The aesthetics of form knowledge: Embodied knowledge throughmaterialization

2016

Studies in Material Thinking 2016, 14

This article demonstrates an aesthetics of form knowledge, in the sense of knowledge that

comes to us through the senses. The role of the body and material in understanding form

are described from an inside perspective. Embodied knowledge of form and form processes

in clay are localized and articulated. My own experiences from modelling are connected

to embodied knowledge from five phenomenological concepts:

animated organism,

zero-point, Leib, body-scheme and kinaesthetic

, which are based on theories developed

by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. These concepts, together with reflections

of material agency discourses from various disciplines, form a theoretical framework to

propose and give access to subjective, embodied experiences in order to develop new form

knowledge. I argue that clay itself has agency, meaning that it reacts and responds to the

body’s movements: therefore, form processes in clay are described as a dialogue between

body and material. Phenomenological concepts and reflections about material agency

are valuable in that they give perspective to, and anchor personal knowledge of form

from, here-and-now experiences in a more general understanding of form. The aim of

this research is to imbue subjective knowledge about form with a more general meaning

so that it can be fundamental to developing an aesthetic embodied theory of form.

Studies in Material Thinking