Deakin Research Online This is the published version: Keane, Jondi 2007, Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of perception and action, in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Perception and Action, [International Society for Ecological Psychology (ISEP)], [Yokohama, Japan], pp. 89-90. Available from Deakin Research Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30033961 Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright owner Copyright : 2007, The Author

Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Perception and Action

Jondi Keane

School of Arts, Griffith University, Gold Coast, AUS

My paper will correlate research across the arts and science that converge upon the study of perception and action using the work of Arakawa and Gins' as an exemplar for interdisciplinary research:

Firstly, I will offer a brief context of interdisciplinary trends towards convergence in the arts and science. For example, in addition to Gibson's (1979) interest in Merleau-Ponty's embodied approach, cognitive science has attempted to naturalise Husserlian phenomenology (Petitot, Varela, Pachoud, & Roy, 1999) by considering first-person perspective (Varela and Shear, 1999; Gendlin, 2000) and locating joint attention (Eilan, Hoerl, McCormack, & Roessler, 2005). A similar trend in the humanities can be seen in the renewed interest in the work of Darwin and Bergson (Grosz, 2004). These contemporary trends set the stage for Gins and Arakawa's (2002) investigation of the organism-person-surround.

Secondly, I will introduce the scope of Arakawa and Gins' (1997, 2002, 2003) discursive works and experimental built-environments in order to identify the common ground they share with empirical studies. Their procedural approach suggests that perceptual and conceptual modes of knowing can be coordinated in the study of embodied cognition.

Thirdly, I will discuss how Arakawa and Gins' "tactically posed surrounds" which combine enactive, empirical and introspective methodologies offer a viable first-person science consistent with an ecological approach. I will discuss their latest built environment in Mitaka, (Tokyo) in order to determine the ways in which environments can become heuristic tools for observing one's own modes of perception.

I will conclude by suggesting that Arakawa and Gins' architectural procedures are a development of the notion of "effectivities" (Shaw. Turvey & Mace, 1982) which inevitably include the ability to directly perceive and act upon our own modes of sensing which, in tum, shape the relationships that constrain attention, recognition and potential action.

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References Arakawa and Gins, M. (1997). Reversible destiny- Arakawa and Gins- We

have decided not to die. M. Govan (comp), New York: Guggenheim Museum.

Arakawa and Gins, M. (2003). Directions for architectural procedure invention and assembly. In INTERFACES: Architecture against death/ Architecture contre la mort, double issue, v.l n.21/22. Paris: College of Holy Cross and Paris University, 7 Dennis Diderot: 11-27.

Eilan, N., Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., & Roessler, J. (2005). Joint attention: communication and other minds (Issues in philosophy and psychology). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gendlin, E. (2000). The mind/body problem and first-person process. In R. Ellis & N. Newton (Eds.), The cauldron of consciousness: Motivation, affict and self-organisation: An anthology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 109-119.

Gibson, J.J. (1986, [1979]). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Gins, M. & Arakawa (2002). Architectural body. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Grosz, E. (2004). The nick of time: Politics, evolution and the untimely. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Petitot, J., Varela, F. Pachoud, B. & Roy, J-M. (1999). (Eds), Naturalizing phenomenology: Issues in contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Shaw, R. E., Turvey, M. T. & Mace, W. M. (1982). Ecological psychology: The consequences of a commitment in realism. In W. Weiner & D. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the symbolic process. Vol. 2 (pp. 159-226). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Varela, F & Shear J. (1999). (Eds.), The view from within: First-person approaches to the study of consciousness. Bowling Green: Imprint Academic.

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