Published in hurly burly magazine #19
Are we dealing with the old debate of the split in metaphysics that led Kant to consider that imaginative activity was an impediment to theoretical knowledge?
Would it be possible to deny a strict gap between the analytical and the synthetic? Between the a priori and the a posteriori? Between the formal and the speculative?
If we were to contemplate this possibility, we would have to bear in mind the hypothesis of a progressive bipolarization. Towards one end, those tendencies whose productivity is based on the sustaining of an objective structural pattern or scheme, to the other, those which could be conceived as a subjective and relativist speculation. Between both extremes, a whole scale of different stances.
The former would impose scheme over process. It would be unconceivable to generate the foundations of such a building without considering the necessity of performing an important transformation in the topography of the ground of the chosen site. A building in which geometrical shapes, lines and surfaces metaphorically represent the necessity of claiming the primacy, with varying degrees of strictness, of structural patterns over shapes conceived through interaction, has necessarily to place its pillars on a conceptually created frame: a surface.
According to this argument, the reasons by which the surface imposes itself upon other structural elements become evident to a greater or lesser extent. Other functional concepts slide remarkably well along those surfaces: rulers, wheels or cloths used for wiping dust away. One may wonder whether this objects are something of a little brother to those other ones. Besides, the surface is the conceptual unit of a geometry which is vital to such organization.
Serving a markedly functional aesthetic, excavators have for decades been levelling hills and filling up valleys in order to obtain an homogeneization of the ground compatible with its purpose.
From the traditional formal perspective, the different variables may be filled with a range of contents since the essential aspect is the preservation of the formal structure itself. This “filling” system imposed on much of the architecture, greatly simplifying the role of design since the form predominates and multiplies, and it may be filled with whatever subjectivity.
Following this principle, our own subjectivity must adapt itself to the form that is thus placed on an ontological level and is specific to reasoning, being independent from any individual or ergonomic conscience. The aspect which is seriously worrying isn’t that of the nature of the game described, although it is rather frightening in itself, but the out of all proportion capacity of transformation to which it is associated.
Carrying out such excesses through means with less conditioning capacity than conrete or asphalt could be a good idea. To that end, a broad theoretical speculation as, for instance, the one developed in propositional logic should suffice.
Unfortunately, we have chosen the structural frame for our significant experiences to lean on these conceptual schemes to such an extreme that their very setting is built on top of those schemes. In turn, those experiences become redundant and forge their own set of beliefs, which validates all the a priori conceived premises. This activity provides truly permanent “physical” frameworks for action, like environments that remain throughout time impossing a particular interaction within them by their mere presence.
Our culture, elaborated according to the classic model of Parmenide, hasn’t allowed us to develop a sufficiently broad experience of interaction which provided us with a suitable theoretical framework akin to its trans-cultural nature. Our relationship with reality, which from then onwards has always been that of subject with predicate, has been radicalized during this century of logical scientific empirism.
But acting, or being an end of an interactive pattern, is equivalent to proposing the other end. A context for a certain kind of response has been stablished, and now it seems possible that we have inevitably turned into the submissive predicate of the structures long ago originated. In any case, considering it from an interactive perspective, our identity and the environment are bound together by a dialogue similar to the one maintained in a chicken and egg situation. For instance, the vertical scheme, exaggeratedly predominating in some cases, reinforces the scale-like abstraction of our value system of ‘the higger you get, the better’, or, simply, ‘more is up’. For some theoreticians this concept is later spread all over our social, political, technological or cultural behaviour, thus decisively conditioning it.
If this is so, it is likely that such a reductionism of the form may be directly “absorbed” through perception, delimiting our capacites of semantic elaboration to a certain extent. The kind of connections that we perform may be partially determined by the kind of predominating schemes which, in turn, collaborate to promote a certain tendency towards the uniformity of thought and conduct which characterizes this end of millennium.
As a counterbalance to the hypothetical advantages generated through network systems (internet, etc.), the indiscriminate proliferation of the media (satelite, etc.) and the overtly unsustainable development of means of transport in terms of energy, lays this progressive tunning which has turned into a social and individual set of gestures that underlines, in my opinion, the task that the excavators started.
