The Momental-Mark Paterson

eröffnung/opening: 5. Mai, 2006 | 19-23:00
6. Mai - 10. Juni, 2006

	Calendar Curator Text Austellung/Exhibition Larissa Fassler Ivana Franke Germaine Koh Stephan Kurr Jeff Preiss Åsa Ståhl Lectures Mark Paterson Christel Weiler + Barbara Gronau Johan Zetterquist mit Judith Manzoni Workshops Stephan Kurr + Jürgen Krusche Markus Miessen


		Paterson \| Video Stills

Mark Paterson

Sensuousness and the Everyday in Measured Space: Haptic Architectures
May 9, 2006 | Sparwasser HQ | 20:00 | Lecture and Film Presentation live from Sydney, AU.

A film/text and public lecture. The sensuous, sensory body is kinaesthetic. As we encounter and experience built environments, the somatic senses (kinaesthesia, proprioception, the vestibular sense) are engaged. With the recent notions of ‘haptic architecture’ and design for sensory impairments, there is an increased interest in the material mechanisms, materials and technologies of sensory appeal. Sensory appeals based on textured spaces play with the motile body, invoking affective responses. Using particular materials and spatial ordering, bodily trajectories through multi-textured, multi-sensory spaces can start to reveal narratives, embodied spatial stories that come together through sensing and movement.

The moving body in thought [text]. There is an increasingly rich emerging area of architectural thought that deals with the phenomenological encounter with the built environment. Engaging directly with the senses and the human scale of the body, a brief overview will be provided, relating to earlier phenomenological thinking about space and embodiment (e.g. Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty). There is a kinaesthetic background to everyday movement and sensation that Husserl refers to, and this can be developed in terms of the aesthetic (sensuous, somatic) experience of architectural spaces. Such theoretical and poetic insights can be applied to particular buildings and sites, literally concrete instances. This brief textual contribution will encourage audience discussion, connecting recent architectural work with a range of other texts. The text can be taken home by the audience, and will work in conjunction with the film.

The movement of thought [film]. But how to explore the moving body, the somatic senses, without reducing complex exp-eriences to mere representations? Film offers the possibility of exploring three-dimensional spaces and textures through what has been termed ‘haptic cinema’ (Antonia Lant, Laura Marks). As a way of ‘re-mediating’ and researching rather than ‘representing’ this motile, multisensory experience, I offer a short (ca. 15mins) film accompanying the spoken/written text. The film is an attempt to depict an embodied, affective spatial story and to evoke the haptic set of bodily sensations: through movement, the textures of light, and temporal form of a set of sensory impressions and appeals, the spatial narrative of a body through particular buildings. The film contribution therefore provides an impressionistic, discursive element to the theoretical text, being another way of thinking through underexplored somatic sensations within the built environment.

Dr. Mark Paterson is a lecturer in Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He completed his Ph.D. in Human Geography at the University of Bristol entitled 'Haptic Spaces' in 2002. His research involves the senses, especially touch, as everyday embodied experience, and the alteration of such sensory experiences through technology. He has also been an English teacher in Zimbabwe and Japan, and worked for non-profit organisations.

He is currently on Research Leave, writing a book entitled The Senses of Touch in Sydney, Australia, with a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Recent publications include: Consumption and Everyday Life (London: Routledge) 2005, "Seeing with the hands": Blindness, touch and the Enlightenment spatial imaginary', British Journal of Visual Impairment 2006, The Forgetting of Touch: Re-membering Geometry with Eyes and Hands', Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 2005.

www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/haptics