Cyborgian Images by Grabbe Lars C.; Rupert-Kruse Patrick; Schmitz Norbert M

Author:Grabbe, Lars C.; Rupert-Kruse, Patrick; Schmitz, Norbert M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Moving Images, Cyborgs
Publisher: Büchner Verlag
Published: 2015-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Space and Time

For instance, there are findings about the influence of spatial body concepts on (kinesthetic) synesthetic experiences which suggest that this »spatial sense« plays an important role in synesthesic phenomena like the perception of calendar units located in a spatial arrangement around synesthetes’ bodies. This spatial arrangement of days, months or years in time-spatial synesthesia serves as a good example for the concept of embodied cognition (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980): the abstract concepts of days or months seem to be so hard to be learned or understood by children around the age of three, that some of them might develop already acquired abilities to »imagine« 3D-objects in the space even further and use these mental images (unvolontarily of course) to get hold of the idea of a »Thursday« or a »December« (cf. Mroczko-Wasowicz and Nikolic 2014, 8). Even time is considered to be perceived and experienced in a sensory mode (Rao et al. 2001). For instance, the circadian (or daily) rhythm seems to rely on some kind of chronoception or »time sense« of which we dispose.

Moreover, the temporal-spatial parameter of movement also seems to play an important role in the processing of (syn)aesthetic perception of colors, sounds, and numbers. As Ward et al. (2008) have shown in a unique and large scale interdisciplinary study, there occurs to exist »a general tendency for the visual experiences to move in a left-to right direction …« (Ward et al. 2008, 1295). In these experiments non-synesthetes were confronted with 100 animations by the artist and graphic designer Samantha Moore, which either derived from synesthetes’ descriptions of their visual perception of musical tones or were designed just by the artist herself. The study’s authors emphasize the observed »directional bias« as »not trivial,« because it occurred »… in spite of the fact that there was no spatial movement directly implied in the tones that were used.« The authors further suggest that this phenomenon could have two possible causes: »First of all, there is a general bias in attention to the left of space that may reflect right hemispheric specialisation for spatial processes … Second, it may reflect the cultural tendency for left-to-right reading« (Ward et al. 2008, 1295).

However, this selection of examples shows, that the concept of spatial or spatial-temporal perception of sensory inputs from various sensory domains seems to play a crucial role for individuals to perceive the world at all. This observation also fits together well with theories of the embodiment of cognitive concepts, and it strengthens the idea of a holistic, bodily understanding of reality. Although neurosciences predominantly investigate and explore brain functions, their findings often also show that perception, memory, and other neural functions not merely can be reduced to brain processes but rather have to be extended to the whole body as a perceiving and information processing living organism.

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