vendredi 24 juillet 2009
lundi 20 juillet 2009
dimanche 19 juillet 2009
Aperitif/ Introduction
Aperitif
The power of emotions to affect us, to stimulate and encourage our behaviour has always been a source of fascination; the apprehension as well as the excitement of the goal of living.
The Recipe of emotions is an experiment to extract from the theme of cooking another understanding of emotion. It will focus more on processes, the fact of being in a movement of flow, which happens also during the creative process. Keeping the flow for the initial chapters and engaging in all the complex connected points, I will separate the ingredients from the utensils, the temperature and time of cooking… I hope that by using a cooking vocabulary I may be able to offer a more sensitive language to write carefully about inexpressible emotions.
Creating mixed media textiles, this dissertation is an occasion for me to mix cooking and emotions to work out the interest of a mixture. Creation has to shift our basic vision to respond to the perpetual movement of our way of living and come near to the nature of things. As food has very appealing sensual colours, and textures and emotions make us vibrate, they both present a sensitive and conceptual language that is very rich for a textile designer.
Moreover, they both give information about our identity construction and our impressionable perception. Data gathered in a questionnaire showed that characteristics between basic emotions and terms of cooking cross surprisingly to reinforce the physical pictures we have in mind. I created visual graphics that are an expressive representation of the space and the weight one emotion would be. The main interest of this essay is to come to another understanding of the meaning of process and to hopefully give you an original reading of the complex emotional machine.
The power of emotions to affect us, to stimulate and encourage our behaviour has always been a source of fascination; the apprehension as well as the excitement of the goal of living.
The Recipe of emotions is an experiment to extract from the theme of cooking another understanding of emotion. It will focus more on processes, the fact of being in a movement of flow, which happens also during the creative process. Keeping the flow for the initial chapters and engaging in all the complex connected points, I will separate the ingredients from the utensils, the temperature and time of cooking… I hope that by using a cooking vocabulary I may be able to offer a more sensitive language to write carefully about inexpressible emotions.
Creating mixed media textiles, this dissertation is an occasion for me to mix cooking and emotions to work out the interest of a mixture. Creation has to shift our basic vision to respond to the perpetual movement of our way of living and come near to the nature of things. As food has very appealing sensual colours, and textures and emotions make us vibrate, they both present a sensitive and conceptual language that is very rich for a textile designer.
Moreover, they both give information about our identity construction and our impressionable perception. Data gathered in a questionnaire showed that characteristics between basic emotions and terms of cooking cross surprisingly to reinforce the physical pictures we have in mind. I created visual graphics that are an expressive representation of the space and the weight one emotion would be. The main interest of this essay is to come to another understanding of the meaning of process and to hopefully give you an original reading of the complex emotional machine.
samedi 18 juillet 2009
Chapter 1: Whet your appetite
1/ Whet your appetite
“One day, she lost her appetite. The day after, she lost her motivation. Emotionally, she was in trouble, not satisfied…”
I have always noticed that many things are interconnected in our behaviour, but without knowing exactly what it meant. To me, different appetites are a kind of motivation; something that we would like to have, which is necessary, vital or not, but may provide us with some pleasure or satisfaction at least.
For a long time now, I have been very interested in how psychologies work, how motivation is generated, how passion is something you can feel deeply inside a person.
I honestly cannot imagine studying or working in a job without being passionate, even though, of course, it is not always practically possible for everyone. When it is, I wonder how you can push people to understand how to find their own interest, when they are not able to do it on their own. As with young people, they have to find out their own areas of interest, and how they can develop their capacities further.
Well, looking at the explanations offered for emotions, it is generally admitted that emotions are recognized as being one of three types of mental process, that is to say: motivation, emotions, and cognition.
Emotions therefore exist to indicate some changes in individuals’ relationships and their environment in order to adapt their behaviour. Faced with a threat or an injustice, anger rises. In danger, fear mounts, followed by an attack or by flight.
