Revealing surprise: The Local Ecology and the Transposition of Action

Cleverly, Jason, Heath, Christian, vom Lehn, Dirk and Luff, Paul (2012) Revealing surprise: The Local Ecology and the Transposition of Action. In: Emotion in Interaction. Oxford University Press, New York, USA. ISBN 978-0199730735

Abstract / Summary

Surprise is a response to the unexpected or untoward arising within the immediate environment, a reaction foreshadowing emotional correlatives such as pleasure or fear. This chapter considers how our discovery of, and response to, the unexpected is constituted in and through our interaction with others familiar or unfamiliar. Drawing on video-recordings of visitors to museums and galleries, the chapter examines how people show surprise, enable others to be surprised and addresses how emotion is tailored for the presence and actions of others. The chapter considers how surprise is embodied through expression and how surprise reflexively embodies the sense and significance of occasioned features of the immediate environment., This chapter forms part of an ongoing investigation of the ways the artist/designer can reflect upon fine-grained qualitative analysis of visitor behaviour. Collaboration with the co-authors affords access to research methodologies deployed by social scientists and occasions a design perspective within the process. This opportunity is of reciprocal value to the partners and is of particular importance for me as it contributes to and helps inform the design of situated assemblies within my practice., Situated interpretive interactive artefacts require inbuilt problems and rewards to enhance informal learning amongst museum visitors. This design problem can be engineered to focus co-participation in and around the assembly, engendering emotional responses aligned with the research into the tailored affect of surprise. This research highlights the value of surprise in the conceptualisation and design of situated interpretive interactive artefacts.

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