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Research / Material / Practice
Concept of Affordance
All steps of strategy in this project are based on the concept “affordance” that was proposed by an American psychologist James Gibson in 1930’s. Affordance originally means “all possibilities of an animal’s action which are recalled by an object or an environment”. In 1988, Donard Norman took this word “affordance” to mean the possibilities of the action that humans can perceive from an object or an environment, within the cognitive psychology field. Nowadays, the word “affordance” has even spread into the design scene. I was first introduced to this word during my studies in design. To explain the definition of “affordance” by Norman, leading the action of the hand is often used as an example. When you find a flat plate on the door, you can understand that you should push the door to open it. Or when you find a handle on a cup, you can intuitively see which part of the cup you should hold.
As the first study to understand this thought, I performed an practice to read the “affordance” from specific objects.
I put out two types of chairs. One with a back(chair), and one with no back(stool). The question was “how do people find an “affordance reason” that shapes interaction with these chairs?”
The chair with back showed the direction that people should sit. And the chair without back does not. But if that chair has a square seat on the legs, it help for people to imagine four directions to seat. But in case of a circular seat, it doesn’t matter which direction people sit practically. These hints to make actions are thought of the affordance that Norman proposed. But strictly speaking that is different from original proposal by Gibson. The original “affordance” by him is not the specific possibility of leading that an object/environment show to a human. It should be the all the possibilities of the relationship between an object/environment and an animal. Therefore, even if people do no correctly read the context of the chairs and use it in wrong way, for example, to sit facing the back, this relationship between an object and an animal could be “affordance”. It is all the possibilities which include concrete hints that an object/environment shows an animal’s intention of reading the context. It doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong, if it is purpose or not. Meanings and activities themselves are forms of affordance.
Studio Practice
An example of one of the simplest exercises.
I stand on the center of a square room. And I perceive the 8 points in the room the 4 corners on the floor and the 4 on the ceiling. Then I point to one of those corner randomly with my right hand, and the left as well. Next is legs. The right foot should step toward one of the corners, and the left as well. The situation should be like the game of twister. 4 actions and 8 points in the room would make specific conditions and shape the body belonging to it. I can also add the direction of face and gaze(eyes), and also other points that are not only the end of arms or legs, but also elbow, knee, pelvis etc. Eventually even two-dimensional elements like back, belly, the nape of the neck could be connected to the eight points in the room. I am motivating specific action from materialistic conditions and in doing so, looking for more complicated shapes within the of body.
The situation with more than 2 bodies in the room seems complicated but it could be possible to use the same process if they deal with each other in a practical and materialistic way as well. But as the fact, when we practiced to learn “affordance” between bodies, we found the moment that bodies found the motive to do action from not only practical but also socio-psychological ways. Then I felt big potential to develop it, and made 3 groups each with 5 people in order to observe their improvisations. Eventually I took this work as the actual element of the piece.
Some concrete instruction that I gave them :
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to understand exactly the situation of your body moment by moment
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to observe thoroughly the situation around you, choose the concrete reason to move, and react instantly
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to leave your motivation of moving to the environment or other body
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not to act, dance, or have personal or emotional motives behind doing something on stage
Additionally, I shared with them the thought of “This body is not mine.” with giving some example like the moon reflects the light of the sun, and the mirror reflects the light in front of it.
Showing - Improvised scene based on practice
