Presence and Coherence

April 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

From my notes:

Presence is a function of coherence. To be present is to maximally engaged in the specific activity to hand and to refrain from engaging in other, possibly conflicting activities.

Non-conscious bodily activity is structured through the organisation of the proprioceptive sense, which allows for effective behaviour to be carried out holistically and appropriate to the demands of the particular environment. So, for example, the proprioceptive organisation which allows an effective swimming stroke to be executed (unconsciously and holistically) is different to that which allows for effective sprinting.

I can’t remember which panel this paper was part of, but it seems to link to the paper on Zhan Zhuang I reported on earlier.

Posted in Coherence, Conference Abstract, Performance, Presence, Proprioception | No Comments »

Attention Shoppers: Everybody Please Rise

April 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

A spectator has the unique power to wield attention. The ability to capture and hold the attention of spectators is a desirable skill for any performer to have, and is part of a raft of skills and tools utilised by performers which collectively result in ’stage presence’.

From the point of view of cognitive linguistics, when we use these metaphors we are not simply making poetic allusions in place of more symbolically structured knowledge or transcendent reason. Rather in using these and related metaphors to describe the performance event we are relating the formal structure of thinking itself. From this perspective, almost all thinking is metaphorical and these metaphors (which ultimately are sourced from bodily experience) overlap and inter-relate to form what we think of as bodies of knowledge. This paper will use the cognitive linguistic approach developed by Lakoff and Johnson and others to excavate the metaphors and image schemas associated with attention in relation to performance. Particular attention (sic) will be given to the use of metaphors used in performer training as a possible means of empowering the performer and developing stage presence.

Posted in Attention, Cognitive Linguistics, Conference Abstract, Johnson, Mark, Lakoff, George, Performance, Presence, Schema | No Comments »

Be. Here. Now.

April 28th, 2006 Fred McVittie

For the purposes of this paper, presence will be regarded as primarily a spatial concept. That is, the degree of presence demonstrated by an entity is found to be proportional to the degree to which that entity may be said to have a single distinct location in space. Following the logic of Egginton in ‘How the world became a stage’ (2003), this presence functions as a replacement for subjectivity as the authenticator of being. Therefore to have presence is ‘to be, there’. To occupy a point is space (not to be partially there, not to be elsewhere, to be in that place only.)

Posted in Conference Abstract, Performance, Presence, Space, Theatre | No Comments »

Folk Physics and Performer Training

April 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The first part of this paper will look at a range of training regimes associated with theatrical and public performance forms, paying particular attention to techniques which appear to enhance ‘presence’. Particular attention will be paid to body-based training practices. From this initial research key ideas and terms will be extracted that use metaphors which are drawn from and have accurate meaning in the physical sciences; terms such as energy and focus, and ideas such as ‘being centered’ and ‘extension’.

Keywords: Folk Physics, Naive Physics, Performance, Metaphor, Embodiment.

(Time did not actually permit any practical demonstration of these ideas, but I could see some relationship between these ideas and the content of the ‘Details of Excellence’ workshop I went to.)

Posted in Conference Abstract, Metaphor, Naive Physics, Presence, Story, Training | No Comments »

Language and Being: Centred

May 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

An aim of much artistic, performative practice, as well as spiritual practices which promise ‘enlightenment’, is to go beyond (or before) conceptualisation and fully experience what the senses offer, with minimum filtration and organisation by the rational mind. Artists know this principle in the maxim ‘draw what you see, not what you know’, and in the field of theology, Rahner refers to this as ‘unthematic experience’ and associates it with a non-objective contact with the divine. An important aspect of realising this aim is to fully occupy the space and time that one is in; avoiding distributing one’s consciousness by thinking of the past or the future, or smearing that consciousness across space by imagining oneself to be anywhere else but exactly here, precisely now. The common term for this full occupation of personal space and time is presence, or being centred.

A significant obstacle to overcome in any attempt to be centred is the inevitable decentering of oneself that happens in much language use. We refer to ‘ourselves’, as if those ’selves’ were some object that we possessed and that was in some way outside of us. We nominate ourselves as an object in our sentences, even when we use ‘I’. This usage, and the conception that goes along with it, inevitably places us at a remove from the centre of our own experience. We talk, and think, of ourselves from a position that is eccentric. If our aim is to claim the centre with all of the sensual subjective power that comes with that claim, then we need to watch our language.

