We don’t arrive at a situation as a blank page ready for transformation or without previous thought, experience or memory. We know and we have known before. We are already a mess of assumptions and preconceived positions that are ready to mask, direct or predict a reaction to any new ness any new information. We are primed by ourselves, we are observers that have already observed. As Bohn comments ‘we come with our assumptions we see through them’ (page date) Imagine the blackboards that used to adorn a classroom wall, (before the digital white boards that inhabit the classroom today). Remember the roll and thunder of the mechanism that revolved to show a new plain to mark and learn from. There was always the thought of the plain that couldn’t be seen, the one behind, the one not revealed. What information was hidden there? What was preferenced above it through the roll of the new plain. After a 6-week summer break the boards would be cleaned, wiped with wet cloths or sponges to try and strip the previous thinkings that had played and danced on those plains. The cleanness of the blackboards afforded something; potential. A potential of all the thoughts, lessons, words, definitions, calculations that would or could exist there. The potential of things not already known. However, there was already the consideration of the hidden blackboard sitting behind, there was also the edges of the newly cleaned plain that told a truth. The small chalk lines at the very parameters of the board, where the board rubbers or cloths couldn’t reach. Whether ends of letters, parts of sums, small traces of knowledges still existed and if one was to look with closer inspection the wet cloths could never wipe the indentations of the heavier chalk marks that were made through excitement or frustration. These marks had pushed into the plains. These blackboards were primed for new encounters yet couldn’t be extracted from their ‘before’. We can not be extracted from our 'before'. I am thinking about affordance and affordancies. There are complex layers within the ideas of affordance. For instance, where does the affordance begin. As stated in Katherine Leduc’s paper ‘Art as affordance’ 2013, ‘the object did not spontaneously come into existence’ What does an object bring with it? As initially argued by Gell the ‘ascription of art status to an object comes through a process which he termed the technology of enchantment’ 1992. This hinges on the technology or processes of making enabling an object of beauty to be created. We can recognise the reductive position of the idea that beauty equals art. However, the definition of the affordance of art objects continued to develop and Gell moved towards the action attributed to or enacted by the object. What action occurs with the object? It may be assigned a function or a particular movement or use, but this can shift in accordance with need, potential and context. The affordance needs another beyond the object, the thing it is afforded for. This thing, individual, ultimately communicates with the object, they speak to each other and activate a meeting point. Affordance becomes married with communication for it is how that object is used and understood. That 'use' provides its affordance. “affordances may thus differ from species to species and from context to context.’ (Hutchby 2001:26)
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Kimberley FosterKimberley's practice as an artist is pedagogical, it doesn’t just reference learning, it plays with, embodies and encourages learning at its core. The objects consider ideas of collaboration and authorship, discussions about touch and encounter, and bring into active consideration issues of learning within social and participatory practices. Archives
October 2018
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