Situated imagination

Abstract

Imagination is often considered the pinnacle of representational cognition. Looking at the concrete details of imagining in context, this paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature that is challenging this representational view by offering a relational and radically situated alternative. On the basis of observing architects in the process of making an architectural art installation, we show how to consider imagination not as de-contextualized achievement by an individual but as an opening up to larger-scale "affordances," i.e. the unfolding possibilities for action. We show how the architects coordinate the enactment of multiple affordances across different timescales, from small-scale affordances of picking up a mobile phone to the large-scale affordance of making the installation that takes months to unfold. These affordances get co-determined as they are jointly enacted. It is within this determining process that imagination too finds its place. On our view it is the indeterminacy of multiple affordances unfolding in action simultaneously that can be experienced as imaginative. The indeterminate character of this coordinative process allows activities to widen and open up, letting new possibilities for action enter into them.

Keywords: Affordances; Ecological psychology; Embodied cognition; Enaction; Imagination; Skilled intentionality framework; “Higher” cognition.

Fig. 1

(Taken from Van Dijk and Rietveld 2018). Affordances unfolding as a multi-scaled process. Each line represents an affordance unfolding in activity. The use of lines aims to emphasize that, in process, affordances are actively determined over time and have a direction of unfolding (Heft ; James 1912), The single lines intertwine to form strands (here at least three strands can be identified). These strands will be identified in Section 4 as “(unfolding) situations,” with their own global direction. Strands in turn intertwine to form a larger-scale unfolding process – consisting of the figure as a whole (which also has a direction). At all these scales, the process is constrained by its own history, represented by their decreasing width. From left to right, the multitude of possible ways in which materials can still be coordinated, and activity can continue, makes way for the one actual way in which material has been coordinated and the activity has unfolded. The lines that make up the figure can be read in two directions. Starting from the left-hand side, the line indicates an activity that is determining an inviting possibility, while starting from the right-hand side looking back on the line, it indicates a determined action and a constraining material environment (see Ingold , ; Schatzki ; Shotter and Van Dijk and Rietveld for details)

Fig. 2

Examples showing some of the diversity in affordances within the practice of architects, giving a general impression of some of the activities unfolding when making an architectural art installation. a Exploring a carpet for supporting the back while standing and using it to support a laptop so that one can type. b Build models that invited comparison for different design features, notably the possibility to suspend carpet in the air. c Wooden beams that afforded making a tilted floor for optimal foot support and aligning it with the room where the installation was being built. d Measurements taken of models such as in Fig. 2b invited to make a schematized drawing on paper. e A photograph of the installation consisting of carpets suspended in the air by steel wires as it neared completion. By that time it invited only minor transformations to the architects, for instance (f), the edges of the carpet invited to be cut with a small pair of scissors (see Van Dijk and Rietveld 2018)

Fig. 3

A metal frame in a warehouse, in which a strip of carpet is suspended using metal pipes and lashing straps. When this picture was taken a long pipe was getting replaced by a shortened pipe so here both can be seen holding up the carpet (see description of Part 2 for details). This position affords supported standing (see Fig. 2a)

Fig. 4

RR holding his phone while standing in the carpet with CS to his left (not shown). They are discussing the location of the cable in relation to a photograph of a cardboard model of their current favorite configuration of the installation as a whole (cf. Fig. 2b and e)