The following exercises are highly recommended.

• Exercise One: Avoid using the following words. I, me, myself.
• Exercise Two: Shut the fuck up.

Posted in Centre, Enlightenment, Exercises, Performance, Presence, Rahner, Karl, Spirituality, Training | No Comments »

Overlapping concepts using the metaphor of light

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It is proposed that a key metaphor linking consciousness, presence, creativity, and enlightenment is that of light. Metaphorically they concepts all draw upon the image of moving into the light and out of the darkness.

1. The ‘light’ of consciousness is contrasted with the eldritch (and possibly forbidding) darkness of the unconscious.
2. Illumination is the stage of a creative process when a breakthrough or solution emerges into the light of consciousness, often characterised as a ‘light bulb moment’, or a ‘flash’ of inspiration.
3. Presence is the theatrical phenomenon of being entirely there, in the light of the present moment, (and often in the literal spotlight), as opposed to being partially or entirely elsewhere; in the wings, in the dressing room, offstage.
4. Enlightenment is the state of being in which one can see clearly through the shadows of illusion and ego that make up the world and the self.

This overlap of conceptual structure will be discussed, particularly in relation to the well known metaphorical relationship between seeing and knowing.

Posted in Consciousness, Creativity, Enlightenment, Illumination, Knowledge, Light, Metaphor, Presence, Seeing, Theatre | No Comments »

A Folk Physics of Presence

June 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Presence is a feature of performance, particularly theatre performance, which is notoriously difficult to define, and appallingly difficult to teach. As a quality it is instantly recognisable, yet seems to be additional to simple technique or skill. In fact presence is what distinguishes an excellent performance from a display of skill. In some ways presence is analogous to the condition in sport of being ‘in the zone’, in which the athlete has an unproblematic sense of mastery, which shows itself as peak performance on the field. It is an article of faith in many sports that at the peak of the profession skills and technique are a necessary but insufficient factor, what wins or loses is the mindset of the athlete on the day. It is the athlete that is in the zone, that is most ‘present’ that wins.

The challenge facing the teaching of presence is to identify the mindset of those who do have presence and reproduce it in a training regime.

Many actor training systems attempt this through physical and mental exercise routines which are intended to have certain specific effects on the actor. Some of these effects are simply physical, the actor becomes more supple, more in control of their posture and gestures etc. In addition, however, some of these training techniques seem to be intended to subtly alter the mindset of the performer, particularly the subjectively experienced relationship of the actor to the wider world in which they feel themselves to be lodged.

The body of knowledge, or ’science’, which articulates this subjective relationship between actor and world is not quite the same as the science of the objectively real world studied by the rational sciences. The physical laws that the actor must internalise (to the point where they become embodied common sense, much as gravity becomes embodied common sense to us all), are more akin to a kind of ‘naive’ or ‘folk physics’.

Posted in Acting, Exercises, Naive Physics, Performance, Presence, Training | No Comments »

Presence, Being, and Charisma

June 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It will be claimed that the concept of charisma is identified in one or more of four processes;

• Celebrity recognisability - in which charisma is a function of the degree to which the possessor has gained public and/or media attention.
• Supernatural power - in which the possessor is assumed to have some gift, energy, or magic that confers charisma upon them.
• Actual authority - where the possessor of charisma also has access to material resources, knowledge, force, etc that is desirable.
• Beauty/attractiveness - in which the possessor of charisma also possesses other, less mysterious, attractions.

The notion of presence within performance (and in non-theatrical contexts) will be related to these various processes of charisma production. It will be proposed that there are techniques to produce presence/charisma in performance in which the embodied signs of these processes are manifested.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Energy, Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Attention Physics

June 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Attracting attention is a physical response to an environmental or social situation. In certain situations it is necessary, if not evolutionarily adaptive, to be able to call attention to oneself; when drowning for example, or in an attempt to attract a sexual partner or advertise one’s prowess in a particular field. Whilst this might obviously entail gross motor actions in a deliberate attempt to attract attention (shouting, broad movements etc), it is inevitable that other, more subtle, behaviours also exist for the management of attention. These behaviours include such minimal and largely unconscious proprioceptive actions as eye gaze direction, length of pauses in speech, syncopation of physical and vocal patterns, etc. Given that such fine-grained behaviour is usually beyond the reach of conscious control, it is likely that these are better controlled through the adopting of an overall mental ‘attitude’, and using this attitude or mindset to organise proprioception. The succesful organisation of proprioception around an attitude of attractiveness results in the physical manifestation of ‘presence’.

