I recently read the piece "Who is an author?" by Foucault, and many thoughts emerged regarding my own writings and artworks. In that essay, he illustrates the initiation of discursive practices and the phenomena of exceeding the limits of the authorship with the functions of the work by giving examples of Marxism and Freudianism. By doing so, he claims that these writers initiated some ideas, but those ideas initiated many other authors and their work. In that sense, the artwork outside manifested into something bigger, a set of ideologies and anti-ideologies. Similarly, can design initiate and manifest some other forms of media just like the Foucault examination of literature's function? If so, what is the essence of my design practice, and where do I get my ideas that turn into visuals? The above set of questions led me to the artistic research that will be unfolded in this essay. Although they are posed as questions on perception, they stem from a critique of my own paradigms of how design can be invented and created in the process and what happens after it. Previously I presumed design could originate from a subject matter within the realm of human conceived concepts such as 'social politics,' 'identity,' or 'the collective.' Thereby it was only possible to design through conventional processes of translation and expression. Then the question of "Can I design a perception?" emerged. Alternatively, could visuality originate from exploitation of a physical reality such as the typography, a space, or colour in a kind of 'negotiation' or 'conversation'?
PROBLEMS AS RESEARCH METHOD
In design studios, we fundamentally problematize the relation of sensation and visuality into a synthesis, a perception. Nevertheless, to what extent do we choose what we create? The concept of 'encounter' derives from the 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze's critique on representation in his book Difference and Repetition. Deleuze's encounters fundamentally problematize our ability for recognition as a consequence of a received sensation that cannot be met with an image in thought. It, so to speak, exceeds the limit of common sense, and as a result, a "discordant play" of "perception, memory, imagination, understanding [and] judgment" is happening to us (Cvejić, "CH.P." 29). The problem constitutes a generator of new experiences since our senses must transcend themselves to go beyond what they usually can represent (Cvejić, "CH.P." 40-41). When understood about Deleuze's concept of encounters, a real problem does not resolve itself with proposed solutions.
As long as the sensations received cannot affirm an identity, which is to say that it cannot present itself as an image, a problem with all its differential faculties, Cvejić argues, "continue to transform itself and force thought to learn beyond knowledge" ("CH.P." 40). However, the force of the encounter can give rise to an idea constructed by differences. The problematic encounter has the power to produce thoughts. I wonder if a perception itself can become visual. Is a perception prolonged in time as it manifests itself in a visuality? Will it transform or change?Moreover, if so, can I keep my attention on that perception as it changes with the translation process of verbality to visuality? Design as a question does not attempt to express or communicate a special message. It is there to be completed by the multiplicity of experiences, perspectives, and interpretations. Design is a result of our thinking. Each mode verified, substantiated, and problematized one another, giving rise to new thoughts and active experimentation.
To ask, 'Can I design a perception?' is to invent a problem by constraining my ability to make design purely from perception. This entails a process of cause and effect that cannot be represented to me as an image since only the object of perception can have an image in thought, while the mechanism of perception has no image, it is, to us, pure experience. Therefore, a different kind of thought is needed to explain how it can be conceived, and to this, Cvejić draws upon Deleuze's concept of 'anti-representational thinking.' A representation is, for Deleuze, a mode of thinking that reduces information into identity rather than difference and is therefore only able to create the already recognized and recognizable (Cvejić, "CH.P." 36). As opposed to representational thinking, the kind of thinking Deleuze wants to distinguish has a relationship between sensation and thought that stays problematic and will, as a consequence, force thought to invent itself and "affirm difference prior to identity" (Cvejić, "CH.P." 36-7). Deleuze assigns this anti-representational thinking the power of creation because of its ability to bring something unexciting into being (Cvejić, "CH.P." 37-8). Or rather, bring into being that which does not have an image of representation. As an alternative to the inability to conceive something in a representation, Deleuze proposes a concept of ideas. Deleuze's ideas are not constructed through similarities aiming at identity. On the contrary, they are different. They, so to speak, depend on differences rather than similarities and exist in thought as a field wherein various interconnected and interdependent faculties cross and meet (Standford).
In Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the independent and interconnected planes formed by matter and perception on the one hand and time and memory on the other. This investigation is a quest for understanding the relationship of matter and mind and thereby position itself within the classical philosophical 'body-mind problem' ("Matter" par. 1). Matter and Memory's subtitle 'Essay on the relation of body and spirit' does more than state this clearly, it also suggests 'spirit' to be a memory as 'body' is matter. Before laying out Henri Bergson's concept of perception, it is essential to note that this chapter does not attempt to argue for or against the theories posed in a larger philosophical context. Furthermore is, Bergson's Matter and Memory only the point from where this chapter will depart and circulate since a few secondary sources will help with articulation and clarification. What will now be unfolded are only selected concepts within a vast field of knowledge on perception, which have served as sources of inspiration and has proved useful for this research. Henri Bergson does not strictly see perception as that faculty of the brain that constructs a representation as an image of our consciousness. The brain's faculty is instead to suggest motor possibilities of the body towards an object. In this respect, the brain function just as the reflex actions of the spinal cord as it is always oriented towards action and, therefore, only differs from it by degree and not in kind (Bergson 23). However, as opposed to the reflex actions of the spinal cord, which translate sensations directly into movements, the brain functions as an intermediate between the movement received and the movement selected in the process of analyzing information from the senses and suggesting and selecting possible actions for execution (Bergson 12). Or in other words, perception is the process of a nervous system receiving movements and expanding them into voluntary actions (Bergson 19). Perception should therefore be understood as a sensorimotor mechanism. Hence perception is, in fact, already part movement, and even though sensing must first take its part, the whole of perception has its explanation in the body's tendency to act, to move (Bergson 23).
