Metaphorical Objects

The material sign is constituted as a meaningful entity not for what it

represents but for what it brings forth. (Malafouris 2013, p.105)

When we think about intangible concepts like time, thought or love, there is
some physical way we understand them. We think of time as moving or as a
substance of which we do not have enough. We think of love as a place to be
in or out of, or as an object where pieces fit together. We describe thoughts
as strong or distant. This physical understanding, outlined in the conceptual
metaphor theory, introduced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their
book Metaphors We Live By (1980), was the starting point and inspiration for
my creative practice. If these concepts are learned, understood and
described through physical experiences one has in the world, then are the
qualities associated with these concepts recognizable? I wanted to develop a
practice where the physical qualities of these concepts could be explored,
highlighted and utilized to convey meaning. The piece that resulted was titled
Moving Around X (2015), which aimed to prioritize the felt meaning of events
and trigger thoughts without sentences for the audience and performers. I
was interested in how and why something is known, even what is known,
before it becomes a recognizable symbol.

Conceptual metaphor theory, rooted in cognitive science studies, explains

that abstract concepts are typically understood using sensorimotor structures
where entities from a sensorimotor source are mapped onto an abstract
target (Johnson 2007, p.165). These cross-domain mappings are expressed
in primary metaphors like Psychological Intimacy is Physical Closeness or
Time is Motion. The basic structures of sensorimotor experience that pattern
our interactions, allowing us to understand our world, are called image
schemas (Johnson 2007, p.136). Image schemas are the structures that
metaphors are built on, binding the body to the mind. Pathway and Container
were two image schemas that I felt related the most to concepts like time,
love and thought. Qualities like linearity or curviness from Pathway, or the
inside-ness or hidden-ness attached to Container are projected upon and
used to understand metaphors like love is a journey, time passing or thinking
outside the box. After establishing the image schemas of Pathway and
Container as my focus, I introduced those into the rehearsal process as
actual objects. Wooden boxes, bags of dirt and a large tarpaulin provided
physical containers while ropes of different thicknesses and lengths, long
plastic sheets and dirt on the ground created pathways to explore. As I was
looking to test the inherent meaning residing in the three-dimensional
metaphoric objects, without revealing a narrative, I allowed the qualities of
the objects to speak for themselves, weaving the text they evoke with the
texture they hold.

Generating meaning through atypical interactions

While working with objects, another important concept that affected the
research was affordance theory, introduced by psychologist James Gibson,
which defines affordances as potential actions provided by the surrounding
environment (1979, p.127). Affordance theory considers how properties in
the environment affect and are available to the perceiver (Chemero 2003,
p.183). In the practice, it became important to notice how much the object
was shaping our interactions with it. Going against the typical affordance of
an object helped to change our normal way of thinking, and allowed a
greater understanding of the object’s capabilities to emerge. By exploring
what we called atypical affordances, like dragging a rope across the room
instead of looping it to carry, or purposelessly holding a bag against a wall,
we began to write new metaphors. For example, using a long rope and its
linearity to substitute physicalized thought, we could create moments where
the object afforded a typical interaction. Rope easily gets tangled. When rope
is thought, then we have a familiar metaphoric text of ‘thoughts are tangled.’
However, as we sought to find atypical affordance behaviors between body
and object, like standing on a rope, we were able to write new metaphors
like ‘thoughts are under my toes.’ The introduction of new physical
relationships through practice allowed for the understanding of that concept
to change and expand. The texture of the object became responsible for the
new text it evoked.

The generation of new metaphors is highly connected to abstraction and

surrealism, as the meaning generated between shared qualities of two
concepts is not commonly known or agreed upon yet. Engaging with the
objects with these new metaphors in mind created a performative tension
and allowed us to connect to the concepts in a more subjective way. The
practice sought for the performers to feel rather than think and was on the
edge of using what is familiar against what is abstract and open for multiple
interpretations. Moving Around X hoped to bypass the need for the audience
to know an exact narrative, and instead provide tangible qualities and
physical dimensions so an increase in metaphor interpretation pressure
would give them the potential to make meaning through association. Author
and artist Richard Allen proposes the appearance and disappearance of
objects in performance ‘dictates a rhythm that invites the audience to edit
and frame the images themselves, letting the temporality of transition
resonate rather than the resolution’ (Allen 2013, p.123). My intent was to
create temporary relationships between object, performer and audience that
resonated through the visual-tactile qualities presented. Thus, inviting the
observer to understand the felt meaning of a moment on a sensorimotor
level.