But let us focus our attention on motivation. Motivated by certain motors, able to cause motion, we are lead by our various needs. Primary motors are notably hunger, thirst, needs of social contacts and sexual desire. The role of motivations is to guide the organism to satisfy its need for survival and reproduction. Unlike emotions, with their flexible cycle, motivations are more regulated by a temporal cycle. For example, thirst rises until it is satiated, and is satisfied by drinking. Then, there is a distinction to be made between basic need for subsistence or survival and real, deep needs. On that point, I suggest that we look at Human Scale Development , by the Chilean economist and environmentalist Manfred Max-Neef who researched fundamental human needs to fight against poverty in developing countries. He classifies them as follows: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs. It is quite interesting to look more carefully at his chart… Understanding the specifics of the different needs is important for the adoption of creative solutions, the creation of objects and services that might answer accurately our human needs and desires. Another way of seeing this, for me, is that we can distil ideas from it and use them, as a part of a stronger strategy for creation.
Coming back to my last category, less well known I think, are the cognitive factors. They enable the organism to learn from his environment and resolve problems in new situations. The learning process is actually done to satisfy the motivations, on the one hand, and to maintain some positive emotions, on the other. So cognition includes the learning process, memory, and the resolution of problems. Thus, these three basic mental processes belong to, and blend together into, a larger systemic framework to generate more complex mechanisms that forms the individual’s personality.
What must be admitted then is the importance of food and the organization of diners at any occasion, be it private or for business matters. Important things happening in our life, from a birthday, a candlelit dinner to a wedding breakfast, are celebrated around a table. It is certainly because all seated together, we share a meal and a moment in time; stories are activated and emotions engaged. Then, when we remind these moments, the context, the people with whom we were, what we have eaten, and the spoken topics, all come to our mind, merged together to evoke a global feeling.
On second thoughts, consider the meal – something we do generally three times a day, started in our family and given to us by our parents. And I would say, it is parents, and, particularly the mother – if she is the one who prepares the meal – orientate our tastes, our dietary habits, our health, actually a quite big part of our identity. Through a simple meal, she may pass down cultural culinary customs. And her pleasure to prepare a meal, to satisfy different tastes might influence the appetite and the curiosity for various ingredients, ways of cooking, and so forth.
Well, it has to be said that it is then something particularly important in France, although I am sure it has a meaning for other cultures. I cannot really explain why, but it is true that if you choose good products, invent simple recipes, cook for people you like, and enjoy the sensations together, all this bring a natural and simple pleasure. I think, though, that this has more meaning for French people, as traditional cuisine, with each region in France having its own culinary specialities. Of course, it depends on the families, mine, for instance – my father being an oyster farmer, passionate, with subtle tastes, he was very keen for us to savour samples of various fresh seafood for instance. “Dégustation” has been his favourite word! And because his job is his passion, I have been grown up with plenty of oysters (which, you will notice, is typically French) and I can say it tells about us, about our history, about part of my identity.
Let us see what is happening around a meal: When a resonant “Dinner’s ready!” is called to everybody at home, we know that our personal rhythms are going to be re-timed for a familial moment. Eating with your family in not harmless. We might return from such a meal in another mood, because all the personality of a person is building up during the meal. As the sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann says: “The meal is the architect of the familial life”. To me, many things I have read in this book echo with plenty of my own daily life stories around the table.
“Contact” expresses the idea of getting close to somebody ‘with’ ‘tact’, the touch, physical and emotional. Well, to get in touch tightly may take time; it is about building ties through different areas of interests and sharing it, offering it to others in an ideal of union and pleasure.
This notion of union is interesting since the table forces us into a close intimacy with the ones with whom we share the table. The table is not a simple object, but really an intermediary for communication. “Being in communion with” others achieves a familiarity, and to some degree enables a freedom in our expression of the emotions, and this is easily perceived as successful or as a drama through a meal. Given that it is quite difficult to deal with the conversation and table manners, such as the careful avoidance of certain hot topics, like political views, the table might then become a challenging moment of tension. Fortunately, food is always here “to smooth over some clangers…”
This makes us fully aware that the table can be used on purpose to revitalize the links within a family. Some mothers make sure to keep the dinner time at least with their family, or their husband, even though there is no deep conversation, it is the only thing left. Switching off the television may sometimes save relationships while many times over it calms the atmosphere and even encourages exchanges. At any rate, it might be said that through a meal you can quickly “renew the unique links” that a family has with one another.
1. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/background/maxneef.htm
2. Kaufmann, Jean-Claude, Casseroles, amour et crises: ce que cuisiner veut dire, Armand Colin, 2005, p.93, 172.
3. ibid., p.180, 278
“One day, she lost her appetite. The day after, she lost her motivation. Emotionally, she was in trouble, not satisfied…”
I have always noticed that many things are interconnected in our behaviour, but without knowing exactly what it meant. To me, different appetites are a kind of motivation; something that we would like to have, which is necessary, vital or not, but may provide us with some pleasure or satisfaction at least.
For a long time now, I have been very interested in how psychologies work, how motivation is generated, how passion is something you can feel deeply inside a person.
I honestly cannot imagine studying or working in a job without being passionate, even though, of course, it is not always practically possible for everyone. When it is, I wonder how you can push people to understand how to find their own interest, when they are not able to do it on their own. As with young people, they have to find out their own areas of interest, and how they can develop their capacities further.
Well, looking at the explanations offered for emotions, it is generally admitted that emotions are recognized as being one of three types of mental process, that is to say: motivation, emotions, and cognition.
Emotions therefore exist to indicate some changes in individuals’ relationships and their environment in order to adapt their behaviour. Faced with a threat or an injustice, anger rises. In danger, fear mounts, followed by an attack or by flight.
But let us focus our attention on motivation. Motivated by certain motors, able to cause motion, we are lead by our various needs. Primary motors are notably hunger, thirst, needs of social contacts and sexual desire. The role of motivations is to guide the organism to satisfy its need for survival and reproduction. Unlike emotions, with their flexible cycle, motivations are more regulated by a temporal cycle. For example, thirst rises until it is satiated, and is satisfied by drinking. Then, there is a distinction to be made between basic need for subsistence or survival and real, deep needs. On that point, I suggest that we look at Human Scale Development , by the Chilean economist and environmentalist Manfred Max-Neef who researched fundamental human needs to fight against poverty in developing countries. He classifies them as follows: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs. It is quite interesting to look more carefully at his chart… Understanding the specifics of the different needs is important for the adoption of creative solutions, the creation of objects and services that might answer accurately our human needs and desires. Another way of seeing this, for me, is that we can distil ideas from it and use them, as a part of a stronger strategy for creation.
Coming back to my last category, less well known I think, are the cognitive factors. They enable the organism to learn from his environment and resolve problems in new situations. The learning process is actually done to satisfy the motivations, on the one hand, and to maintain some positive emotions, on the other. So cognition includes the learning process, memory, and the resolution of problems. Thus, these three basic mental processes belong to, and blend together into, a larger systemic framework to generate more complex mechanisms that forms the individual’s personality.
What must be admitted then is the importance of food and the organization of diners at any occasion, be it private or for business matters. Important things happening in our life, from a birthday, a candlelit dinner to a wedding breakfast, are celebrated around a table. It is certainly because all seated together, we share a meal and a moment in time; stories are activated and emotions engaged. Then, when we remind these moments, the context, the people with whom we were, what we have eaten, and the spoken topics, all come to our mind, merged together to evoke a global feeling.
On second thoughts, consider the meal – something we do generally three times a day, started in our family and given to us by our parents. And I would say, it is parents, and, particularly the mother – if she is the one who prepares the meal – orientate our tastes, our dietary habits, our health, actually a quite big part of our identity. Through a simple meal, she may pass down cultural culinary customs. And her pleasure to prepare a meal, to satisfy different tastes might influence the appetite and the curiosity for various ingredients, ways of cooking, and so forth.
