How Culture comes to Mind: From Social affordances to Cultural analogies

Until now, the naturalist attempts to account for cultural phenomena have tended to see them as representations that spread within the population thanks to the counterintuitive properties making them salient and easy to remember. As a supplement to this view, which postulates a kind of cognitive distance between individuals and culture, this paper proposes a naturalist model that takes into consideration the strong cognitive involvement and the participative rather than contemplative stance triggered by a good many cultural phenomena. Such a model tries to defend a «continuist view » of the link between nature and culture by calling partially into question the traditional emphasis of social sciences on the artificial, arbitrary dimension of social facts. For the authors, indeed, this emphasis does not account for the naturality and universality of a certain number of elementary social forms. Once the partial naturality of the social is asserted, the purpose is to describe the emergence of cultural phenomena. The hypothesis put forward here is that analogical capacities, also natural, which allow human minds to «draw » cultural forms from the world of nature, either physical or social, play a central role in the elaboration of a sphere of collective experience that is both cultural and intuitive.Comment la culture vient à l'esprit. Des affordances sociales aux analogies culturelles. Jusqu’à présent, les tentatives naturalistes visant à rendre compte des phénomènes culturels ont eu tendance à les appréhender comme des représentations qui se diffusent dans la population grâce à leurs propriétés contreintuitives, qui retiennent l’attention et facilitent la mémorisation individuelle. En complément à cette perspective, qui présuppose une forme de distanciation cognitive entre les individus et leur culture, cet article propose un modèle naturaliste qui prend acte de la forte implication cognitive et de la posture, non pas contemplative mais participative, que provoquent bon nombre de phénomènes culturels. Un tel modèle tente de défendre une «vision continuiste » du lien entre nature et culture en remettant partiellement en question la focalisation traditionnelle des sciences sociales sur la dimension artificielle et arbitraire des faits sociaux. Pour les auteurs, en effet, cette focalisation ne rend pas compte de la naturalité et de l’universalité d’un certain nombre de formes sociales élémentaires. Une fois posée la naturalité partielle du social, l’objectif est alors de rendre compte de l’émergence des phénomènes culturels. L’hypothèse défendue ici est que les capacités analogiques, elles aussi naturelles, qui permettent aux esprits humains de «dériver » les formes culturelles du monde de la nature, qu’il soit physique ou social, jouent un rôle central dans l’élaboration d’une sphère de l’expérience collective qui est tout à la fois culturelle et intuitive.Clément Fabrice, Kaufmann Laurence. How Culture Comes to Mind: From Social Affordances to Cultural Analogies. In: Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, n°46-47, 2007/2-3. Culture and Society: Some Viewpoints of Cognitive Scientists. pp. 221-250

Separation and Engagement: From Duplex Vision to the Achievement of Self-Consciousness

The world we observe and the world we act in are one and the same world, and crucially so. Dualisms are rife in cognitive science, and superficially, this paper may seem to be an exercise in splitting things in two. Neither brain structures nor cognitive aptitudes nor even modes of awareness will appear safe. Yet the core insights of this paper are guided by the above maxim of metaphysical monism, and serve to reinforce it. They will concern not differences and oppositions, but rather cooperation and complicity. To employ a prime metaphor elaborated by Brian Smith (1996), this is one story of the single dance we perform in our world, and how the two main skills we bring to bear therein – and to dig deeper, how their neural foundations – result in our important achievements as thinking creatures. Though it may traffic in popular dualisms, this is a tale of negotiation and mutual enrichment. Monisms and dualities notwithstanding, there is also a three-step hierarchy that the following argument will scale. I will begin in the trenches of neuroscience and the psychology of visual perception. This will motivate a discussion of two skills available to perceiving creatures, skills that I will subsequently claim to be central to a rather sophisticated form of self-consciousness. The main charge of this paper may be conceptualised as the task of showing that these three domains, of visual perception, of vital ways of interacting with the world, and of self-consciousness, are importantly interconnected. In what follows, I will build the case for two broad realms of embodied, embedded cognitive capability, referred to as separation and engagement in honour of Smith’s (1996) usage, being directly enabled by the functions characterising ventral stream and dorsal stream visual processing, respectively. Separation and engagement are our twin abilities to represent what is at a spatial or temporal distance from our local and present surroundings on the one hand, and to interact with our immediate, available environments, on the other. I will commence by exploring the perceptual performances made possible by the ventral and dorsal streams of the visual system. Based on empirical findings and theoretical analysis, I will draw out the relationship between ventral processing and a modest form of separation, and indeed, between dorsal processing, ecological perception, and engagement. This strictly segregated dialectic will soon begin to seem artificial. It will therefore be synthesised by way of arguments for the necessity of dorsally mediated processing for full-fledged separation, and the metaphysically indispensable position of the functions of ventral processing in engagement as we know it. Finally, I will attempt to show that full-fledged separation is what catalyses the transition from being an aware subject to being an object of self-awareness. Yet full-fledged separation cannot exist in the absence of an engaged, active life and the neural processing that supports it. Therefore, my claim will be that a sophisticated kind of self-consciousness can be traced back to the functions of the two visual streams via the interlaced achievements of separation and engagement. Prior to my closing remarks, I will advance some clarifications of this thesis and field objections as to its implications for the nature of cognition

