Test-Taking, Test-Making
The third event in the month-long “Academic Aesthetic Breakout Session,” “Test-Taking, Test-Making” was advertised as a discussion-workshop with Visiting Haverford and Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow John Muse focusing “on ‘the test’ as aesthetic object-experience.” Having initially hoped to refigure the usually stressful experience of the test as some sort of participatory art event, we decided instead to collaborate with faculty members at PIFAS on a FINAL EXAM to be held at the end of residency, thus reimagining this initial “lecture” from Muse as a brainstorming session for that later project. What we didn’t tell attendees was that we had commissioned Muse to construct a test to be administered as part of the lecture, focusing on the one shared body of knowledge we could count on among all attendees: test-taking itself.
Questions ranged from the ethics of cheating to the etymological link between ‘test’ and ‘testicles’, resulting in what Muse termed a “test on testing, about testing, both the academic assay (what do you know? what are you?) and the scientific experiment which seeks to corroborate and/or falsify and/or revise a hypothesis.” In his words, “We’re testing testing.”
With no compulsion other than the theoretical gauntlet thrown down by Muse, 30-odd attendees spent the next 20 minutes completing the pop quiz in silence, a simulcast audio/video feed allowing test-takers to spill out into PIFAS’s main area for more room, while still able to hear Muse “call time” as the clock ticked down. A lively discussion ensued, as test-takers recounted the feelings of fear and excitement experienced as they answered the questions.
One of Muse’s pre-quiz encouragements–that tests in school had definite beginnings and ends–informed much of the conversation. The tests that take place outside the classroom–those of etiquette, initial meetings, greetings, handshake or hug–often only reveal themselves as tests upon the taker’s “failure.” This interest in the difference between “known” and “unknown” tests would provide the groundwork for THE FINAL EXAM.