In order to develop the ability to attract attention in this way, and to develop presence, it may be necessary to learn techniques for the subtle orientation of the physical body such that the necessary attitude is produced. It is likely that such techniques would take the form of holistic exercises intended to allow the embodiment of such an attitude and its realization through the control mechanisms of the proprioceptive senses.

Posted in Attention, Embodiment, Exercises, Presence, Proprioception, Training | No Comments »

Out of Body: In Body. Being Present

June 24th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Presence, in the sense of theatrical attractiveness or charisma, is a phenomena which is the exact opposite of an OOBE or ‘out of body experience’ (see Metzinger). In the OOBE the sense of self is decoupled from the somatosensory body and instead relies solely on internal maps and models for orientation in space etc. In the condition of enhanced being that we refer to as theatrical presence the sense of self is very firmly lodged within the somatosensory body, (or rather, there is a near-total match between internal model and somatosensory body).

Posted in Charisma, Metzinger, Thomas, Out of body experience, Performance, Presence, Theatre | No Comments »

The Body as a Vehicle of Telepresence

June 25th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It has been demonstrated that the sense of being present within a virtually simulated environment, a phenomena usually referred to as telepresence, correlates with the ability to effectively carry out a task in that environment. That is, the more one feels present the better one performs.(1) Given this, it may be useful to consider the unaugmented human body not as integrated with psyche but rather as a vehicle for the psyche to occupy. In this understanding, the psyche becomes ‘telepresent’ through its immersion in the environment and sensorium of the body. A performer working with this conception of the relationship between mind and body should be able to better understand the need for presence, as well as being able to interpret exercises and information for the enhancement of that presence (a term which is often shrouded in mysticism) in terms of an immersive somatosensory experience. The radical Cartesian dualism that this implies is distinctly unfashionable (although it is an axiom of ‘human science’ and apparently a ‘human universal’) but may prove useful in explaining and potentially enhancing the sense of presence which, in theatrical performance contexts, correlates with the carrying out of tasks which increase charisma and the ability to attract attention.

1. Welch, Robert B. - How Can We Determine if the Sense of Presence Affects Task Performance? Presence, October 1999, Vol. 8, No. 5, Pages 574-577

Posted in Charisma, Dualism, Exercises, Performance, Presence, Telepresence, Training, Welch, Robert B. | No Comments »

Unconscious Presence

July 9th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Theatrical presence or charisma is not primarily an attribute we can comprehend through conscious measurement or logical processes of deduction. We usually get a sense of the charisma possessed by a performer on a non-cosnscious level, although we may be able to bring that sense to conscious awareness. This suggests that techniques for the enhancement of presence and the development of charisma would involve the learning of strategies for self-presentation which similarly operate and communicate on a non-conscious level.

Posted in Charisma, Presence, Theatre, Unconscious | No Comments »

Presence and ‘Presence’

July 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Presence (in the sense of ‘telepresence’) is the cognitive immersion by a human operator in an environment which is not the ‘actual’ environment occupied by their physical body. A prototypical example is the virtual presence one can experience within a VR setup, although partial immersion is common in a range of new and traditional media; the novel, the play, the movie etc. More generally, presence is the immersion of oneself in the reality of lived experience. Immersion, or even absorption or dissolution, can be seen as the unproblematic lowering of the boundaries between the individual and the environment, such that the person and the environment are seamlessly connected. For virtual immersion, and correspondingly a feeling of ‘being present’ to occur in non-actual environments, the experience should be as veridical as possible, which means it should produce an integrated embodied experience. Non-immersion, in novels, VR, or in lived experience, gives one the disorienting (or just plain boring) experience that life is elsewhere.

