#questions of perception phenomenology of architecture

[dare-g]

Questions of Perception Phenomenology of Architecture

[fursasaida]

re: music. please do tell

(for everyone else: this is about my commenting in some tags that the idea that music is "how we decorate time" vs architecture decorating space, or music as something that is pure time or happens purely in time, is bullshit)

there are two ways to look at this. one is practical (and snotty) and one is theoretical.

practical: the production of music depends at least as much on the manipulation of space as it does the manipulation of time (rhythm, pacing, etc). your larynx and vocal chords, string instruments, wind instruments, drums all depend on resonance chambers and distances (length of the string, pipe, vocal cord, etc; dimensions of the drum, shape you make with your mouth, etc). that musical sound of the tinkling brook has to do with the volume of water, size of the stones, length of the drops, etc. this is because music is sound, sound requires vibration, vibration has physical properties that vary with various attributes of extension that are undeniably spatial. even digitally recorded and manipulated music relies heavily on tools for simulating spatial conditions of production--different kinds of reverb, for example. not to mention: you can hear any of it because of your god damn ear, which is another kind of resonance chamber. not to mention: how could anybody make music without any space to move in. even slapping your knee requires fucking up and down. AND HAVE WE CONSIDERED ACOUSTICS.

theoretical: ok ok so we don't have to take this so literally. it can be kind of poetic--or, as in some philosophy etc., illustrative/theoretical. my charge here is that treating music as "pure time" is bad poetics and does not help us explain anything theoretically either. theoretically: space and time aren't separate. i do not blame some random twitter user for not getting this. i do blame somebody like henri cursed-be-his-name bergson. just because it can be useful for certain purposes to think of them separately (like, say, graphing something's speed) does not make it valuable to talk about a pursuit like music in only one dimension or the other. like, the cubists were inspired by bergson; they show you bodies from more than one angle because they're trying to give a sense of duration--the ways you would see it at multiple moments as you move. this is supposed to be full of time instead of static and timeless like perspective. this is also horseshit. there is nothing less spatial about this! it has to do with the fact that the body you're looking at looks different from different angles, i.e. it has shape and directions! perspectival painting shows you actions and processes all the time! arguably it is more timeless to collapse multiple perspectives and moments into a single image! i'm not anti-cubism particularly, it's fine, i'm just saying, like: did anyone think this through actually.

similarly, if you want to use music to talk about the way time passes, how it's always going but does seem to have a present-duration--the present moment is not knife-edge thin--you can use literally any process that happens at a perceptible speed to do this. and you do not need to ignore that whatever it is also has spatial qualities. how would you even perceive time without motion or change in space? music is supposed to be one way. but i'm sorry! a) for practical reasons it simply is not without such motion/change (not even as a digital recording), and b) since time and space manifestly are united in perception, what help is it to try to separate them if you are a phenomenologist (bergson) rather than a (classical) physicist or engineer? henri what the fuck. this has always struck me as mainly a way to completely fail to appreciate music while also being obtuse about time. to speak of music as time only, no space, means divorcing it from the physical process of its production. this means it requires believing in absolute time--something that would pass and would happen even without anything to happen in it. which is just as wild as absolute space (space with a priori locations that would exist whether there was any matter to fill it or not). not even isaac newton, who invented both of them, thought this was something you could perceive or measure empirically. absolute space and time was to him a purely theological-mathematical idea, something that had to exist for the sake of certain premises but could never be experienced as such. your measurements will always be relative, not absolute. so absolute space and time are both bad for theorizing how anything affects us or is experienced--you know, like phenomenology? also fwiw the fact that absolute time can't capture the sensation of duration is still, like, a big problem in physics.

going back to that reblog where i explained that not everybody has always even had the concept of "space" like we do now, there is no empirical reason to believe absolute time or space exists. duration and extension are properties of physical processes (at varying levels of materiality). and many of those physical processes are not better explained but rather impoverished by trying to make them "happen in space and time" rather than things that give rise to spaces and timings. this is why the idea of music as pure time or purely in time leads to such absurd questions as "how can you slap your knee without up and down." it's stupid! it's snotty! but that's because the premise is bonkers!

so. whether theoretically or poetically, music is much more suited to discussion in terms of place. places have or are both space and time. in fact it is to some degree wrong to talk about place as "space and time" at all; rather we get the two separate concepts more by extrapolating from place, in which they are so fundamentally unified that not even a word like "spacetime" really captures it. that is partly what makes place difficult to theorize: places are too much like bodies, or like people, or like communities; you can't pull them apart into axes like "space" vs "time" and not lose what it is you're trying to theorize. (you can, e.g., track and analyze traffic patterns quite well this way, and that can be worth doing! but does that capture the place? does it explain what a place is? probably not. it's a different purpose.)

why were european cathedrals designed to have great acoustics? because those were places for the glorification of ~the divine, which was to be accomplished through both light and sound; both its spatial form (extension, hardness, size) and its nature as a ritual site (repetition, endurance); these qualities or capacities could not be separated. did the music not "decorate" the place just as much as the paintings, sculptures, architecture, stained glass? of course it did. we've all seen videos of somebody stopping in an archway or a big bathroom or whatever and singing; the place is further beautified by that because it is an interaction with the place, its spatiality, its acoustics, its textures, the way it looks, the fact that it invited the singer to sing--whether congruously (maybe a church) or incongruously (the aforementioned bathroom). just like your neighborhood has a distinct soundscape; just like a city has refrains. just like i remember stopping dead in the middle of the old city of damascus because three different calls to prayer had, intentionally or otherwise, overlapped to form a perfect major triad for a moment. i will remember that forever. and i will remember where i was when it happened too. (souq al hamidiyya.) that is part of the place. it happened because of the number of mosques and where they were located. and similarly what kind of sounds, or what kind of music, happens in which places has to do with the normative character of places. some sounds, some musics, "belong" some places and not others, because some actions are held to be appropriate there or not, or because they are or are not held to be characteristic. i'm not saying that's a good thing in itself. it's just the way it is. (and there are some places whose function is specifically to be open to all kinds of music, of course.) but i'm saying it leads to much more interesting questions with much more explanatory possibility. for example we could ask about characteristic rhythms or speeds of sounds in different places and what that means. or look at conflicts over what sounds "belong" or don't and to what degree that is justified in terms of time (time of day, pace of life, epochal ideas like what is or isn't "modern," etc).

tl; dr: explain to me the concept of an echo (which we use as a metaphor for having a strong experience of time quite a lot) using time and no space. explain to me how putting it in terms of time alone, even if you could, captures something that including space, or better, a simple narrative set in a place, does not. now explain to me why you would want to do either of those things.

[thehauntologicalsociety]

Phenomenology

By the act of reflection something is altered in the way in which the fact was originally presented in sensation, perception, or conception.

— Hegel, 1830, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.

Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties ... Phenomenology (archaeology), based upon understanding cultural landscapes from a sensory perspective ... Phenomenology (particle physics), a branch of particle physics that deals with the application of theory to high-energy experiments ... Phenomenology (philosophy), a philosophical method and school of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) ... Existential phenomenology, in the work of Husserl's student Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and his followers ... Phenomenology of Perception, the magnum opus of French phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty ... Phenomenology of religion, concerning the experiential aspect of religion in terms consistent with the orientation of the worshippers ... The Phenomenology of Spirit, a book by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ... Phenomenology (psychology), used in psychology to refer to subjective experiences or their study ... Phenomenology (science), used in science to describe a body of knowledge that relates empirical observations of phenomena to each other.

Phenomenology; A term used in philosophy to denote enquiry into one's conscious and particularly intellectual processes, any preconceptions about external causes and consequences being excluded. It is a method of investigation into the mind that is associated with the name of Edmund Husserl, as it was he who did most to develop it, although when Husserl's system appeared on the philosophical scene, the word already had a long history and had undergone a conspicuous semantic evolution.

The first use of it goes back to Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–77), a disciple of Christian Wolff (1679–1754). Lambert published in 1764 a treatise on epistemology dealing with the problem of truth and illusion, under the rather pedantic title of Neues Organon oder Gedanken über die Erforschung des Wahren und der Unterscheidung von Irrtum und Schein (New Organon, or Thoughts on the Search for Truth and the Distinction between Error and Appearance), in the fourth part of which he outlines a theory of illusion that he calls 'phenomenology or theory of appearance'. Although he belongs to a period in the history of philosophy in which the question of the intuition of essences had not yet been raised, his implicit definition of phenomenology, taken literally, does not sound odd to the post-Husserlian reader, except that to him, Lambert, an appearance (or phenomenon) is necessarily an illusion. More important, Lambert was acquainted with Kant, and Kant in 1770 was writing to him about the need for a 'general phenomenology' which he conceived as a preparatory step to the metaphysical analysis of natural science. According to Spiegelberg (1960), what Kant called phenomenology was in fact synonymous with his idea of the critique of pure reason, though nothing allows us to suppose that he specifically used the term forged by Lambert to qualify phenomena as antithetic to noumena or things in themselves. It is, however, with Hegel's Die Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of the Mind), published in 1807, that the term is used explicitly for the first time to label a philosophical work of fundamental importance.

