let's go back to those convoluted Kantian-Germanic sentences that require "many words on screen." A better phrase here might be "many screens (slides) with few words on each." A typical multimedia lecture thus has many slides of words interwoven with fewer slides of images. Consider the opening sentence of Kant's Critique of Judgment:

If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do not refer the representation of it to the object by means of understanding with a view to cognition, but by means of the imagination (acting perhaps in conjunction with understanding) we refer the representation to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure.

A dozen or more slides might be used to examine this sentence. The few words that appear on each screen almost always show phrases and never complete sentences. A single screen will have a phrase, possibly two which without commentary are meaningless. Usually, they are still rather unclear even if the student recognizes them from prior reading. Here my practice with a phrase shown on screen actually resembles my practice with the showing of a representation of a painting. I will not merely display the words as fully intelligible in themselves; rather I will talk about the phrase as I might about the picture, exploring the meaning of the words. Depending on the context, I might talk for 10 minutes about a single phrase. These words in Kant may well be reasonably interpreted by students using familiar meanings. These familiar usages are often extremely misleading and it is these misreadings as well as Kant's meanings that must be explored. The words on the screen, by themselves, are perhaps like a single line from a Rembrandt drawing which has been reproduced by itself isolated from the whole on a blank piece of paper. If one had seen the drawing prior to seeing one of its lines thusly reproduced, one would have obviously "seen" that line, and could just as likely not have noticed it at all. Or even having noticed such a line, one may still not have noticed how that one line defines the whole drawing. Perhaps, after seeing the line in isolation and then returned to its real context, one may be able to see its "weight" in the whole. Much the same happens with philosopher's words.

There is more to be noted in this resemblance of the showing a phrase on screen to the showing of a painting. One thing that both showings share is color. If there is profound "thunder" in multimedia I think it is to be found in how one uses color far more than it is to be heard in the volume or unexpectedness of sound production. By "use of color" I am now thinking of using different colors in showing particular words. In a usual multimedia display of text, there is usually a default background color for all screens and a complimentary color used to display the text (light blue text on a dark blue background for example). Within this framework one can then give emphasis to selected words by giving them a third, contrasting color. I do this in two ways. On the one hand I will use a different color for the single word on a single screen that I want to discuss in detail. This method of emphasis is analogous to using italics or bold or underlining in print documents. Here once again Mr. Orwell might tell us that while there are many ways of adding emphasis to displayed text, some methods of emphasis are "more equal" than others. My experience is that color is far more effective in maintaining attention than are the more classical print methods of altering font shape. The issue here is not simply that there are more colors to choose from than there are alternate font shapes. Showing with color invites still more careful thinking.

Earlier multimedia was described as the use of still images, text, sounds, animation and video. To put this slightly otherwise, multimedia addresses us through our senses of sight and hearing. That learning would take place through the senses of sight and hearing comes as no surprise to anyone. These are the senses we rely upon the most and the ones we would least like to lose. And yet in this complete familiarity with sight and hearing there may still be lurking some astounding things we do not understand. I remember saying to myself, when I finally began to grasp what multimedia "authoring" meant, that I would have to "learn what color was" - either again or "for the first time." What I am trying to bring forward here is a significance of color and sound which goes far beneath the familiarity of our everyday relations to color and sound. We may approach this unusual significance of color and sound by turning to a different sense, smell. In the "Overture" to Remembrance of Things Past Proust struggles to remember his childhood days spent at an aunt's house in the "country." While able to retrieve many details of those visits he is never able to retrieve anything more than a bare framework of those times. Unable, that is, until years later when he dips a madelaine into lime-flower tisane (the same event took place at his aunt's house) and in smelling it the whole world of his youth opens before him again.

