Affect as multifaceted and active:
Key to my understanding of affect and how I might work with/through it has been recognising that it is not one thing (or even a thing at all), but part of what makes us ‘experience’. Massumi, describing affect, suggests that you must accept ‘the manyness of its forms’ if you are going to understand it as, ‘not a thing,… [but] a dimension of every event’ (Massumi, 2009, p3), returning to Spinoza’s definition of affect as an “ability to affect or be affected”, as ‘two facets of the same event’. This is picked up by Deleuze as the power to affect and be affected, governing a felt transition, a change in state, that ‘what is felt is the quality of the experience’. Massumi states that ‘Starting from affect in this way is an invitation for an indefinitely constructive thinking of embodied, relational becoming.’ (Massumi, 2009, p3). My investigation of how I can construct for embodied response considers the possibilities of activating spaces so ‘event’ can occur, and considering affect as a multifaceted dimension of experience in which there are many ‘bodies’ that need to come together, Bennett (2010 p23) states that ‘Spinoza believes, for example, that the more kinds of bodies with which a body can affiliate, the better, "as the body is more capable of being affected in many ways and of affecting external bodies . . . so the mind is more capable of thinking"‘. This understanding of the multifacetedness of affect informs my approaches, I explore this further particularly in the reflection on the exhibitions made in Dyffryn materials and About chapters.
Links and voice text:
“This research is a meeting of elements, this survey aims to introduce and outline the ‘field’ that informed this exploration, including visual and sound art/ists and theory, philosophical, historical and fiction texts. The chapter begins with an outline of art (in its broadest sense) practice and theory considered. Followed by an overview of ‘affect theory’ as the central theoretical concern of this enquiry, where I position myself within this, and then a summary of pertinent criticisms. I go on to describe the areas of affect that particularly inform this praxis research, namely the trickiness of writing ‘affect’, that it is always multifaced and active, ‘microshocks’ (Leibnitz through Massumi) as triggers of affective response, how affect is transmitted and the notion of ‘The Smooth and Striated’ (from Deleuze and Guattari) which informs my ‘scaffolding’ approach across all the work.”
There is a further brief voice and text element at the end, which links this survey into the rest of the thesis.
Microperceptions/shocks:
As the early practice research progressed, ‘microperceptions/shocks’ come to the fore in relation to informing/triggering bodily response and opening a ‘view’ of links between ‘microperceptions’/affect and our experiencing of our everyday sonic environment. Deleuze and Guattari (2004 p8) use “microperception”, Massumi “microshock” and the 17th century philosopher Leibniz, (who originates the idea) “petites/small perceptions”. Massumi describes them as; ‘not (a) smaller perception; it’s a perception of a qualitatively different kind. It’s something that is felt without registering consciously. It registers only in its effects’ (Massumi 2009, p2). I describe ‘microperceptions’ and how they inform my developing thinking in the chapter The Cairngorms. Massumi clearly links the bodily trigger of affect to microshocks, saying: ‘Affect for me is inseparable from the concept of shock. It doesn’t have to be a drama. It’s really more about micro-shocks, the kind that populate every moment of our lives. For example, a change in focus, or a rustle at the periphery of vision’ (Massumi, 2009, p3). This ‘rustle and shift’ becomes what I am ‘looking for’, extrapolating ‘microperceptions’ as ‘elements’ in the sonic environment, stuff to gather and work with. I link these with multielement/multifaceted shifting, moving points of encounters, these writings bring a sense of the sonic spaces we inhabit, and the potential spaces I can ‘construct’. I merge elements of theory/practice/praxis in a way that shifts materials from a representation/recording to a new and active encounter through a dynamic process of exploration
Visual/sound art/ists, theatre and writing:
As an artist/researcher it is pertinent to outline experiencing of art works and discussions, prior to and within this process, from which thinking has arisen, including: Chris Watson and BJNilsen’s work ‘storm’ live (Arnolfini:2007/Touch Records, 2006) which included approaches from across field/wildlife sound recording, music, sound broadcast techniques, and sound art; the influence of Toshiya Tsunoda’s, ‘Extract from Field Recording Archive’Series 1-3, (1993-2018) which was conceived as a catalogue of physical vibrations; and the way Ed Atkins’s work ‘Bastards’ (2014 [Exhibition] Palais De Tokyo, Paris) informed how I might begin to make ‘spaces’ in Early Tests & Experiments; and an approach to layering information and stimulus considered in Coventry following seeing Elizabeth Price’s ‘Felt Tip’ (2018 [Exhibition] Nottingham Contemporary).