A significant step in its evolution from Lambert to Hegel may be found in J. G. Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science), in which its role is to establish the origin of phenomena as they exist for consciousness; and in Hegel's elaborate system, its basic task is primarily historical since it aims at discovering the successive steps of realisation of self-consciousness from elementary individual sensations up to the stage of absolute knowledge through dialectic processes.

The few authors worth mentioning who dealt with phenomenological problems between Hegel and Husserl are William Hamilton (1788–1856), who in fact equates phenomenology with psychology as opposed to logic, Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), whose studies on religious, ethical, and aesthetic consciousness were greatly inspired by Hegel's phenomenology, and, to some extent, Charles Sanders Peirce, though his work on the classification of phenomena belongs more to metaphysics than to an actual phenomenology of subjective experience.

Except in the case of Hegel, phenomenology was not a major field of reflection until Husserl's monumental work. Since Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is discussed in some detail in the entry under his name, it will suffice here to underline its distinctive features. In contrast with pre-existing philosophies, it is no mere, closed, abstract construct that theoretically allows the philosopher to pronounce on the conditions of principles of experience; it is rather an endless attempt to stick to the reality of experienced phenomena in order to exhibit their universal character. In order to succeed in the endeavour, Husserl has to discard the classic dualistic view, according to which the knowing subject reaches the world only through representation — a position typical of rationalistic and idealistic systems. Hence he refers, after Brentano, to the intentional character of consciousness, and condemns psychologism (the theory that psychology is the foundation of philosophy) in view of the contradiction it brings about: that the supposedly universal laws of logic and mathematics would be dependent on the concrete functioning of psychological mechanisms. The Husserlian standpoint is thus a radical one, since it aims at 'going back to the things themselves' by claiming that there is no reason to suppose that phenomenon and being are not identical. In other words, the noema (object content) and the noesis (knowing act) are directly related by the intentionality of consciousness, so that every phenomenon is intuitively present to the subject.

However, phenomena, as they are grasped by the subject, are always given under a particular profile. No object whatsoever is given in its totality as a simultaneous exhaustible whole, but every profile conveys its essence under the form of meaning for consciousness. In order to reach the essence of any object, one is bound to proceed to unceasing variations around the object as thematic reality, i.e. to discover the essence through the multiplicity of possible profiles. This procedure applies to all phenomena, ranging from current perceptual experience to the highly intricate constructs characterising the various fields of knowledge, such as physics and psychology.

Every phenomenon belongs to a regional ontology by virtue of its essence, as revealed by the so-called eidetic intuition, the essence (eidos) being the sum of all possible profiles. In the course of this process, consciousness operates as a constitutive moment, i.e. its activity in grasping the essence of phenomena is, perforce, part of the process of their emergence. Thus Husserl overcomes the classic dualism of subject and object. Reaching the universal essence of an object through eidetic intuition, i.e. discovering the basic structure implied by its very existence, is a process which Husserl calls eidetic reduction. This being granted, the next step consists in referring phenomena to subjectivity without falling back into psychologism, since the empirical subject, as referred to psychology's own regional ontology (or Descartes' res cogitans), belongs to a realm of contingent being, which cannot furnish by itself the necessary foundation for the organisation of the absolute principles governing universal essences. Husserl is therefore bound to exclude belief in the natural world as the ultimate reference of all our intentional acts. This process is termed phenomenological reduction. It presupposes, in Husserl's terms, a provisional 'bracketing' (Einklammerung) of the natural and a description or explication of our intentional acts as referred to pure noematic structures.

The final accomplishment of this process is the transcendental reduction, by which the fundamental conditions of every possible meaningful intentional relation must be elucidated. This is the core of Husserl's theory of transcendental subjectivity or transcendental ego. Thus Husserl's phenomenology reconsidered the philosophical problem of consciousness in a radical fashion and contributed thereby to the placing of psychology — and the human sciences in general — within a new epistemological framework. Criticism of the one-sidedness of both empiricist and idealistic standpoints could be developed so that the shortcomings of dualistic views, with all their derivatives such as mechanicism, parallelism, and phenomenalism, became more apparent.

As a fundamental theory of phenomena ranging from perception to creative thinking, it has provided a firm starting point for the integration of concepts of the subject at different levels: hence phenomenologically inspired hypotheses such as those that guided F. J. J. Buytendijk and V. von Weiszäcker in anthropological physiology. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's analyses of the experienced body (1942) and perception (1945) were phenomenological works that contributed to the transforming of the classical standpoints in psychology.

— Georges Thinès, 1987, Oxford Companion to the Mind.

[baeddel]

The figure-ground thing is interesting... I was surprised to see it come up in a little architecture book I was reading (its really a coffee table book, dont get the wrong idea), because before I’d only seen it in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, where he used it to argue against empiricism. To him, the fact that sensation is organized, ie. when I looked at something I sort it into ‘figure’ and ‘ground’, so if I see a cloud in an otherwise blue sky I perceive the cloud as a figure standing out against a background... to him this meant that my perception was organized rationally. It has to be something, maybe a priori, I have ‘in mind’, I look at the world and organize it based on things I already think - clouds have this shape, the sky has no shape... whatever. His friend A. J. Ayer argued with him, saying that empiricists generally allow for sensation to be organized, but those organizational schemes are already developed out of experience (he’s a little agnostic about how; he mentions he prefers a behaviorist model, like operant conditioning, which was current but now would be very unfashionable)

Its funny because by now this is not really a matter of philosophy. If we want to know if and how and why perception is organized we go and heat up the fMRI machine... These are questions which now can receive, and have received, empirical answers. So figure-ground segregation is one perceptual process which is carried out in a particular region of the brain (we can even say which one; the intraparietal sulcus, for auditory figure-ground segregation, per Teki et al., 2011), as is object recognition (we organize things into discrete objects), colour perception, etc. All of these are engaged simaultaneously but take different lengths of time to complete, and this length of time can be measured in miliseconds. So we know that object recognition occurs prior to figure-ground segregation (Peterson & Gibson, 1994), and so on. But these processes are also all connected and carry out processes on each other, too. So we can sort them into ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ in terms of influence. Attention exerts a very strong top-down influence on every other perceptual process, for example - we dont hear something very well if we aren’t paying attention to it. Some of these are passive, ‘feed forward’ processes, like receiving visual stimulus from the eye, while some are active, participatory processes, like attention. Some active processes mediate the feed, too, such as the way that Broca’s Area, which is used to produce speech, also mediates the way we hear speech.

Anyway, Merleau-Ponty does seem to come out on top here - these processes do seem to be a priori, features of our mental firmware. But does that necessarily trouble an empiricist? I’m not sure... so philosophy remains on the table - as ever. But I wonder where designers are getting their figure-ground discourse from - phenomenology, or neuroscience? How long have they been talking about it? Do they communicate very much with the other disciplines that care about it? If they asked me to make a game for the Atari ST and they were worried about the audience being able to read the game, would I approach it on that basis, or would mature perception science make me approach it a little differently? Perhaps I would have told them that it was going to read just fine no matter what you did because all perception is pareidolia anyway. Worry about getting their attention, it’ll ‘mediate’ the rest!

[danielkbrown]

A city is never seen as a totality, but as an aggregate of experiences, animated by use, by overlapping perspectives, changing light, sounds, and smells. Similarly, a single piece of architecture is rarely experienced in its totality ... but as a series of partial views and synthesised experiences.

Steven Holl, in Questions of Perception: Phenomenology in Architecture, 2006

[transhumanitynet]

The Independent Core Observer Model Computational Theory of Consciousness and the Mathematical model for Subjective Experience

Abstract: This paper outlines the Independent Core Observer Model (ICOM) Theory of Consciousness defined as a computational model of consciousness that is objectively measurable and an abstraction produced by a mathematical model where the subjective experience of the system is only subjective from the point of view of the abstracted logical core or conscious part of the system where it is modeled in the core of the system objectively. Given the lack of agreed-upon definitions around consciousness theory, this paper sets precise definitions designed to act as a foundation or baseline for additional theoretical and real-world research in ICOM based AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) systems that can have qualia measured objectively.

Published via Conference/Review Board: ICIST 2018 – International Conference on Information Science and Technology – China – April 20-22nd. (IEEE conference)  [release pending]  and https://www.itm-conferences.org/

Introduction The Independent Core Observer Model Theory of Consciousness is partially built on the Computational Theory of Mind (Rescorla 2016) where one of the core issues with research into artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the absence of objective measurements and data as they are ambiguous given the lack of agreed-upon objective measures of consciousness (Seth 2007). To continue serious work in the field we need to be able to measure consciousness in a consistent way that is not presupposing different theories of the nature of consciousness (Dienes and Seth 2012) and further not dependent on various ways of measuring biological systems (Dienes and Seth 2010) but focused on the elements of a conscious mind in the abstract. With the more nebulous Computational Theory of Mind, research into the human brain does show some underlying evidence.

