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tags: Anthropology Architecture
Thought
I remember dropping into VR for the first time. While I was getting to grips on my environment another participant came directly at me. Their virtual body clipped mine, so I was in the transparent inner part of their virtual head.
That real sense of presence, like when a person is intimate and close to you, really was a striking feature for me of these early VR experiences.
People like to keep certain distances between themselves and other people or things. And this invisible bubble of space that constitutes each person’s “territory” is one of the key dimension of modern society. This text introduces poxemics to demonstrate how man’s use of space can affect personal and business relations, cross-cultural interaction, architecture, city planning and urban renewal.
Culture as Communication
In 1930s Benjamin Lee Whorf, a full-time chemist and engineer but an amateur in the field of linguistics, began studying with Sapir. Language, he said, is more than just a medium for expressing thought. It is, in fact, a major element in the formation of thought. Like a computer, a man’s mind will register and structure external reality only in accordance with the program. Since two languages often program the same class of events quite differently, no belief or philosophical system should be considered apart from language.
Aggression is a necessary ingredient of life. Normally aggression leads to proper spacing of animals, lest they become so numerous as to destroy their environment and themselves along with it. When crowding becomes too great after population buildups, interactions intensify, leading to greater and greater stress. Births drop while deaths progressively increase until a state known as population collapse occurs. The food supply is only indirectly involved with these cycles, which are generally recognized as normal for warm blooded vertebrates.
Distance Regulation in Animals
A scientist can observe, if 40 years, 440 generations of mice, while at the same span he can only see two generations of his own kind.
Thought
Reminds me of the scifi book Dragon’s Egg by Robert Forward
“Free as a bird” - he sees animals as free to roam the world, by he himself is imprisoned by society. Studies show the reverse is closer to the truth, and that animals are often imprisoned by their own territory.
Thought
I understand this sense of freedom though. A bird, even trapped in his own territory can land on top of my neighbor’s house, and sing a song. I cannot, or at least cannot do regularly without consequences.
Territory as a behavioral system, evolved in very much the same way as anatomical systems have evolved. In fact, differences in territoriality have become so widely recognized that they are basis for distinguishing species, much as anatomical features are used.
Spacing
- Flight Distance - a wild animal allow man or other potential enemy approach up to a given distance.
- Critical Distance - the narrow zone separating flight distance from attack distance.
- Contact and non-contact species - some species huddle together and require physical contact.
- Social distance - a psychological distance, where one begins to feel anxious when he exceeds the limits.
Crowding and Social Behavior in Animals
Calhoun’s experiments Calhoun experimented on several colonies of domesticate white Norway rats, over the course of 28 months.
Even with plenty of food and no pressure from predation, his population never exceeded 200, and stabilized at 150. Five female rats over the period could produce 50K progeny. Why did the population level off at 150 in the wild state?
Even with 150 rats, fighting was so disruptive to normal maternal care that only a few young survived. Rats did not randomly scatter but had organized themselves into discrete local colonies of a dozen rats each. 12 rats were the max number that could live harmoniously in these groups and even that number may induce stress.
Behavioral Sink
designates the gross distortions of behavior which appears among the majority of the rats. He states “every behavioral process that collects animals together in unusually great numbers is this outcome.”
This includes disruptions in nest building, courting, sex behavior, reproduction, and social organization along with physiological change observed in rat autopsies.
On courting and sex several males developed
- aggressively dominant, exhibited normal behavior
- the passive males, avoided both fighting and sex
- hyperactive subordinate males, chased and harassed females, including sustained mounting.
- pansexual males, mounted everything, male and female alike.
- withdrawn males, removed from social and sexual intercourse and went abroad chiefly at the time when the other rats slept
Crowding disrupts important social function and so leads to disorganization and ultimately to population collapse or large-scale die-off.
Perception of Space - Distance Receptors-Eyes, Ears and Nose
The amount of information gathered by the eyes as contrasted with the ears has no been precisely calculated (at time of writing.)
Since the optic nerve contains roughly eighteen times as many neurons as the cochlear nerve, we assume it transmits at least that much more information. Actually, in normally alert subjects, it is probable that the eyes may be as much as a thousand times as effective as the ears in sweeping up information.
At 20 feet the ear is efficient. At 100 feet 1 way communication is possible. Beyond this distance auditory cues break down rapidly. The eye is efficient for human interaction at a mile.
