The roles of art, design, and architecture on long-duration human space missions could have deep, significant impact on the functional capabilities of human environments in space, far beyond mere form and aesthetics. Yet, today’s technology-driven paradigm of space design pays limited attention to “soft” disciplines that relate to artistic and designerly modes of operations. This current worldview is governed by engineers and project managers. “Soft” considerations are looked at as nice-to-have add-ons at the end of the project, dependent on resource availability. While sufficient for short missions, this unnecessarily constrained view of artistic and designerly modes must change for long-duration missions, as the crew spends nearly 100% of their time inside a severely limited volume, in virtual isolation. Thus, it becomes necessary for all the systems, usable objects, and artistic artifacts inside the habitat to be connected to the goal of facilitating engaging interactions with the crew. Artifacts – as boundary objects in the intersection of various disciplines – facilitate circular conversations between an observer (crew member) and the environment of the spacecraft, and have many important functions. They provide emotional connections and comfort, promote well-being, support autonomy, help thinking to evolve novel ideas, and aid discovery and entertainment. When designing for experiences and interactions in space, artists, designers, and architects are able to look at artifacts from the perspective of the crew as observers, and imagine a rich set of interactions through various aspects and stages of the spaceflight. As a result, these artifacts support the higher-level needs of the observer, beyond basic physiological, psychological, and safety needs. They are designed for the well-being of the crew members, while sustainably utilizing the habitat volume and resources. In this paper we systematically show how human-centered roles and circular conversations between the observers and their environments can be incorporated into the culture of designing for space travel through the involvement of artists, designers and architects, from an early stage of designing the mission and its elements. This process is inclusive of the people who envision and create the environments and user experiences, and those who experience, use, and evolve them. Making the case about the importance of these considerations may help artists, designers, and architects to reframe the discourse of their contributions to space exploration and, in effect, find a stronger acceptance from the decision makers of a technology-driven human space exploration paradigm.

Key words: design, art, space habitat, human spaceflight, boundary objects, cybernetics.

In linking evolution, biosemiotics and languaging, analysis of meaning is extended by investigation of natural innovation. Rather than ascribe it to internal or external content, meaning comes first. Ecological, evolutionary and developmental flux defy content/ vehicle distinctions. In the eco-evo-devo frame, I present the papers of the Special Issue, pose questions, and identify a direction of travel. Above all, meaning connects older views of semiosis with recent work on ecosystemic living. Whilst aesthetics and languaging can refer to evolving semiotic objects, nature uses bio-signals, judging experience, and how culture (and Languages) can condition free-living agents. Further, science changes its status when meaning takes priority. While semiotics shows the narrowness of laws and recurrent regularity, function brings semiotic properties to causal aspects of natural innovation. By drawing on languaging one can clarify, for example, how brains and prostheses can serve human cyborgs. Indeed, given a multi-scalar nexus of meaning, biosemiotics becomes a powerful epistemic tool. Accordingly, I close with a model of how observers can use languaging to track both how self-fabricated living systems co-modulate and also how judging (and thinking) shapes understanding of changing ‘worlds.’ In certain scales, each ’whole’ agent acts on its own behalf as it uses epigenetic history and adjusts to flux by engaging with an ecosystem

Key words: biosemiotics, languaging, semiotics, eco-evo-devo, meaning, distributed language

Through an analysis of some key theoretical texts of historical Surrealism, this article elucidates the connection between the theory and practice of artistic Surrealism and the Kellyan concept of reconstruction. Its main thesis is that Surrealism originates in a reconstruction of the most superordinate construct in both Western aesthetics and Western ontology—the construct real-unreal—and that the ultimate aim of Surrealist poetics is to provoke a similar reconstruction in the audience.

In this essay Clarence Joldersma explores radical constructivism through the work of its most well-known advocate, Ernst von Glasersfeld, who combines a sophisticated philosophical discussion of knowledge and truth with educational practices. Joldersma uses Joseph Rouse’s work in philosophy of science to criticize the antirealism inherent in radical constructivism, emphasizing that Rouse’s Heideggerian critique differs from the standard realist defense of modernist epistemology. Next, Joldersma develops an alternative conception of truth, in terms of disclosure, based on Lambert Zuidervaart’s work in aesthetics. Joldersma concludes by arguing that this notion of truth avoids the pitfalls of both realism and antirealism, giving educational theorists a way forward to accept some of the major insights of constructivism with respect to learning and teaching without having to relinquish a robust notion of truth.

In this article an argument in favour of a constructivist approach to performativity is offered. As a point of departure Erika Fischer-Lichte’s approach to performative art as stated in Ästhetik des Performativen is analysed. It is argued that Fischer-Lichte’s position represents an ontological approach which is in fact based upon the poetics of the avant-garde. This position is juxtaposed by a constructivist approach developed with the help of concepts borrowed from Niklas Luhmann. As the notion of auto-poiesis plays an important role for both Fischer-Lichte and Luhmann the comparison of the two approaches is construed by evoking the crucial differences in the interpretation of auto-poiesis. For Fischer-Lichte, it indicates contingency and the lack of control in the performance event. For Luhmann, on the other hand, it refers to an operatively closed system based on a distinction drawn by the system itself. The Luhmannian direction is favoured for three reasons: 1) it leads to a pluralistic attitude and urges us to take an interest in different forms of presence; 2) it makes us see classical aesthetics as a possible poetics rather than a false and obsolete set of concepts to be dismissed; and 3) it allows us to become more experimental and open-eyed as analysts.

