MATRIX OF DIALOGUE

A matrix of dialogue is a structure within which participants can play a 'game of meaning' that remains focused and coherent. LVT involves such a matrix and in such a way that participants can 'fine-tune' aspects of the matrix to enable better mutual understanding and effectiveness between them.

Most meetings are conducted with controls of procedure that mitigate against connecting meanings or with the domination of personalities. This limits or even totally blocks creativity and results in endless repetition of 'much the same thing'.

The dialogue process opens up the play of conversation by suspending the usual constraints. Pure, free-floating dialogue is relatively rare because it is not tied in in any way to a particular task or objective. It has been devloped as a creative method of mutual understanding by the physicist David Bohm, the MIT management professor William Isaacs and the psychotherapist Patrick de Mare. There are degrees of dialogue from the free-floating to task-oriented meetings.

There are several kinds of meeting or conversational forms, such as the six shown here with a central column relating them to games.

DIALOGUE free floating conversation that generates its own material	UNBOUNDED GAME to make it more interesting	ENQUIRY free association/conversation centred on a question
FORUM interchange of diverse people with loose boundaries	MATRIX	DISCUSSION pitting together of contrasting views
SOCIAL developing and sustaining emotional relationships	BOUNDED GAME win-lose	FUNCTIONAL operating as part of an organizational machine

With LVT, there is dialogue within a structure. This brings it under the category of enquiry. Enquiry, which is to look into a subject together, operates within a matrix. A matrix is a container that enables participants to talk together coherently because they are playing with meaning within the same structure. A good analogy is that of a board game, which has set pieces, configurated spaces of play and rules. There are bounded games with set rules and which are win-lose. There are also unbounded games in which the value of the game is in the playing and development of the game.

The matrix of dialogue set up in LVT consists of 'pieces' which are molecules of meaning - MMs - generated and agreed by the participants, and also a set of configurated spaces on which they are displayed and moved. The pieces are meanings embodied in physical and/or visible objects. They are positioned in an organising space - a 'board of play' -so that where they are in relation to the other meaning-objects is signficant.

This enables participants to map their thinking in a way that reflects it back to them and leads to new insights, which new insights remain within the bounds of the matrix. This is due to the fact that all emergent meanings remain linked to an initial set of MMs and are played out on the same set of configurated spaces. In LVT, the process of dialogue unfolds within discrete steps corresponding to stages of a game, with known and mutually agreed rules that can be fine-tuned as the process develops.

The choices and moves of each individual are relatively independent, but are co-ordinated between people within the same matrix.

This is possible in LVT because the process makes thinking visible. The auditory channel is matched by a visual channel.

Instead of recording - e.g. on flip charts - simply what is said by a 'scribe', the moves taken can be recorded by each participant and positioned in the display format to add significant value. Because participants know the 'rules' and take part in making the structure, they are equally involved.

In LVT, the processing of content is matched by work on structure. Its is dealing with information and also with how this information is organised to develop its further implications. It deals with both information and information about information.

The ways in which different people organize the same information come from their view of the world or reality. Behind our thinking there are different worldviews. One person can look for concepts, another for inter-personal relations, another for images or feelings, and so on. These different people make sense of the whole differently. One of the significant features of dialogue is to make these differences more conscious and also, then, to accomodate them within a mutually acceptable matrix.

This is modelled in Eisntein's relativity theory, in which the different measurements of different observers can be made to agree by using an appropriate space-time matrix in place of the two previous separate ones for space and time of Newton.

In LVT, the structure of process that enables the dialogue to be coherent and focused also enables a specific matrix of interpretation to be developed by the participants, in which they can understand each other better and see what to do in co-ordination with each other.

UNDERSTANDING Understanding is more than knowledge. It involves structure - or information about information - and incorporates values.	AWARENESS Awareness enables one to see alternatives and compare them. The greater the range of alternatives made accessible 'all together at once' the deeper the awareness	KNOWLEDGE Knowledge embodies and fixes experience all on the same level without reference to relative values.
ART	LVT MATRIX OF MEANING	SCIENCE
CONFIGURATED SPACES	RULES	PIECES

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