Our Assumptions Qualia typically is considered the internal subjective component of perceptions, arising from the stimulation of the senses by phenomena (Gregory 2004), given the assumption of a version of the computational model of consciousness and the fact that data from sensory input can be tracked in a human brain we are assuming that qualia as “raw experience” is the subjective conscious experience of that input. From the standpoint of the conscious mind qualia is the subjective experience that can be measured external to the system if the mind in question is operating under known parameters we can tap into for example in systems using the ICOM Theory of Consciousness as it can be objectively measured.

Humans are not able to make logical decisions. Looking at the neuroscience behind decisions we already can prove that humans make decisions based on how they feel (Camp 2016) and not based on logic. We are assuming researchers like Jim Camp or Antonio Damasio are accurate at least at a high level with the empirical evidence of their work implying that humans do not make ‘logical’ decisions. This is important when looking at how consciousness works in that it appears not to be based on logical but on subjective emotional experience and that is the assumption that this research will continue to bear out with the current empirical evidence already supporting it.

Subjective experience can be measured and understood. The traditional view that the subjective nature of experience (Leahu, Schwenk and Sengers 2016) is purely subjective is rejected as a matter of principle in this paper. All things can be objectively broken down and understood theoretically, and the use of things being subjective is more indicative of an excuse for not being able to objectively quantify something ‘yet.’ Consciousness, even by scientists in the field, frequently consider it the realm of “ontology and therefore philosophy and religion” (Kurzweil 2001) our assumption is that this is false and we reject it as stated earlier as a lack of understanding and/or insufficient data and/or technology.

Consciousness can be measured. To quote Overgaard; “Human Consciousness … has long been considered as inaccessible to a scientific approach” and “Despite this enormous commitment to the study of consciousness on the part of cognitive scientist covering philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific and modeling approaches, as of now no stable models or strategies for the adequate study of consciousness have emerged.” (Overgaard 2010) That is until now with the ICOM theory and our approach to measuring consciousness based on the Porter method (Porter 2016) and which while has elements of subjectivity, it is a qualitative approach that can objectively be used to measure degrees of consciousness. As to the specific points of the Porter method, we also believe that we can measure consciousness regarding task accuracy and awareness as a function of stimulus intensity (Sandberg, Bibby, Timmermans, Cleermans and Overgaard 2011) that applies to brain neurochemistry as much as the subjective experience from the point of view of systems like ICOM based on the Porter method.

To be clear there are subjective problems with the Porter method however to the extent that we are focused on “if a system has internal subjective experience and consciousness” the Porter method can help us measure the degree in which that system has those subjective conscious experiences and thus help “enumerate and elucidate the features that come together to form the colloquial notion of consciousness, with the understanding that this is only one subjective opinion on the nature of subjective-ness itself” (Porter 2016) being measured objectively using those subjective points.

We have a concrete definition of ‘Subjective’ as a concept. To be able to make progress in building and designing a system with a “subjective internal experience” we need a way of defining ‘subjective’ such that it can be objectively measured. ‘Subjective’ then is defined as the relative experience of a conscious point of view that can only be measured objectively from outside the system where the system in question experiences things ‘subjectively’ as they relate to that systems internal emotional context.

Consciousness is a system that exhibits the degrees or elements of the Porter method for measuring consciousness regarding its internal subjective experience. (Porter 2016) While the dictionary might define consciousness subjectively in terms of being awake or aware of one’s surroundings (Merriam-Webster 2017) this is a subjective definition, and we need an ‘objective’ one to measure and thus the point we are assuming for the context of the ICOM theory of mind and the ICOM research altogether.

Basis for Design of the ICOM Theory of Consciousness

The ICOM or Independent Core Observer Model Theory of Consciousness is based on the Computational Theory of Mind (Rescorla 2016) which is defined as:

According to CCTM, the mind is a computational system similar in important respects to a Turing machine, and core mental processes (e.g., reasoning, decision-making, and problem IST2017 solving) are computations similar in important respects to computations executed by a Turing machine (Rescorla 2016) – which can have numerous variations.

An instance of an ICOM system would be a variation instance of CCTM. In addition to that, the ICOM Theory of Consciousness or ICOMTC also borrows from the Integrated Information Theory (Tononi, Albantakis and Masafumi 2014). CCTM does not give us a complete basis for developing ICOM systems and includes elements of Integrated Information Theory as well as CCTM.

Integrated information theory or IIT, approaches the relationship between consciousness and its physical substrate by first identifying the fundamental properties of experience itself: existence, composition, information, integration, and exclusion. IIT then postulates that the physical substrate of consciousness must satisfy three key points or ‘Axioms’ (Tononi, Albantakis and Masafumi 2014).

Integrated information theory phenomenological axioms are: 1. information says that each experience is specific – it is what it is by how it differs from alternative experiences. 2. integration says that it is unified – irreducible to non-interdependent components. 3. exclusion says that it has unique borders and a spatiotemporal grain.

In IIT you can develop a mathematical framework in which composition, information, integration, and exclusion are defined precisely and made operational (Tononi, Albantakis and Masafumi 2014). IIT still doesn’t account for subjective experience and is specific to a substrate while ICOM based system would apply IIT an IIT based system is not necessarily able to have the emotional, subjective experience and quantify it in the same way we can with ICOMTC based systems which can be broken down where ICOMTC systems address objective measurement of subjectivity.

ICOMTC also borrows from Global Workspace theory in that things move through the system and only when things reach a certain point is that bit of ‘thought’ or ‘context’ raised to the level of the conscious mind. (Baars and Katherine 2016) CCTM, IIT and Global Workspace all exist more or less in ICOMTC where ICOMTC based system exhibit all the elements of all of these theories to some degree but it is also substrate independent in that ICOMTC is not an attempt to produce the same kind of system as the biological substrate of the human brain or do anything that requires that kind of hardware nor is it tied to current computer architecture either other than any Turing machine (Wiki 2017) in theory would be able to run an ICOMTC based system given enough time. ICOMTC does not address those implementation details and is, therefore, substrate-independent in design and theory.

The Independent Core Observer Model Theory of Consciousness (ICOMTC)

At a very high level, ICOM as a cognitive architecture (Kelley 2016) works by streaming data and context processed by the underlying system (the observer) and based on emotional needs and interests and other factors in the system, these are weeded out until only a certain amount are processed, or ‘experienced’ in the ‘core’ (or global workspace) which holds emotional models based on Plutchik’s (Norwood 2016) work. These elements of the core exist for both conscious and subconscious emotional landscapes of the system where the context that is ‘experienced’ from the standpoint of the system is the only ‘experiences’ that the conscious system is aware of. In this way, only the differential experience matters and the system, for example, doesn’t understand a word as much as it feels the emotional context of the word as it relates to underlying context. It is the emotional valences associated with things that the system then selects things to think emotionally about. The system select’s actions based on how they improve the experiences of those emotional valences and in this way the system may choose to do something logical based on how it feels about it, or it could just as easily pick something else for no other reason than it feels a bit better about it. In this way, also the system does not have direct access to those emotional values nor is a direct function of the algorithms, but it is an abstraction of the system created by the core that can be considered emotionally conscious or self-aware being sapient and sentient in the abstract.

Subjective Experience in ICOM Cogitative Architecture

How do we then look at a system that experiences emotional, subjective experience objectively? The following set notation shows us a simple logical implementation of the last climb of “a thought” as it makes its rise from the depths of the system to the awareness of the conscious, self-aware parts of the system.

Figure 1: Core Logic Notation.

First, let us walk through the execution of this logic. Coming into the system we already have context data decomposition, sensory input, also related data from memory that may be of emotional interest but for the purposes of one ‘thought’ let’s say it’s one bit of context meaning an emotionally related context tree related to something that the system has sensed externally. This will be represented by ‘Inputs.’ At this point, we have already passed the point of that ‘context’ being raised to the global workspace. Figure 1 essentially is one cycle of the core considering what is in the global workspace or ‘core’ of ICOM. In Figure 1 we first see that we have two sets or collections of emotional models represented by the two sets defined in the first two rows, then we have the input new context placed in the ‘NewContext’ set. We apply the ‘Needs’ function that applies a matrix set of rules such as the technical requirements of the system to other wants and needs based on the systems hierarchy of needs and current environmental conditions. At this point, we look at how this thought applies conscious emotional rules in the function ‘ConsciousRules’ and then how that manipulates the current conscious emotional landscape. We say ‘landscape’ because it is not a single emotion but a complex set of almost infinite combinations consciously and subconsciously that the system experiences.

In like manner, the system applies subconscious rules to the subconscious states and the subconscious rules to the conscious states and finally those states as they apply to the new context where in all cases it is only in the abstract from this states that the system experiences anything. Meaning the system is using the abstracted states to represent that emotional landscape in how things affect all of those emotional states and related context finally being passed to the observer for action if that ‘NewContext’ contained an action. In this way, the system doesn’t even deal with the complexity of its actions as much as the system will do them if the system felt like it and knows how; where as numerous cycles might have to execute in the core for it to perform a new task, meaning it will have to think a lot more about something it doesn’t know how to do. After that context is posted back to the observer (the more complex part of the system in ICOM), then it is placed back into context memory, and in this way, we see the rich set of the emotional landscape of the system is modeled and executed.

