Embedded creativity: structural interconnections between materiality, visuality, and agency in everyday perceptual settings
Abstract
The goal of the article is to examine how some material surfaces contribute to the social consequentiality of the everyday visual experience, generating, transmitting and disseminating nonverbal social meanings, making up bulk of contemporary world’s communicative practices, even its very social fabric.
Unlike most of the current – otherwise enormously productive – theoretical initiatives making the social functions of material objects and surfaces the main focus of their social-theoretical inquiry, an approach proposed in this article lays emphasis on some formal structural correlations between the modes of materiality of visually perceived phenomena and the behavioural and emotional opportunities for perceiving subjects. I propose the notion of “generative surface” as the most semantically dense and socially consequential type of visual materiality – a sort of perceivable surfaces that, in contrast to mere physical ones, constitute meaningful material settings substantially influencing our creative capacities within everyday experiences.
Article in English.
Įtvirtintas kūrybiškumas: vidinės struktūrinės jungtys tarp materialumo, vizualumo ir dalyvavimo kasdienėje su vokimo aplinkoje
Santrauka
Straipsnio tikslas – išnagrinėti, kaip tam tikri materialūs paviršiai daro įtaką socialiniam kasdienės vizualinės patirties konsekventumui, generuojant, perduodant ir skleidžiant neverbalines socialines reikšmes, pabrėžus komunikacinių šiuolaikinio pasaulio praktikų svarbą, net pačią socialinę struktūrą.
Skirtingai nei daugelis dabartinių – kitų ypač produktyvių – teorinių iniciatyvų, kurios pagrindinį dėmesį skiria materialių objektų ir paviršių socialinių funkcijų socialiniam-teoriniam tyrimui, šiame straipsnyje pateikiamas požiūris išryškina tam tikras formalias struktūrines koreliacijas tarp vizualiojo suvokiamų fenomenų materialumo pobūdžio bei tarp elgesio ir emocinių galimybių suvokti subjektus. Aš siūlau „generatyvinio paviršiaus“ sąvoką kaip semantine prasme giliausią ir socialine prasme logišką vizualinio materialumo tipą – suvokiamų paviršių rūšį, kuri, skirtingai nei vien fiziniai paviršiai, steigia reikšmingą materialią aplinką, turinčią esminę įtaką mūsų kūrybiniams gebėjimams kasdienėse patirtyse.
Reikšminiai žodžiai: dalyvavimas, kūrybiškumas, materialumas, reikšmės kūrimas, medialumas, performatyvumas.
Keyword : agency, creativity, materiality, meaning-making, mediality, performativity
How to Cite
Inishev, I. (2018). Embedded creativity: structural interconnections between materiality, visuality, and agency in everyday perceptual settings. Creativity Studies, 11(1), 70-84. https://doi.org/10.3846/cs.2018.541
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Alexander, J. C. (2010). Iconic consciousness: The material feeling of meaning. Thesis Eleven, 103(1), 10-25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513610381369
Alexander, J. C., Bartmański, D., & Giesen, B. (Eds.). (2012). Iconic power: materiality and meaning in social life. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012869
Amabile, T. M. (2017). In pursuit of everyday creativity. Journal of Creative Behavior, 51(4), 335-337. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.200
Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media. Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Bruno, G. (2014). Surface: Matters of aesthetics, materiality, and media. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114835.001.0001
Coccia, E. (2016). Sensible life: A micro-ontology of the image. Series: Commonalities. T. C. Campbell, (Series Ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823267415.001.0001
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism & schizophrenia. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.
DeNora, T. (2014). Making sense of reality: Culture and perception in everyday life. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446288320
Gell, A. (2013). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1986). The Ecological approach to visual perception. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. NYC/Evanston: Harper & Row.
Hennion, A. (2007). Those things that hold us together: Taste and sociology. Cultural Sociology, 1(1), 97-114. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975507073923
Hodder, I. (2012). Entangled: An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118241912
Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication, 2(1), 29-57. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357203002001751
Keane, W. (2005). Signs are not the garb of meaning: On the social analysis of material things. In D. Miller (Ed.). Materiality (pp. 182-205). Durham and London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386711-008
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London and New York: Routledge.
Lash, S. (2010). Intensive culture: Social theory, religion and contemporary capitalism. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Series: Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marks, L. U. (2002). Touch: Sensuous theory and multisensory media. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.
Miller, D. (2009). Stuff. Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press.
Rancière, J. (2009). Aesthetics and its discontents. Cambridge, Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Reckwitz, A. (2016). Kreativität und Soziale Praxis: Studien zur Sozial – und Gesellschaftstheorie. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839433454
Seel, M. (2005). Aesthetics of appearing. Series: Cultural memory in the present. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.