Olfaction - Americans travelling abroad are apt to comment on the strong colognes used by men.
Thought
I’m not sure if I’m fully on board with all the thoughts here, but I also feel I am missing some thought on this more broadly. To me NYC is a mixture of pleasant smells, and absolutely vile smells. I’m also considering olfactory notes in places like the supermarket.
Our cities lack both olfactory and visual variety. Anyone who has walked along the streets of almost any European village or town knows what is nearby. During World War II in France I observed that the aroma of French bread freshly removed from the oven at 4:00 A.M. could bring a speeding jeep to a screaming halt. The reader can ask himself what smells we have in the U.S. that can achieve such results. In the typical French town, one may savor the smell of coffee, spices, vegetables, freshly plucked fowl, clean laundry, and the characteristic odor of outdoor cafes. Olfactions of this type can provide a sense of life; the shifts and the transitions not only help to locate one in space but add zest to daily living.
Perception of Space: Immediate Receptors-Skin and Muscles
Early Japanese gardeners understood the interrelationship between kinesthetic experience of space and the visual experience. The visitor is periodically forced to watch his step as he walks along stepstones set in a pool. The Japanese tend to keep the edges of their rooms clear. Europeans tend to place their furniture along the walls. As consequence, Western rooms look less cluttered than Japanese do to us. Anything beyond the minimal requirement is a “frill.” 
Hidden Zones in American Offices
Based on interviews of 100 Americans three hidden zones in offices emerged
- the immediate work area of the desktop and chair
- a series of points within arm’s reach outside the area mentioned above.
- spaces marked as the limit reached when one pushes away from the desk to achieve a little distance from the work without getting up.
A room that can be traversed in one or two steps gives an entirely different experience from a room requiring fifteen or twenty steps. A room with a ceiling you can touch is quite different from one with a ceiling eleven feet high. In large out- door spaces, the sense of spaciousness actually experienced depends on whether or not you can walk around.
The Japanese are conscious of the significance of texture. A bowl that is smooth and pleasing to touch communicates not only the artisan cared about the bowl, and the person who was going to use it but about himself as well. rel:Wabi Sabi - The Art of Impermanence
Most intimate moments are associated with the changing textures of skin. The hardened, armor-like resistance of unwanted touch or the exciting, ever-changing texture of the skin during love-making, and the velvet quality of satisfaction afterward are messages of one body to another than have universal meanings.
Visual Space
As he moves through space, man depends on the messages received from his body to stabilize his visual world. Without such body feedback, many people lose contact with reality and hallucinate.
People have varying perceptual worlds, due to different attention focuses and influences.
Space is thus perceived differently. In West we generally perceive the objects, not the spaces between them. In Japan spaces are perceived, named and revered as the ma, or intervening interval. rel:Holes
Art As a Clue to Perception
Maurice Grossner:
The portrait, he says, is distinguished from any other sort of painting by psychological nearness, which “depends directly on the actual physical interval—the distance in feet and inches between the model and the painter.”
Grosser sets this distance at four to eight feet. Such a spatial relation of the artist to his subject makes possible the characteristic quality of a portrait, “the peculiar sort of communication, almost a conversation, that the person who looks at the picture is able to hold with the person painted there.”
The history of art is almost three times longer than that of writing, and the relationship between the two types of ex- pression can be seen in the earliest forms of writing, such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, very few people treat art as a system of communication which is historically linked with language. If more people were to take this view they would find that their approach to art would change. Man is used to the fact that there are languages which he does not at first understand and which must be learned, but because art is primarily visual he expects that he should get the mes- sage immediately and is apt to be affronted if he doesn’t.
It is likely that art was one of man’s first efforts to control the forces of nature. For the shaman-artist to reproduce an image of something may have been his first step in gaining control over it.
Why was Greek sculpture a full thousand years ahead of Greek painting? The answer lies in the fact that sculpture, is primarily a tactile and kinesthetic art, and if one views Greek sculpture in these terms it is easier to understand. The message is from the muscle and joints of one body, to the muscles and joints of another.
The Language of Space
Whorf: No individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of inter- pretation even while he thinks himself most free.
The Hopi thought world has no imaginary space.. it may no locate thought dealing with real space anywhere but in real space, no insulate space from the effects of thought.
