Participant: Daniel Rosenberg
Affiliation: Design & Computation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Format: Presentation and Conversation
Themes: paradigm, praxis

In this paper I explain the material and goal of art and design by distinguishing between the domain of behavior and the domain of experience. Behavior corresponds to the changes of a living system’s corporal postures which an observer distinguishes as actions in relation to the environment (Maturana & Varela, 1998). Experience corresponds to the flow of living specific states of neural activity in a mutual correspondence between sensory-motor processes and body/medium’s perturbations (Maturana & Varela, 1998). While behavior is a third-person description that an external observer distinguishes, for example stating that a person is sitting under a tree, experience corresponds to the first-person felt account of what is going on when sitting under a tree (Varela & Shear, 2000).

I argue that the current paradigms of art and design consider behavior explicitly and experience only tacitly, and that there is no clear correlation between the two domains. I propose a non-dualistic model or middle ground between behavior and experience to explain the material and goal of artists and designers. While the material corresponds to what the artist/designer manipulates while designing (process), the goal corresponds to what the artist/designer is trying to achieve with his design (product).

In the domain of behavior, the artist/designer manipulates objects (material) in order to shape others’ actions, such as bodily postures, movements or expressions (goal). In the domain of experience, the artist/designer manipulates the felt perturbations of his body and his medium (material) in order to trigger particular sensations and feelings in himself and in others like him (goal). These two domains are complementary and interdependent because they cannot be explained without reference to each other: objects are lived, sensations and feelings are distinguished as actions. The artist/designer is manipulating perturbations by distinguishing objects. The artist/designer is shaping others’ actions by triggering sensations and feelings.

A new paradigm has to involve a non-dualistic model of correlations between the artist/designer as a third-person (observer) and as a first-person (experiencer). Art and Design are about observing and experiencing, about describing and feeling, about behavior and experience together.