gl-atmosphere

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READING RESEARCH

Space, Place and Atmosphere. Emotion and Peripheral Perception in Architectural Experience

JUHANI PALLASMAA

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WEEK 3

Plural atmospheres: Atmosphere, perspectives and plurality

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GLOSSARY OF ATMOSPHERIC TERMS

J-Z

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GLOSSARY OF ATMOSPHERIC TERMS

A-I

A

Aesthetic Category

Aesthetic Engagement 

Affect

Affordance

Agency

Ambiance

Animacy

Apparatus

Archaeology

Assemblage

Atmosphere

Atmospheric

Aura

B

Becoming

Building

C

Character

Catalyst

D

Decor

Decay

Defamiliarisation

Design

E

Effect

Emotion

Environment

Ether

Event

F

Field

Field (aesthetic)

Flexibility

Form

G

Generators (of atmosphere)

Gestures

H

Heterotipia

Hylomorphism

I

Immersion

Intensity

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READING: Drawing Atmosphere

A Case Study of Architectural Design for Care in Later Life

D Martin, S Nettleton, C Buse

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READING: Atmospheric Architectures

The aesthetics of felt spaces

Bohme, G. (2017)

This essay is an argument for a way of thinking about the aesthetics of spaces and how we experience them. Bohme unfolds his argument through a sequence of positions. Your task as the reader is to identify the key ideas that support this argument. Often you will find these in some key quotes.

New aesthetics

Before positioning his new theory of aesthetics he defines – an old theory of aesthetics, one in which judgment holds a central place-

What are the key differences between aesthetics based on judgement and those based on the experience of atmosphere

Aura

The idea of aura is important in Bohme’s concept of aesthetics and definition of atmosphere

What does he mean by “aura” and how does it become meaningful in relation to objects, art works and spaces?

The concept of atmosphere in Herman Schmitz’ philosophy

Bohme draws on Schmitz’s philosophy to support or legitimate atmosphere as the basis for the theory of aesthetics.

How does Schmitz define atmosphere? How does Schmitz theory support Bohme’s argument? What are some of the important ideas?

The ecstasies of things

Bohme discusses the subject/ object divide in this this section.

What does this mean, and how does this change in Bohme’s argument for the experience of things?

Making atmospheres

Bohme begins to summarise his argument in this section and begins to define premises central to atmosphere as an aesthetic

Find a statement in this section where he defines atmosphere. What are some examples he outlines which involve the “making of atmospheres

The critical potential of an aesthetics of atmospheres

In this section Bohme discusses how an aesthetics of atmospheres ” demands the equal recognition of all products of aesthetic work – from cosmetics to stage design, from advertising to industrial design, fashion and to so-called true art” .

How does this differ from how an “older” approach to aesthetics operates?

Conclusion

Bohme concludes that the “new aesthetics” is a general theory of perception.

What are the key aspects of perception he identifies that contribute to an understanding of atmosphere?

In the last paragraph on page 35 Bohme outlines how the “new aesthetics” shifts aesthetic discussion beyond that of art, into the many spheres in which aesthetics now operates. These include everyday aesthetics, commodity aesthetics, and the aesthetics of politics. All of these kinds of aesthetics, he suggests have “real social power”.

Find some examples of above in practice, and the kinds social power they engage with.

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ANALYSIS OF COLLAGE

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AESTHETICS

Definition

adjective

Concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty.

"the pictures give great aesthetic pleasure"

Research

Aesthetic qualities

Aesthetic qualities were usually explained as the way in which art elements and principles, materials and techniques work together to influence the mood, feeling or meaning of an artwork. Some explain how the term refers to the visual appeal and beauty of an artwork and how aesthetic qualities evoke an emotional response within the viewer.