Interestingly enough, in current ICOM research there are indications that this sort of system is perfectly capable of becoming mentally ill and even forgetful if hardware starts to limit operations, where as the only way to optimize for the execution environment would be to place memory limits and based on the node map memory models this would be the only way to continue optimal execution given certain limits.

A better way to think of ICOMTC is that not a single element of the system is conscious or selfaware to any level, it is the ‘interactions’ between the parts that together those interactions become aware abstractly, and it is through the underlying process articulated in Figure 1 that is then measured in terms of consciousness via the Porter method mentioned earlier as well as direct instrumentation of the system to measure ‘qualia’ for example.

Measuring Qualia

In ICOMTC qualia can be objectively measured through the differential between the conscious emotional landscape of the system represented by a plutchik model along with the subconscious model and the model of the irreducible set of any given context experienced by the system and the emotional model created that represents that specific ‘contextual’ experience. In the ICOMTC the qualia is that differential between the state and effective one emotional structure that represents that current context and how the system applies choices is then based on that and the numerous underlying factors that affect the construction and choices based on specific contexts. Now by its nature the system can’t self-reflect directly on those values but is an abstraction of that process in the global ‘work space’ that effectively is created by the underlying operation. We can of course measure this ‘qualia’ of the system but the system can’t do it directly from its standpoint. In the research already done for ICOM we can see that ICOMTC system doesn’t really have free will but it would appear that way from the systems standpoint and experience the illusion of free will much the way humans do.

As stated qualia then can be measured. Referring back to figure one we can use two values or sets from that set of operations and preform a ‘qualia’ measurement like this based on those values:

Figure 2: Computing Qualia

In this case we are computing qualia by taking the sets that represent the current emotional landscape of the system and a conscious and subconscious level and computing the difference matching sets where a set is a plutchik model with 8 floating point values. We subtract the current state from the previous state giving us the plutchik representation of the subjective emotional differential experienced by the system. This really gives you the numbers in terms of ‘sets’ that show how a specific element of ‘context’ that managed to make it to the global work space is ‘experienced’ or rather the effective of that experience. We actually have to calculate this after the fact external to the system as it is not actually computed in the real process (noted in figure 1) and there is not a ‘direct’ method in ICOM to surface an objective measure of qualia to the system without a complete abstraction but we can compute it external and use it for analysis.

Conclusion

The Independent Core Observer Model Theory of Consciousness (ICOMTC) addresses key issues with being able to measure physical and objective details well as the subjective experience of the system (known as qualia) including mapping complex emotional structures, as seen in previously published research related to ICOM cognitive architecture (Kelley 2016). It is in our ability to measure, that we have the ability to test additional theories and make changes to the system as it currently operates. Slowly we increasingly see a system that can make decisions that are illogical and emotionally charged yet objectively measurable (Chalmers 1995) and it is in this space that true artificial general intelligence that will work ‘logically’ similar to the human mind that we hope to see success. ICOMTC allows us to model objectively subjective experience in an operating software system that is or can be made self-aware and act as the foundation for creating ASI.

References

Rescorla, M.; The Computational Theory of Mind; Stanford University 16 Oct 2016; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

Seth, A.; Theories and measures of consciousness develop together; Elvsevier/Science Direct; University of Sussex

Dienes, Z; Seth, A.; The conscious and unconscious; University of Sussex; 2012

Dienes, Z; Seth, A.; Measuring any conscious content versus measuring the relevant conscious content: Comment on Sandberg et a.; Elsevier/ScienceDirect; University of Sussex

Porter III, H.; A Methodology for the Assessment of AI Consciousness; Portland State University Portland Or Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Artificial General Intelligence;

Sandberg, K; Bibby, B; Timmermans, B; Cleeremans, A.; Overgaard, M.; Consciousness and Cognition – Measuring Consciousness: Task accuracy and awareness as sigmoid functions of stimulus duration; Else-vier/ScienceDirect

Tononi, G.; Albantakis, L.; Masafumi, O.; From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0; 8 MAY 14; Computational Biology http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588

Siong, Ch., Brass, M.; Heinze, H.; Haynes, J.; Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain; Nature Neuroscience; 13 Apr 2008; http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide  

Metaphysicist; The raw-experience dogma: dissolving the “qualia” problem; Less-wrong, 7 NOV 2016; http://lesswrong.com/lw/ehz/the_rawexperience_dogma_dissolving_the_qualia/

Camp, Jim; Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making; 2016 http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neuroscience-behind-decision-making

Kurzweil, R.; The Law of Accelerating Returns; Mar 2001; http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

Kelley, D.; Critical Nature of Emotions in Artificial General Intelligence; IEET 2016; https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/Kelley20160923

Gregory; “Qualia: What it is like to have an experience; NYU; 2004 https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/qualiagregory.pdf

Leahu, L.; Schwenk, S.; Sengers, P.; Subjective Objectivity: Negotiating Emotional Meaning; Cornell University; http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~lleahu/DISBIO.pdf

Overgaard, M.; Measuring Consciousness – Bridging the mind-brain gap; Hammel Neurocenter Research Unit; 2010

Baars, B.; Katherine, M; Global Workspace; 28 NOV 2016; UCLA http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/GWorkspace.html

Chalmers, D.; Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness; University of Arizona 1995

Merriam-Webster – Definition of Consciousness by Merriam-Webster – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness

Wikipedia Foundation; Turing Machine; 2017; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine

Norwood, G.; Deeper Mind 9. Emotions – The Plutchik Model of Emotions; http://www.deepermind.com/02clarty.htm 403 (2/20/02016)

Kelley, D.; “Google-It”; Self-Motivating Computation System Cognitive Architecture; Springer 2016 ISBM 978-1-4939-6413-0

  The Independent Core Observer Model Computational Theory of Consciousness and the Mathematical model for Subjective Experience was originally published on transhumanity.net

[ebouks]

Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture

Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture

Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Perez-Gomez 1.0 2.0 3 comments This new edition of Questions of Perception brings back into print one of the most important architectural theory treatise of recent years. Authored by noted architectural scholars Alberto P?©rez-G??mez and Juhani Pallasmaa as well as the preeminent architect Steven Holl,…

[conferenceproceedings-crimson]

Social Character of Space, Lived Experiences and Storytelling in Architecture _ Crimson Publishers

Social Character of Space, Lived Experiences and Storytelling in Architecture by Sevinç Kurt in Integrative Journal of Conference Proceedings

For Lefebvre, space is always loaded with social values, and hypothesized that social connections are repeated day by day. He also discusses the idea of spatial configuration and pictures it in human activity by using the term ‘spatial practice’ [1]. He also claimed that built environment has been created according to many constraints; most of the time in reference to ‘lived experience’ (1991, p. 190). Relatively, Kahn L [2] defined architecture as “…the thoughtful making of spaces.” Parallel to Rasmussen SE, et al. [3] and Bachelard G, et al. [4] idea of describing space as experience, the claim of the architectural design for the fulfilment of human needs is evolved from the “scenario” of the events that are directly related to human actions and human relations.

The relationship between architecture and space advances serious number of philosophical questions in various disciplines such as methodology [5], perception [6], and phenomenology [7]. Foucault M, et al. [8] stated that the effects of materiality and space cannot be ignored, even if they are not deterministic. Hence, Heidegger M, et al. [9] characterizes space as it is neither an outer nor internal experience additionally it isn’t foreordained and settled. Likewise, the relationship between environment and the space is substantial.

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[cyriaclevet]

scale and observation

“Here we are, with our finite beings and physical senses in the presence of a universe whose possibilities are infinite, and even though we may not apprehend them, those infinite possibilities are actualities”

Alfred North Whitehead

 Following the methodology of Alberti, in the renewed architectural practice of the 15th century, the act of scaling was initially used as a technical mean through which it was possible to condense the explanation of either too large or too big phenomena into a graspable object (here a drawing on a piece of paper). The word scale suddenly appears as a new measuring tool, where the optical capacity of the human eye became the zero-degree scale, the initial reference. Anything that happens beyond that scope would belong either to the macro- or microscopic world without necessarily understanding the correlation between the two extremes. This is today illustrated by one of the biggest humanistic concern in history, looking for a unified theory of everything, potentially able to explain the macrocosm according to the microscopic definition of our reality. More than illustrated, this dualistic split between the micro and the macro is materialised in the scientific practice by the rise of increasingly set of complex technical instruments, detectors, observatories, or other colliders. Each of those objects is built for a very precise set of actions, operating in their own reality, lacking any interrelated value. One can suppose that the information transferred through those machines continuously follows a specific direction: bringing back a far distant object to the limited vision of the human eye which then interact with the brain to create meaning and at the end, knowledge. Thus, the origin of any human assumption and theoretical work upon the building of the universe is seen through the prism of selective devices, discretising, reducing and splitting the global complexity of our milieu, either looking into the micro or the macro scale of the universe.