The experience of ‘presence’ within the context of theatre is also a function of a boundary, but in this case it is a boundary produced by the fact that performance is almost always ontologically separate from lived experience, and the performer themselves are almost always ontologically (and physically) also separate. This separation conveys the very strong message that the entities and events are beyond a boundary corresponding to the boundary separating the non-immersed individual audience member and their environment. In this sense, the logic of theatrical performance automatically mitigates against the audience having an immersive experience, or of seeing the ‘presence’ of the performer. Not only is the stage activity fictional, it is also ‘unreal’. The various compositional and scenographic conventions which theatre history represents can be seen as solutions to the first problem, that of the anti-immersive nature of theatre. The extent to which a performer may be said to ‘have presence’ is a function of how well they are able to also cross this ontological barrier between the unreal and the real.

Posted in Boundary, Fiction, Performance, Presence, Telepresence, Theatre | No Comments »

Creativity and Presence

July 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

There seem to be two key strands of concern that I am developing an interest in, at least to the extent that I keep finding myself at presentations concerning these ideas; these are presence and creativy. I guess something I would like to do would be to find a way of thinking of them as part of the same gestalt, or having a similarity of structure. There does seem to be a relationship of shared metaphor, particularly in relation to the metaphor of light, which (sort of) figures in both concepts. For now, I am assuming there is a link between theatrical presence (i.e. an assessment of presence carried out be an outside observer or audience) and presence as signifying an individual, phenomenological feeling of being exactly here, precisely now.

In performances which have presence, the moment of continuous becoming which marks the ‘being in the moment’ of performance, can be considered as a constant ’stepping into the light’, a state of wakefulness and breaking consciousness.

In creative processes there is (usually) a moment in which connections are made, solutions are revealed, intuitive leaps are made, and this moment is often termed illumination. In this case the light is that of conscious awareness. There is a feeling that the creative process has been proceeding in the darkness of unconscious processing, and that the end result is forced up or brought forth into the light.

In terms of training, assuming that these metaphors have any validity, there is clearly a benefit to be gained by both performers seeking to improve their presence and others wishing to improve their creativity by working on this shared moment of enlightenment.

Posted in Consciousness, Creativity, Light, Performance, Presence, Story, Theatre, Walking | No Comments »

Space and the Now of Presence

July 28th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Our consciousness of the past, the present, and the future uses radically different cognitive correlates and processes, and this difference is tied up with the relationship between consciousness and space. Our consciousness uses imagination, in different ways, to access the past and the future, whereas our consciousness of the present has no need of imagination; perception and awareness are sufficient. This difference between being conscious of an imagined past or future, and being conscious within a non-imagined, experienced present is revealed in the different relationship to space (and time) that our consciousness of the present has when compared to our consciousness of memories or predictions.

When we share space and time with others we may not (cannot) share the same memory or imagined future; our bodies occupy the same small area of space but our memories and imaginings of the future are widely disparate and radically different. The present, however, is not disparate, and all our presents are very similar. The present is in the room with us; is the room with us. We are present together in space and time and have a shared experience of it (with only minor perspectival differences). Space, time, and consciousness of present experience, what might be called ‘awareness’ or ‘presence’ are therefore co-extensive, and in all likelihood, identical.

Posted in Consciousness, Presence, Space, Time | No Comments »

Metaphors of Partial Presence

August 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Although the fort da logic of perception and experience suggests that an entity is either present or absent (there or not there), in actuality we seem to be able to conceive of presence/being as a property which has more than a binary function, but which can exist as a continuum. The cognitive facility to conceive of entities as partial, which is clearly an abstraction, is achieved through metaphorical mapping from concrete experiences in which entities appear to reduce their level of presence. The key metaphors for this partial presence are; distance, fragmentation, and transparency.

Posted in Metaphor, Perception, Presence | No Comments »

Performance and Mind-Reading

September 2nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

A significant aspect of being human is the ability to ascribe agency to other humans (and occasionally non-humans); a faculty sometimes referred to as ‘mind reading’. This consists of the ascription of various abilities to the agent, including intentions, beliefs, desires etc. These abilities are not part of a mechanistic paradigm and do not figure in most of the nuts and bolts psychology literature. This ability to ‘mind read’ is one element which makes up what Philip Auslander refers to as ‘liveness’, the ontologically distinct (although problematised) phenomena of live performance which distinguishes it from recorded or ‘mediatised’ phenomena. To attribute liveness to an entity requires an attribution of agency (even if the entity is dead, as opposed to simply inert. A corpse possesses more ‘liveness’ than an inert object). Other elements which vary the extent to which an event or entity displays ‘liveness’ include mediation (being present, being telepresent), empathy (the simulated sharing of a biological narrative) etc. The binary that Auslander set up erases the distinction between the various elements which make up liveness.

