Artist as observer: observational drawing, plein-air painting and photographic capture in its many forms are established and well-recognised tools of the artistic process.
A participant observer is a term more commonly associated with an anthropologist who seeks qualitative data on particular human behaviour patterns by immersing themselves in the observed behaviour. It is also associated with experimental archaeology, where researchers immerse themselves in a re-created past, gaining knowledge and insight from the sensory experience of physical engagement.
Embodied cognition, as described by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is perception, knowledge and thinking, fundamentally rooted in the body’s physical interaction with the world. While this is taken from a 1945 philosophy paper, there is extensive contemporary work around the idea. Recent developments in AI for embodied cognition in robots are moving from reprogrammed patterns to learning by doing.
So, where does art come into this?
These terms, when used in relation to art, most often reference audience management or therapeutic practice. I want to take the terms back to a closer association with their usage by anthropologists and archaeologists.
I know from experience that physical engagement in making works better when intellectual word-based knowledge is suppressed. For example, when producing a drawing of a face, focusing on the shapes and proportions of what is in front of you gives a more accurate representation than thinking, `Now I’ll draw another eye here.’ I’ve seen the advice not to reduce what you are drawing to labels work many times, and there is much written about it.
I consider the process of making and physically engaging with the world as wordless thought (embodied cognition) and so extend this idea to participant observer. By physically engaging in work associated with an area of interest, I explore and extend my understanding in ways that are missed by text and word-based understanding. That does not devalue word-based knowledge or the parallel reduction of an art-based representation or narrative; it rebalances and reminds us of the vitality of embodied cognition, knowledge, and thinking that is fundamentally rooted in the body’s physical interaction with the world.
Recently, I’ve been involved in a conservation work.
TCV, The Conservation Volunteers, enable people throughout the UK to engage with protecting our natural environment. I joined a recent project installing `leaky dams`at Mansers Shaw, Battle. The leaky dams built are human versions of the dams that beavers instinctively build: they restrict the flow of floodwater and increase opportunities for biodiversity.
As a participant observer, the quality of connection to the landscape is far more intense and complex. Details you might miss on visual inspection suck your wellies into the soft sediments of the inner curve of the gill. You feel the texture of the mud, smell the decomposition of organic matter, and hear the subtle changes in the chatter of the water. Looking up to the opposite bank, you find yourself deeply immersed in the idea of the flow of water, land, and time; reeling it backwards and forward like a video in your mind.
Participating in a group activity brings multiple perspectives and constant shifts in patterns, as varied experiences and skills are applied to a joint task. What can be achieved and how it is achieved change as the group works together. Working with your hands and body in a natural environment to bring about positive change with a group of like- minded individuals is a physical pleasure in its own right.
The result is a far more complex, interwoven, internal sense of the landscape, and the nature of understanding is academic, participant and embodied.
I had many reasons for doing this, one of which was to engage in embodied cognition, documenting the project as a participant observer. The aim was not to produce art, rather to influence future work by developing my understanding of both textual and embodied cognition… and play with some camera and audio technology.