Interacting with immateriality

During Moving Around X one dancer swings and pulls a large rope, which
creates ripples along the stage. These ripples are being paired to emotional
jazz music played on the piano. The dripping piano scales, the melodic runs
and the variation of occasional counterpoint notes are visualized in the rope’s
continuous tempo, widening and narrowing ripples and contrasting loops
when the rope is twisted or thrown. Here, the audience was guided to “listen
with their eyes.” Highlighting prototypical qualities of objects allows the
spectator to recognize and assign meaning to an event or object. Rich pre-
categorical sensory information allows reception among audience to vary as
each person is capable of seeing each stimulus with different meaning
(Sugiera 2002, p.233).

Performers Michael O’Connor and Samuel Feldhandler interact with large ship ropes in time to
music, pairing sound to sight to create a visual listening. Photo: Nellie de Boer 2015.

Performers produce time through a projection of light onto a cloth-like materiality and practice
atypical interactions with time after transposing the linguistic metaphor Time as Fabric back
into a physical form. Photo: Nellie de Boer 2015.

Utilizing the primary metaphor Time as Fabric, a projection of a clock was

placed on a large tarpaulin, giving time a materiality that allowed the body to
unconventionally explore the fabric-like qualities of time. With this cross-
domain mapping, the practice was to approach the tarpaulin in ways one
normally does not interact with time, for example caressing time with an
erotic touch. This created an interesting foursome, in which one dancer is
controlling the image of time while the other is interacting with the tarpaulin.
They are sensuously interrelating, sensing each other’s presence, yet
engaging a visual-tactility between light, image, and tarpaulin without
actually touching each other.

Moments like this interest me because they are ambiguous and vague, and
this is where the performance finds its strength. The qualities the body uses
to interact with the tarpaulin are understandable but the performative event
does not prescribe a specific context or content to illustrate any specific
narrative. It is nonsense and at the same time a déjà vu. Philosopher Charles
Sanders Peirce explains that ‘ ‘depth’ or meaning of a symbol is controlled by
its ‘breath’ or reference’ (Anderson 1984, p.463), allowing it to be
recognizable in different ways simultaneously.

A rope is as much a thought as a thought is

Lambros Malafouris, a Research and Teaching Fellow in Creativity, Cognition

and Material Culture, crosses embodied, metaphorical theories with objects in
particular and suggests the mind can be found in between the actor and the
object. This material engagement theory, as he calls it, was important for my
practice in that it helped verify the proposal that I was working with concepts
through the objects. Allen and Malafouris both quote Daniel Miller when
referencing that objects should not be considered simply as material artifacts
or symbols that signify dramatic meaning, but that they act as a trigger that
‘makes possible the immaterial existence of thought and emotion’ (Allen
2013, p.124). Malafouris sites Andy Clark’s term of surrogate material
structures as ‘any kind of real-world structure, artifact, or material
assemblage that is used to stand in for, or take the place of, some aspect of
some target situation, thereby allowing human reason to reach out to that
which is absent, distant or otherwise unavailable’ (Malafouris 2013, p.104).
Here, material engagement theory excitingly blends objects with a
metaphoric surrogacy making possible a way to understand nontangible
things. Utilizing cognitive science studies in my practice to explore immaterial
things like time, love and thought through metaphor by enacting them as
tangible objects appears congruent with Clark’s supposition.

Moving Around X utilizes movement of qualities to temporarily create

meaning between the object and the body that is polyvalent and subtle. The
drive behind the work was to remember that, as Malafouris states, ‘the
material sign, (…) does not stand for a concept but rather substantiates a
concept’ (2013, p.97). I feel the research undertaken in this practice and
work was a successful entanglement between cognitive science studies and
art, demonstrating how conceptual metaphor theories could be questioned
and explored in performance.

By Michael O’Connor

Samuel Feldhandler manipulates rope to conjure a tangible thinking through lines and
pathways with a thin black rope. Photo: Nellie de Boer 2015.

This article is based on:

Love-Empathy-Metaphor AMCh Practice Reports, Master of Arts Choreography

Studies: Theater School-Dance, Amsterdam School of the Arts, 2015

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