By defining perception as the process of suggesting possible actions, the logic follows that the more information a living being can receive, the greater the number of possible actions will be suggested to its consciousness (Bergson 16-17). They allow the information that does not serve any function to pass unnoticed while that which does "become perceptions by their very isolation" (Bergson 17). The real world is therefore reduced in the act of perception as it only draws that information that is useful, and as a consequence, the perceived world is not the whole of reality but can only be less. Gilles Deleuze states this view clearly with his reading of Bergson in Bergsonism by saying that a "perception is not the object plus something, but the object minus something, minus everything that does not interest us" (24-5). This means that we will have to understand the perception of matter to be different from the reality of matter, being different from being perceived. However, to Bergson, the difference is only by degree and not in kind since the objects' whole reality and our perception of it share the elements and faculties of the parts that interest us (18). Although it has just been explained how perception is a sensorimotor process, there is no perception without memories. In fact, every perception is full of memories and mixed with many details taken from past experiences (Bergson 14). However, this information is not taken at random. Instead, it only adds information into perception as it is relevant to our situation. By relevance, we should again understand functional movements or suggestions of movements. Bergson presents two distinct forms of memory: motor mechanisms; and independent recollections (47). The first could be understood as actions performed in immediate response to an object. Put differently, it does not present our past to us but acts it. This is opposed to independent recollections that present our past in the form of images. In either form of memory, their final determination is movement. Therefore, memory is only seen as stored motor impulses waiting to be augmented into our perception when they become relevant to our present situation, either as a ready-made response or as possibilities of action. To act is to encourage memory to narrow itself into a useful movement, and in the case of independent recollections, it is to give up the memory image that suggests the possible and make it actual in movements (Bergson 69). As living beings' conscious perception is limited to those parts and aspects of those parts, which movements can affect, there must be a correspondence between the perceived and the movements executed. And this correspondence is a result of the fact that they both are a function of a third factor, which is the indetermination of the will (Bergson 20). The nervous system is seen as a center for all the external points in space it can receive information from, and each of these points can make an "appeal to my will and to put, so to speak, an elementary question to my motor activity" (Bergson 23). Such a question is a perception since it does nothing but suggest how a movement can affect an object. In this regard, it is up to our will to filter that information out. We might need to fulfill our needs with action. However, in the case of this research, it might filter out much useful information as it inattentively expands into habitual movements. Bergson's explanation of the attention mechanism could allow more conscious decision-making.
Attention is, Bergson argues, a faculty to render a perception more intense. It manifests itself in an attitude of the body that initially inhibits movements. However, shortly after, more subtle movements appear in the body that attempts to retain the relationship of sensation and movements, or as Bergson puts it, attempt "to retrace the outlines of the object perceived" (65). With these movements, attention begins its collaborative work with memory. As long as attention is kept on an object, our memory attempts to recollect information about it or similar objects and project it onto our image. As long as these details do not suffice, a more significant appeal is made to memory, which enriches the perception (Bergson 66).
Consequently, we should see perception as a circuit where perception meets the mind and projects its image to check for accuracy (Bergson 67). They uphold each other in equilibrium by constant negotiation. The most profound aspect of Bergson's theory is that memory plays a significant role in the mechanism of perception and the attention we might adopt toward an object. In this regard not the amount of sensations gathered at once that intensify a perception, but rather all the information gathered over time and prolonged into the present resulting in a coexistence of both memory and sensations, past and present. With attention, we cannot only perceive objects with an automatic recognition resulting in habitual movements, as explained earlier, but also recognize attentively by giving up its practical effects, a notion Bergon calls 'attentive recognition' (64-66). Bojana Cvejić applies this notion of attentive recognition in Choreographing Problems when explaining how one might approach movements as the object of perception. When inhibiting one from extending a perception into habitual movements, the sensorimotor mechanism is broken, and as a result, one becomes the perceiver of one's own body (Cvejić, "CH.P." 71).