Importance doesn’t reside in the content of what is being emitted but in the degree of tuning obtained. To this purpose it is essential that the potential interactor, as much as the possible spectator, have already been “standarized”. His “standarization” is utterly necessary for him to be tuned. In this sense, his capacity of semantic interpretation must be pileable and, thus, as compatible with other such capacities as possible. That capacity needs to reshape its profiles and get inmersed in a progressive levelling and filling virtual process.
This symbolic conceptualization may be notably reinforced in our habitual teoretical-practical itinerary designs, conferring them a markedly teleologic character. More and more, the bulk of our itineraries, inlcuding our conscious intentions, are conceived not as responses to necessities arisen from the environment but rather as formally planned and organised projects.
Thus, bouncing from a formal experience to the next, our initiative is necessarily included among its own habits, these being organised according to a particular redundancy (bears usually don’t masticate chewing gum and female opera singers don’t play rugby) so that, little by little, as we insist on behaving in this way, there are less possibilities of acting differently.
However, a large part of our learning was developed in contact with a far more complex formal and conceptual universe than the one in which we dwell, which is, as I have already pointed out, excessively reductionist in its knowledge. In our early childhood, we sporadically discover some elements that seem to gather as a significative structure, transforming what seemed shapeless into an appropriate and harmonious whole. At other times, prefixed structures which have turned into lumps of redundant stiffness are dismantled. Thus, any previous determinism inherent to performance is transformed into a casual exploration that develops its own set of gestures and brings back to horizontality any provisionally installed verticality.
The natural cycle that fuels our surprise capacity, which is the thrust for our imagination and fantasy, depends, as Lewis Carroll wonderfully suggested, on our capacity to carry out apparently absurd connections relating to the unforeseen. However, this connections seem to obey certain rules which, in spite of being unknown to us, fully affect and condition us in some way.
The indeterminacy of this fascinating game calls for a permanent and necessary revision of its rules as an answer to the gestaltic whole that becomes significat at each moment. Without intending to, this attitude opens the doors wide to all the things that were excluded, due to their incompatibility with the initial intention, in favour of a structural formalism.
Bearing all this in mind, one could infer that to live excluding chance ins’t just inconvenient, but foolhardy. We perceive the form resulting from the multiple and extremely complex reorganization of diverse phenomena happening in our environment as chance. And this is so because not even the exhaustive and permanent superimposing of formal schemes can interpret a flow whose interactive rules have proved to be clearly unattainable even to our perception -not to mention our logic- throughout this century. Any attempt to formalize in logic terms the connections between the laws and the contents described, or between scientific terms and states of observable objects has proved to be utterly futile. The greatest efforts in this field, such as the ones by Carl Hempel in his Aspects of Scientific Explanation, clearly prove that the meaning verifying theory hasn’t been capable of linking empiric meaning with independently observable data.
The feeling of unease that results from discerning the entrance to any unexplored territory through our relentless newtonian glasses may be a determining element in the tendency to make us believe that the best way to wander through it is to bear in mind every possible inconvenient beforehand. However, we may as well end up experiencing what happend to Scott in his expedition to the Antartic. His lack of flexibility to adapt to the new circumstances (which, in addition, were extreme) and his desire to have the expedition planned down to the smallest detail, determined that the whole crew died frozen.
Since, contrary to what is feared at first sight, a speculation lacking in archetypal schemes doesn’t necessarily become scheme-free but rather it usually envisages a different kind of schemes, covered with the provisional character that unpredictability lends them and which remind us of the rough primitive building of shelters or sheds in which, due to the lack of sufficient means of transformation, the shape of the building stresses the very nature of the ground, yields according to an economy of resources and adapts itself to it. However, this attitude differs from those other ones in that, in this case, the choice is a wilful one and has the character of a conscious renounce.
Little by little, one comes to realize that, in such contexts, the idiom to be employed and even the intended objective always have an intermodulating provisional character. That is to say, it is discovered, consolidated, abandoned or transformed, and, at the same time, it transforms us during the process. It is not about neutralizing the danger by means of transferring previously produced orthopaedic resources, but rather developing a skilful capacity to create and disolve occasional links. A kind of dexterity which is equivalent to the one found in each of the performances that demand from us some intentionality. A dexterity that arises from instrumental decisions developing certain physical capacities and habilities that turn any previous regulation into something completely irrelevant. This doesn’t consist in a few nervous connections being activated; but rather in a whole network of gestaltic structures and instrumental habits, which depend on perceptive interactive schemes, being activated. Improvisation implies the acknowledgment by the improviser of responses elaborated according to such situations. Body and mind integrated to produce a spontaneous set of getures with varying degrees of adequacy.