Well, it has to be said that it is then something particularly important in France, although I am sure it has a meaning for other cultures. I cannot really explain why, but it is true that if you choose good products, invent simple recipes, cook for people you like, and enjoy the sensations together, all this bring a natural and simple pleasure. I think, though, that this has more meaning for French people, as traditional cuisine, with each region in France having its own culinary specialities. Of course, it depends on the families, mine, for instance – my father being an oyster farmer, passionate, with subtle tastes, he was very keen for us to savour samples of various fresh seafood for instance. “Dégustation” has been his favourite word! And because his job is his passion, I have been grown up with plenty of oysters (which, you will notice, is typically French) and I can say it tells about us, about our history, about part of my identity.
Let us see what is happening around a meal: When a resonant “Dinner’s ready!” is called to everybody at home, we know that our personal rhythms are going to be re-timed for a familial moment. Eating with your family in not harmless. We might return from such a meal in another mood, because all the personality of a person is building up during the meal. As the sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann says: “The meal is the architect of the familial life”. To me, many things I have read in this book echo with plenty of my own daily life stories around the table.
“Contact” expresses the idea of getting close to somebody ‘with’ ‘tact’, the touch, physical and emotional. Well, to get in touch tightly may take time; it is about building ties through different areas of interests and sharing it, offering it to others in an ideal of union and pleasure.
This notion of union is interesting since the table forces us into a close intimacy with the ones with whom we share the table. The table is not a simple object, but really an intermediary for communication. “Being in communion with” others achieves a familiarity, and to some degree enables a freedom in our expression of the emotions, and this is easily perceived as successful or as a drama through a meal. Given that it is quite difficult to deal with the conversation and table manners, such as the careful avoidance of certain hot topics, like political views, the table might then become a challenging moment of tension. Fortunately, food is always here “to smooth over some clangers…”
This makes us fully aware that the table can be used on purpose to revitalize the links within a family. Some mothers make sure to keep the dinner time at least with their family, or their husband, even though there is no deep conversation, it is the only thing left. Switching off the television may sometimes save relationships while many times over it calms the atmosphere and even encourages exchanges. At any rate, it might be said that through a meal you can quickly “renew the unique links” that a family has with one another.
1. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/background/maxneef.htm
2. Kaufmann, Jean-Claude, Casseroles, amour et crises: ce que cuisiner veut dire, Armand Colin, 2005, p.93, 172.
3. ibid., p.180, 278
jeudi 11 juin 2009
Chapter 2: The emotional process
2) The emotional process
Emotions fuel the reading of a book, make a movie stirring, and above all imbue our relationships with uniqueness. Emotions are ever present and unconscious most of the time, even when we would like to refute them. They have little to do with the ‘reason’ side of the brain. In the beginning, that is perhaps why we perceive emotions as a second source of information, after reason, whereas they are generally good appraisals of a situation. Thus, understanding our emotions better may help our well being in everyday life.
Because they are complex and happen so quickly – they can be volatile – it seems difficult to give a precise definition of what emotions are without going against their particularity. There is no one right answer to this; otherwise we narrow the parameters of the research. The question of what an emotion is has been debated for a long time, at least since an article by William James in 1884, and indeed the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is still contributing to this debate with some interesting discoveries about the brain. Many theories have been offered about the essence of emotions, how they are generated, how they are connected to cognition and motivation, and how they play a main part in decision-making. Such theories depend as well on the interpretative framework, such as the different approaches towards emotions, from a Darwinist evolutionary perspective, a neurobiological one, or else a cognitive one. But what emerges, above all, from all of these theories is that emotions are a process. To me, starting to think about emotions as a process and humanising them was an interesting starting point.
I therefore intend to conduct research into a sort of creative framework and suggest a comparison with cooking to enable another way of seeing what an emotion looks like. Indeed, cooking similarly involves a process, that is to say, a chain of facts or phenomena responding to a certain system and leading to a result, like a mechanism, a manner of creating something. The process of making is engaged: making a cake, creating a particular emotion… Is it possible to ‘create’ an emotion? As the cake needs many stages before it is baked, all the stages constitute the general process.
