#Psychospace Body psiquis and architecture

The aim of this paper is to investigate the perception of space in the context of digital architecture. Our starting point is Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh which represents the continuity between a perceiving body and the perceived world. While moving in space, the body is able to incorporate direct spatial relations and make dynamic and constantly-in-movement synthesis. Models of posture are consequentially projected onto changing spatial situations by the body, whose position in space is constantly updated in order to interact with the environment. The communication between the body and the world takes place through a praktognosia, a practical and direct knowledge of the world. The body’s posture is also predictive because it assumes multiple or possible tasks and acts in an oriented-space connected with an historical time. The intention of the body creates a space-time structure of her-and-now. An architectural environment convey certain spatial experiences and can refine sensibility and enlarge consciousness by exploiting multiple possibilities of movement. The perception of architectural spaces is nowadays connected with the rise of technology and virtual reality produced by computer and digital designing. In the case of computer-aided architectural design - in which the architect can manipulate visual representations - architectural spaces gain a new reality by supporting the creation of new architectural objects. In this process, the constituting elements of a building become technical networks of communicating nodes. Digital design becomes not only a way to create new objects but also a support for communicative and intersubjective platforms which could be considered means of mediation between people. In the virtual context of digital architecture the body oriented space is modified and the original movement is replaced by an exploring virtual body projected by mind inside a non-Euclidean and non-orthogonal context. Our question is: if architectural, urban structures are designed for the experience of the body’s motor faculties, does architecture, by modifying space-time categories of the lived-body and brain’s treatment of spatial perceptions, open new paths of experience?

Katowice : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2005

Filozofski Vestnik, 1999

In her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle assumes that the new computer technologies materialize “postmodern theory and bring it down to earth”. Turkle is not the only “cyber-theorist” defining the new technologies as a kind of materialization or visualization of something previously invisible. But in doing so, such theorists erase important differences: that of a topological and a descriptive notion of the unconscious, between the Other and the other, between the body and its unconscious image, and between gender and sexual difference. Various examples of cybertheories and (art) practice (media art, net-projects) demonstrate this impulse to erase these differences. But when an equation is made between the unconsciousness and the cyberspace, a crucial difference is lost, namely that which constitutes the space of the subject.

Leveratto, Jacopo. 2014. "The Body Is the Medium (Between Space and Technology)." International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design 2: 86-91. Preprint Digital landscapes

IDEA, 2020

This visual essay is a constellation of images, text, places, objects, and projects which aims to interrogate the kind of interiorities that are generated when two bodies interact from distant locations through predominantly digital platforms.

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2023

The following paper attempts to look at virtual reality technologies—and the (dis)embodiment affected by them—through a phenomenological lens. Specifically, augmenting traditional discussions of virtual reality as a purely technical problem, this paper seeks to bring Maurice Merleau-Ponty's embodied phenomenology into the discussion to try to make sense of both what body we leave behind and what body we gain as we enter virtual worlds. To do this, I look both at historical examples of virtual reality technologies and their methods of (dis)integrating the body and speculative future examples of virtual reality where the corporeal body is fully sidelined through the lens of Merleau-Ponty's account of the body schema, noting that habituation is an ever present factor that must be considered in virtual environments. Ultimately, I conclude that even in a scenario of one-to-one mind-computer transference, the virtual world will, like the physical world we currently inhabit, solicit a 'phantom body' thus forcing us to act and live in accordance with a mutual interplay between self and virtual world.