Therefore, our epistemological approach on the world in its globality should look at alternative observing methodology to capture, connect and experience the deepest part of our Umwelt, our sensorial and spatial milieu. Firstly, is the computerised instrument, powered by artificial intelligence, data centres and digital assistance, using binary LED screens to interact with humans, the most efficient interface to experiment and “experience”? Could we suppose instead that the instrument becomes a tool of “de+re-territorialization” for the body, providing access to multi-dimensional geographies (vertical-horizontal / micro-macro / local-global)? Could the organic body, the optical/mechanical object, and the natural stimuli merge into one architectural space? Would that be a way to craft alternative ontologies, in the same way we need alternative environmental ethics?

The return of experience itself following the phenomenological approach of Edmund Husserl might be a key issue. To reach a state of transcendental connection with the outside phenomena is to escape from the close circuit of perception and denomination and enter in a dynamic of evocation, creating an experience of contrast, an experience for thought (Stengers 2011). What could provide such a state of mind is an architecture of the experiment, offering physical and metaphysical experiences that transcend the way we envision our environment and our reality. The body and the mind simultaneously inhabit the physical space occupied by the observer and the immaterial world of the observation. The experiment architecture address questions that go beyond the actual scientific concerns, desperately looking for answers that might remain uncertain forever.

 A look at the early practice of astronomy in ancient Egyptian civilisations might give an interesting perspective regarding the definition of such an architecture. The Nabta Playa observatory located in southern Egypt was built a thousand-year before the most renowned Stonehenge site in the UK. Used as a cosmic calendar, a necropolis, and a ceremonial, the stone arrangement on the land unveiled the organisation of spiritual, economical, and philosophical life of those population. The intuitive observation of the real was physically translated into a meticulous territorial composition. The scale of the stone became the connector between the land and the cosmos providing deeper transcendental experience when seen through the human eye. Shifting from a rigorous scientific approach, observing the world from this specific setup still became an opportunity to build narratives and craft a cohesive vision of human within nature, halfway between astronomy and astrology.

In this sense, astrology understood in the way distant forces make intimate and contradictory claims on the soul, is interesting in our quest of associating the experience with the observation. The macro-scale of the universe suddenly affects the microcosm of the human body and, the mind. Although, to avoid any dogmatic criticism, what emanates from the macrocosm toward the microcosm is more like a field of uncertainty than a line of causality. And this is this field of uncertainty that the architecture tries to frame, the architecture opens up the world of the unknown, a world to which science does not have all the answers.

[genesiagoudal-u8report]

🟣 WKM03: 1stDraft

⬛️ THEMATIC EXPOSITION

The theory of The alienation of the self ¹, developed by Karl Marx in 1932, describes one of the consequences to being one mechanistic part of the ensemble. Fifty years later, the Situationists International guaranteed that this global misery of social alienation has been spreading to every aspect of life and culture², due to the dictatorship of advanced capitalism.

On another level, social structures and over hierarchised forms of power have led the mass to master the art of social performance, a role-play cultivated through normalised education. This performance of embodying perfectly our own selves makes us strangers to our Gattungswesen, our species-essence¹.  The role-player, the everyday man, loses his ability to determine destiny and life. He is deprived of the right to conceive and to direct his own actions¹.

Debord’s spectacle may well be the everlasting sun³ that never sets over the empire of modernity. It burns and consumes the personal experience of consciousness. This mechanisation of reality leads me to investigate human's relationship to the I and the It⁴. To the I and the else. Indeed, an ability to position oneself within its environment could be key to define and, therefore, re-design its scope of action within the possession of its consciousness.

environment | ɪnˈvʌɪrənm(ə)nt, ɛnˈvʌɪrənm(ə)nt |, noun 1 the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates.

The sensitive relationships our bodies have with their territories⁵ question politics of living together, both in terms of spatiality and sociability. Space, for example, models an objectified version of the world we live in. Its complex architecture, both physical, its buildings, streets, signs, and immaterial, its social structures, ways of navigating; geophilosophically, holds hierarchical systems. Ways to behave are preconceived. The perspective of an informed cognitive experience fades away as we acknowledge our impotence in the impact of the surroundings. It seems like we are not given the choice. We do forget that we have the choice .

Did we loose the skill of questioning our environment and acting for it?
How could be arouse in people a remastered sensation of power over the design of one's life experience?

experience | ɪkˈspɪərɪəns, ɛkˈspɪərɪəns | noun 1 practical contact with and observation of facts or events 2 an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone

Critical discourses have socially been confined to distinct areas within the polis, from the museum to the university; where the simplest notion of accessibility is still questioned. Creative thinking struggles to pass the walls of standardised learning environments and to find application within society's re-design agenda.

Participative experiences can help the wider audience to effectively regain that creative instinct to question, experiment, play with, learn and to position oneself within the world. It's inviting them to become more than a mechanistic part, they have control over the final creation. They are now considered. In Deleuzian words, I call for co-creative ways to foster transformable and transformative situations ⁶.

Through the 20th century onwards, we have witnessed artistic, political and theoretical attempts to challenge and nurture collective creativity. The Situationists have experimented with methods such as psychogeography ⁷ to disrupt mapped conceptions of urban environments. Another call for a total dissolution of the boundaries between art and life. A call for applied creative thinking. Modern and avant-garde artists explored mediums such as installation, performance, in-situ pieces to engage people in reflective, critical exchanges. They sparked debates using effective information assemblages, providing the public with keys to generate an opinion on current matters.

Nevertheless, these attempts were still socially and spatially assigned to the domain of art. Accessibility still questions. Design has a role to play to reach wider audiences and to open the dialogue even more. Historically, designed products and ads played a predominant role in the growth of the spectacular capital age. It shaped our perception of things, pushing consumption forward. Although, other graphic designers, Barbara Kruger, Rick Poynor, David Carson, understood its power to transmit messages and to provoke deeper emotions than: "Oh my god, I really need that anti-wrinkle lotion!". User-based experiences and the internet also helped significantly.

More recently, The Rodina, a duo of dutch graphic designers, ask themselves: How can design foster freedom and playfulness for its users? How can we create objects and situations that promote activity and participation for social good? ⁸

Their practice of performative design ⁸, is one way to challenge the action of co-creating the surface and its content. Designers, then, become facilitators of rich experiential debates. The act and choice of being present and conscious of the shared reality is necesarry for both designer and audience. It finally feels like we are looked upon as potent and powerful vectors of future re-designed possibilities.

Carrying one, my personal intentions as designer, researcher and facilitator are to break down pre-established knowledge formations and to provide individuals with accessible choices into learning and understanding the power of applied creativity. In other words, their power of influence. Within the spectrum of ‘post-critical’ design, I experiment with collective ways to inspire and engage people in the re-modelling of the everyday.

To design such tools and platforms, I work on combining theoretical research work (sociology, phenomenology, geography, politics) and practical creative experiments (art, design, vernacular). Thinking through making is another component of my creative journey, feedbacks are essential to re-assess my design's capability to challenge particular environments and beliefs systems.

I believe that this socialist approach to design can play a role in the decrease of established power structures, which constrain the act of deciding one's experience of consciousness and, therefore, life. Contrary to the affirmative design approach, I intend to defy the context instead of aligning with it.¹⁰ I consider participation as a soft power tool that can help to free oneself from Marx's theory: the estrangement.

⬛️ CASE-STUDY EVIDENCE

🟣 

As explained above, I aspire to question systems of knowledge and access to critical judgement in the everyday life. This focus on reformative education has been central to this first project: on classroom.

“People learn to learn as they learn.” Hein, G. (1954) Constructivist Learning Theory

Through the learning of hand-weaving, I had wished to regain a self composure by avoiding the digital realm. The technique did not really impress me, at first. Indeed, "I have always been a manual person".

Surprisingly, I had been wrong. My learning curve turned out to be far more disastrous and uncomfortable than I expected. Pressure and anxiety lead me to realise: how could I ever be legitimate enough to teach weaving to others? Doubt is present, but must be overcomed in my quest to become facilitator. With this in mind, I started to experiment and user-test early drafts.

My first and second attempts focused on achieving a gratifying individual learning experience. I would design an accessible customisable step-by-step guide to weaving, with a focus on relaxation and mental wellbeing.   But then, I started to question this guide's capacity to accomplish such ambitions. Again, "will anyone be able to complete weaves on my advices, and balance its natural emotional response to failure?" This desire for accessibility and optimal efficiency led me to reconsider the scope and agenda of the project. Looking back, I realised that the focus should be on the underlying issue: mental health awareness and mindfulness.

The target audience quickly drifted and became group-based. Indeed, a retrospective look at education seems essential to understand how and why stress and anxiety are so prevalent in today's world. It is certain that the race for progress and the strong competitiveness of society and its education system condition children to become alienated and profit-driven adults. A balance needs to be found. Without being too radical, reaching higher levels of empathy and mental health support given in schools nowadays, could be a first positive step towards change.  

Focusing on that perspective, my new designed attempt would target school groups of middle-aged children and facilitate interpersonal exchanges, practical mindfulness and human debates between adults and young people. In other words, a progressive educational space, re-evaluating the conscious and grounded experience of one's life in a world of constant, rapid mutations. I now ask myself, which design system could work in introducing active, mindful participation within the collective classroom space?

