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THE EVOLUTION OF THE EXPERIENCE

Perception, Defamiliarization, and Einfühlung in Furniture Design

M.F.A. Furniture Design Thesis








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ABSTRACT

    Furnishings are more than rational, pragmatic market artifacts. Like art, furniture can be conceived and created to intrigue and inspire the viewer. Repetetive physical interactions lead people to subconscious, automatized behavior, which result in the underappreciation of furniture. This physical but non-intimate relationship with objects is underdeveloped due to the lack of stimulation felt by our daily interactions with them. It is up to designers to create with intention to break with user’s subconscious, automatized habits to form spaces with unique and distinctive aspects.        

    Influenced by the concepts of defamiliarization and Einfühlung, this thesis intended to create an experience that was physical, cognitive, and emotional (I refer to this as “tri-interactive”) to create a stronger interaction between the viewer and the objects. Case studies from artists, practitioners, and luminaries such as Olafur Eliasson, Grant Achatz, Viktor Shklovsky and Robert Vischer influence the methodology that motivates this approach to advance the experience and perception of furniture.
Perception

    Research pointed me towards the hypothesis that people are eager to understand everything and give it meaning or purpose; this creates an obsessive habit. The obsession draws us towards what is different because it encourages a desperate need to explain the unfamiliar. How we perceive our surroundings relies on what we understand of what surrounds us. Perception is a common word that few people take the time to contemplate. Oxford’s dictionary defines perception as “the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses.” The emphasis is on the part of “becoming aware of something”. When you become aware of something, it implies that “something” already exists, it is simply not seen or noticed, for whatever reason.

    Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian formalist, discusses the general laws of perception in his article Art, as Technique. He argues that “as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic. Thus, for example, all of our habits retreat into the area of the unconsciously automatic […]” (2). In order to disrupt subconscious, automatized behavior, artists and designers should focus to challenge how people perceive their work in order to stimulate the senses and heighten how the public experience it. For Shklovsky, the purpose of art is to create perception by overcoming automatized behavior. Art disrupts automatization through the presentation of visuals that are new to the eye and promotes the absorption of such with more inquisitiveness.

   An artist whose work focuses on the enhancement of the viewer’s experience of the ordinary is Olafur Eliasson. His definition of perception is distinctive; he describes perception as “how we choose to use our eyes” (Abstract: The Art of Design, “Olafur Eliasson: The Design of Art” 27:45). This definition puts emphasis on the individual. Everyone is in control and entitled to their own reality. That is the beauty of perception, it is not normalized. Eliasson discovered that if you light an enclosed space solely with monochromatic lighting, the rest of the colors in the space appear in a gray scale. He realized that by doing so, people’s sensation of color and detail is heightened through a reduction of the spectrum. Through the removal of color, a space becomes a place of hyper focus to all other elements that comprise it. The lighting sharpens the viewer’s vision and heightens their sensitivity to contrast. The exhibition of this thesis focused on fabricated guidance that aimed to lead the viewers to experience space and objects differently than they may have been accustomed to.

   After studying Eliasson’s work I shifted focus to a different disciplline: cooking. Specifically the owner and chef at Alinea, an avantgarde restaurant in Chicago, Grant Achatz. He is in a constant effort to take new approaches in how he expresses and presents food by being intriguingly experimental and questioning everything. Achatz is driven by creativity and continually experiments with ideas others believe to be impossible or risky. To be innovative requires a certain degree of risk; nothing innovative has ever been achieved by playing it safe. Achatz innovative approach to the eating experience inspired this thesis to focus on all the elements involved with presenting a furniture collection. When the focus is expanded, the potential of the design is elevated and creates a stronger impact on those who experience them; a different approach will lead to new results.

    Perception deals with the importance of creating a sense of doubt causing the user to question their perceived reality of the space. This compels the viewers to see, not merely look. By seeing, the viewers immerse themselves into the experience, perceive the objects and define what they seem to be, each in their own reality.
Defamiliarization

    “We get used to horrible things and stop fearing them. We get used to beautiful things and stop enjoying them. […] Art is a means to make things real again” (Shklovsky, “Art, as Device” 151).  Viktor Shklovsky introduced the technique of ostranenie, which translates to “estrangement”. He first introduced the term in his article, Art, as Device, in 1917. Ostranenie is more commonly known as defamiliarization. In his book, Theory of Prose(1925), he defines defamiliarization as “the removal of an object from the sphere of automatized perception” (6). In Art, as Device, Shklovsky argues that art exists “to return back the sensation to life – or, more probably, of life” (154). He later goes on to explain how things have become insignificant in automatized life and claims that art is what brings back this significance.




