Matters of art and practice: In dialogue with things
The aim is to explain what the abilities and skills are enabling artistic creation and aesthetic experience, and that can explain the central place of the arts in human life. The project brings together my previous research on creativity, art, and embodied embedded cognition. Using examples from the visual arts, pottery, modern dance and jazz music, I show that the ability to appreciate and produce art objects depends on bodily, perceptual and emotional processes that enable interaction between humans and artifacts at a pre-reflective level, and describe how the artist painstakingly refines them in search of a unique style. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges in a mostly wordless dialogue with the artwork that requires listening and openness to diversity, and is similar to the dialogue we have with those that are closest to us.
Final report
FINAL REPORT RJ SABBATICAL 2018
SAB17-1061:1 Ingar Brinck
The project has resulted in a draft manuscript about the skills and capacities that enable, on the one hand, making and artistic creativity, and on the other, aesthetic experience from the consumer’s or user’s point of view, and which can explain the central place of art and craft in human life both cognitively and existentially. The approach is interdisciplinary and involve research and sources in philosophy, psychology, phenomenology, gesture studies, archaeology, theory of art, and craft studies. Using examples from the visual arts, pottery, sculpture, and modern dance, I argue that the ability to appreciate and create art in its many forms depends on bodily, sensorimotor, and emotional processes that underlie an array of interrelated interaction dynamics between human and artefact with the perception-action and motion-emotion loops at the centre.
The initial chapters pivot around drawing that is central to the art and craft practices, manifesting itself differently depending on activity, technique, and technology. In contrast to how it may seem from a first-person perspective, the hand and body in movement as a rule guide the agent’s eye gaze, and in the exploration of both motive or scene and materials, the hand functions as a cognitive agent, cautiously grounding the search in the specific and concrete. The following chapters focus on pottery, sculpture, and dance with continued emphasis on the contact between material and body. The final chapters recognize that on a longer temporal scale, materials and technology play decisive roles for meaning making, and making and aesthetic experience are placed in a wider social context organized by social norms. Yet, in the fleeting present, making and experiencing artistic artefacts can reveal an ethical dimension that precedes rule-based forms of life, arising in an emotional, wordless dialogue with materials and artefacts that requires listening to difference.
In addition, the sabbatical has resulted in two published articles and a paper in conference proceedings (see list of publications). One article is co-authored with Vasudevi Reddy, developmental psychologist and potter, whose contributes with her personal experience of pottery making. The article takes its starting-point in the central hypotheses of the book manuscript and explores the relation between potter and clay in the process of throwing. Proficient potters have another impression of this relation and transforms their experiences into a more efficient and simultaneously open and sensitive manner of working the clay than those who are less skilled. The article explains how skilled potters’ personal engagement in the material depends on the interplay of sensorimotor and emotional processes, which makes it possible for them to feel how the clay will react to touch and grasp in anticipation of actually performing the movements. The article constitutes a novel approach to pottery and generally, making. Since its on-line publication 6 months ago, it has been downloaded 1500 times from the journal’s website (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11097-019-09629-2).
Another article is co-authored with Christian Balkenius, roboticist and cognitive scientist. It takes its beginning in ideas from the book manuscript that identifies the relation between maker or user and material/artefact from three different angles: the cognitive-motor perspective, the normative-material perspective, and the emotional-ethical perspective. The article applies the conclusions of these discussions to the interaction between human and new technology in the form of AI and autonomous systems, specifically, social robots. The aim is to describe a new respectful and collaborative approach to human-robot interaction that avoids well-known problems with current technological paradigms and can be realized in the design of robots today.
Accordingly, the research has generated new questions, some of which are applied, that form the basis of new research about the interaction between human agents and today’s new technology. Conclusions from the present research about the relation between artist or maker and materials are useful for clarifying the interaction between human and technology. The questions range over two areas, viz., human-machine interaction, joint action and cooperation in philosophy, robotics and cognitive science; and second-person ethics and social norms in philosophy, developmental psychology and robotics.
Additional activities include:
-- collaboration with musicians and music researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim about improvisation between jazz musicians and in music pedagogy (as practised in Trondheim),
-- exchanges with researchers at University of Amsterdam working in philosophy and design,
-- research collaborations with the Lund University Cognitive Robotics Lab with the aim of testing some of the hypotheses detailed in the book manuscript,
-- dialogues with Swedish artists and craftspeople about improvisation, body dialogue and ethics with the potential of changing the received scientific understanding of these phenomena.
The research so far has been spread in presentations at workshops, conferences, and informal seminars and during visits at research centres (Netherlands, France, Norway, England) and via media. Below you find a list of conference presentations and radio appearances in 2018 and 2019:
-- 12th Conference of the International Association of Visual Semiotics, Lund, 22-24 August 2019: Invited speaker, participant in symposium/panel: "Enactivist, embodied and embedded approaches in cognitive semiotics"
-- The 9th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics, Oslo, 19-22 August 2019: Poster presentation and conference paper "Recognition in Human–Robot Interaction: The Gateway to Engagement"
-- 7th Peripatetic Conference on Cognitive Systems Modeling, Male Ciche, arr. by Unversity of Warsaw, 18-21 October 2018: Invited speaker “Dialogue in the making: Engaging with the material world”
-- Fagdag om Jazzgehör/Musical Aptitude in Jazz Improvisation, School of Jazz, NTNU, Trondheim, 22 Juin 2018: Invited speaker, project presentation and commentator.
-- International Workshop: The Philosophy and Practise of Improvisation, Lund, 11-12 Juin 2018. Organizer. Talk ”Improvisation - Intelligent Skill and Emotional Engagement”
-- Pre-Workshop Improvisation, Malmö, 9-10 juni 2018, incl seminar with two dancers from Skånes Dansteater. Organizer.