I participated in practical workshops with Chris Watson and Jez Riley French across Early Test & Experiments and The Cairngorms, these included much discussion and sharing of ideas. I worked alongside Stans Cafe to gather materials in About and reflect on a later work of theirs in relation to their interest in ‘making dramatic’ the commonplace/everyday, whereas I am interested in its ‘nondramatic’ qualities. There have also been discussions with fellow PhD researchers, staff at Birmingham City University, and many other artists.
I consider sound art theory including: R. Murray Schafer’s description of the symphonies all around us all the time in The Soundscape Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (1994), particularly in Early Test & Experiments and The Cairngorms; Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle’s In the Field: The Art of Field Recording (2013) and On Listening (2013) have supported and informed my processes of working across the practice; and Salome Voegelin’s Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art (2010) developed thinking in relation to sound and memory.
Reading Yves Lomax’s Sounding the Event: Escapades in Dialogue and Matters of Art, Nature and Time (2005) extended my understanding of event; its properties of only there in that moment, and once named or acknowledged is past, is key to my approaches to activating spaces, and correlates with my bodily sensing of ‘things’. This links with the ‘new materialism’ outlined by Jane Bennett in ‘Vibrant Matter’ (2010) – and by Dolphijn and van der Tuin in New materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (2012) in that New Materialism in its, “searches for how matter comes into agential realism, how matter is materialized in it. It is interested in speeds and slowness’, in how the event unfolds according to the in- between, according to intra-action. New materialism argues that we know nothing of the (social) body until we know what it can do. It agrees with studying the multiplicity of modes that travel, natureculture as the perpetual flow it has always already been”. (Dolphijn and van der Tuin, 2012 p. 113). New Materialism tangles event, affect and the power of ‘things’ to create these and be active in what happens, my thinking is based in an ‘activeness of everything’, that stuff as the material of the world and affects, is affected by everything else.
Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2002) has influenced my thinking, influenced my recognising and consideration of the role of my ‘desire’, supported my experiencing of transitory moments, a ‘just then’, and gather parts of those and work with them, which developed into my understanding that experiencing and desire generates in me a frisson, an indicator of my own affective response. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. (2019), has facilitated understanding the importance of gathering in my practice/research, informing a clearer understand my own approach, and my reading of Maurizio Lazzarato’s outline of Vertov’s approach to film making, Videophilosophy (Chapter 1, The War Machine of the Kino-Eye and the Kinoki Against the Spectacle) has informed my understanding of ‘my’ place in my process.
Capacity to memory and transmission:
Affect and microperceptions are linked to a capacity or potential for active/event/encounter and so transmission or movement through ‘bodies’. Lambert (2013, p90) outlines Leibniz’s description of crowds and the transmission through bodies and actions of an individual which when taken up by a group make a bigger action, Massumi states an interest in political microshock/affect and uses the example of how most of us react to an alarm such as a fire bell: the small actions of individuals come together with others to create a group response. He talks of affective politics as inductive (causative) and that ‘Bodies can be inducted into, or attuned to, certain regions of tendency, futurity, and potential’ (Massumi 2009, p3) but that because of our individual ‘previous cuing’ there will not be a uniformity of responses.
Shouse states that ‘every form of communication where facial expressions, respiration, tone of voice and posture are perceptible can transmit affect, and that list includes nearly every form of mediated communication other than the one you are currently experiencing’ (2005). He suggests that the power of affect lies in its abstract, unformed and unstructured nature and that this is what makes affect transmittable. This thinking supported my intention to put something of my affecting encounter into another space, so that another body might experience it.
These potentials/capacities, fed my exploration into utilising my affect-based responses (an affect Heuristic) to gather affecting, active, stuff in one place/space which might be constructed into another. These are materials with potentials to move through/between and be influenced by bodies, which can form active spaces of event/experience, and be further affected/activated through the ‘cueing’ that happens in an individual’s encounter.
