A possibility for the Experiment

Excellent article, and beautiful experiment. I definitely think we should try this. I really want to experience this genesis of space for myself. What seems powerful about this experiment is, on the one hand, how minimal it is, and on the other hand, how open it is to being expanded and articulated into richer and more complex scenarios.

We've been talking about the minimal conditions of rooming and roominess; Lenay and Steiner may have devised something close to the minimal conditions for the genesis of spatiality. By giving the participant a new sense organ, she gets to experience and enact the genesis of space almost "from scratch" (and observers get to see her doing this). Space here shows up as a structure that emerges in and through the dynamic coupling of movement and sensory feedback.

By building on their minimal experiment, we might be able to witness the self-articulation of space into rooms, the tangling up of threads that generates a knot or node.


LOGISTICAL QUESTION: Are we meeting tomorrow, Nov. 17?

Noah
Upvote Upvoted 0
1 response

Noah,<o:p></o:p>

I am not certain the final status of tomorrow’s meeting. I know I can’t make it because of a previous engagement. Xin Wei can answer.<o:p></o:p>

I am glad to find this enthusiastic response.<o:p></o:p>

I also like your way of focusing us on the genesis of space. I think we want to be narrowing in on that, as you indicate, with respect to the minimal conditions of room and roominess, with respect to issues of memory:<o:p></o:p>

That is, we want to ask: What are the minimal conditions for the genesis of a space that harbours memory? Our hypothesis that this requires room, as constraint on movement, where the constraint is neither purely in us nor outside us. And approaching this hypothesis through phenomenological study of the minimal conditions of space-genesis will, I think, give us insight into: the minimal conditions of room; the linkage between room, movement, and memory; and probably the way place is important. (I imagine for example, we set up a situation where there was sort of a portable room; whenever your handle reach 80 cm away from your body, you get a stimulus that sort of makes you feel a bubble around your body; but this bubble moves with you no matter where you are. I don’t think you’d quite get a room effect within that periperipheral space; rather, you might experience things in there as tools or part of your body, not quite things to remember as coming back to them; there’s a leaving behind and coming back to that I think cuts across memory and movement, which is why doorways are key…)<o:p></o:p>

David<o:p></o:p>

From: memoryplace's posterous [mailto:post@memoryplace.posterous.com]
Sent: November-16-10 3:22 PM
To: davimorr@alcor.concordia.ca
Subject: A possibility for the Experiment<o:p></o:p>

— David