Excerpt: [I]n saying that every living being exists in a psychic space, I am saying also that the experiences that we call mental, or psychic, or spiritual, arise in us as reflexive distinctions in language of our emotional involvement with different aspects of our biological dynamic congruence with our domain of existence. But, as I say what I say, I also insist in that the biological dynamic congruence with the domain of existence which is the biological fundament for the distinction of those experiences, is proper to all living beings as a condition of their existence as such. indeed, it is not rare to observe that other animals exhibit some behaviours which remind us of our own psychic or mental experiences. One which reminds me of our aesthetic experience, is the well being that animals show as they relate with their domain of existence, and that appears some times as an actual contemplation of the landscape. But there is more. The fact that what we enjoy as natural beauty is precisely the comfortable coherence with each other that living beings exhibit when their conditions of existence have not been disturbed, shows that we pertain to the same constitutive domain of biological congruence as they do, as is to be expected since we are members of the same biosphere. I consider that the natural biological manner of living is constitutively aesthetic and effortless, and that we have become culturally blind to this condition In this blindness we have made of beauty a commodity. creating ugliness in all dimensions of our living, and through that ugliness, more blindness in the loss of our capacity to see, to hear, to smell, to touch and to understand, the interconnectedness of the biosphere to which we belong. We have transformed aesthetics into an, health into medicine science into technology, human beings into public… and in this way we have lost the poetic look that permitted us to live our daily life as au aesthetic experience, Finally, in that loss, wisdom is lost Which is the cure? The creation of the desire to live again, as a natural feature of our biosphere, the effortlessness of a multidimensional human living in a daily life of aesthetic experiences.

What do people consciously experience when they read? There has been almost no rigorous research on this question, and opinions diverge radically among both philosophers and psychologists. We describe three studies of the phenomenology of reading and its relationship to memory of textual detail and general cognitive abilities. We find three main results. First, there is substantial variability in reports about reading experience, both within and between participants. Second, reported reading experience varies with passage type: passages with dialogue prompted increased reports of inner speech, while passages with vivid visual detail prompted increased reports of visual imagery. Third, reports of visual imagery experiences, inner speech experiences, and experiences of conscious visual perception of the words on the page were at best weakly related to general cognitive abilities and memory of visual and auditory details.

Key words: reading, inner speech, visual imagery, introspection, experimental aesthetics, experience sampling.

Purpose: This paper aims to mediate Josef Mitterer’s non-dualistic philosophy with the claim that speaking is a process of embodied experience. Approach: Key assumptions of enactive cognitive science, such as the crossmodal integration of speech and gesture and the perceptual grounding of linguistic concepts are illustrated through selected performance pieces of multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. Findings: The analysis of Anderson’s artistic work questions a number of dualisms that guide truth-oriented models of language. Her performance pieces demonstrate that language is both sensually enacted and conceptually reflected through the integration of iconic signing (e.g. sound play, dance) with symbolic communication. Moreover, Anderson’s artistic practice demonstrates that media such as voice, gesture and recording technologies realize different forms of embodied language. Benefits: Media aesthetics in the vein of embodied cognition can overcome a number of the dualisms that inform analytical philosophy of language, linguistics, and communication studies, such as perceptual/conceptual meaning, iconicity/symbolicity, emotion/cognition, body/technology and voice/script.

Key words: language, embodiment, media, aesthetics, performance art.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine shared principles of “irreducibility” or “undecidability” in second-order cybernetics, architectural design processes and Leibniz’s geometric philosophy. It argues that each discipline constructs relationships, particularly spatio-temporal relationships, according to these terms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is organized into two parts and uses architectural criticism and philosophical analysis. The first part examines how second-order cybernetics and post-structuralist architectural design processes share these principles. Drawing from von Foerster’s theory of the “observing observer” it analyses the self-reflexive and self-referential modes of production that construct a collaborative architectural design project. Part two examines the terms in relation to Leibniz’s account of the “Monad”. Briefly, developing the discussion through Kant’s theory of aesthetics, it shows that Leibniz provides a “prototype” of undecidable spatial relations that are also present in architectural design and second-order cybernetics. Findings: The paper demonstrates that second-order cybernetics, architectural design and metaphysical philosophy enable interdisciplinary understandings of “undecidability”. Practical implications: The paper seeks to improve understanding of the geometric processes that construct architectural design. Originality/value – The paper explores interdisciplinary connections between the disciplines, opening up potential routes for further examination Its analysis of the aesthetic and geometric value of the Monad (rather than its perspectival value) provides a particularly relevant link for discussing the aesthetic production and experience of spatial relations in second-order cybernetics and contemporary architectural design.

Key words: Cybernetics, design, architecture, geometry

Excerpt: In the past decades, literary studies have undergone a series of changes, some of them minor, others quite dramatic or even paradigmatic. For the sceptical observer, however, the question remains: Has there really been a substantial change of literary studies, or has the traditional divide between the hermeneutical mainstream and certain secessionists only been perpetuated? Have new approaches, like reception aesthetics, polysystems theory, empirical studies of literature, constructivism or deconstructivism, really altered literaiy scholars’ views of the subjects, problems, methods, and goals of their discipline?