nerate or grasp new meanings or ideas. · Ice core sample with sheet music. Light 'Kept in the dark', 'See what you mean', ... Core samples and partially decayed sheet music
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Susan Ryland (PhD) University for the Creative Arts (UK) [email protected]Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and practice City University London Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice Soundings the emergence of meaning
Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and practice
City University London Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
Soundings the emergence of meaning
Presenter
Presentation Notes
I am a visual artist. My research interest is in cognition. How we think creatively - the cognitive mechanisms we employ to generate or grasp new meanings or ideas.
Metaphors • Journeys (Sam Elkington) • Windows (Kate Hammer) Attributes • Unknown / unforeseeable • Risk • Autonomy • Ambiguity • Acknowledging emotions • Collaborative • Experiential, in the moment, tangible • Open source / peer-to-peer sharing Interventions • Improv: Neil Mullarkey (dynamic dialogue) • Planning for the unplanned: Sam Elkington • The destructive task - creating space: Alistair Dryburgh
Creativity, innovation and leadership
Artists are inherently risk-takers – they have courage. Increasingly, this is seen a transferable skill from the arts to business and other spheres. For example speaker: Caroline Southard (musician: flute) talking about 'tolerance for novelty'.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Speakers at today's conference have used a variety of metaphors to explain the creative process. They have described attributes such as: risk-taking, collaborative working, and responding to emotions and our subconscious selves. Several speakers have proposed interventions aimed at encouraging creative thinking, such as 'Improv' for business environments (Neil Mullarkey - keynote), and 'planning for the unplanned' in higher education (Sam Elkington).
I will: • discuss how new meaning is generated • describe key cognitive mechanisms in creative thought - out-of-placeness (metaphor) and - overlookedness (metonymy and synecdoche) • give a reflective account of the development of a new
exhibition and performance: Soundings: thought over time • sum up and offer conclusions.
Susan Ryland Meme:brain. Digital study for Soundings: thought over time
Presenter
Presentation Notes
I will discuss the cognitive mechanisms for emergence of new meaning. Then I will show you examples of how we apply these principles as a conscious devise in the creation of a collaborative exhibition between myself as a visual artists, a classical musician Helen Thomas who plays the oboe and cor anglais and an electro-acoustic composer, Michael Beiert. This is work-in-progress with its first showing and performance on 5th July in the Peter Scott Gallery at Lancaster University.
Metonymy : peripheral (overlooked) part-whole / partonomic / part of. A new perspective on something familiar.
Synecdoche: category relations / taxonomic / kind of. Meaning expansion from a lesser to a more comprehensive category
Metaphor: bringing together disparate entities to find common features that provide access to more complex, abstract ideas.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We are all familiar with metaphor as a mechanism for explaining (or to use a metaphor: shedding light on) a complex abstract idea such as LIGHT IS KNOWLEDGE. Metaphor has a cognitive 'partner': metonymy. And depending on whose definitions you prefer there is arguably another mechanism: synecdoche, which is sometimes considered to be part of metonymy. Of these three primary cognitive mechanisms. Metaphor has a settled definition, but metonymy and synecdoche are still hotly discussed in Cognitive Linguistics, and have no satisfactory definitions in general dictionaries. So these are my definitions based on work by cognitive linguist Ken-ichi Seto, Brigitte Nerlich (psycholinguist) and my own studies.
Louise Bourgeois Maman outside the National Gallery of Canada
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Metaphor is clearly at work in this sculpture by Louise Bourgeois Maman in which she brings together two disparate domains of knowledge: a giant spider and the concept of 'Mother'. This gives us a new understanding of Mother, as protective, nurturing and intimidating; being simultaneously magnificent and monstrous. Other examples of metaphors include phrases such as, 'I’ve seen the light', 'In light of what you say', 'the road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor' - a line from the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes 1906, which sets the scene for a passionate romance. However, we are less confident about the ways metonymy and synecdoche work in visual art, so here are some examples...