In light of moving images: technology, creativity and lighting in cinematography

ThesisThis practice-led doctoral research examines lighting techniques used by cinematographers and more widely amongst practitioners working with moving imagery. The widespread adoption of digital technologies in the film production industry has received a good deal of critical attention from practitioners and scholars alike, however little specific consideration about changing lighting practices can be found amongst this discourse. The control and orchestration of lighting have significant aesthetic connotations for moving image work, so it is surprising that this practice remains an under-explored area in the digital age. Informed by a series of research-driven experimental installations and collaborative cinematography work on independent films, presented in a separate portfolio, this thesis offers an understanding of how light is orchestrated during the production of moving imagery through direct creative inquiry.The contribution to knowledge made through this doctoral research is distilled into three areas. First, understanding lighting in moving image production through a relational, new-materialist perspective which foregrounds the flow and energy of light as a generative force and a cultural and creative process. Second, providing a more detailed first-hand investigation into lighting processes than is currently available that uses autoethnographic methods to capture practical knowledge that is deployed in situ during moving image production. Third, offering a new approach to the relationship between a cinematographer and his/her equipment by applying the actor-network theory framework to the consideration of moving image, and explicitly lighting technologies. The new-materialist perspective outlined in this thesis provides a strong foundation for further studies of lighting in emerging forms of moving image production because of its emphasis on process and a practitioner’s correspondence with light. This theoretical framework offers an effective way to understand and analyse creative lighting work across changing technologies, while the insight into practical processes captured during this enquiry can be employed directly in cinematography education.PortfolioDeveloped between 2014-2017 as part of a doctoral research enquiry, In Light of Moving Images brought together a series of film and video works by cinematographer and filmmaker Alexander Nevill. The exhibition included five research-driven moving image installations as well as three single screen short films created collaboratively in the role of Director of Photography. Although varied in form and production context, these works all investigate cultural and creative orchestrations of light on screen.Providing visual documentation, this publication serves as a record of the exhibition and, moreover, offers an account of the practice-led research journey through which it emerged. The following pages incorporate written contextual insights about each practical work, describe the timeline of and rationale behind them and also include a variety of supplementary artefacts such as sketches, lighting diagrams and photographs of the work in progress to reveal creative processes.Traditionally considered the responsibility of a cinematographer, lighting in a filmmaking context refers to the arrangement of illumination sources around a location or set to create a specific aesthetic. Expanding this term, lighting can also refer to creative control over the passages of illumination which constitute moving imagery, shaping ways that audiences perceive the frame. Selected amongst a larger body of cinematography and moving image experimentation, the work in this portfolio and exhibition engages with both facets of lighting, taking the form of spatial projections that weave together light in and of moving imagery while questioning the material tensions of mediated illumination

Seeing the City Digitally

This book explores what's happening to ways of seeing urban spaces in the contemporary moment, when so many of the technologies through which cities are visualised are digital. Cities have always been pictured, in many media and for many different purposes. This edited collection explores how that picturing is changing in an era of digital visual culture. Analogue visual technologies like film cameras were understood as creating some sort of a trace of the real city. Digital visual technologies, in contrast, harvest and process digital data to create images that are constantly refreshed, modified and circulated. Each of the chapters in this volume examines a different example of this processual visuality is reconfiguring the spatial and temporal organisation of urban life

