Aesthetics: A Pattern Language for Social Field Shifts
It was June 2016, during the first of three annual gatherings for the advanced Social Presencing Theater (SPT) practitioners in the US. I still remember being prompted by Arawana Hayashi, as to how we could reflect on our embodied experience using language? I was very new to SPT, a beginner myself. However, having come out recently from design graduate school (Parsons School of Design), one thing I was sure I had learned was how to find patterns, and create generative languages.
SPT has a series of embodied practices that are founded on performing arts, theater, social change, and contemplative traditions. Arawana developed them as a way of making visible social systems, and their patterns, oppressions, and opportunities. At the root of the word ‘theater’ is the idea of ‘making something relevant visible’ to society. As a social designer, how could my practice add value to that? For one thing, designers are all-about ‘making visible’. However, there I was, with someone who already had a practice for making visible social dynamics, and that was theater itself.
Our opportunity for collaboration became clearer when we noticed that learners had a tendency to get caught in three recurring limiting habits of reflecting on an experience of embodiment. When they sat together in a large or small group to reflect on what had happened, how it linked back to their lives, and how they might apply what they had discovered, they would usually fall into three behavioral reflexes:
- Some said that ‘adding a language to their embodied experience was removing them from the experience itself’.
- Most limited themselves to using psychology-driven language to express what had happened (e.g. “I felt included”, “you did not see me, therefore I felt sad”, “I did not feel connected”, etc.)
- Many projected their perceptions onto other people’s experience, by wording their experience as ‘I think you felt this way…” or “you seemed to be feeeling sad”.
Arawana clearly wanted to move away from some of these habits of reflecting on experience, and explore alternatives to them.
Not to suggest that there’s anything wrong with using emotions-centered desciptions: as human beings, we do feel emotions. They are in continuous transition throughout consciousness. At times, we feel sad, or happy. We may feel connected or disconnected, included or separated. However, when we speak of whole social systems, emotions are only one part of the social dynamics. In SPT, we noticed that sometimes people have a tendency to self-centralize. That, in itself, is counter to systems thinking, which is basically about the collective, and how the latter wishes to move forward. It is almost like saying that the ‘collective’ social system is like a being of its own.
What, then, would be an adequate language to reflect on experience? Is ‘reflection’ the best way to describe people’s effort to evoke a memory of what happened, and unfold a fresh sense from it?
Because of our interest in social change and societal transformation, this became a very key question of our action research work at the Presencing Institute. The basic underlying hypothesis is the belief that we might be able to find an alternative language to help groups and individuals describe their direct experience. What would this language consist in? Are there patterns we can extract? We were soon very inspired by the work of Christopher Alexander, who discussed a pattern language for cities, and architecture, and Donella Meadows, who pioneered a language for social systems. Arawana had also worked with Peter Senge, who was himself devoted to research and practice on systems thinking.
“The access to experience seems difficult to most people because it is. The whole first person is just too demanding(…). Human beings are not spontaneously very gifted for this process. So the social mediation is absolutely fundamental.” — Francisco Varela
Over the last three years, we had a chance of prototyping a series of experiments around this ‘language’, which we began to call an ‘aesthetic language’. Aesthetics because it has to do with the ‘felt quality’ of the experience. The opposite would be ‘unaesthetic’, which is related to numbness. Aesthetics here is not linked to ‘beauty’ or implying any meaning around ‘perfection’. Aesthetics is about the felt dimension of our experience. Social systems always have ‘felt qualities’ to them. And here, ‘felt’ is not related to emotions, particularly. Knowing something is not only an intellectual process, it has something to do with the heart as well. Human heartedness is in our knowing. A quality of warmth. In that way, the aesthetic language has been our exploration around this felt, human hearted-way of knowing.
Prototype 1.0: importing visual aesthetics into social systems (2016).
Our first prototype included a deck of cards. We basically looked up common visual arts and design language around principles of visual composition, and asked ‘what if we spoke of our experiences using the language of visual composition?’ That is, balance, rhythm, contrast, direction, proximity, etc. Arawana helped me understand that this language is also present in the performing arts. For theater, for example, levels, clusters, direction, shapes, are all basic ways of describing a performative composition.
Our prototype 1.0 was basically to create a deck of these cards, with composition / aesthetic qualities. We printed them, and made a ‘toolkit’ for participants to reflect on their experience, following their embodied practice. The cards, specifically, were designed to follow a reflection on the Village (SPT). During this embodied practice, the group is asked to spread across the space (room), and begin with either movement or stillness. At any time, during 20 minutes, they can walk, sit, stand, turn, greet, lie down, or run.
In the Village, one does not have a goal, nor a “case”. Focus is placed on space, not on ‘figure’. It therefore requires from people a contemplative attitude. As a social experiment, we mention to the group the possibility of ‘attending to the whole’, but not in a directive way. We observe that people, at times, self-centralize instead. In which case, they get lost, easily forget the point of doing the activity altogether, or begin to be extremely concerned with how their own self is doing (‘what about me’ mindset kicks in).