Mindfulness is recently gaining more public attention. We notice a current boom in initiatives towards wellbeing and better consideration of the individual. As an example, The Anna Freud Center is currently running a UK study named 'Inspire', introducing mindfulness as part of the national curriculum, through awareness classes, relaxation exercises and meditation. Though, it could be pushed forward.

Considering all this research and experiments, I started to draft a designed set of rugs allowing children to lie down, meditate, exercise and debate. Weaving will still be introduced by the textural aspect itself of the surface. The system will also be developped as a talking pillow with each rug stating words, topics of discussions opening up debates over the co-creation of the social classroom -break-schedule-pressure-community. etc. The emphasis is placed on the experience of understanding the feeling of being oneself within the environment, both in the present (as child) and in the future (as adults). My role here, as facilitator, is to provide enough informations, structure and materials for the experiment to thrive; and enough 'free' space to not over-power the specific needs of different classroom environments. Education has a role to play in the support of healthy and peculiar individual's learning journey.

Summerhill school is one positive example of a self-governed, co-designed community. "Our school decision-making process is democratic. Each adult and child has an equal vote." In a utopian world, perhaps my framework could, uniquely, facilitate the voting of common rules, as this affects everyone's well-being.

The outcome, informed by the craft, various experiments, my personal learning curve and a new approach to spatial participative mindfulness, is definitely one way to challenge our current relation with the I and the It in education and society nowadays. This conscious experience of body language intertwined with a re-discovery of the senses, the space and others will allow this third space to flourish. The focus is placed on the acknowledgement of the self and the community and how they can smoothly function together. Really, "We live at the same time in the common property world and in a private world" (Merleau-Ponty 2008, 335).

🟣 

A second project, on museum, provided me with more elements to critically reflect on another learning environment: the structure & agenda of the museum. The brief brings up another kind of challenge, it is anchored in reality. In fact, I will design an interactive for the '150 years of postcards' exhibition. This experience definitely supports my ongoing search for balance in between theory and practice.

The museum institution is shifting in its purpose and aspirations. Rapid societal developments urges the need for a change in the current museum definition. Debates are vivid, international committees are struggling to find agreements.

As of now: “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” (24 August 2007, ICOM, current definition)

A new definition was proposed in 2019, but got refused; categorised as outrageously inappropriate and politicaly-driven. Its lengthen, utopian formulations around equal rights, transparency, social justice and planetary wellbeing, potentially, does not represent what museums and cultural spaces are at the moment. The situation remains unclear. However, this call for hope and action inspires me deeply; things are starting to move and knowledge structures are being open to new, great potentialities.

Following my interest of creating tools for a greater interactive understanding of space, I primarily focused on designing a transparent publication encouraging visitors to be actors in the writing of the new museum definition. My positionning within the critical discourse was necessary to start clearly conceiving my final interactive for the Postal Museum. My first outcome, a 10 pages publication, leaves, meaningfully, fill-in-blanks texts and spaces to engage the public in a guided creative brainstorming. My intentions are to easily generate ideas and to collect countless personal perceptions of the museum, present and future.

To work out an enhanced, enjoyable experience for all, I experimented with ways to conduct the visitor through its pre-existing knowledge and awareness of the cultural space. Customisations and disruptions are encouraged. The conceptual window created by the page frame situates the artefact and the information it holds in dedicated environments, both the wire and the proposition. You are being considered within the co-creation of 'futurabilities'.

The artefact works as a sophisticated metaphor of the twenty-first century' museum. The use of glass as medium and the standardised printed format question the notions of transparency and openness. The publication's thickness allows it to stand on its own, as an exhibit piece. It becomes object of contemplation and a significant evidence of culture, in this instance, of the human participation towards collective knowledge.

“Visitors stop being passive observers; they change instead to active players who feel they’re somehow influencing the outcome of events.” (Sarah Fellows, Museum at play, p19)

Interactions transform the museum into a social and creative space. A greater visitor inclusivity, as primary source of knowledge, could enrich a positive learning and teaching practice in the everyday.

“Games allow the audience to look at objects in different ways, giving permission to question previous assumptions about the museum, its content and its place in the users’ lives. A recurring theme is the museum’s shift from a traditional “keeper of artefact” to a collection of “stories”.  (Katy Beale, Museum at play, p24)

As a second step, I designed a speculative workshop for the '150 years of Postcards' exhibition. Visitors are invited to imagine future means of communications, their own view on the future of postcards. Will be at their disposal, a designed set of blank postcards and contextual stickers to set up imaginary scenarios. Indeed, they are part of the story, they are the story, they are writing the story.

The power is given to the public to construct singular narratives. They will also be able to slide their newly found ideas and stories on a wall display. They are given immediate power over the exhibition.

The 'Changing Relationships to Play' workshop ('Permission to Play') given at the Wellcome Collection in February 2020, investigates ways to play, educate and spark creativity in same ways. The system escorts you through the re-creation of specific museum spaces by picking 3 cards  -an urban space or feature… -that senses or measures… -that makes you… - Together they form a context for you invention.

“How might creativity be nurtured in learners, teachers as well as in our existing and future learning environments?”  ('Teaching for Creativity', medium.com, Nov 9, 2018)

As these two projects unfolds, I strongly confirm my interests for a search towards creative teaching and learning through space and participation. I wish to provide people with clever and accessible tools to  comprehend their environment and the creative impact they can have on it. Such interactions will hopefully lead towards a growing inclusiveness in the (re)creation of the common world.

⬛️ ANALYSIS  Both of my design processes, for classroom and museum, strongly relied on the thinking foundations of my practice. Indeed, the process of conscious experience is acquired within the very walls of schools, within the home or other learning environments such as museums. These social, educational spaces are key and build on our understanding of the local and global environments surrounding us. In a positive or negative way, they do shape our vision of the world and the role we will have to play in it.

For the museum brief, my capacity of balancing theory and practice was well challenged. Indeed, I wished to work on the museum and for the museum at the same time, incorporating conceptual notions of progressive structures as well as tangible informations and systems to be used by specific audiences. This quest for legibility, accessibility and theoretical depth is certainly very ambitious to achieve, and can sometimes make the outcome unclear on both sides. However, I try to push my practice further everytime by experimenting and user testing a lot.

As with my classroom brief, mutliple attempts were necessary to finally realise that the scope of action had been mistaken from the beginning. By printing out one, two, three versions of step-by-step guides I understood that focusing on single individual's learning experiences were maybe less efficient and impactful than reaching out established classrooms, and so, the educational system itself.

On another level, aligning my medium choice with the brief and re-considering the act of creating the surface and its content everytime helps the generation of exciting and playful situations, as I am constantly learning as well. Co-creation is also, in the end, still a difficult process to attain or even enjoy fully. Letting go challenges my control over visuals and narratives. Nonetheless, a consensus can still be found between authorship and participation. Studios like Metahaven, do combine both aspects and still have some control over the visual creation or written texts. As long as what's being presented sparks discussions and engage people in action, a meaningful piece of work has been, in my point of view, accomplished.

"To design is to express something while disappearing as an author, even though you are the author. That is also unlike art. Designers are stealth authors, secret agents, ghostwriters. Yet, the definition of “ designer ” and what a designer is doing is not something that is fixed for eternity. There have always been different kinds of designers and different interpretations of design as an activity, including the social and political implications. Unlike what we are being told, it is not that all these interpretations merely peacefully coexist."(https://indexgrafik.fr/in-pratice-metahaven/)

⬛️ BIBLIOGRAPHY

¹  Karl Marx, (1818 –1883) , Theory of Alienation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation)

 ²  The Situationists International, (1957 –1972), On Marx’s Theory of Alienation.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International)

 ³  Guy Debord, 1967, The Society Of The Spectacle.

 ⁴  Spike Art Magazine, 2014, Artist’s favourites by Metahaven. (http://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/artists-favourites-3)

 ⁵  (1925–1995) Gilles Deleuze, and (1930–1992) Félix Guattari on Geophilosophy. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze)

 ⁶  on Gilles Deleuze. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze)

 ⁷  on Psychogeography.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography)

 ⁸  The Rodina, 2015, Action to Surface. (https://www.therodina.com/actiontosurface/)

 ⁹  on Phenomenology. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy))

 ¹⁰  Liene Jakobsone, 2017, Critical design as approach to next thinking, The Design Journal.  (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352923)

[audreymeehan-blog]

This research attempts to unearth the cultural politics and relational power structures and further distinguish these findings to analyze the muddled and potentially problematic relationship adolescent women hold with their virtual avatar. Employing Motivated Identity Construction Theory, Feminist Theory, Psychological Studies of Dual Congruity Perspective, Girlhood Studies, the Symbolic Interactionism Theory and Phenomenology of Architecture will service researching some of the ways this particular identity construction is affecting the reality of feminine self -perception, and intrinsic conflict a girl may encounter within the virtual and real world. Video game consumers or participants in social media create their virtual avatars. Sharing and creating avatars, particularly for girls, promises an opportunity for owning uniqueness and individuality.  The customization of virtual identity can be confused with the a possibility for one’s idealist identity. They are also promised a world where they can operate their ideal identity. When one is asked to create an avatar in self-likeness, it is done in the fashion synonymous to fictitious autobiography. The opportunity of agency that users encounter, (to reflect and represent themselves), within the supposedly creative environments of commercially designed online spaces uncovers multiple relational power structures. How are these power structures affecting self-representation, interior resolution, and asks, how does one recognise or define self-commodification.