Seeing the City Digitally

This book explores what's happening to ways of seeing urban spaces in the contemporary moment, when so many of the technologies through which cities are visualised are digital. Cities have always been pictured, in many media and for many different purposes. This edited collection explores how that picturing is changing in an era of digital visual culture. Analogue visual technologies like film cameras were understood as creating some sort of a trace of the real city. Digital visual technologies, in contrast, harvest and process digital data to create images that are constantly refreshed, modified and circulated. Each of the chapters in this volume examines a different example of this processual visuality is reconfiguring the spatial and temporal organisation of urban life

The Descent of Preferences

[A slightly revised version of this paper has been accepted by the BJPS] More attention has been devoted to providing evolutionary scenarios accounting for the development of beliefs, or belief-like states, than for desires or preferences. Here I articulate and defend an evolutionary rationale for the development of psychologically real preference states. Preferences token or represent the expected values of discriminated states, available actions, or action-state pairings. The argument is an application the ‘environmental complexity thesis’ found in Godfrey-Smith and Sterelny, although my conclusions differ from Sterelny’s. I argue that tokening expected utilities can, under specified general conditions, be a powerful design solution to the problem of allocating the capacities of an agent in an efficient way. Preferences are for efficient action selection, and are a ‘fuel for success’ in the sense urged by Godfrey-Smith for true beliefs. They will tend to be favoured by selection when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when organisms have rich behavioural repertoires with heterogenous returns and costs.   The rationale suggested here is conditional, especially on contingencies in what design options are available to selection and on trade-offs associated with the costs of generating and processing representations of value. The unqualified efficiency rationale for preferences suggests that organisms should represent expected utilities in a comprehensive and consistent way, but none of them do. In the final stages of the paper I consider some of the ways in which design trade-offs compromise the implementation of preferences in organisms that have them

Generators of Architectural Atmosphere

This book was born as the legacy of the “Generators of Architectural Atmosphere” Symposium, an Interfaces event of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), sponsored by the EU’s Horizon 2020 MSCA Program — RESONANCES Project, the Perkins Eastman Studio, and the 2020 Regnier Chair. The event was hosted in the College of Architecture, Planning and Design (APDesign), Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, on April 12, 2022. Recent advances in science are confirming many of the architect’s expert intuitions opening new doors to the perception of space and the meaning of architectural design. This volume collects three essays: “The Atmospheric Equation and the Weight of Architectural Generators” by Elisabetta Canepa; “Sensing the Atmospheric Space Through a Virtual Lens: Scrutinizing Opportunities and Limitations” by Kutay Güler; and “Locating Architectural Atmosphere” by Tiziana Proietti and Sergei Gepshtein. Bob Condia provided a critical introduction entitled “The Applied Science of Generating Atmospheres in Architecture.”https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1048/thumbnail.jp

Onlife Drama: Towards a Reference Framework for Hyper-Connected Activity

An important aspect of ICT, identified 25 years ago within the user interface design community, is dramatic interaction: The deep engagement promoted by digital technologies that can be better explored by adopting a conceptual framework traditionally used to describe and study theater. This framework offers a wider perspective that demonstrates a deep connection between the qualities of our hyper-connected era and drama as an art of representing action. These concepts transcend the prevailing technical mentality when addressing ICT. They imply that we all participate as “interactors” on the “onlife stage” where other agents (either humans or computer-controlled) are also present. By promoting deep experiences, the hyper-connected environment in which we live in, changes our metaphysics and self-conception. A dramatic framework can explain the power of ICT and help us work towards the development of an equilibrium both personally and collectively: When used to enrich our experiences and extend our agencies, ICT can be considered as an enhancement of reality. When, on the other side, they are used to promote a false reality experience, they should be rectified. Important ethical and anthropological concerns are framed on the same philosophical ground as ancient drama. Ancient drama was a major pillar of Ancient Democracy and served the need to educate citizens with empathy in order to participate as responsible actors in decision making processes