-- Filosofiska rummet P1 Sveriges Radio, Oktober 2019
-- Filosofiska rummet P1 Sveriges Radio, Maj 2019
-- Förmiddag i P4 Sveriges Radio, Augusti 2018
SAB17-1061:1 Ingar Brinck
The project has resulted in a draft manuscript about the skills and capacities that enable, on the one hand, making and artistic creativity, and on the other, aesthetic experience from the consumer’s or user’s point of view, and which can explain the central place of art and craft in human life both cognitively and existentially. The approach is interdisciplinary and involve research and sources in philosophy, psychology, phenomenology, gesture studies, archaeology, theory of art, and craft studies. Using examples from the visual arts, pottery, sculpture, and modern dance, I argue that the ability to appreciate and create art in its many forms depends on bodily, sensorimotor, and emotional processes that underlie an array of interrelated interaction dynamics between human and artefact with the perception-action and motion-emotion loops at the centre.
The initial chapters pivot around drawing that is central to the art and craft practices, manifesting itself differently depending on activity, technique, and technology. In contrast to how it may seem from a first-person perspective, the hand and body in movement as a rule guide the agent’s eye gaze, and in the exploration of both motive or scene and materials, the hand functions as a cognitive agent, cautiously grounding the search in the specific and concrete. The following chapters focus on pottery, sculpture, and dance with continued emphasis on the contact between material and body. The final chapters recognize that on a longer temporal scale, materials and technology play decisive roles for meaning making, and making and aesthetic experience are placed in a wider social context organized by social norms. Yet, in the fleeting present, making and experiencing artistic artefacts can reveal an ethical dimension that precedes rule-based forms of life, arising in an emotional, wordless dialogue with materials and artefacts that requires listening to difference.
In addition, the sabbatical has resulted in two published articles and a paper in conference proceedings (see list of publications). One article is co-authored with Vasudevi Reddy, developmental psychologist and potter, whose contributes with her personal experience of pottery making. The article takes its starting-point in the central hypotheses of the book manuscript and explores the relation between potter and clay in the process of throwing. Proficient potters have another impression of this relation and transforms their experiences into a more efficient and simultaneously open and sensitive manner of working the clay than those who are less skilled. The article explains how skilled potters’ personal engagement in the material depends on the interplay of sensorimotor and emotional processes, which makes it possible for them to feel how the clay will react to touch and grasp in anticipation of actually performing the movements. The article constitutes a novel approach to pottery and generally, making. Since its on-line publication 6 months ago, it has been downloaded 1500 times from the journal’s website (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11097-019-09629-2).
Another article is co-authored with Christian Balkenius, roboticist and cognitive scientist. It takes its beginning in ideas from the book manuscript that identifies the relation between maker or user and material/artefact from three different angles: the cognitive-motor perspective, the normative-material perspective, and the emotional-ethical perspective. The article applies the conclusions of these discussions to the interaction between human and new technology in the form of AI and autonomous systems, specifically, social robots. The aim is to describe a new respectful and collaborative approach to human-robot interaction that avoids well-known problems with current technological paradigms and can be realized in the design of robots today.
Accordingly, the research has generated new questions, some of which are applied, that form the basis of new research about the interaction between human agents and today’s new technology. Conclusions from the present research about the relation between artist or maker and materials are useful for clarifying the interaction between human and technology. The questions range over two areas, viz., human-machine interaction, joint action and cooperation in philosophy, robotics and cognitive science; and second-person ethics and social norms in philosophy, developmental psychology and robotics.
Additional activities include:
-- collaboration with musicians and music researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim about improvisation between jazz musicians and in music pedagogy (as practised in Trondheim),
-- exchanges with researchers at University of Amsterdam working in philosophy and design,
-- research collaborations with the Lund University Cognitive Robotics Lab with the aim of testing some of the hypotheses detailed in the book manuscript,
-- dialogues with Swedish artists and craftspeople about improvisation, body dialogue and ethics with the potential of changing the received scientific understanding of these phenomena.
The research so far has been spread in presentations at workshops, conferences, and informal seminars and during visits at research centres (Netherlands, France, Norway, England) and via media. Below you find a list of conference presentations and radio appearances in 2018 and 2019:
-- 12th Conference of the International Association of Visual Semiotics, Lund, 22-24 August 2019: Invited speaker, participant in symposium/panel: "Enactivist, embodied and embedded approaches in cognitive semiotics"
-- The 9th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics, Oslo, 19-22 August 2019: Poster presentation and conference paper "Recognition in Human–Robot Interaction: The Gateway to Engagement"
-- 7th Peripatetic Conference on Cognitive Systems Modeling, Male Ciche, arr. by Unversity of Warsaw, 18-21 October 2018: Invited speaker “Dialogue in the making: Engaging with the material world”
-- Fagdag om Jazzgehör/Musical Aptitude in Jazz Improvisation, School of Jazz, NTNU, Trondheim, 22 Juin 2018: Invited speaker, project presentation and commentator.
-- International Workshop: The Philosophy and Practise of Improvisation, Lund, 11-12 Juin 2018. Organizer. Talk ”Improvisation - Intelligent Skill and Emotional Engagement”
-- Pre-Workshop Improvisation, Malmö, 9-10 juni 2018, incl seminar with two dancers from Skånes Dansteater. Organizer.
-- Filosofiska rummet P1 Sveriges Radio, Oktober 2019
-- Filosofiska rummet P1 Sveriges Radio, Maj 2019
-- Förmiddag i P4 Sveriges Radio, Augusti 2018