Old Aesthetics / New Aesthetics

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WEEK 2

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NOTES FROM CLASS PRESENTATION

Week 1

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ATMOSPHERE AND XXXX

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WHAT ATMOSPHERE MEANS TO ME

This is a brief exercise to visually map what you currently know atmosphere to be. Set yourself 30mins to collect and map the various ways you know 'atmosphere'. Use any resource or media at your disposal such as the internet, library, a sketchbook, a camera, your body, a room. Collate your material as an A3 visual collage (this can be physical or digital). 

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READING: Emotion, Space and Society

Mikkel Bille (2014)

Atmospheres can be encountered in everyday language as ‘ambience’, ‘sense of place’, or the ‘feel’ of a room, and more philosophically in terms such as Stimmung, ‘mood’ or ‘attunement’ (Heidegger, 1962: 134), as ‘tempered space’ (Bollnow, 1963: 230), as ‘tinctured’ or ‘tuned’ spaces (e.g. B€ohme, 1993: 121), or as that which ‘corporeally moves the perceiving person’ (Schmitz et al., 2011: 257).

In the last decade's academic focus on affect, the term ‘atmosphere’ has been a recurrent word. Quite often it has been taken for granted as a kind of shorthand for capturing ‘collective affects’ or individual moods and feelings (Anderson, 2009; Rosfort and Stanghellini, 2009; Stewart, 2011). Or when philosopher Brennan (2004: 1) starts her book on the transmission of affect by asking ‘Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and “felt the atmosphere”?’

We may think of atmospheres as the personal experience of a situation that may be qualified as ‘friendly’, ‘cosy’, ‘dull’, ‘tense’ or ‘depressing’ and with various degrees of ‘thickness’ and intensities. Yet an atmosphere is never exclusively a psychological phenomenon, as state-of-mind, nor solely an objective thing ‘out there’, as an environment or milieu; atmospheres are always located inbetween experiences and environments. Following philosopher B€ohme (1995, 1998a, 2006, 2007), it may be argued that the properties of atmosphere are captured in the intersection of the objective and the subjective. Even more importantly, B€ohme contends that atmospheres issue forth as a cross-over of the material and the immaterial, forcing us to deal with the conceptually and experientially ambiguous in order to appreciate atmospheres shifting our scholarly gaze away from fixity, beyond multiplicity (Law and Singleton, 2005; Mol, 2002), towards indeterminacy.

For B€ohme, atmosphere is thus not simply the subjective feel of a room or a situation, nor is it an objectively observable state of the physical environment. Yet contending that atmospheres can be staged (B€ohme, 2013), he also implies that they can somehow be built and anticipated, which means that they hinge on the material world as well as subjective dispositions. Atmospheres emerge, according to B€ohme (1993: 119), as an intermediate position between subject and object, or rather as the inherent unity characterised by the co-presence of subject and object (2001, 56). B€ohme defines the presence of things not as their mere factual existence as subjects or objects, but in terms of the ways they make their presence perceptible; a thing is articulated not as being-there or not-being-there, but instead as ‘the ways in which it goes forth from itself’ (1993, 121). These ways of ‘going forth’ from itself is what he terms ‘the ecstasies of the thing’, i.e. the way a thing qualitatively and sensuously stands out from itself (1995, 32e34). In this sense, atmospheres are the perceived quality of a situation, made up by the constellation of people and things. Atmospheres, he argues, are ‘spheres of the presence of something, their reality in space’ (B€ohme, 1993:121e122). Atmosphere, presence and materiality thereby become caught up in one instance and are inseparable from one another

This harmony may not succeed according to Chekhov, since there may be discordance between the individual's ‘subjective feelings’ and the ‘objective feelings’, which he terms atmosphere. This discordance, raises questions of how atmospheres can be recognised and orchestrated as aspects of social life if they occupy an intermediary position between subject and object? How ‘strong’ must an atmosphere be in order not to be shaped by the subjective feelings of an individual? And if they only offer a potential for seizing the individual's feelings how can one know that one shares the same atmosphere?