In this initial prototype 1.0, one thing we learned was that reflective dialogue following the practice (usually for 10 minutes) became apparently sharper. Small groups of five people would place the cards upside down on a pile, and one by one, pick up a card, and read. This person would then share a moment from the Village practice, in which they had either seen/done/or felt that aesthetic quality. We asked them to frame their reflection around the “I-voice”, and not project onto others (“you-voice”). They would say things like “I saw balance when the group moved over to the other side”, “I felt excluded when a circle formed in the middle”, or “I did a solo at the edges while everyone was looking in”.
Prototype 2.0: creating videos for an aesthetic language (2017).
When a new SPT group gathered in New York, we noticed that the basic vocabulary around aesthetic language was still largely missing. For instance, how do ‘rituals’ show up in movement? What is rhythm? What does it mean to relate to space (empty or occupied)? There are many things, that even if we know their conceptual definition, we may not yet have bridged over, between concept and experience.
So our prototype 2.0 included asking small groups (five people) to pick up aesthetic qualities from the card decks, and then create a short 10–20 second piece in which they would show that quality to others, who, would then, try to guess what the aesthetic quality was. This prototype intention was to find a way of using a game-like approach, and video, as tools to build capacity towards aesthetic language.
One thing I learned in particular from this prototype was how some of the aesthetic qualities were very straightforward (e.g. proximity, contrast, levels, etc.) while others sparked confusion, and misunderstandings. Even among advanced SPT practitioners. For example, rituals, and even rhythm.
Prototype 3.0: introducing an aesthetic language game (2018).
In 2018, with a group of advanced SPT practitioners from Scandinavia, we prototyped a new twist and blend of our aesthetic language evolving piece. That took the form of a game. We re-created the cards, and combined them with a board game, and a wheel. Following the embodied practice, participants would be asked to join groups of five people, and use the game as a method of reflection.
The board game piece was introduced as a prototype for helping practitioners stick to the raw data, coming from the “I-voice”, that is, their own experience. As they turned the wheel (which added some playfulness, and randomness to it), the arrow would point to one of three major ‘language categories’: awareness, relational, or structural. There were two rounds. In the first round, each person in turn would turn the wheel, and pick up a card from one of these three categories. The person would share a moment from the practice in which that aesthetic quality showed up, using I” saw/did/felt”. In the second round, again one by one, turning the wheel — but, then, they would share a moment from their work or life situations in which that aesthetic quality was present.
One thing I learned about this prototype was that the board game definitely added complexity. And having to move from an embodied practice to a reflective one, by adding the game, we introduced a dynamic in which the group had to take time to understand the game rules. That moved people instantly to a ‘head space’, thinking about ‘what is the way to play it?’. Some said they were uncomfortable with this rapid body-to-brain transition. I learned we must find ways to make that transition smoother. On the other hand, some seemed very enthusiastic about it, and about the opportunity of giving language to their reflection on the experience.
Prototype 4.0: exploring aesthetics through a performance (2019).
Early this year (2019), we had a chance of trying out a prototype in which we explored the aesthetic language as a performance piece. That prototype was completely arts-based. The performance is, of course, a piece of art itself. And, anyways, a prototype (why not?).
In this short performance, I learned more about the aesthetic language simply by rehearsing it through a performance. We picked up a few aesthetic qualities (e.g. softness, togetherness, form & freedom, etc.), and created short moments of performance, in which we would make these qualities visible using movement. As a prototype, that helped me understand more about these qualities, and what they mean, in my own embodied experience. For example, earlier, I would usually speak of “form and freedom” in a conceptual way. After this performance prototype, I got an embodied sense for myself of what “form and freedom” looks like, and feels like. That was one of the values and learnings, I think, coming from this performance-based prototype.
Moving forward
At the Presencing Institute we are now at a stage of developing a fifth iteration of this prototype. For the first time, we will be making aesthetic language cards (‘a pattern for social field shifts’) in two versions: beginners and advanced. SPT practitioners will have access to a limited print edition of these cards during the upcoming Social Field Research Summer School, hosted by the Presencing Institute in Berlin, June 2019. Our effort is to continue evolving the language, and research around social fields and systems transformation. These intentions behind the new versions of these cards is to help groups sharpen their capcity to clarify the social field shifts they notice.
Thank you
Much gratitude to all SPT practitioners involved in the prototyping rounds of this embodied language so far, in the US, Germany, and Denmark. Thank you to the Presencing Institute Research team, including Arawana Hayashi, Adam Yukelson, Katrin Kaeufer, Otto Scharmer, and Ricardo Dutra.
*This written piece is a part of a larger practice-based research initiative involving Monash University, and the Presencing Institute. Ricardo Dutra currently pursues a PhD in Design at Monash University, and works with choreographer Arawana Hayashi developing methods of action research for systems change, within the Presencing Institute.