The ‘cuing’ of an individual’s encounter advances the considering of affect/microperception aligns with the making of memory and its later recall. Massumi says there is ‘no such thing as starting from scratch’ (Massumi, 2009, p3) things are always related to what’s happened before. When the quality of the experience is felt, that ‘transition’ leaves a trace, a memory; therefore it’s not restricted to that one occurrence, Massumi (2009, p2) states that ‘the capacitation of the body as it’s gearing up for a passage towards a diminished or augmented state is completely bound up with the lived past of the body. That past includes what we think of as subjective elements, such as habits, acquired skills, inclinations, desires, even willings, all of which come in patterns of repetition. This doesn’t make the event any less rooted in the body.’
Our reactions to a future affecting encounter are modified by earlier events that travel forward with us and in a region of relation; things will play out differently every time. Making our experiences and how we carry them forward, part of an ongoing dynamic event that is ever-shifting and altering and that when we ‘meet’ something our experience of it is particular to that moment; we can never meet it in quite the same way again; it will be ‘a reactivation of the past in passage toward a changed future ’( Massumi, 2009, p2).
Into the rest:
“The elements ‘gathered’ here of theory, and related texts, exhibitions, and artists work and thinking, are added to in the next Methodology chapter. They are then ‘worked with’ through the ‘doing’ and entangled with my embodied research/making processes within the practice/praxis chapters. Things come to the fore and drop back through the journey of the research, but these ‘elements’ are always somewhere ‘in mind’ as I work.”
My position and concerns:
I (if allowed) suggest, as a simple portrayal, affectus as the ‘affect’ (experienced) and affectio as the 'modification’ or shift, through interaction, in active power, of a body. In many ways my use of the term ‘affect’ is a conflation of both, and I am thinking with the ideas from Spinoza, Deleuze et al, while walking beside feminist new materialisms. I am linking ‘microperceptions’ (Massumi, from Leibnitz) to the multitude of elements in the quotidian (visual and) sonic landscapes we inhabit and encounter, and exploring how the bodily, non-concise knowings and response from/to these can bring us into relation with spaces, trigger links and memories, and bring us to a place of being bodily embroiled in an environment.
An overview of affect:
Overview:
Theories of affect originate with the 17th century philosopher Spinoza. These were expanded on by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychiatrist Felix Guattari (second half of C20th), and further expounded by contemporary social theorist and philosopher Brian Massumi. Spinoza used two terms - affectus and affectio. Deleuze suggests ‘terminological caution’ is needed when using these terms, and says ‘when I use the word “affect” it refers to Spinoza's affectus, and when I say the word “affection,” it refers to affectio’. There is often a confusion between affect, feelings and emotions, Massumi argues for a more defined split between affect and emotion than Spinoza, suggesting that it does not denote a personal feeling, rather it is ‘an ability to affect and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act’ (2004, pxvii).
The distinction between feeling, emotion and affect is clarified by Shouse (2005, p1):
- feeling; ‘a sensation that has been checked against previous experiences and labelled’.
- emotion; ‘the projection / display of a feeling’
- affect; ‘a non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential’; ‘affect is what makes feelings feel. It is what determines the intensity (quantity) of a feeling (quality), as well as the background intensity of our everyday lives”.
Shouse’s description of affect being in ‘the half-sensed, on-going hum of quality/quantity that we experience when we are not really attuned to any experience at all (2005, p2) speaks very directly to my experiencing of our shifting, fluctuating everyday aural environments, and the ways it informs our interactions with our environment. Our brains filter much of this out of our ‘consciousness’; we relegate it as ‘background’, however sound constantly ‘tells’ us things, modifying and informing how we interrelate with the world around us.
Two branches of affect theory are often described (Truran, 2022, p26), one coalesces around Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi, the other siting within feminist, queer and cultural theory, where Lauren Berlant identifies the “multiple affective registers of collective life” (Berlant & Prosser, 2011b, p183) and a “materialist context for affect theory” (Berlant, 2011a, p14), and Sara Ahmed traces specific emotions through a phenomenological orientation as “the affect of one surface upon another, an affect that leaves its mark or trace” (Ahmed, 2014, p6). This trace connects lived experience, emotion, and affective contact as “we are affected by ‘what’ we come into contact with” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 2)
Affect, problems and criticisms:
I am conscious of, and interested in, the difficulty of pinning down and describing affect. It is a concept that in part sits outside linguistics/text, and because affect has been adopted by many fields including social and cognitive sciences, neurology, psychology, art and media theory, there is not a consensus on its meanings or usage.