METONYMY: same domain relations based on contiguity
MARCHING FEET FOR ARMY
Cornelia Parker The Negative of Whispers, ( Ear plugs made with fluff gathered in the Whispering Gallery, St Paul’s Cathedral, London), 1997
PART-WHOLE relations
Presenter
Presentation Notes
My definitions of metonymy and synecdoche are influenced by Ken-ichi Seto’s 1999 paper and supported by Brigitte Nerlich (2010) and discussed in my thesis (2011) We can say that METONYMY is a device of 'domain-internal relations' or 'same domain relations'. It is a highly dynamic domain-internal process of meaning expansion, which uses proximity and adjacency to draw in meaning. I define it thus: Metonymy is a dynamic cognitive process of meaning expansion or elaboration, within a domain or domain matrix; in which a domain is considered to be ‘any coherent organization of experience’, and ‘meaning elaboration’ as being ‘the accumulation of a network of new senses around the original meaning’. (Ryland, 2011) There is more than one type of 'same domain' or 'domain-internal' relations. Part-whole relations. For example: Cornelia Parker's 'Negative of Whispers'. Dust gathered from the Whispering Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral, which is then fashioned into earplugs. The dust is a peripheral part of the Whispering Gallery that, when foregrounded or 'highlighted', draws attention to past whispers and provides a means of silencing the present.
Butter bean (species-genus relations)
Presenter
Presentation Notes
According to Ken-ichi Seto synecdoche expands meaning within conventional category relations. Synecdoche deals with 'taxonomic relations', while metonymy deals with 'partonomic relations'. But is this a phenomenon particular to art? I don't think so. So lets test this idea with an ordinary butter bean, from a can of beans. I suggest that when we glance at the single bean, we recognise it as a bean (mentally name-and-frame it) and probably think no more about it. We are familiar with the category of BEANS of which the BUTTER BEAN is one type, in a species-genus relation. However, if I show you 25 beans ... Next slide...
Twenty-five beans
With a number of beans we encounter a process of ‘domain annexation’ or ‘micro-domain annexation’. Brigitte NERLICH, Synecdoche: a trope, a whole trope, and nothing but a trope? In: NERLICH, B. & BURKHARDT, A. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s). 2010: 310.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
With a number of beans we become aware of subtle differences between them. We start comparing one against another - our eyes moving back and forth. Gradually, the differences become interesting - colour, shape, size - and it is out of this awareness of difference that associations are made, with for example, medical references (foetus, ovaries, ..) and this is the point where the lesser category of 'bean' expands into the wider category of 'start of life'. It might not have required as many as twenty-five beans to trigger the mental shift to ‘the start of life’, but there is no question that increasing the quantity of beans generated an attentional shift or cognitive movement into a wider, but related, domain. This would apply to any taxonomical relationship in which we can perceive qualities (see, hear, touch, taste etc), and then discern differences between the members of the category (e.g. wine tasting events). Refer to Brigitte Nerlich's chapter: 'A process of ‘domain annexation’ or ‘micro-domain annexation’. Brigitte NERLICH, Synecdoche: a trope, a whole trope, and nothing but a trope? In: NERLICH, B. & BURKHARDT, A. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s). 2010: 310.
Metonymy : peripheral (overlooked) part-whole / partonomic / part of. A new perspective on something familiar.
Synecdoche: category relations / taxonomic / kind of. Meaning expansion from a lesser to a more comprehensive category
Metaphor: bringing together disparate entities to find common features that provide access to more complex, abstract ideas.
See Seto 1999, Nerlich 2010, and Ryland 2011 for further information
Presenter
Presentation Notes
To recap: So, in these visual art examples there are disparate domain relations (metaphor) part-whole relations (metonymy) category relations (synecdoche)
Soundings: thought over time collaborative touring exhibition
Susan Ryland (artist) Helen Thomas (musician/composer) Michael Beiert (electroacoustic composer)
Susan Ryland. Core Sample Encyclopaedia Britannica (2011). Photograph
Presenter
Presentation Notes
I have been working on a collaborative touring exhibition with Helen Thomas (oboist/composer) and Michael Beiert (electro-acoustic composer). We started the project with a conscious awareness of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and literality.