RESEARCH IN ACTION
Instead, this creation departed from wondering how the perception of gravity is constructed through sensations and how we could intensify these sensations. Gravity has been a general interest of mine for a long but only became current as I read the book Gravity by Steve Paxton. The book moved me with its poetic description of gravity's role in our physical and psychological nature. Although this book inspired me, it is essential to separate the point of departure of 'No title' from Paxton's Contact Improvisation technique, which I conceive of as active research into how one can exploit the force of gravity upon one's body to expand possibilities of moving. As an attempt to pose an alternative to this approach, I wanted to explore how the designers and I could intensify the experience of gravity. To sum up these thoughts and take them into active experimentation, two leading questions were proposed for the four of us to explore together and share the knowledge we gained. Yet, it seems that we do it unconsciously most of the time. We can walk, bike, lift, push, pull, etc., while talking, singing, and thinking. In other words, regarding Henri Bergson's notion of perception, we can quickly expand our perception of gravity into habitual movements. But, could we, by bringing our attention towards gravity, sense or perceive it with our full consciousness? Could we intensify this sensing, perceiving, and experiencing? As a way to take these questions into experimentation, the focus was set upon three primary sensations that, in my intuitive understanding, make a perception of gravity possible: the touch and pressure of the ground on our bodies, the sense of weight (through the sensation of the water of our bodies being pulled down); and the vestibular system (the sense of balance and spatial orientation). A method of research naturally developed from attempting to focus on each of these specific sensations and perceptions; attention was guided (through setting up a fixed and detailed physical movement task) to a sensation that (in collaboration with others) constructs a perception of gravity. We were attempting to directly apply Bergson's concept of attentive recognition to the hypothesis that we were taking out the practical effect of movements. Three such tasks comprised the three parts (or scenes) of the final creation, and each was done very slowly, calmly, and precisely. Not only did we naturally do the task this way, but we also could not keep attention to the sensations affected by gravity if we tried moving faster. It struck me how accurate this is concerning Bergson's writing about attention. At first, there is an inhibition of movements, but soon after, more subtle movements appear to try to retain the understanding of the object through a synthesis of sensations and movements. At first, guiding one's attention towards a sensation was only a means for intensifying a sensation. However, at the point in which the creation of 'No title' had finished and the creation of the solo 'How would I know if I have not seen?' was about to begin, the act of paying attention became increasingly clear to me as that process which might be able to produce movements, more than generate a quality of moving. Having said that, if we use a task with a predetermined set of movements to allow our attention to stay on our perception of gravity, are we then designing a perception, or are we designing while perceiving? The intuitive answer would be that we are just designing while perceiving, meaning that the genesis of the movements cannot be traced back to perception but to a fixed task.
This can be said to be that fundamental encounter, which gave rise to the problem that this research is investigating and resulted in the final invention of the "problematic" research question:
- Can we remove the screen of the will that comes in front of our perception?
- Can we remove our need for practical effects, our habit of reducing a perception into identity?
- Can we perceive within differences, also when there is a gap between sensation and thought?
- Can I also encourage my audience's thinking beyond recognition and knowledge?
- But will it transform or change? And if so, can I focus on that perception as it changes with the static images of design work?
The frame of morphing one "solution" into the next in 'How would I know if I have not seen?' does not quite suffice in the attempt to be a design of differences. I need to surrender to the unknown, to the unintelligible, and instead, attempt to propose a yet unimaginable knowledge. Can a design depend on differences that do not manifest a singularity but disperse several possibilities of understanding? I perceive more attentively by removing the search for beneficial effects in an object. I become the perceiver of my own body. I am no longer only the executor of movements.
As a result, I encountered the idea that perception itself could produce movements. By understanding Deleuze's concept of encounters and how Bojana Cvejic used it to account for the practices stemming from problems in Choreographing Problems, I constrained my ability to create design purely from perception itself, thereby inventing the problem 'Can I design a perception?'. By inventing a problem, I forced myself to think beyond representation, beyond knowledge. I had to understand how it might work, not how it might look. To synthesize these "solutions," I did an improvised design practice based on Henri Bergson's theory of movement and memory's partaking in the mechanism of perception from Matter and Memory, together with his concept of attentive recognition. The problem stated continues to transform and reveal new problematic perspectives. A problem, in my experience, forces my thinking beyond representation, recognition, and knowledge, producing ideas for making design. Yet, if I am to apply Deleuze's concept of anti-representational thinking to my research process and future design work, I must force myself to think beyond my current ideas of what my design should look like.
I will not allow myself to design to meet a form. This is control and, consequently, a form of the conqueror, making my abilities its enslaved person. I will let myself control itself while I will ask it questions! Perception is prolonged in time as it manifests itself in a movement since a perception suggests possible actions: Intensity cannot be divided as extent can.
References:
Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. 1911. Translated by Nancy M. Poul and Scott Palmer, Random Shack, 2016. E-book.
Brenscheidt, Diana. “Bergson, Henri. “The Recognition of Images,” in Matter and Memory, annotation by Diana Brenscheidt gen. Jost (Theories of Media, Winter 2003).” Accessed 18 May 2022. www.uchicago.edu/annotations/ bergsonrecognition.htm
Cvejić, Bojana. “Bojana Cvejić: In the Time of Choreographing Problems.” Taideyliopisto, Vimeo. Accessed 17 Nov. 2022, www.vimeo. com/243249056. Accessed 18 Feb. 2019.