Within the ‘affective turn’ there is, as with many ideas that challenged generally accepted conventions, no consensus about its usefulness. ‘Affect theory’ is described as a broad field and often (Gregg, Seigworth, 2010 & Turan 2022) it is criticised for being a Eurocentric approach and Leys (2011) suggests it recreates a body/mind split, a duality because of affect’s primacy of the body over the mind, criticising Massumi for an ‘either or logic’. I am not persuaded that Massumi separates mind/body; I suggest that, in speaking of intentionality and bodily reactions, there is a recognition of conscious and nonconscious action. Wetherall (2012) proposes that the route I am taking, of practice being part of considering/working with affect, may be a way into understanding.
Criticisms of writing on affect[1] include that many people write affect as personal experiencing, describing their own physical, bodily, responsive mode, labelling this as a problem of ‘subjective descriptions’. (van Alphen, Jirsa, (eds) 2019). I suggest that there is a problem if we say, “this is how I experienced it, so this is how this is”, but in acknowledging (my) subjectivity, and describing my experiencing autoethnographically can share an understanding of it.
While acknowledging criticisms, I do think that affect theory is key to exploring and understanding pre/nonconscious experiencing, and positing that this is how we are ‘involved’ with our quotidian sonic environments it must be central to my developing approaches to making installations of affecting atmospheres with potential for moments of embodied response, and through embodied research methods. I will need to ‘hear’ and ‘listen for/to’ my bodily reactions, exploring affect as activator, through its activation of ‘me’. I experience no split into dualities of body/mind, and affect theory positively releases a way of having scaffolds of intent to support the embodied sensing processes. Additionally, it aids in the understanding of a ‘usefulness’ for the particularities of my subjective situated knowledge as a crip/neurodivergent researcher/artist.
Writing affect:
I consider how affect can be written, and note the commonalities of the problems between writing affect and sound. To paraphrase Heidegger (2010 p158), we don’t hear sounds, we hear the things making the sounds ‘the creaking wagon’, ‘The north wind’; but we understand how “creaking” sounds and the different sounds of wind, although we don’t easily have language to describe them. Affect is often described through a personal experiencing of what it ‘does’ to an individual and there is a difficulty in describing the concept of affect as it could be said to sit outside our linguistic deconstructive frameworks, and ‘cannot be fully realised in language, because affect is always prior to and outside of consciousness’, (Shouse, 2005)
Texts such as ‘Ordinary Affects’ (Stewart, 2007) and ‘The Hundreds’ (Berlant, Stewart,2019) have extended my approaches to writing with and for affect. Both books are structured in ‘chunks’ under short headings, an example under the heading ‘potential’ is ‘Fleeting and amorphous, it lives as a residue or resonance in an emergent assemblage of disparate forms and realms of life.’ (Stewart, 2007, p.21), which for me is prose that brings ‘something’ alive more than most texts do.
Through tests I have found chunks or ‘elements’ of texts (more manageable for 'this bodymind') to have potentials in my writing: they can be shifted and moved in editing and reading, and be moved through and linked by the reader in ways informed by own experiences and choice, resonating with my practice/making as they are more porous and slippy, and allow for an attunement with things that are occurring, a ‘something’ that is active in that moment.
Smooth and striated - scaffolds and structures:
I consider Deleuze and Guattari’s Smooth and Striated spaces (2004, Plateau 1440) in relation to our everyday aural landscape, and the friction between methods, processes, and structures. Smooth space is described as ‘filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things. It is a space of affects, more than one of properties’ (Deleuze / Guattari, 2004 p501), reflecting my thoughts on how our sonic environment ‘is’, and this is considered in my praxis approaches to making spaces of embodied encounter. Haecceities lead me to quiddities, which are looked at in more detail in the Coventry practice chapter, and then recognising that the specificities, the ‘thisness’ and ‘whatness’ in the materials hold potential to link us with prior experience/memory. Smooth and Striated also facilitated my consideration of how ‘things’ that seem irreducible can work in ‘collaboration’, informing my use of a (temporary) ‘structure’ to support the unstructured/unstructurable as a way of ‘managing’ this barely tangible stuff.