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NORDIC LIGHT & COLOUR
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man experience. As humans we access and relate to the world
through our senses and actions, our senso-motoric capacities,
and the construction of phenomena in the environment, such
as architectures and light formations, are negotiated in the
relation between the body and the environment.
Following Pallasmaa “Sensory experiences become integrated
through the body, or rather, in the very constitution of the body
and the human mode of being. […] Our bodies and movements
are in constant interaction with the environment; the world and
the self inform and redefine each other constantly. […] [T]here
is no body separate from its domicile in space, and there is no
space unrelated to […] the perceiving self” (Pallasmaa 2005:40).
“Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory;
qualities of space, matter and scale are measured equally
by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle. […]
Instead of mere vision, or five classical senses, architecture
involves several realms of sensory experience which interact
and fuse into each other” (Pallasmaa 2005:41).
Performative engagement as a psychophysical method
The ‘psychophysical method’ discussed below is a method by
which we can approach experiential explorations of light in its
complex modes of appearance and inaugurate evidence on the
basics of experiential accounts.
The notion of ‘psychophysical’ and ‘performative engagement’
derives from the field of theatre and actor training techniques
and as such include movement and action as structural tools
for improvisational systems by which the beholder are enabled
to investigate how he/she engages with a given surrounding
- space, room or place. It is a perceptive method that acti-
vates the whole human bodymind, – an approach by which we
investigate how we experience being in a given space, and what
psychophysical impulses different orchestrations of daylight or
different composed artificial light settings accumulate.
In exercising this training you are occupied with techniques
that structure both body and mind generating a heightened
state of engagement towards the surrounding space and
what is at stake in that space. These techniques are of course
designed as methods to help the actor perform on stage. But
for the practitioner these techniques produce or build up an
experiential capacity as a certain intuition on spatial concerns.
Within theatre anthropology this shared and common phenom-
enon is discussed as an extra-daily state.
Extra daily & pre-expressive
In the course of the training the performer develops a capacity
for performing, a scenic behaviour which is distinctly differ-
ent from her every day behaviour. The performer’s practice is,
according to the theatre director Eugenio Barba, “the behav-
iour of the human being when it uses its physical and mental
presence in an organised performance situation and according
to principles which are different from those used in daily life”
(Barba 1995:vii).
The actor and director Phillip Zarilli speaks of an “inner aware-
ness […] toward a heightened […] state of engagement” (Zarilli
2007:57). This heightened state developed within performance
practice, Barba terms an ‘extra-daily’ mode of presence,
distinct from daily life behaviour, - obtained through perform-
ing practices, and evolving as a consequence of a cultivated
technique.
The reference to an ordinary behaviour and daily use of
techniques – such as eating, walking, and sleeping – is based
on the anthropologist Marcel Mauss’ (1950) concept of ‘daily
activities’. These ordinary behaviours are understood as human
techniques conditioned by culture and everyday situations,
embodied in human action and structures of social disposition.
The concept of extra-daily is then “the utilisation of specific
body techniques which are separate from those used in daily
life” (Barba 2007:257).
The extra-daily expressive capacity of the expert performer is
what Barba terms ‘pre-expressive’, a way of working particu-
lar to the performer. According to Zarilli the pre-expressive
capacities are “characteristics shared by systems of training/
exercise through which the actor works on oneself. […] [e]
exercises are not simply a means of toning the physical body,
but creating an entire new awareness of the actor’s internal life
– not in a psychological or behavioural sense, but as a psycho-
physiological means of encountering the performative moment
[…] a bodymind awakened, sensitized, made newly aware or
fully concentrated” (Zarilli 2002:89).
Concepts such as ‘the extra daily mode’ and ‘pre-expressivity’
enable a discussion on the acting techniques as tool and meth-
od in itself that can be utilised in disciplines such as architec-
ture and lighting design, to explore and enhance the potential
qualities of engagement with a given spatial environment.