Playing with perspectives : using digital video with teenagers to explore percepts, concepts, and the other's point of view

Abstract

This thesis is based on the interplay between people coming to understand their own minds and coming to understand the minds of others. This interplay is pursued through an examination of the rich and intricate relationship between perceptions and concepts. Working with a number of teenagers from the South Boston community, I have developed a workshop format that allows teenagers to consider the very nature of perspective-taking through the thoughtful design of experimental video works. Adolescents use media-rich design activities to delineate how perceptions relate to conceptions and how this relationship can form a different perspective. In short, teenagers become producers of media, not merely consumers of it, through an approach to the problems of perception. I explain the social, cognitive, and material basis for this work, and unpack an extended case of these elements in use. The hope is that by engaging students in a study of what it might mean to perceive and conceive of something, they may come to realize that perspective-taking is not only possible but is necessary for understanding the complexities of the subjective world. This thesis is less about having teenagers take different perspectives than it is about having them recognize that different perspectives can exist.