Posted in Agency, Auslander, Philip, Performance, Presence, Telepresence | No Comments »

Corpuscles of Now

September 27th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Husserl makes the observation that a perception is not simply a static, atemporal image, but also contains the dimension of time. Each percept contains a retention of the ‘just past’ and a protention of what is about to occur. Perceptual presence, therefore, is not ‘punctual’; it is rather that now, not-now, and not-yet-now exist in what Husserl refers to as a ‘horizontal gestalt’.

To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, ‘we are all beings that live for a medium duration of time, experiencing that life in medium-sized moments, midway between femtosecond and cosmological time.

(”Hindu cosmological time cycles represent numerically the life of our solar system and are a comprehensive system of time measurement based upon the sexagesimal number system with units as small as 1/216000 of a day and as large as 3.1104×1014 years.”
http://www.aaronsrod.com/time-cycles/time-cycles-03.html)

Posted in Husserl, Edmund, Perception, Presence, Time | No Comments »

Presence is in the Details

November 7th, 2006 Fred McVittie

‘Presence’ in performance (or the optimisation of that performance) corresponds to a set of behaviours which are finely detailed, multiple, and largely unconscious. In other words, the difference between a performance which has this quality and one which does not is a result of a large number of small nuances in the behaviour of the performer. These might include such physical behaviours as; eye gaze direction, length of pauses in speech, rhythm and timing of gestures, etc. The number, range, and subtlety of these nuances is such that they lie largely outside of the conscious awareness of both the performer and the audience.

Posted in Exercises, Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Presence and Proprioception

November 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The number and complexity of the detailed physical nuances which must be adjusted to improve ‘presence’ is such that this adjustment cannot (usually) be made through the conscious training of each individual nuance. Instead, this adjustment is best carried out by using the more holistic method of the adopting of appropriate body images or physical schemas. As an analogy, one way of learning the correct position of the hands and arms for downhill skiing is to imagine oneself carrying a tray of drinks. This holistic image, when activated in the imagination, organises the proprioception of the hands and arms such that they adopt the correct configuration. Similarly, learning to dance the ‘twist’ (certainly when I was at school in the 1960’s) involved imagining drying one’s back with a towel whilst simultaneously grinding out a cigarette butt under the ball of one’s foot. This combination of physical schema produce a gestalt movement which corresponds to the required dance move. The adjustment of behaviour which produces the peculiar dance of ‘presence’ is most effectively and economically produced by a similar activation of an imagined image; an image which organises the proprioception of the body such that the many subtle detailed actions of the body produce the effect of ‘presence’.

Posted in Presence, Proprioception, Schema | No Comments »

What is ‘Presence’?

November 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

‘Presence’ is an observable condition in which the person displaying this quality is distinguished from others who do not by their ability to attract attention (without apparently doing anything unusual). This quality is often characterised as a ‘power’ (charisma) which is ineffable and makes a direct appeal to intuition rather than to rational analysis.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Intuition, Presence | No Comments »

Presence, Performance, and the Management of Nuance

November 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

One understanding of the term ‘Performance’ is as a moment within all creative processes corresponding to that of ‘illumination’ in Wallas’ model. This understanding has been applied to the process of scientific enquiry (Crease) in which the actual carrying out of an experiment is the ‘performance’. (It is revealing to note that Crease further describes a highly effective scientific experiment as ‘artistic’). If we can allow the term ‘performance’ to adopt this meaning, then it might be useful to consider what another terms/concepts used within the context of theatrical performance might come to mean when given this wider application. One term which lends itself to this consideration might be presence; the theatrical quality of being able to attract attention, also referred to as charisma.

It has been hypothesised elsewhere that presence is a function of a set of behavioural nuances which, taken together, convey a certain impression, even if the exact method of this conveyance is not recognised. We do not routinely note why a certain person possesses charisma, we recognise it non-consciously and feel ourselves affected by it. If we are to take this concept of the mechanisms of presence and apply it more broadly we would be led to conclude that the correlate of presence in non-theatrical creative processes would involve a similar management of subtle nuances. In a scientific process for example, particularly in the ‘performance’ moment of the scientific experiment, presence would consist of an attention to detail that might be thought of as requiring an artistic sensibility.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Crease, Robert, Performance, Presence, Wallas, Graham | No Comments »

Being There: Presence, Space, Metaphor.