Habits thus acquired don’t exist merely as preintentioned gestalts. Once elaborated, they are significatively incorporated to our reasoning as part of our comprehension, not of specific interactive situations but of abstract structures of a more permanent kind. Therefore, they are part of our identity, patterns to which we relate and that we constantly use in order to interpret different types of ideas and situations.
A student doing any particular degree, once he has turned all his learning into an objective, symbolized by the degree awarded, transfers, already unconsciously, that reference frame, organized according to the habit acquired through hundreds of significative experiences, to the different subsequent experiences in his life. The result of this situation is that this student didn’t just learn during that period certain essential aspects, but rather a whole existential model by which he organises his identity.
Similarly, an improviser learns to explore the functioning of his own semantics. This learning enables him to consider the experience as being significative beyond his intention, since the stablished connections and semantic relationships are experienced as being constituted by the instrumentalizations that his habits generate. And that set of habits is what finally penetrates into his meaning networks.
Once this learning is assimilated, it is slightly more complicated to fully identify oneself with any intentional or propositional act, since all the identification process is experienced not as backcloth against which the preconceived intention stands out, but rather as being part of it.
When used in an utterance, the term improvisation (potentially) evokes all this contents as belonging its meaning because they are part of our experience of signification.
Entering this territory inevitably brings into play the necessity of assuming transformation. At the extreme of this axis, orientation is defined by its stockastic character. This generates a deep wearing. In a sense, each activity represents a new identity, a new formation of habits, the discovering of unimaginable features within oneself. One discovers that a certain degree of freedom may be, at the same time and in the same proportion, pleasant and uncomfortable.
This will possibly be unconceivable for those who, habituated to building their intentions whilst remaining convinced of their determination, are unable to transcend it even for a tiny moment. If we learnt to do this, we would save ourselves some of our most excesive and irreparable gestures.
If it is impossible for us to relate to the idea that we merely express our opinions, we will try to reach an objective and definitive concept about ideality in tune with the cultural prejudices turned into supreme principles. This caprice has turned our history into a successive parade of magnified paradigms that stress, on each step, just a slightly different aspect of the same nucleus, and which have ended up being turned into tools serving the powerful, finally disapearing when, being sufficiently worn out and exploited, they have to yield way to more efficient control systems.
The reason for this exaltation seems related to a deep-rooted desire for fixed patterns to assess our actions, thus managing to avoid the frightening indeterminacy of our experience.
The fright associated to the idea that the absence of an adequate rational matrix may force us into some sort of relativist anarchy seems faint-hearted, although some pale when confronted with the idea that such an absence forces them to occasionally demonstrate some insecurity incompatible with the exercise of power.
A vast intermediate territory lays between the extremes of relativism and fundamentalism. It is not about giving up, but rather periodically renewing the acquired theoretical frames, putting more stress on the constant investigative aspect than on the definitive results. Such a renewal presupposes a permanent adjusting of the tasks of purpose categorization in relation to an updated vision in real time of our creative necessities and of the tasks carried out in relation to them.
In so far as our experience contains some redundancy, we will be in a better position to foresee the causal effects produced. This guarantees that we are “connected” with the real world, but it won’t ever imply that the possibility of developing such predictions brings us any closer to a definitive model, merely informing us about the way through which we are “focussing” at that particular moment.
This feeling of being “connected” is all the “form” we need. Our compromise with it constitutes our interactive theoretical-practical intentionality. If we allow this to happen, everything that is situated outside our intentions will speak to us and manifest its own presence, our formalness being guaranteed by the reciprocal influence exerted.
From such a viewpoint one can clearly see how concepts don’t organise the world but necessarily converse with it. As a consequence, creatures whose extreme beauty dismantles our aesthetic prejudices and tear our identity to pieces are discovered with every step.