My experience in using color to show words in multimedia lectures follows Proust's story. Color, I am suggesting, like smell and like sound can make a deeper impression upon us than we may initially understand. I came to this conclusion as did Proust; that is, through experience. I initially started selecting certain words for emphasis probably just because "it could be done" (the computer made it possible). This practice evolved to choosing one color for each key word and using that word only in its "own" color throughout a series of lectures. In the midst of this experimentation I began to notice that students were using these "key words" quite differently from how students had used them in the past. I don't mean correctly as opposed to incorrectly, but rather "more comfortably," more frequently, and sooner. This change is particularly apparent in teaching Heidegger. Heidegger's creation of new words poses fundamental problems for translators and for beginning students (and for anyone else who takes an intellectual walk with him). In the past it seemed as though students simply preferred not to use words like Dasein, Enframing or Ereignis. Or, if they used them that use was very self-conscious, very unsure. Now I find these same words have become the center around which students try to think through Heidegger's texts. The same is true for Kant and indeed for many other philosophers I teach. Perhaps one could describe such teaching as showing students how to read. Letting students learn how to read is fundamentally different from dispensing information.

We need now to go back to the word "lecture." "Lecture" like "legend," comes from the Latin legere, to read. The reading here is that which is done in public, and so is speaking. A multimedia lecture thus turns out to be speaking which is interwoven into a showing of words and a showing of pictures. We do indeed, then, have an integration of vision and hearing in such lectures, but the images and the sounds retain a distinct quality of their own. Showing words is analogous to showing pictures. Such showing is fundamentally different from the presentation of image or sound in a multimedia presentation which wants to dispense information. Once again that non-multimedia lecture on Nietzsche's Dionysian and Van Gogh's Red Vineyard in a darkened classroom becomes important. I am relatively sure that none of the students in that classroom that day had ever spent 75 minutes looking at a single painting (a possible exception is an art major). I recall three distinct periods of student involvement that day. First there was typical attention. This was followed perhaps 10 minutes later by a nervous shuffling in the room. I had not announced in advance that I would lecture for the whole class in the dark. Indeed, I had not even planned to do so. I expected to say what I need to say in front of the painting and then return to "business as usual" with the lights on. Well, when the nervousness appeared I still had a bit more to say and so I continued. Soon, and very unexpectedly, the mood changed one more time - and before I knew it the class was over. That apparent Holzweg turned into a Feldweg of speaking and the showing of pictures.

Multimedia lectures, as just noted, are an interweaving of speaking and showing pictures and showing words. The warp of the lectures consists of the shown words and the shown pictures ­ they constitute the linear element; the weft is the speaking. As in any weaving the warp and weft threads are both inextricably held together and simultaneously held apart in their individuality. The showing in such lecturing is radically different from the display of image and sound in the multimedia presentation that thunders with motion and music. Showing in the way proposed here has as its goal the progressive, deepening of involvement in the material on the part of students. The path taken towards this involvement requires the lecturer's own progressively deepening involvement in the same material. Perhaps an example will bring such showing more fully before us.

In Descartes' Second Meditation one finds his most famous argument which everyone knows through the phrase: "Cogito ergo Sum." One might start a class sequence having just these words on screen. One step in examining this phrase would be to consider the usual misinterpretations. One of these misinterpretations takes Descartes to be saying, "I am anything that I think I am." Because such positive self-assertion can indeed be psychologically beneficial, many find it appealing and stop thinking about Descartes' argument at this point - "What else could he be saying?" To illustrate why this may not be Descartes' actual argument one might then show the following phrases: "I think I am Michael Jordan, therefore I am Michael Jordan," or "I think I am a snowflake, therefore I am a snowflake." The point is obviously to get thinking turned away from the content of thought and turned towards thought itself.

Descartes' argument is better understood to be saying: "The fact that I am thinking, that fact alone proves to me that I exist." The transition to Descartes' own argument requires two changes in our typical thinking. We must give up our habitual privilege to the content of thinking and we must reconsider who it is the argument persuades. In the above example, it is obvious to students that their teacher is not Michael Jordan (I have some hair on my head). But for Descartes, the fact that he is thinking proves to him alone that he exists - the proof persuades Descartes alone. It does not apply to anyone else, except in the sense that their own thinking can prove to them (alone) that they exist. The question then is how do we give up our habitual ways of thinking?