November 21st, 2006 Fred McVittie

Presence, however the term is applied, always assumes the idea of Being There. That is, it combines certain assumptions about the nature of Being, with others assumptions about the concept of Thereness, and supports the intuition that Being is intimately connected to concepts of space. It is impossible to consider Being without adding, soto voce, a Being At, or a Being There.

There is locational and spatial, and the Being There of presence similarly assumes this spatial dimension as a metaphor for its ontology. Presence assumes a geography of space, and in so doing, becomes in thrall to the entailments of this metaphor including boundary, direction, level, extension, separation, relationship, division etc. All of these concepts demand the existence of space, contribute toward the structure of space as a concept, and are meaningless in the absence of space.

Posted in Metaphor, Presence, Space | No Comments »

Subjective and Objective Presences

January 6th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Being subjectively ‘present’, i.e. to experience ‘presence’, indicates a phenomenological feeling of locatedness, of being at a particular place and time, and is a feature of virtual reality and teleconferencing applications. In such applications, while one’s actual self (and one’s actual body) may be in one place the technology gives a compelling feeling that one’s self and body are in another place. A successful virtual reality experience is one in which one is ‘immersed’ in the illusion such that it becomes transparent and one can forget that one self is elsewhere.

Being objectively ‘present’ on the other hand is an attribute assigned to a person by someone else. To say a person has ‘presence’ is not only to indicate that their body is in the same room at ourselves, it also suggests that they are present in a way which is variable, and which may confer some power or attractiveness on the person. We also call this phenomena ‘charisma’.

Both these understandings of ‘presence’ ultimately depend on the intuitive dualism that we bring to any experience involving human being. To be subjectively (virtually) present we have to acknowledge a distinction between our body, which may be passive and sensorily deprived, and the consciousness of our sensory experience, which may be active. Successful immersive telepresence allows us to temporarily forget the body and place our consciousness at the centre of a sensory experience which is remote from that body. Similarly, when we say, objectively, that a person has ‘presence’ we are suggesting that not only their body is here but also some aspect of their being or self.

Posted in Centre, Presence, Telepresence | No Comments »

Being Telepresent

January 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie

In order to optimise one’s performance of an activity it is useful to increase the extent to which one is (subjectively) ‘present’, i.e. ‘in the moment’. One strategy for aiding in this process is to re-establish the relationship between self and body such that the automaticity of embodiment is avoided. This involves an initial distancing of oneself from the body through the identification of self with some core, non-corporeal entity such as ‘essence’, ’soul’, ‘core self’ etc, followed by a conscious and whole-hearted re-inhabiting of the body and the senses. Through this process one becomes effectively telepresent in one’s own body. This technique draws upon the intuitive dualism noted by Bloom in ‘Descartes Baby’ in which he notes that the conceptual separation of self and body, however much it may be denied by science and decried by much philosophy, is nevertheless a part of the human condition of consciousness.

Posted in Bloom, Paul, Dualism, Essence, Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Presence and Optimal Performance

January 12th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The concept of being ‘present’, in addition to meaning simply being physically located at a particular place and time, also means being fully psychologically engaged in the immediate activity one is carrying out or the experience one is having. This is also referred to as being ‘in the moment’, ‘in the zone’, not half asleep, not projecting oneself into the past or future etc. There is a well-established connection between this fully present engagement in an activity and the ability of produce optimal performance in that activity.

Posted in Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Telepresence is Bad

January 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

To be objectively present one should not be subjectively telepresent. Even without augmentation by telematic media we are routinely moving (parts of) ourselves to other locations and times, imagining futures and replaying the past, seeing the viewpoint of others, dreaming of subjunctive worlds different to this one. The extent to which we engage in these acts of virtual telepresence is the extent to which we are no longer present in the moment of our actual experience

Posted in Presence, Telepresence | No Comments »

Here is Now

May 24th, 2007 Fred McVittie

When we imagine ‘time’, one of the most common forms this imagining takes is one a line drawn through an empty space.

Considering time ‘objectively’ in this way, and placing ourselves at some remove from this ‘object’, this line, we might envisage is as something like a ruler, possible with ends, possible without, but with its length being divided, or at least divisible, into the durations of years, weeks, day, and minutes.

