Page 84 - META

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ISSN 2309-0103 www.archidoct.net
Vol. 7 (2) / February 2020
up the predominant “distribution of the sensible” (Rancière, 2006) by redistributing the sensible through a multiplicity of centres and different sources of intelligence as a hybrid, parasitic and collective engagement between digital technologies humans, and non-human knowledge.
3.1 Experience, embodiment and enactment
The classical mind-body problem (Cartesian dualism) determines the ontological status of mental properties in relation to physical properties. As Baudrillard (2008) observes: “Calculating and logical thought only serves to exploit the world while separating us from it” (Baudrillard, 2008; 10). This dualism erodes if we think of natural processes, organisms possessing collective intelligence, the swarm behaviour of animals and biomimicry principles. The original, biolog- ically founded concept of emergent self-organization (“autopoiesis”) (Maturana & Varela, 1987) drew on cell biology, highlighted the exis- tence of resonant, unicellular organisms and thus substantiated new cognition theory 6 (figures.4, 5).
By shifting to a sensorimotor account (i.e., enactive cognition) 7 of consciousness, human perception (cognition) arises from a dynam- ic, physical interaction between living beings and their environment. The “enactive approach” (Varela, 1991) describes a sensorimotor ap- proach to humans that includes physical and cognitive processes (embodied cognition) as well as the specific situation of cognition (embedded cognition). “Enactivism” describes a continuous, dynam- ic process of participatory, sensomotoric sense formation and mu- tual interaction, and the coordination of two embodied actants and their mutual causal relationship including the specific environment. Thus, knowledge arises from the interrelation and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social and cultural phenome- na. It involves shared social reality and the organism as a situational, active (inclusive) and creative participant — rather than as a passive observer (Varela, 1991). Perception and consciousness, as well as the qualia thereby involved, are products originating from cognitive ac- tivity. Hence, they do not simply happen, but arise through an or- ganism interacting with its environment (Noë, 2004). Perception and experience in this sense are an “enactive” (ibid) approach to tracing bodily-material effects and their affective force relations, in order to associate discrete elements in a sensible, embodied way as an in- terlaced assemblage of life (Deleuze, Guattari, 1980). The proposed “enactivst” concept of humans, non-humans and technology under- stands these entities as different organisms, as different sources of intelligence. This approach has the potential to shift our perspective beyond hierarchical, dominating, colonialized systems and compar- isons. Once adopted, it enables us to move beyond human-centred design towards more complex, entangled and assemblage-like un-
6.“Thus, if a cell interacts with molecule X and incorporates it in its processes, what takes place as a result of this inter- action is determined not by the properties of molecule X but by the way in which that molecule is “seen” or taken by the cell as it incorporates the molecule in its autopoi- etic dynamics. The changes that occur therein as a re- sult of this interaction will be those changes caused by the cell’s own structure as a unity. Therefore, inasmuch as the autopoietic organization causes biologic phenome- nology by bringing about living beings as autonomous unities, a biologic phenom- enon will be any phenome- non that involves the auto- poiesis of at least one living being” (Maturana & Varela, 1987b; 51, 52).
7. This is the assumption of recent post-cognitive phe- nomenological approaches (Gallagher, 2017; Stephan, 2013; Noë, 2004; Varela, 1991; Maturana & Varela, 1987a) and of interaction design approaches (Dourish, 2001; Depraz, 2003).
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Inbetween – A Post-digital Turn – Craftmaking 4.0
Verena Ziegler