New publication: enactive ethnography of skilled intentionality in architecture

Posted on December 4, 2015 by erikrietveld

Well known philosophy journal Phenomenology & the Cognitive Sciences has accepted our paper on optimal grip on affordances in RAAAF’s architectural design practices. It is based on Anne Brouwers’ ethnography as an embedded researcher at RAAAF ‘s studio.

Download it here: Rietveld, E. & Brouwers, A.A. (2016) Optimal grip on affordances in architectural design practices: An ethnography. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, doi: 10.1007/s11097-016-9475-x

This paper will be interesting for philosophers of enactive/embodied cognitive science, philosophers working on distributed cognition and architects/artists curious about RAAAF’s way of working and affordance-based architecture more generally.

New publication on self-organization and skilled intentionality

Posted on July 20, 2014 by erikrietveld

Jelle Bruineberg and I have published a new paper on self-organization and skilled intentionality. (An earlier 2008 paper on this topic can be found here.) Jelle is one of the PhD-students on VIDI-project ‘Landscape of Affordances: Situating the Embodied Mind’ at the University of Amsterdam. The paper is published in a Frontiers in Human Neuroscience special issue on the implications of Tony Chemero’s (2009) book Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Here is the abstract and a link to the page where one can download the PDF of our paper:

Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience (cf. Chemero, 2009). This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology of skilled action.

In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism’s tendency towards an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously (Rietveld, 2012a/b/c). Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment (Gibson, 1979; Chemero, 2003). In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances.

Figure 1: Sketch of conceptual framework to be refined (Rietveld, 2012c). Through skilled intentionality one gets a grip on a field of affordances. (Inspired by: Thompson, 2007, 2011; Chemero, 2003, 2009; Dreyfus, 2007; Tschacher & Haken, 2007; Rietveld, 2008a/b/c).

Second, we use Friston’s (2000, 2011) work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the brain-body-environment system. Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism’s selective openness to relevant affordances.

In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research (De Haan, Rietveld, Stokhof & Denys, 2013) on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients.

Upcoming invited talks Spring 2014

Posted on June 21, 2014 by erikrietveld

Over the next few weeks we will present work at several interesting and recommended events. Most are in the field of enactive or embodied cogntive science, some in the fields of art & architecture.

May 22, An Outstanding Landscape of Affordances, lecture and animation, RAAAF together with Barbara Visser, Invited by Atelier of the Chief Government Architect (Rijksbouwmeester Frits van Dongen), Ministry of Finance, The Hague.

May 26, Sitting Kills: Towards an Landscape of Standing Affordances, Grand Round, Academic Medical Center (AMC), Amsterdam.

June 20, The Landscape of Affordances: Situating the Embodied Mind, Expert Meeting Psychiatry & Philosophy, Radboud University, Nijmegen.

June 20, Expert Practice in DBS Parameter Optimization (presented by Maarten van Westen), Expert Meeting Psychiatry & Philosophy, Radboud University, Nijmegen.

June 24, Vacant NL on the Move (together with Ronald Rietveld), Kunsthal, Rotterdam. (An interview with Dutch newspaper Volkskrant can be found below.)

June 24, Vacancy Studies (presented by Arna Mackic), Strijp S, Eindhoven.

June 26, Affordances in archtectural practice, EWEP 13 symposium organized by Rob Withagen ‘Affordances and architecture: Towards an ecological approach‘, Queens University, Belfast.

July 6-14, Action readiness in a landscape of affordances (together with Jelle Bruineberg), International Summer School in Affective Sciences, Swiss NCCR Affective Sciences Center (ISSAS), Geneva University, Château de Bossey, Switzerland.

Vacancy Studies: Toward a new professional and academic field

Posted on May 29, 2014 by erikrietveld

Proud to present our new book Vacancy Studies!!
A first media-preview for the international press will take place where it all started: at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The book is available in the better book stores and online here and now.

Many bunkers, forts, churches, castles, hospitals, water towers, post offices, prisons, palaces, and airports are empty. Thousands of them. The book Vacancy Studies focusses on the affordances they offer and provides the architecture world with an optimistic perspective on the temporary reuse of vacant spaces.

According to RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture Art-Affordances), there is great potential in vacant public and government buildings. At the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010, RAAAF visualized the gigantic scale of these vacant spaces in an installation called Vacant NL. The worldwide media attention by organizations such as The New York Times, The Guardian and The Architectural Review shows the international relevance of RAAAF’s vision for the new field of Vacancy Studies.

Artists, architects, and other designers can make a major contribution to social issues such as vacancy and climate change, and this requires new ways of working. Climate change for instance requires re-using existing resources including vacant buildings and terrains. The field of Vacancy Studies has been further developed in the practice of RAAAF and by a multidisciplinary team at the Sandberg Institute, Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam. The book ‘Vacancy Studies: Experiments and Strategic Interventions in Architecture‘ introduces the design approach of ‘strategic interventions’, and presents new ideas and experiments. Vacancy Studies is an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the possibilities of vacant spaces.