Soundings: thought over time considers how metaphors ‘frame’ our world.
Geological metaphors such as:
‘deep in thought’ ‘buried memories' ‘just scratching the surface’
turn abstract notions of knowledge into tangible objects that can be lost and found.
Presenter
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We have created the environment to generate new work, the outcomes are only now becoming apparent, and the work will continue to evolve as the exhibition and performance tours the UK.
Knowledge metaphors
Encyclopaedia Britannica core sample (2010) (maquette)
Light:Strip (2009) Scanner image of striplight
Ice core sample with sheet music.
Light 'Kept in the dark', 'See what you mean', 'Shed/throw some light on the matter'
Presenter
Presentation Notes
MAKING CONNECTIONS: Knowledge is an abstract notion that has multiple metaphors such as LIGHT IS KNOWLEDGE applied to it, leading to phrases such as 'I see what you mean', 'in light of what they said', that for experiential reasons show that light reveals knowledge (i.e. we are physically able to see things) and conversely 'being kept in the dark' is having information withheld. I will talk about two strands of the exhibition: the visual one: 'Core Sample' and the sonic one: 'S/core'. Both of which consider knowledge expressed in written/spoken language and evocative sounds.
Avant garde music scores and geological studies share visual and linguistic characteristics
Meta-staseis by Iannis Xenakis (1953-4) Music score for 61 musicians
Volumina by György Ligeti for Organ (1961-2)
Presenter
Presentation Notes
We are interested in the visual and linguistic links between geological ‘soundings’ and avant garde music scores – the visual languages appear connected and this led to the development of key words. Sedimentation, grainy, coarse, accumulation, layering, ... next slide
Each of us assembled key words and these have remained a raw material for all the work (visual and sonic)
Core samples and partially decayed sheet music
Analogue to digital conversion 0101101111111111111101101010010000000000000100010011011101111111111111011010100100000000000000100101
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Core Sample is a literal rendition of geological metaphor for knowledge in the form of a core sample taken from a stack of Encyclopaedia Britannica, supported by prints and drawings that explore the linguistic and cognitive connections between sight and sound. I started by making literal visual connections – images of music and geological core samples
Fossil coral PERSON AS BOOK metaphors: 'an open book'
STORY AS WEAVING: 'tangled plot', 'narrative thread'
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Making reference to meaning expansion, the interweaving of language and thought...
Encyclopaedia Britannica core sample cutting Studio view (Susan Ryland 2012)
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Encyclopaedia Britannica : Repositories of knowledge. VALUE: £15 PER SET. Butchery: Knowledge as an organism SPINE, BOUND, LAYERS, COVER – pulling an organic form apart. Breaking it down into its parts: THREADS/ SINEWS, GLUE (ANIMAL), LEATHER COVER – SKIN...
Detail of Encyclopaedia Britannica core sample (Susan Ryland 2012)
Presenter
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FREE FROM BINDING: NO LONGER CONSTRAINED BY CONFORMING TO A PLACE IN THE ALPHABET. Dense text, sedimentation, how knowledge over the years is compacted and aspects lost, along with cultural things, and in that process of loss, things might be excavated, or re-viewed. Inherent pulse of the book covers defining the limits of each volume. The need to step back to consider the meaning as a whole (metaphors) and move close to study closely related details (metonymy).
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Knowledge was ordered alphabetically, so items were related to where they existed in the alphabet. Online information has freed us from that binding, enabling intuitive links to be made metonymically. Even the butchery of the books exposes metaphors: they had to have their spines removed. Quote from Vitae forum, 'I do think being able to skim through and gut a paper of its important points is a skill I've built up over the last few years'. Unbound and connected in new ways.
Beiert & Thomas (2009) Two Similar for tap dancer, oboe and live electronics,
The Cornerstone Festival, Liverpool
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Again, in the sound track of an early S/core rehearsal, the percussive sounds come from peripheral elements, the tapping of the keys, without blowing - foregrounding peripheral elements uses metonymic thought.