Question:

How is the self concept of an adolescent girl shaped by the existence of two identities? The description of this self concept may introduce the intrinsic conflict that arises between their real world identity and their idealistic virtual avatar’s identity. What limitations and possibilities are seen, and how do they manifest in a girls self concept? I want to break down the construction of the non-unitary nature of identity and of the unrealistic promise of uniqueness in a virtual commercially designed space, and, understand the processes of participants settling for a sutured identity where the options for representation were casted in the domain of emphasized femininity.

Contemporary media artist Cao Fei, claims “it’s no longer important to draw the line between the virtual and the real, as the border between the two has been blurred. In the virtual land, we are not what we originally are, but to some extent, we remain unchanged.” I will borrow this perspective and upon it begin to create and employ appropriate paradigms to organize this research.

To create an eventual conclusion, analyzing the Self Concept with appropriate Paradigms will structure this research:

Paradigm ( I. ) Identity construction dealing with femininity, the relationship of the market for the virtual and technological and the participant/consumer, the analysis of self representation in a landscape built out of compromise between desire, reality, and necessity.

Paradigm( II.) Identifying and analyzing the moment of creating an avatar in self-likeness, specifically the motivations for aesthetic choices, and assignment of personality characteristics.

Paradigm (III). Observes how a participant controls the behaviors of their avatar in the virtual space, and how this self objectification manifests in reality.

Paradigm (IV). Analyzes where self objectification in reality is formed, how this implicates self concept as well as comparing a young woman’s relationship to her avatar and the women’s relationship to her objectified self concept.

The Adopted Conceptual/Theoretical Framework will engage Feminist Theory ( unclear of particular principals at the moment.) I want to dissect the relationship between the virtual identity formation and the real identity formation, and how girls view themselves in this heterotopic space, (a physical representation or approximation of a utopia, or a parallel space, that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space possible), vs reality, and what those clashing realities can do to her identity formation, especially the natures of this self-objectification. I will also engage with Girlhood Studies. In academia, specifically, feminist writing, the study of girls has been neglected.  I want to think about a particular paradox that is present in virtual identity construction, through the case of a girl, and the literature that describes a girl’s development of self concept. Particularly in videogames this paradox is present; the structural limitations imposed on girls are in direct conflict with an institutions (or videogames’) acknowledgment of the agency of girls. Often feminist writing has not settled on the girl as a focus for attention, the girl is only discussed as a marker of transition on the way to what is often given more significance; the question of woman. I will engage with Psychological Processes of Dual Congruity, which explains the value of expressive and utilitarian attributes, and how they  operate through two different psychological processes; self-congruity and functional congruity:

1. self congruity : a psychological process in which an individual focuses on source images and matches these to his or her self-concept.

2. functional congruity: a psychological process where the match between the beliefs in the utilitarian attributes of a product or service and an individual's criteria.

A Tentative Hypothesis: This research aims to acknowledge non-unitary nature of identity and of the unrealistic promise of uniqueness in a virtual commercially designed space, as well as the promise of cherry picked identity becoming a self image. This acknowledgment, that the present is the future, and that the virtual is not so different from the real, can hope to come together to amplify girl’s voices as they mark out their own space in a changing world.

Preliminary Bibliography

Connie ,Morrison ."Girls, Girlhood and Feminism." BINARYTHIS. N.p., 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 20  Feb. 2017.“Creating and Regulating Identity in Online Spaces: Girlhood, Social    

            Networking, and Avatars”, Connie ,Morrison. Berghahn Books. (2016)Web.

Kil-Soo Suh, Hongki Kim and Eung Kyo Suh “What If Your Avatar Looks Like You?   

Dual-Congruity Perspectives for Avatar Use” Management Information Systems Research Center, University of Minnesota.Web.

Blacovich, Jim and Blacovich, Jeremy.” Infinite Reality” 2011. Harpers-Collins 10 East 53 Street

NY,NY. First Edition. Book.

[dare-g]

Questions of Perception Phenomenology of Architecture

[isabellagarnerblake]

According to Ponti, communication with others, take up and go beyond the realm of perception or hyper-experience, viewing architecture as people we converse with; our conversation a language and each subject “like a open book” in which we do not yet know what will be written. This reflects the inseparable interaction between space and action of the individual. The individual is the conduit; the sensory switch that connects the individual to the space. Referencing ‘The texture of diagrams’, “all smooth surfaces attain texture with certain modes and levels of attention and proximity.” This texture is only realised through “concentrated refinement of qualitative affects”. In relation to John Caillois’ ‘Mimicry and Legendary Psychastehnia’ - an analysis of the pathology - in this case deconstructing and cataloguing the mechanics. Internal referring to the theoretical; a condition that cannot be separated from possibilities that obtain for form creation, either guided by program or or abstract activity. These morphologies of socio spatial networks linking phenomenology, spatial analysis and discourse analysis; of body and encounter, initiates us to a true sense of place.

Exploring through reproduction the possibilities of transformation through perception. 

The book referencing the narrative of reading songlines, questioned whether blank space should be left to allow for ‘the spectacle’ and whether the pages should be double sided to allow for multiple interpretations and folded possibilities. 

The vessel - acting as a container of memories made from memories - symbiosis and interdependence. 

[visualcultureconference2019-blog]

Day 3: March 21

Landfill as Landscape (Adam Westman)

In my presentation I will investigate how the visual montages in Jennifer Scapettone book The Republic of Exit 46 allows us to think the on going ecological disaster in relation to the landfill. And how they make visible humans relationship to environment and consumption. Scapettones montages incorporates both photographic imagery and textual fragments.  I will understand the book in the context of site-specific art and argue that it allows for different understanding of the environment. Specifically I will focus on the representation of the relationship between humans to landscape and environment.  By way of a semiotic method I will show how Scapettone book by incorporating both text and visual elements in her montages allows for a new and different relation to the environment. I will connect my methodological findings to a Marxist theory of value to further shed light on the relation of the visual montages and their connection to questions concerning human relationship to the environment.  The republic of exit 46 is a site specific book which through the means of poetry, theatre, visual montage and found source texts investigates and approaches the landfill as a site for archaeology.

Pushing the boundaries of nature and art: A semiotic analysis of Olafur Eliasson’s installations based on Yuri Lotman’s theories (Cecilia Muszta)

The concept of nature was featured throughout the history of art both in Europe and outside of it. After the renaissance however nature started to become represented not as a symbolic space, but something worthy of depiction without any added symbolic value. This created an image of nature which is seemingly independent of human culture, an image which is problematic. In this conference I am going to talk about the installations of Olafur Eliasson which problematize the image introduced above, such as Riverbed or Lava Floor. In these works, the artist pushes the boundaries between art, institution and nature trough featuring natural materials and constructed landscapes in environments where these appear anachronistic. Eliasson does invoke aesthetic qualities attached to the image of nature such as the serene or sublime, yet the institutional environment keeps disorienting the visitor, making them aware of the constructed nature of these environments. In a sense, the question what nature is being asked by mixing radically different environments. Furthermore, I am going to provide a semiotic analysis of the problems highlighted above. Using the theories of Yuri Lotman I aim to connect the concepts of nature and art world to Lotman’s “semiosphere” idea and liken Eliasson’s artistic work to the philosopher’s notion of boundary concept.

The New Landscape: Music stage constructions on water surfaces (Laine Medniece)

Music festivals and events are entering the immense rivalry phase when differentiation is necessary in order to attract more visitors. Unlike festivals in cities and public spaces, events taking place in deserts, forest, by the beach or abandoned castle ruins, besides artist line-up, include a remarkable aesthetical experience due to the unusual landscape. These particular and unique locations also include events, where the stage is constructed on a lake, particularly to directly experience the specifically chosen landscape.

This conference paper explores the correlation between the stage, landscape and music, and how these aspects are being used in order to signify the landscape and aesthetics. It will be argued how the specific location of the stage on water, the placing of an audience and the visuals of the stage itself can affect the perception of a landscape, as well as how the stage is being perceived as an artificial object within a landscape. Additionally, music emphasizes the experience of a landscape and vice versa, thus creating a constant correlation between the three figures – the stage, landscape and music, - where the slightest change in one aspect can affect the importance of another.

I will refer to music events in the Baltic States and Austria, within techno, ambient and classical music genres, which will be explored based on the ideas within environmental aesthetics.