The Hopi cannot as we think of it, imagine a place such as heaven or hell. There is no abstract space. Even spatial imagery is foreign “grasping a line of text”. The Hopi concept of a room is apparently somewhat like a small universe because “hollow spaces like room, chamber, hall are not really named as objects are, but are rather located: i.e. positions of others things that are specified as to show their location in such hollow space” rel:Holes
What is distance? I know that nothing which truly concerns man is calculable, weighable, measurable. True distance is not the concern of the eye; it is granted only to the spirit Its value is the value of language, for it is language which binds things together.
Anthropology of Space
The present internal layout of the house is quite recent. Rooms had no fixed function in European houses till the 18th century. Strangers came and went at will, while beds and tables were set up and taken down according to the moods and appetites of the occupant.
Distances in Man
rel:’Yelling
It should be noted at this point that how people are feeling toward each other at the time is a decisive factor in the distance used. Thus people who are very angry or emphatic about the point they are making will move in close, they “turn up the volume,” as it were, by shouting.
For example, the presence or absence of the sensation of warmth from the body of another person marks the line between intimate and non-intimate space. The smell of freshly washed hair and the blurring of another person’s features seen close up combine with the sensation of warmth to create intimacy.
Thought
Sitting on a chair that is still warm.
I’m intrigued by this notion, that the closer we get to another person the more blurred they become. “Seeing” them becomes less exact, and more of an impression of their presence. The further apart we go, the more invisible.
Four distance zones are discussed. Cultures have different proxemic patterns.
- Intimate Distance:
- Unmistakable. Can be overwhelming because of the greatly stepped-up sensory inputs. Sight (often distorted), olfaction, heat, sound, smell and others combine to signal unmistakable involvement with another’s body.
- Close Phase - Distance of love-making, wrestling, comfort and protecting. Vocalization at this distance plays a minor part, and is communicated mainly by other channels. A whisper has the effect of expanding the distance, and vocalizations that do occur are largely involuntary.
- Far Phase - Heads, Thighs and pelvis are not easily brought into contact but hands can reach and grasp extremities. The head is enlarged and features are distorted.
- “They put their face so close it feels like they’re inside you.”
- “Get your face out of mine. Get out of my face.”
- Personal Distance:
- Designates the distance consistently separating the members of non-contact species.
- Close Phase - Partners can stay inside the circle of a close personal zone with impunity. For another partner to do so, is generally an entirely different story.
- Far Phase - (two and a half to four feet)
- “At arms length”
- Social Distance:
- Close Phase - (four to seven feet)
- Details of skin texture and hair a perceived clearly.
- Impersonal business occurs at this distance.
- Far Phase -
- “Stand away so I can look at you.”
- Desks of important people are large enough to hold visitors at a far enough social distance. Fine details of the face are lost.
- A voice can be raised, noticeably louder so that it might even be heard in an adjoining room.
- Back to back furniture seeing - a sociofugal device, appropriate solution to minimum space because it is possible to stay uninvolved if that is their desire.
- Public Distance:
- Close Phase (twelve to twenty-five feet)
- A subject can take evasive or defensive action if threatened.
- Linguists have observed that a careful choice of words and phrasing of sentences as well as grammatical or syntactic shifts occur at this distance.
- Far Phase (twenty five or more feet)
- Automatically set around important public figures.
- Nonverbal part of communication shifts to gestures and body stance.
- Martin Joos’s frozen style is characteristic Frozen style is for people who are to remain strangers.
Proxemics in a Cross-Cultural Context: Germans, English and French, Japanese and Arab
Text carries on here with examples/generalizations.
Cities and Culture
The automobile is the greatest consumer of public and personal space yet created by man. In Los Angeles, the automobile town par excellence, Barbara Ward found that 60 to 70 per cent of the space is devoted to cars (streets, parking, and freeways). The car gobbles up spaces in which people might meet. Parks, sidewalks, everything goes to the automobile.Not only do people no longer wish to walk, but it is not possible for those who do wish to, to find a place to walk. This not only makes people flabby but cuts them off from each other. When people walk, they get to know each other if only by sight. With automobiles the opposite is true. The dirt, noise, exhaust, parked cars, and smog have made the urban outdoors too unpleasant. In addi- tion, most experts agree that the flabby muscles and reduced circulation of the blood that come from lack of regular ex- ercise make man much more prone to heart attacks.