Focusing on atmospheres means addressing not simply ‘experience’, but rather the co-existence of embodied experience and the material environment. In order to get to grips with atmospheres, we have to engage more actively and analytically with architecture, colours, lighting, humidity, sound, odour, the texture of things and their mutual juxtaposition. The dual understanding of atmosphere as a meteorological phenomenon and a spatial experience of affect and materiality should most often not be seen as distinct, but rather as feeding on each other, whether through the impact of a sunny day on the feel of the city, or the way rain may turn the experience of an open air concert or football match into something completely different.

The relation between self and others is also a performative orchestration of intangible phenomena, such as light, air, and smell. Much literature on atmosphere take the concept as a given, relying on the confidentiality with a contemporary notion of atmosphere from the researcher's own cultural milieu. Atmosphere may, however, be conceptualised and experienced in widely different ways, depending on cultural values and personal background. The cultural premises are often overlooked in atmosphere research, departing from the assumption that a contemporary, Western philosophy of atmosphere is universal. By foreclosing the situated and changing experiences of atmosphere that may be based on dynamic sets of expectations and negotiations of values and norms, atmospheres are thus in danger of being reduced to timeless and constant phenomena, unrelated to cultural attitudes, conceptualisations and experiences.

The body and embodied action are also central to the understanding of atmosphere (Sørensen, in this volume). Spaces are perceived in particular ways by way of the moving body, and this also means that they are essentially temporally contingent; atmospheres change as the body moves through space and is exposed to changing sensory stimuli, and so too does the biological composition of our bodies change as we are exposed to different atmospheres. Architecture is so influential on the mode of movement that social exclusion and inclusion becomes orchestrated through atmospheres, and hence becomes a way of allowing ideals of social norms to come into being.

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READING: Visual Communication

Designing Atmospheres: introduction

Tim Edensor (2015)

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READING: The aesthetics of atmospheres

Böhme, G. (2017)

Intro (History of atmosphere)

Pre-1700s -  Atmosphere, meteorological, air, weather

1700s - Atmosphere as metaphor for mood

1900s

Otto 1917 - numinous

- Schmitz 1964 - phenomenology, quasi-objective feelings

Tellenbach 1968 - the smell of the nest, feeling ‘at home’

- links natural with cultural

1990s

Böhme Towards an Ecological Aesthetics 1989/99

First introduced concept of atmosphere in relation to social-natural wellbeing - bringing human aesthetics into environmental science (ecology), realising that the aesthetics of an environment affect us, not just its physical elements.

Intro (Definition of atmosphere)

“...what mediates objective factors of the environment with aesthetic feelings of a human being is what we call atmosphere.” p1

Objective factors & constellations of environment > Atmosphere (in-between) (mediating) > Subjective bodily feeling in the environment

Production aesthetics can be produced

Not just a thing

(more-than-objective)

Perception aesthetics can be shared

Not just a feeling

(more-than-subjective)

Intersubjective

Quasi-objective

atmosphere = “tuned space[:] a space with a certain mood.” p2

Always spatial, always emotional.

Articulated via characteristics.

Applications

Scenography

Producing a climate or mood (on stage)

Confirms atmospheres are quasi-objective; can be produced

Produced by agents/factors manipulated by an artisan:

- sound, light, geometry of a space, signs, pictures etc

- trees/plants, light, sound, open/closed ‘sight’

Scenography = staging of everything (politics, sports, culture)

- set in scene, framed, arranged, illuminated

Commodity aesthetics

Benjamin - Parisian arcades; Haug - commodity aesthetics

Brand ‘world’; production & consumption

Ingredients in staging lifestyle ‘world’ of consumer

Use-value = stage-value (means of producing atmosphere)

Advertising

Presents scene/atmosphere rather than commodity as such

Appeals “to somebody who wants to be embedded into a certain atmosphere of life… to belong to a certain group...” p5

Architecture and design

Modernism, Bauhaus “form follows function”

- postmodern humanism (experience, feeling, impression)