 Architecture in Cinema: The history of constructing an environment (Christopher Fletcher Sanderjoo)

The role of studio and set designs have always played an important role in cinema. From enhancing the story through architectural choices, to advancing the technologies used within filmmaking. Early works of set and studio designs have mainly been lost to history, within film studies, as to who created them and the thought processes behind these works. The focus points of this paper will handle how studios and sets are built and portrayed to replicate, create and control the environment but also the narrative structures behind architectural choices in cinema. I will look at these focus points mainly through a historical perspective where most of this paper will be about the early history. The films that I will mainly talk about will be The cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and In Bruges (2008). I will go about this through qualitative research and will delve into trends and thought processes to give us a greater insight in the works of sets and studio designs.

 The fetishisation of the Arctic ice caps in the age of the Anthropocene (Linnéa Lindgren Havsfjord)

The Arctic territory was of interest already in the Middle Ages: its harsh climate made it unwelcoming territory until European explorers in the early nineteenth century saw its ice caps as a symbol of the Arctic’s awesome natural power, to be tamed and colonised. Historically, visual representations of the Arctic and its glaciers have been renegotiated from Caspar David Friedrich’s romantic depiction ‘Sea of Ice’ (1823-1824) to Olafur Eliasson’s distressing ‘Ice Watch’ (2014-). This renegotiation reveals an interesting shift in the perception of glaciers, from a powerful unconquered natural space to victim of manmade forces. However, taking their perspective from ‘the anthropocene’, contemporary visual depictions of the Arctic ice caps are in danger of fetishising our current ecological crisis, and without stepping outside of the hegemonic Western perspective. My presentation will problematise the theoretical approach of the anthropocene by looking at this tendency to fetishise the arctic glaciers and ice caps. I will ask whether visual representations of the ice caps via the anthropocentric lens amount to a form of fetishising our own destruction?

  How do Environmental Institutions in South Florida Create Different Representations of Our  Oceans? An Interpretation of Conservation Science and Social Community Engagement  (Marisol Diaz Turkowsky)

The description of our marine world is not only cultural, but also based on social and political influence from the scientific experts and environmental institutions supervising and framing appropriate marine conservation conduct.

This master thesis investigates the common and unique roles that each institution portrays in the making of today’s oceans and science regulations for the general public. South Floridians are known to be active participants in coastal and marine activities, commonly organized by environmental organizations, private research laboratories and federal agencies. In addition, local zoos and aquariums have also attracted tourists and locals to portray conservation issues and goals regarding Florida’s waters.

In this study, nine different environmental institutions in Florida were interviewed regarding their roles as educational portals of conservation and outreach communicators. The results show that the institutions’ political agenda and social relationships with their target public were reflected differently on their conservation motives and values. Varying animal species were also used and displayed based on what messages these institutions wanted to communicate. This study argues that to understand where the vision of ocean conservation is going, we need to understand how environmental institutions connect humans to the making of their ocean ecologies.

 Before Terraforming? The aesthetics and ethics of terraforming landscape on the Ascension Island  (Chenglan Jin)

Ascension Island is located in the South Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between South America and Africa. Scientists from the 19th century had built the planet's first artificial ecosystem here by planting the non-native tree to this volcanic/Mars-like island also known as the Green Mountain.

While much has been written about this island's scientific value on changing the island's soil, rainfall and increasing its plant diversity, less has been said about how this human- made landscape critiques our perspective of terraforming through aesthetics and ethics.

In this paper, I plan to draw upon some Phenomenology theory and Postcolonial theory, combining them with the field of aesthetics and ethics in order to explore the questions of How does the experience like when are we appreciating the terraforming landscape aesthetically? How does it re-shape our view of the relationship between landscape (on the surface level) and human activity?

It will be argued that different approaches such as semiotic and phenomenology will vary our interpretation of the artificial and natural that comes from the terraforming landscape. Also, it will be further analysed that terraforming landscape is a representation of the Anthropocentrism in which human took away the islands' ability to define its original landscape.

Through this biocentrism point of view, Ascension Island invites us to reinterpret our perception with the past (terraforming earth) and the future (terraforming Mars).

Ecologies of Masculinity and Melancholia in the Natural Landscapes of Video Games (Emma Shachat)

During the Romanticism movement of the 19th century, natural landscapes were conceptualised as the domain of the modern man. By claiming nature as a realm of masculine identity, one could reclaim a masculinity that was supposedly lost to Industrialisation. Today, a similar process of constructing masculinity through nature takes root in the virtual realm, specifically in video games that emphasise the exploration of their digitally-rendered, “natural” environments. These multiplayer virtual spaces are sought out for a sense of community and self-actualisation, spaces where new lands can be discovered and new identities created. The expansive, mystical landscapes of community-oriented fantasy games such as World of Warcraft serve as spaces where many players hope to assert--and mourn--a “lost” masculine identity. While these online community spaces often become dominated by toxic masculinity and misogyny, such virtual microclimates can also cultivate communities in which masculine-melancholia can be collectively expressed.

In this paper, I will be looking at images of the landscapes of these virtual worlds as well as analysing how users relate to these landscapes and to each other. By applying Judith Butler’s notion of “melancholy gender” as a theoretical framework and by looking at primary sources from the gaming world, I will attempt to discuss and problematise the relationship between contemporary masculinities, melancholia, and virtual natural landscapes.

[marviinmelton]

Olafur Eliasson’s first building is marvelous

The highly popular, large-scale installation works of Olafur Elaisson are often described as mind-bending, perceptual, and phenomenological—and for good reason. The Danish-Icelandic artist’s otherworldly creations have included everything from New York City Waterfalls, four artificially constructed, 90-foot-tall waterfalls beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, to spatial interventions that play with our senses, like The Weather Project, a monumental installation that simulated a sunny, misty environment in the main turbine hall of London’s Tate Modern.

Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann [Photo: David de Larrea Remiro]

Highly structured spaces set the stage for Elaisson’s experimental and interactive creations, so it only makes sense that he and his team at Studio Other Spaces—founded in 2014, with architect and longtime collaborator Sebastian Behmann, as a counterpart to his main artistic practice—have ponied up to design an entire building, and it’s truly a Gesamtkunstwerk. Opening June 9 in Vejle, Denmark, a harbor town at the head of Vejle fjord, the Fjordenhus will serve as the headquarters of Kirk Kapital, the business and investment holdings company owned by family members of Lego founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen. While Elaisson and his team have previously designed building facades, lighting, and even a bridge, Fjordenhus marks their first complete building project.

[Photo: David de Larrea Remiro]

“A lot of the things I’ve been working on in art have been spatially based, though art installations are very often meant to stay up, as in an exhibition. With this project, it was great to check or challenge and test the experiments of artistic ideas in an architectural framework,” Elaisson told Fast Company. “My only role is to navigate the artistic questions,” he added, of the largely collaborative effort led by Behmann and their collective studio teams, which include 25 architects among a staff of well over 100.

In the case of Fjordhus, the driving artistic question was: “What type of experiential framework is in fact supporting an atmosphere that keeps challenging you a little bit? Instead of allowing you to be a pacified consumer of the space,” Elaisson says, “I think a great space actually has an element of friction that demands from you your subtle and slight attention, maybe consciously or subconsciously.”

[Photo: Anders Sune Berg]

Rising from the harbor and accessed by footbridge, the elliptical structure is made from four cylindrical structures, clad in more than 970,000 unglazed bricks laid in complex torquing contours and archways. The bricks are a subtle nod to local tradition and industry, turned way up to achieve a complex form that engages with reflections in the water’s surface. Inside, views are equally stunning: Elaisson’s team also created site-specific artworks, furnishings, and lightings specially made for its interiors, while grand, multi-story windows look out onto the water.

“I am very thankful for the trust shown by the Kirk Johansen family in inviting me, with my studio, to conceive Fjordenhus,” said Elaisson by statement. “This allowed us to turn years of research—on perception, physical movement, light, nature, and the experience of space—into a building that is at once a total work of art and a fully functional architectural structure.”

The project is among the town’s first developments to extend into the harbor, and as such, also serves to enhance the community from a public-facing perspective, said Behmann. Sited at the end of a waterfront promenade and plaza, “[Fjordhus] tells the story of the city in relation to the water and the fjord and their surroundings,” the architect added, sharing that he even took a nice swim around the building in the days leading up to its inauguration this past weekend.

It’s a stunning building, and hardly the last to come from Studio Other Spaces, which is currently developing projects elsewhere in Paris and Addis Ababa. This past month alone, Elaisson and his studio also announced an Ikea collaboration with his solar-power company Little Sun, and mounted three exhibitions in Munich, Los Angeles, and Beijing. This all comes ahead of several larger shows next year—the details of which they’ve yet to announce, though Elaisson does share some summer plans in the immediate: “A few contemplative months ahead, involving a lot of landscape and a trip to Iceland. What do you call it, ‘recharging,’ I guess? I’ll be recharging my batteries.”

Olafur Eliasson’s first building is marvelous published first on https://petrotekb.tumblr.com/

[danielkbrown]

A city is never seen as a totality, but as an aggregate of experiences, animated by use, by overlapping perspective, changing light, sounds and smells. Similarly, a single piece of architecture is rarely experienced in its totality but as a series of partial views and synthesised experiences.

Holl, Steven, Pallasmaa, Juhani and Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA : William Stout, 2006, 130.