2017

Humans, on a fundamental level, live not to survive but to explore, to gather knowledge and ask questions about ourselves and the world. Their development is as part of a habitat; they grow from it and have direct influence over it, in an emerging vortex of becoming. When the territory is known, when everything is interconnected, and there is no outside left to explore, to imagine, the vortex stagnates into a circle of imitation, into simulacra. Fortunately, this absolute condition is not part of the nature of reality. There is always a realm of the undiscovered, the unthought, the source of all emergence and becoming, called the virtual. Architects, as humans who shape and manipulate habitats, must first of all be aware of the limitations and aspirations of the human nature, of themselves and the others who inhabit architecture. Considering the intertwined bond between human and habitat, architects have the role of exposing us to the edge of the virtual, to incide external forces and invite them into our perception, and to uncover the outside within the apparently known territory, arousing the multiplicity of the human condition. Architecture is to be under constant interrogation to adjust to and mediate our becoming. While it shelters the body, it also needs to provoke it, to confront it with exterior forces, with whimsical and imaginative worlds. To keep itself emergent, architecture has to situate itself at the boundary, exposed to other disciplines and to the transformations taking place in the layers of the actual. A branch of architecture which inherently lives on the edge is virtual architecture. It embodies different mediums, drawing, text, film, digital, to create a habitat performed through the imagination of its visitors. Virtual architecture has the potential of unbounded critical experimentation, turning the perspective back on the reflection of what reality and the human truly are. This thesis explores human-centred architecture at a fundamental level, searching for the ways our habitat can enable the unexpected. I examine the prospect of an architecture for the virtual in the current fabric of the actual, taking advantage of the fluidity and nomadism of the digitised culture. I analyse the intimate relation humans have with the environment, the factors which influence our perception of space and our ability to affect the world around us. The thesis culminates into an examination of architecture at the limit between physical and digital, employing virtual reality and motion sensing input devices to reflect on the fluid boundary between human and habitat. I see architecture as a celebration, as a mediator between us and the world to live fully, passionately, to rediscover the vigour of our being, to dream and imagine, to operate at the edge.

Architecture and the Virtual is a study of architecture as it is reflected in the work of seven contemporary artists, working with the tools of our post-digital age. The book maps the convergence of virtual space and contemporary conceptual art and is an anthropological exploration of artists who deal with transformable space and work through analog means of image production. Marta Jecu builds her inquiry around interviews with artists and curators in order to explore how these works create the experience of the virtual in architecture. Performativity and neo-conceptualism play important roles in this process and in the efficiency with which these works act in the social space.

International Journal of Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics, 2021

Virtual reality (VR) has been a prominent idea for exploring new worlds beyond the physical, and in recent decades, it has evolved in many aspects. The notion of immersion and the sense of presence in VR gained new definitions as technological advances took place. However, even today, we can question whether the degrees of immersion achieved through this technology are profound and felt. A fundamental aspect is the sense of embodiment in the virtual space. To what extent do we feel embodied in virtual environments? In this publication, the authors present works that challenge and question the embodiment sensation in VR, specifically in the artistic aspect. They present initial reflections about embodiment in virtuality and analyze the technologies adopted in creating interactive artworks prepared for galleries and theater stage, questioning the sensations caused by the visual embodiment in virtual reality under the perspective of both the audience and the performer.

Safety in the Skies: Personnel and Parties in NTSB Aviation Accident Investigations, 2000

Recent high-profile commercial aviation mishaps have stretched the National Transportation Safety Board's resources to the limit and are testing the agency's ability to unravel the sorts of complex failures that lead to tragic accidents. In recognizing the enormous challenges the NTSB faces, agency Chairman Jim Hall sought a critical examination of the NTSB's ability to investigate major transportation accidents, and in particular commercial aviation accidents. The results of that study are contained in this report, the most comprehensive examination of the workings of the NTSB in the 30-year history of the agency. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, RAND used a variety of quantitative and qualitative research techniques to assess the NTSB's operations and processes. This research, conducted in the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, outlines recommendations aimed at strengthening the party process-which involves manufacturers, operators, and others in the determination of the probable cause of an accident expanding the statement of causation modernizing the NTSB's investigative procedures and streamlining its internal processes managing the agency's resources and staffing more effectively developing training opportunities for NTSB staff improving the agency's R&D facilities.