This book consists of two parts:

Part I, Surfing on a Sea of Vacancy, presents a vision of the potential offered by vacancy and a new way of analyzing and designing known as ‘strategic interventions’. Some radical experiments for knowledge development are presented in this part;

Part II, Parachuting above Vacant NL deals with experimentation in art & architectural design education and in real life.

RAAAF (Ronald Rietveld, Erik Rietveld & Arna Mackic) wrote this book together with Jurgen Bey, Barbara Visser, Ester van de Wiel en Martine Zoeteman. Ronald & Erik Rietveld are the editors-in-chief. The book is available in English and Dutch. Graphic Design by Studio Joost Grootens.

RAAAF elected Dutch Architect of the Year

Posted on December 25, 2013 by erikrietveld

RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances] is Dutch Architect of the Year 2013. A jury composed by Archtectenweb selected RAAAF out of a shortlist of 6 nominees including Mecanoo and RAU. From the jury report: “The jury appriciates RAAAF as a unique and headstrong architecture studio. Focusing on relevant issues RAAAF sets its own agenda, explores hidden layers within these themes, and creates unprecedented possibilities in the places touched. Their work expresses crafsmanship, is concrete, visually strong, optimistic, and detailed beautifully.”

Sketch of the Field of Affordances published in Frontiers

Posted on November 19, 2013 by erikrietveld

One of my ongoing interests is visualizing the field of affordances. See for instance the Trusted Subcultures-project RAAAF presented at the Sao Paulo Biennale 2009, using social affordances to create new public domain for the centuries old water city of Amsterdam. Or, more recently, our project Outstanding Landscape of Affordances.

Another example is the Dutch Atlas of Vacancy in which we investigated the affordances (in context) of 10.000 empty public builldings in the Netherlands. For instance the possibilities for making noise: at a vacant air base or in a vacant bunker one can make sounds of 140DB without disturbing anyone.

In a new special issue on Neurophenomenology edited by Evan Thompson for Frontiers, Sanneke de Haan, Martin Stokhof, Damiaan Denys and I have now published a more abstract sketch of different fields of affordances.

Figure: Sketch of different fields of relevant affordances (De Haan, Rietveld, Stokhof & Denys, 2013)

We propose that the changed world as described by the 18 OCD patients with Deep Brain Stimulation interviewed by us at the Academic Medical Center can be fleshed out in terms of changes in their field of relevant affordances. We can distinguish three dimensions to this field: the “width” refers to the broadness of the scope of affordances that one perceives. This dimension relates to having a choice or action options. The “depth” of the field refers to the temporal aspect: one not only perceives the affordances that are immediately present here and now, but one is also pre-reflectively aware of future plans and possibilities for action: the affordances on the horizon that one is responsive to, so to speak. This temporal horizon reflects our anticipatory affordance-responsiveness. Lastly, the “height” of each of the affordances refers to the relevance or importance of the affordances that one is responsive to, i.e., to the experienced solicitation or affective allure. This dimension of relevance and salience relates to the motivational force of affordances.

The title of our (open access) article is: The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: An enactive affordance-based model.

Pretty Vacant

Posted on May 15, 2013 by erikrietveld

Below you will find a photo of Pretty Vacant, a new installation by Rietveld Landscape, acquired by the Centraal Museum with support of the Mondriaan Fund.

The installation Pretty Vacant by design and research studio Rietveld Landscape encourages visitors to take a fresh look at the empty spaces of the Centraal Museum. The blue window literally and figuratively sheds a new light on the space and complements the architecture of this medieval chapel. The window is based on the ‘negative spaces’ of Rietveld Landscape’s earlier installation Vacant NL, which was the Dutch submission for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010.

The installation in the Gerrit Rietveld-designed pavilion in Venice showed the enormous potential of 10,000 disused public buildings in the Netherlands from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.

From the press release of the Centraal Museum: “Rietveld Landscape’s work fits in well with the Centraal Museum aim to acquire work at the intersection of art, design and architecture. Rietveld Landscape is a young studio that represents in an outstanding way the new developments at this intersection. Museum Director Edwin Jacobs described them as ‘the talents in field of spatial interventions, without equivalent in any existing architectural or theoretical discourse. They are real new-thinkers in images.’ Through the acquisition of the installation Pretty Vacant by Rietveld Landscape with support from the Mondriaan Fund, the Centraal Museum has realised its ambition of adding Vacant NL to the ‘Collectie Nederland’.”

Frontiers paper well read

Posted on January 26, 2013 by erikrietveld

Frontiers’ Journal Manager just wrote that our recent sketch on how the notion of a ‘landscape of affordances’ can help embodied cognitive science to deal with the difficult open issue of context-sensitivity is among their most downloaded articles. Download the PDF here:

Kiverstein, J. & Rietveld, E. (2012), Dealing with context through action-oriented predictive processing. Frontiers in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 3 (421), pp. 1-2.

The image above shows how Rietveld Landscape deals with frontiers: the installation ‘Industrial Jurassic’ changes the local landscape of affordances temporarily, offering people the possibility to cross the border between Belgium and The Netherlands for one day.

Research by Erik Rietveld

Skilled Action, Art/Science & Deep Brain Stimulation

Category Archives: Context sensitivity