Questioning Phenomenology: Spatial Experience as an Input-Output Temporal Event

Liana Psarologaki

Recent studies on the ontology of spatial experience in relation to the self appear in
oblivion to the experience of conceptual artistic environments
1
, being limited to the
constrains of phenomenology and the primacy of body and eye but also considering
the artistic experience as sliced from the everyday habitual activity and vice-versa.
Could a meta-phenomenological model of the spatial experience being an input-output
temporal event assist the neuroscientific progress and expand the knowledge on the
perception and cognition of non-inhabited spaces (such as art site-specific
installations)?
Aesthetic subjectivity in relation to how we respond to sensory stimuli has been in
discourse with the spatial dimension of awareness of the self, even before Kant and
his argument that space relies on the appearance of things and the purity of intuition
being thus phenomenal and ideal
2
. It received however fragmental investigation till the
19
th
century when the German philosophers preoccupied with Einfhlung (=empathy)
attempted to explore the different levels of feeling evoked during aesthetic
experiences. More recently the discourse has been reactivated with the reinvention of
phenomenology and the cross-disciplinary studies of neuroeasthetics and
neuroscience on art.
Space is an integral constituent of the self according to Richard Etlin
3
who is
rendering the parameters of phenomenology and the spatial self into a triplet:
personal space, lived space and existential space. In consensus with the School of
Einfhlung, he bounds the bodily presence with the psychological response in the
lived space although he addresses the issue of the Einfhlung philosophers
dependency on the witnessing of events and the primacy of vision. Drawing on well-
known mathematician Hermann Minkowsky
4
, Etlin defines personal space as a
primitive space ! in which our soul moves and enfolds itself! where we delineate a
path through space without this act or path having something of a material quality to
it!through an a priory spatial dynamism.
5
However he very scarcely associates the
above with lived space. Curiously Etlin bounds lived space to the appearance of
things in the lived world and the aesthetic response which these things, including
works of art!prompt in us.
6
One might argue that Etlins theory is problematic as far
as the nature and ontology of the experience are concerned. Kevin Melchionne notes
down a similar inadequacy, reviewing Dowlings commentary on Irvins
phenomenology
7
. He bluntly states that the debate currently revolves around some
strikingly banal observations. Slices of experience, by themselves, cannot tell us much
about aesthetic value in everyday life! By focusing on discrete moments, we have
mistaken the very ontology of everyday aesthetic life.
8
The actual problematic in both
cases and in most neuroscience studies on the art affect
9
, is the consideration of
artistic experience as distinct from the actual, habitual every-day lived action, perhaps
falsely limiting art space down to the sterile white cube art-gallery.
Should one consider the artistic experience a more profound and personal event that
goes beyond the appearance of things and towards the becoming of temporal input-
output events, then a meta-phenomenological and perhaps genomenological
10

approach would be more informative. We live in the post- era
11
Don Ihde points out
introducing post-phenomenology when all is inscribed in and prescribed by
technological innovation. If post-phenomenology is defined as a perceptual-bodily
referentiality
12
, one might dare to acquire a post-phenomenological approach like
Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. For Eliasson, the modern Cartesian subject and
postmodern mechanism of organism-environment are extended towards a
contemporary meta-Merleau-Pontian interactive relativity
13
. If we are spacing
14
he
says- having a tolerance on the order of space then this tolerance is stressed by
spatial art as experience. Perhaps this is the point when the issue of a meta-
phenomenological approach of space is raised. This approach would concentrate
exactly on a condition of spacing whilst enfolded in space being simultaneously
within the micro world of the specific spatial experience and the macro world of every
day reality. In the same manner, distinguished architect and theorist Peter Zumthor
talks about atmospheres and the experience of architectural spaces, extending the
latter from the response to architectural forms and shapes (aesthetic input) to a
psychophysical response (output) through an action of tempering
15
. It is interesting
how he uses the verb temper to associate the sensual effect of a space with
temperature, explaining that temperature in this sense is physical, but presumably
psychological too. Its in what I see, what I feel, what I touch, even with my feet
16
and
contributes in the atmosphere (aura) of the space.
A meta-phenomenological approach on artistic experience is based on the
assumption that the individual is a system correlating temporally with other systems
during the social construct of reality (living) that artistic experience is inscribed within.
Moreover, it points out the uniqueness and multiplicity of lived artistic experiences,
one that is less obvious in the process of viewing traditional media art (painting and
sculpture), proving phenomenology inadequate
17
. Once the spectator becomes
participator, the primacy of the mind takes over the primacy of the eye and art
experience acquires a historico-cultural and situational dimension
18
. In the latter
temporal aspects of newness and mental presence described by Marc Wittmann
19
as
the continuous awareness of oneself as presently perceiving and acting within an
environment is extended.

Notes

1
Minissale, Gregory. (2012). Conceptual Art: A Blind Spot for Neuroaesthetics? In Leonardo Vol 45 No
1 p.43
2
Hatfield, Gary. (2006). Kant on the perception of space (and time) in Paul Guyer (ed.), Kant and
Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 61-93
3
Etlin, Richard. (1998). Aesthetics and the Spatial Sense of Self in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism Vol 56 No1 (Winter 1998). London: Wiley. pp.1-19
4
Hermann Minkowsky introduced the mathematical space-time relativity model in his paper Space and
Time, (Raum und Zeit,1909)
5
Ibid., p.4
6
Ibid., p.5
7
Melchionne, Kevin. (2011). Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life: A Reply to Dowling in the British
Journal of Aesthetics Vol 51 No4. Pp. 437-442.
8
Ibid., p. 439.
9
see for instance Vessel. E., Starr, G. and Rubin, N. (2012) The Brain in Art: intensive aesthetic
experience activates the default mode network in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Vol. 6 Article 66
10
from genomena or !"#$"#% in Greek, as the outcome occuring by multiplying action in opposition
to a phenomenon of appearance)
11
Ihde, Don. (1993). Postphenomenology: Essays in the Postmodern Context. Evanston IL: he
Northwestern University Press. pp. 1-14
12
Ibid., p.6
13
Ibid., pp.3,4
14
Olafur Eliasson (2012) Spaces of Transformation: Continuity/Infinity. Conversation with Bruno Latour
and Peter Weibel . TATE Modern, London. [3
rd
March 2012]
15
Zumthor, Peter. (2006). Atmospheres: Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects. Basel:
Birkhauser
16
Ibid., p.35
17
Vessel et. al agree that in studies that use stimuli of a worldwide recognized genre there is little room
for individual aspects of subjective aesthetic experience and that aestehtic judgements are not only
subjective but also highly susceptible to cultural norms, education and exposure in Vessel. E. et al.
(2012) The Brain in Art, p.1.
18
Nina Zschocke describing her visit to Michael Heizers Double Negative in Art and Architecture as
Experience: an alternative approach to bridging art history and the neurosciences in Cognitive Process
13, 2012 p.377
19
See Wittmann, Marc. (2011). Moments in Time in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience Vol 5, Article
66, p.5