    Shklovsky, along with other formalists, focused on the application of defamiliarization in poetry. They claimed that the technique of defamiliarizing prolonged the process of how a person perceived what was being read. Shklovsky and other formalists, like Roman Jakobsen, believed that the main obstacle we face is automatization. Jakobsen talked about how the perception we hold of the things around us becomes automated, which means that we get used to them to the point where what we do and see becomes automatic; this impedes us from being aware of what is around us. If automated perceptions are defamiliarized, we can remove the blinds we have on (metaphorically) and see again.

    Symbolists believed that thoughts arise from the subconscious, which makes it easier to fall into the habit of automatization, because physical actions, after much reverberation, become habitual. Just as formalists argued, routine actions become automatic and no longer stimulate. “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.” (Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” 2). The approach of defamiliarization in the framework of furniture promotes a change in how we experience objects. It is essential in this context in order to communicate the value of design. When objects are placed out of their normal circumstance, we can try to apprehend them as abstract forms in lieu of using their familiarity to associate them. By doing so, it encourages a new form of interaction that elevates the experience, pressed by the need to refine the way design is approached.

    In Shklovsky’s article Différance in Defamiliarization, he defines the technique of defamiliarization as “a restoration of difference to an object which has “lost” it in the course of a life” (211). Viktor Shklovsky refers to Leo Tolstoy, who was a Russian writer in the late 19th and early 20th century, in this same article on how in order to take an object out of its “habitual recognition” he would defamiliarize it through an objective description. Instead of referring to an object by how we know it to be called, he describes it as if he has come across it for the first time. When an object is referred to in a context that is unfamiliar, it can be presented and perceived in a renewed way. If objects are “deconstructed” and “reassembled” into a new form, taken apart and recombined in a manner of visual practice, they can obtain a new demeanor even though they are familiar in certain aspects. Once the viewer learns to approach a form objectively, they can separate a whole to analyze its parts and then reassemble it, but with emotion incorporated into it. The result is a more developed version and the combination of subject and object through an obscure and dreamlike method. In a sense, this transforms objects into a particular level of abstraction, where it begins to blur the line between art and design.

    The idea was to carefully defamiliarize an object to where it would be interpreted and perceived as new, but not to the extent where it became completely unrecognizable. One of the goals of defamiliarization, as argued by Shklovsky in Art, as Device, is to prolong an object’s perception enough to the point that it is experienced continually. Presenting familiar objects in an unfamiliar way can instigate a reaction from the users. Taking something familiar and distorting its physical appearance, function, or decontextualizing it can make it become more prominent. The concentration of the objects in such a curated space encourages the ultimate absorption of them. The objects become a poetic form by being presented as an abstraction of functionality.
Einfühlung

    Einfühlung is a complicated concept that was invented in the second half of the nineteenth century by German philosopher Robert Vischer. In English, Einfühlung roughly translates to ‘empathy’, but it is also referred to as ‘feeling into’. Other words used to describe this model are ‘sympathy’ or ‘understanding’, as defined by Magdalena Nowak in her article The Complicated History of Einfühlung. During this time period, there was an increased interest in the psychology of perception. In the article, the author mentions philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder’s belief that “while perceiving different natural phenomena one can look for similarities to the human and thus ascribe human feelings to them” (Nowak 303). Vischer mentions in his essay, On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics, that einfühlung originated from the idea that the body “objectifies itself in spatial forms” as a response to certain stimuli in dreams and projects itself into the form of an object, unconsciously (Mallgrave and Ikonomou 92).

    There was an established connection between the concept of einfühlung and the empirical aspect of perception. Robert Vischer’s father, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, argued that artworks (and nature) manifest themselves as emotional beings in order to be empathized with. R. Vischer adopted the beliefs of his father and further developed them. For him, einfühlung meant “the viewer’s active participation in a work of art or other visual forms. It was a mutual experience of exchange between the body and the perceived object” (Nowak 304). He put a strong emphasis on the role of the viewer in relation to the artwork and created a shift in focus; “art lies in the reception and the recipient, not the object” (Nowak 304). To shift the focus is necessary to effectively alter the way we perceive art and design. Without the viewer, artwork is meaningless; the user gives the object a purpose and relevance.

        
    
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