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NORDIC LIGHT & COLOUR
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no sense of direction and no particular separation of being inside
or outside the light-zone. This lack of distinct separation evokes
a sense of one unified place, equally qualified by the all grades of
lightness/darkness as part of the same placeness. The diffuse/
round light-zone produces a varied sense of place and directions
depending on where one stands and how one move. People’s posi-
tions and movements, more than the shape of the light-zone, de-
fines the placeness qualities, and this sensation is further intensi-
fied through exploration. In the diffuse/round light-zone, people
can move around getting really close seemingly without tension.
People behave relaxed, informal and they do not seem to uphold
any positions or to challenge each other. Simultaneously as they
are touching and even hanging on to each other, they are not
producing distinct positional roles or separate individual agendas
in relation to each other. On the contrary there is even a tendency
that each person could seem to create her own individual sense of
realm but still interact with the group.
Triangular experiential negotiation
The complex of perspectives and self-reflective positions,
which is part of the pre-expressive capacity and extra-daily
state of engagement, can be organised in a simple triangular
methodological system by a team of investigators. The cooper-
ative approach enables the development of a shared language
on the experiential accounts, the development of shared ana-
lytic capacities, and facilitates an experimental environment for
the exploration of emerging possibilities and qualities. (Fig 08)
The triangular method operates with a selection of observer
roles similar to the self-reflective position of the performer,
and is specific in the way it situates a collective of investigators
in different positions of observation within the same explorative
engagement. The method enables a structure of engagement
by which a group can share a firsthand experience and explore
this same experience from different positions as a comparative
qualitative investigation.
The triangular set of observer positions:
1. The first participant observes from a position inside the
experience of a performative engagement, wherefrom the light
zone is explored and the participant speaks from her first-
person experience.
2. The second participant observes from a position outside the
light zone in continuous discussion with the first, — a referent
position as external observer who interviews, reflects on and
registers the first-person experience.
3. The third participant observes from an outside position and
uses a camera to frame and document the first-person experi-
ence likewise from an external position.
Each of the roles is a distinct experiential position, which
creates a set of mutually critical position for observing the
exploration from within the experiential process while perform-
ing the engagement.
Together, the three positions maintain each other in a trian-
gularity of performative engagement in an organised perfor-
mance situation and generate a shared mode of presence
similar to that of the performer’s extra-daily state.
The team repeatedly change positions to make sure that each
person rotates through all positional roles several times. The
participants synthesise their experience of all three observer
positions, and attain a capacity for overviewing the totality of
the situation and the relational operations that qualifies it.
The solo experience from any of the roles by themselves will
lack the mutual constitution process, whereby they integrate
the three modes of engagement. The reflective coordination
between the three positions in the moment, as a shared expe-
riential event, is a crucial quality of the method. After a process
of adapting the method, understanding how is works as a
processual tool, the participants can stage similar explorative/
analytic/generative processes on any other topic that need an
experiential design approach.
The experiential accounts, and the pre-expressive capac-
ity, is in this way no longer a unique personal phenomenon,
but brought into a collective discussion and formalised as
shared observations. The triangular performance analysis also
enables the individual to gain an overview from both within the
experience, from outside, and in negotiation. This organised
situation forms an extra-daily mode of analytic presence, which
is developed as a capacity for future investigations and design
processes.
(Petersen & Søndergaard 2011:90)
Experiential architecture
Architecture as staging devise
The idea of architecture as having a staging agenda embedded
for people to improvise their daily life was eagerly discussed
by the architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen already in the 1950s.
In his thinking, the architect acts as a “theatrical producer,
[…] who plans the setting for our lives” (Rasmussen 1959:10),
and he suggested human experience as a primary source for
architectural design strategies. The architectural theorist
Marianne Krog Jensen takes Rasmussen’s argument even
further in stating, “architecture is a cultural action […]. We no
longer ask what architecture is; we ask what it does. Space is
something that unfolds; it is defined through movement, action
and creation” (Jensen 2010:81). The experience of architecture