'Max Patch' created by Michael Beiert - software allocates sound fragments with letters of the alphabet. Here the word typed is 'Hello' as seen in the red band.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
THEN MICHAEL REALLOCATES THE WORD FRAGMENTS TO THE UPPER AND LOWER CASE LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET. BUT THIS TIME THEY MAKE NEW CONNECTIONS.
Play sound track: Rehearsal for S/core Improvisation for Oboe and electronics
Susan Ryland. Pumpkin:Poetry (2012). Digital drawing.
The principal cognitive mechanisms for creative thought are: • metaphor • metonymy • synecdoche
Interventions for encouraging creative thought use • out-of-placeness (metaphor and irony) • overlookedness (metonymy and synecdoche)
The aim is to create a situation or environment where multiple (unforeseeable) possibilities can emerge
Conclusion
Coral:Articulated (2012)
Coral:Poetry (2012)
Metaphor studies: Digital drawings
Presenter
Presentation Notes
As a caveat, I would say that there are no clear boundaries. Literality – synecdoche – metonymy - metaphor function on a continuum from concrete to abstract. Nor would we find it desirable for there to be clearly defined boundaries. We (human's) enjoy ambiguity, but that does not undermine the distinction between how we think and perceive 'part-whole relations' and think and perceive 'category relations'.
END
Susan Ryland University for the Creative Arts (UK)
Please cite this document as follows: Ryland, Susan (2012). Soundings: the emergence of meaning. Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and Practice conference. Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice . City University London.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
END Reference list and questions. Please cite this document as follows: Ryland, Susan (2012). Soundings: the emergence of meaning. Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and Practice conference. Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice . City University London.
REFERENCE LIST
BARCELONA, A. Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: a cognitive perspective, Berlin/New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2003.
BURKHARDT, A. Between poetry and economy: Metonymy as a semantic principle. In: BURKHARDT, A. & NERLICH, B. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s): The Epistemology of Metaphor and Other Tropes. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
CHEVALLET, A. Origine et formation de la langue française. 2 parties en 3 vols. Paris: Dumoulin Imprimérie Impériale 1853-7.
McCAFFREY, A. Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic Problem of Functional Fixedness, Psychological Science. 23(3) 215–218. University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Tobin Hall, 135 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003-9271 E-mail: [email protected]
NERLICH, B. Synecdoche: a trope, a whole trope, and nothing but a trope? In: NERLICH, B. & BURKHARDT, A. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s): The Epistemology of Metaphor and Other Tropes. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
RYLAND, S. Resisting Metaphors: A metonymic approach to the study of creativity and cognition in art analysis and practice (PhD thesis). University of Brighton/University for the Creative Arts, http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/ 2011. See also: www.susanryland.co.uk
SETO, K.-I. Distinguishing Metonymy from Synecdoche. In: PATHER, K. U. & RADDEN, G. (eds.) Metonymy in Language and Thought. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia. John Benjamins. 1999.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Please cite this document as follows: Ryland, Susan (2012). Soundings: the emergence of meaning. Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and Practice conference. Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice . City University London.
Cognitive Psychologist, Tony McCaffrey from University of Massachusetts suggests that
uncovering aspects of the human semantic, perceptual, and motor systems that inhibit the noticing of obscure features would enable people to identify effective techniques to overcome ‘functional fixedness’, which is a classic inhibitor to problem solving.
He claims his generic-parts technique can help people unearth the types of obscure features needed to overcome those obstacles by:
devising techniques that facilitate the noticing of obscure features in order to overcome impediments to problem solving (e.g., design fixation).
McCaffrey's technique uses metonymic thought processes to draw attention to, or 'highlight' peripheral elements.
McCAFFREY, A. Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic Problem of Functional Fixedness, Psychological Science. 23(3) 215–218.
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Please cite this document as follows: Ryland, Susan (2012). Soundings: the emergence of meaning. Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and Practice conference. Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice . City University London.