- “transformation of capitalism into an aesthetic economy” p5

Theory of atmosphere > spatial and emotional

- architecture as spaces not just buildings

- ‘ecstasies’ not just shapes/properties of designed things

- how spatial atmospheres and ecstasies make us feel

“...the turn is from the form or shape of things to their contribution of tuning the space of our bodily presence.” p5

Art

Perception aesthetics - turn from meaning to experience

Production: abstract expressionism, land art, installation

“...adequately appreciat[ing] ... these works of art ... requires exposing oneself to the atmosphere they are radiating.” p6

Conclusion

Atmosphere - shift in Western philosophy

Cartesian (clear, distinct) - vague, subjective phenomenon

Application to aesthetics - staging of life-world

“The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus turned out to be a critical theory of our contemporary civilisation. It reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative character of politics, commerce, of the event-society.” p6

Opened up new perspectives for design, architecture, art

Centred human experience and “rehabilitated the ephemeral”

- “initiated a new humanism”

- “fosters the ongoing democratisation of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody being able to participate in art” p7

Summary

Weather/climate

- mood (metaphor)

- ecological aesthetics (how places make us feel)

Scenography/staging (starting with theatre)

- shift to aesthetic economy

- staging of everything (scenography expanded)

- using atmosphere to sell commodities

Emotion/affect/atmosphere in design

- postmodern return to experience of space/things

- atmospheres of spaces; ecstasies of things

- agents in tuning the space of experience

Aesthetic turn in art

- from meaning to experience

- different forms of art-making

- appreciate via exposure to atmosphere radiated

Detection/theorising of atmospheres led to shifts:

- Western (Cartesian) philosophy’s obsession with clarity & objectivity challenged by vagueness and subjective nature of atmospheres

- Modern architecture and design’s focus on form and function opened up to more human-centred considerations of experience and emotion

- Art’s focus on meaning and judgement opened up to a less elitist aim of having experiences and gave rise to forms of art that were both more ephemeral and situated

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READING: The Sixth Sense

Pallasmaa

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READING: The Sixth Sense

By Juhani Pallasmaa

Intro

Sets up argument for existential value of unconscious, peripheral perception, in opposition to modernity’s focus on visual form and function.

modernity 

form

function

detailed perception 

cold, frightened 

alienated, outside

disturbing

weak sense of being 

technical, formal, aesthetic 

vs

belonging to the cosmos

enveloping, embracing

inspiring, stimulating

unconscious perception

emotional attachment

insiders, participants

protected, nourished

strong sense of being

relational, mediating

Overall Summary

Focused vision

Precise

Focused

Conscious

Analytic

Rational

Reflective, cognitive

Abstract, absolute, universal

Disembodied, mental/psychological

(Slightly) delayed, activated second

Left brain

Peripheral vision

Diffuse

Unfocused

Unconscious

Creative

Emotive

Pre-reflective, pre-cognitive

Contextual, relational, situated

Embodied

Immediate, activated first

Right brain (and body)

Focused vision

Complementary, secondary

Necessitates outsideness, separation from context

Keeps us outside, alienates

Identifies forms, details, elements

Focus on details prevents us from seeing whole/context

Sees what we already know and want to see

Divorced from the cosmos

Peripheral vision

Higher existential priority, important for survival

Allows us to be enveloped, embraced by space/place/world

Makes us insiders, participants

Evaluates, articulates, structures sense of self/being/world

Suppresses detail in order to perceive whole/context

Creative, identifies what is new, ‘at the edges of awareness’

Connects us to the cosmos

> Triggers our sixth sense - the atmospheric

Notes of critique

Western/Euro-centric framework - this is not inherently bad but it should be stated rather than taken as a given, as it doesn’t acknowledge the existence and value of other knowledge systems.

In order to reinstate priority of peripheral sense Pallasmaa ‘villainises’ focused vision (‘alienating’, ‘cold’, ‘frightening’). In reality (and as indicated later on), both systems are important and complementary.