A sequence of Rembrandt's self-portraits turns out to be exceptionally effective in making this turn on the Cartesian path in that second meditation. One might start with an early self-portrait of the young Rembrandt. While showing this painting one can talk of Rembrandt and Descartes being contemporaries living in Holland while their respective works under examination were being produced. One could then move on to showing another self-portrait, often one of the ones "in costume." If a Rembrandt in historical-biblical costume has been chosen one will explain Rembrandt's passion for this kind of painting and his using himself as a model for studying the biblical figures he was to subsequently paint. One can also point out that Rembrandt draws upon himself as the source of understanding and thus relies upon his own thinking as does Descartes. Of course Rembrandt and Descartes rely on their own thinking in different ways. Or, do they? Let's imagine a self-portrait Rembrandt did in preparation for his portrayal of Abraham in Abraham and Issac. One might propose that Rembrandt said to himself, "I think I am Abraham, therefore I am Abraham." A far more Cartesian reading of this would be to understand that Rembrandt can never become Abraham but he can understand Abraham's relation to Issac on the basis of his own experience of his relation to his son Titus. The issue is the inner experience each of us has as parent or child; it is an experience we have wholly on our own - as we know wholly on our own that our thinking proves to us that we exist. There is radical anthropocentrism to be shown in the words of Descartes and to be shown in the paintings of Rembrandt.

One can show more of the complexities of Cartesian meditating by paying attention to one of Rembrandt's self-portraits where he has a gold chain. He does this in spite of the historical fact that Rembrandt never actually received such an honor from the nobility of his time. Rembrandt gives Aristotle a similar chain in Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. I can never resist at this point showing a photograph of Andre Agassi with a huge gold chain around his neck. In all such cases the ones rewarded with such honor must also know of their vulnerability to the arbitrariness which can just as easily remove the honor as it did bestow it originally. My intention in facing so many directions from the shown words of Descartes and from the shown paintings of Rembrandt is to let both word and image be a showing with which we can linger.

This discussion multimedia lecturing can be ended with a return to the metaphor of weaving used earlier. In a weaving, as noted, the threads are both inextricably bound together and yet in that binding are held apart. Multimedia lectures clearly possess this binding that holds things apart. Words are shown on a screen and nothing else. A picture is shown on another screen and nothing else. But once again one has to understand this "nothing else" carefully. The weft of these lectures is the speaking. And that speaking is what holds apart the shown words and images. The words shown on screen are the barest sketch of what is to be thought about. The students listening see the same words sketching the lecture that I see on the computer monitor. The woven fabric of the class shows how those few words open up many things worthy of thought. This opening becomes obvious when one is asked to return to "that earlier slide." Sometimes I lose track of a thread of thinking; my spontaneous asking (aloud), "Now what is this slide about?" pleasantly amuses students and grounds them still further in the thinking at hand. A digital sound file of Seamus Heaney reading a poem is a different kind of speaking help apart. Listening to speaking such as Heaney's with the same complete attention given to a Cezanne painting or to Heidegger's word Ereignis opens another Feldweg / Holzweg for teaching, and a later essay.

For me the multimedia philosophy lecture is, finally, a Feldweg in that it is a perpetuation of the classic philosophical lecture. What is most compelling about this lecturing is the deepened intensity it opens in the classroom. And it is just this deepened intensity that also makes the multimedia lecture a Holzweg because one finds oneself in new places and sometimes a little bit lost. This kind of getting lost is peculiarly desirable in that it opens places in which students and teachers are allowed to learn.

Images of srtwork courtesy of The Web Museum.

EJournal Volume 8 Number 1 (APRIL 1998)