Making Sense: Cognition, Computing, Art, and Embodiment

by Simon Penny, Roger F Malina (Editor), Sean Cubitt (Editor)

Why embodied approaches to cognition are better able to address the performative dimensions of art than the dualistic conceptions fundamental to theories of digital computing. In Making Sense , Simon Penny proposes that internalist conceptions of cognition have minimal purchase on embodied cognitive practices. Much of the cognition involved in arts practices remains invisible under such a paradigm. Penny argues that the mind-body dualism of Western humanist philosophy is inadequate for addressing performative practices. Ideas of cognition as embodied and embedded provide a basis for the development of new ways of speaking about the embodied and situated intelligences of the arts. Penny argues this perspective is particularly relevant to media arts practices. Penny takes a radically interdisciplinary approach, drawing on philosophy, biology, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, critical theory, and other fields. He argues that computationalist cognitive rhetoric, with its assumption of mind-body (and software-hardware) dualism, cannot account for the quintessentially performative qualities of arts practices. He reviews post-cognitivist paradigms including situated, distributed, embodied, and enactive, and relates these to discussions of arts and cultural practices in general. Penny emphasizes the way real time computing facilitates new modalities of dynamical, generative and interactive arts practices. He proposes that conventional aesthetics (of the plastic arts) cannot address these new forms and argues for a new “performative aesthetics.” Viewing these practices from embodied, enactive, and situated perspectives allows us to recognize the embodied and performative qualities of the “intelligences of the arts.”

Genres: Art

540 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2019

About the author

Simon Penny is Professor of Art at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, teaching mechatronic art, media art history and theory, and interdisciplinary seminars interfacing contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind with the arts. Trained as a sculptor, he has spent much of his career building interactive art environments with custom robotic and sensor-based systems.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Describes the process of new media and how it should be considered from a post-cognitivist point of view. I enjoyed learning more about these viewpoints at first, but found a lot of the book to be very repetitive. A few of the major points that came up -

Are we brains in bodies or bodies in brains? We may be more tightly bound to our environment and subjectivity than we realize.

New media art is embodied and performative. It doesn't need to exist to 'solve a problem', make a specific statement, or instruct. And unlike a painting, which sits on a wall, the audience becomes a part of the work's system. The artist should consider this, and remember that the final experience, as well as questions that are created (rather than answered), are most important.

A lot of new media art fields is powered by computers. The computing culture can value cognitivist approaches to work (symbolism), and may resist a more multi-disciplinary approach. History and applications of computing were discussed as a way to challenge assumptions about how computers applications and user interfaces ought to operate.
"It excludes the 'irrational' intelligences of the arts - that is, the generation and judgement of affect. It ignores the cognitive unconscious, precious events play not part. It separates perception, cognition, and action per the input-processing-output paradigm. As noted, such arbitrary and indefensible (reductive) divisions render the intelligences of arts practices obscure." (322)

"Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him" (Heinz von Foerster)