Posted in Presence, Time | No Comments »

Identity , Identification, and Telepresence

May 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

You are sitting in a lecture theatre among a group of other people. At the front of the room a man is talking about identity, identification, and telepresence. Behind him is a screen on which he shows examples; pictures of VR headsets, schematics of network congurations. His first words are,
“Welcome to the lecture theatre of the future. Although you appear to be together in the same room, you are actually sitting in your own homes, your office, plugged into a state of the art video conferencing system which offers the fully immersive telepresent experience of being here now that you are currently having.”
He turns to you are says,
“And this member of our group is coming to us all the way from Indonesia. How are you enjoying your holiday?”
To which you reply,
“Having a great time Mr McVittie. I’m actually in my cabin on a boat to Panang right now, linked up to my laptop and satellite phone.”
“How’s the reception?” the lecturer says, “any pixilation?”
“No” you say, “It’s like I’m really here, I mean there.”

The lecture proceeds, and you forget that you on the other side of the world. You completely believe in the illusion of your presence in the room with the other students. Then the lecturer’s mobile phone rings.

“Hello” he says, and his face falls as he listens. He turns to you and is silent for a moment, the phone still pressed to his ear.
“I have some dreadful news” he says, “the boat you are on is in difficulty and is taking on water. The crew and the rest of the passengers have left and you are the only one left on board. They tried to find you and knocked on your cabin door, but I guess your VR set stopped you hearing them. I don’t know what to say.”

Posted in Identification, Presence | No Comments »

Knowing is Sensing: Aural and Olfactory Modes of Knowing

February 24th, 2008 Fred McVittie

Sight and touch make an appearance on the sense which is coterminous with the origins of those sights and touchings. The object and the sight of that object are simultaneous. See a tree on the horizon, hold a rock in your hand, the rock and the feel of that rock are inseparable. The sight of a tree on the horizon does not signal the impending presence of a tree at some point in the future. The tree that we see is present at the moment of our seeing it. Similarly, the feel of a rock in one’s hand is not an indication that we may be in the presence of a rock at some undisclosed time, or have been in its presence in the past. The rock is here, now. The tree is there, now.

This immanence afforded by sight and touch is not shared by other sensory modes, particularly hearing and olfaction. Typically we hear the impending emergence of an entity prior to its physical manifestation. The crashing in the trees precedes the arrival of the bear into the clearing where we have pitched out tent. The sound may also persist after its departure as we hear its retreat. The ‘beingness’ of the bear which is indicated by the sounds we hear is smudged across a patch of time which extends some way in the future and the past. The scent of a bear, if we had the olfactory abilities of a dog, would show an even greater smearing of being. The lingering scent would not only spread the bear across space but across days of time. The bear would, in this sense, extend into the past, parts of itself clinging to trees and tentpoles and torn canvas and broken crockery, and the long trail of paw-shaped patches of ground that lead through the forest to the here and now of the visible touchable bear.

Applying this logic to the use of sensory modes as metaphors for knowledge there is a logical difference between phenomena which are sensed aurally or through smell than that which is accessed through sight and touch. Whereas seeing and touching refer to the now, hearing and smell also refer to the then of past and future. This difference in the way sensory modes operate should show up in the specifics of their application to the metaphor. It is well established that we use the concepts of felt and seen knowledge to specify that which is evidentially immanent; we say ‘I see what you mean’ and the time of that seeing is assumed to be immediate. We say ‘I feel bad about this’ and again the bad feeling is assumed to be taking place in the moment. When we use words which connect to olfactory or sound metaphors there is not the same self-evident immediacy. If we say ’something smells funny about this plan’ we are not making a claim that something is clearly (sic) amiss that anybody should be able to ’see’. Rather we are claiming some kind of intuitive knowledge about the status of the plan; we are indicating that we have sensed something about it which, although not presently obvious, will make itself obvious later, as the bear crashing through the woods eventually appears in the clearing. We cannot point to the source of our knowing such that it might appear in the senses of others because it is not visualisable in this way. We might say that we ‘just got wind of it’, or it is just ’something in the air’. Olfactory and auditory metaphors tend therefore, to be applied to knowledge which is outside of the subjective/objective dimension and is displaced in time. This is the sort of knowledge which is prescient, which speaks of premonitions, intuition, and ghosts from the past.

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