From some desires, needs and personal tastes, we are driven to buy those ingredients, to prepare this recipe, to make the meal in a particular way… It is not easy to say why we have reacted like that at a certain moment, overwhelmed by shame, let our anger get the better of us. To verbalize emotions is tricky, but that is part of why I have chosen to write about it constructively. Hopefully I will find some clues to the process, and to better control the links of the chain, or, at least, to better learn how to live with the uncontrollable.
Emotional processing expresses a flow in movement, a liquid or at least a kind of substance that transforms in a moment of time, beginning and ending. Indeed, can we not feel this sensation of an energy growing in our body, when the heart is bursting with joy, like the cake rising gently? The invisible smell that escapes from the oven delightfully titillates our nostrils. This first stimulus of our senses is the prelude to hunger. In the sequence of emotions, the stimulus occurs first and the feelings last. LeDoux examines William James’s approach to the components of the chain of emotions. James asked whether feelings cause emotional responses or vice versa. In answering that responses cause feelings, he started a century-old debate about where feelings come from. For instance, he argues that we do not run because we are frightened; we are frightened because we run. There is the stimulus, a response, followed by a feedback to the brain, and then the feeling. James’s theory was generally accepted and completed; other theories consider the emotion as an arousal in our body that we detect and label, appraising a situation for action. The stream of feeling, whatever paths it takes through the thalamus to the neocortex, is a movement. There is in any case a region in the limbic system called the tonsil that plays a significant role for emotions.
It is interesting now to come back to the etymology of the word ‘emotion’, which is based on the Latin emovere, from e- ‘out’ and movere ‘move’. ‘Motivation’ is also derived from movere. Thus the emotion is a sort of change of an affective state involving a high level of activation, visceral changes and strong feelings. This movement is made in order to adapt to a particular situation and to protect from the environment’s aggressions.
Generally unconscious, almost invisible, emotions, linked to cognition and motivation, however drive our behaviour and decision-making, giving a sense to our relationships with others. Feeling an emotion is really the expression of an energy that is moving and pushing us. And surprisingly to me at first, Damasio has said that we are efficiently able to stop one emotion as we can prevent a sneeze...
4. Ledoux, Joseph, The emotional brain, Phoenix, 1998, p.43
5. http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/bci/
6. Ibid. p.16-20
7. Ledoux, Op.cit., p.43-45
8. Chevassus-Au-Louis, Nicolas, A quoi sert notre cerveau?, On se bouge!, 2007, p.43
Emotions fuel the reading of a book, make a movie stirring, and above all imbue our relationships with uniqueness. Emotions are ever present and unconscious most of the time, even when we would like to refute them. They have little to do with the ‘reason’ side of the brain. In the beginning, that is perhaps why we perceive emotions as a second source of information, after reason, whereas they are generally good appraisals of a situation. Thus, understanding our emotions better may help our well being in everyday life.
Because they are complex and happen so quickly – they can be volatile – it seems difficult to give a precise definition of what emotions are without going against their particularity. There is no one right answer to this; otherwise we narrow the parameters of the research. The question of what an emotion is has been debated for a long time, at least since an article by William James in 1884, and indeed the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is still contributing to this debate with some interesting discoveries about the brain. Many theories have been offered about the essence of emotions, how they are generated, how they are connected to cognition and motivation, and how they play a main part in decision-making. Such theories depend as well on the interpretative framework, such as the different approaches towards emotions, from a Darwinist evolutionary perspective, a neurobiological one, or else a cognitive one. But what emerges, above all, from all of these theories is that emotions are a process. To me, starting to think about emotions as a process and humanising them was an interesting starting point.
I therefore intend to conduct research into a sort of creative framework and suggest a comparison with cooking to enable another way of seeing what an emotion looks like. Indeed, cooking similarly involves a process, that is to say, a chain of facts or phenomena responding to a certain system and leading to a result, like a mechanism, a manner of creating something. The process of making is engaged: making a cake, creating a particular emotion… Is it possible to ‘create’ an emotion? As the cake needs many stages before it is baked, all the stages constitute the general process.
From some desires, needs and personal tastes, we are driven to buy those ingredients, to prepare this recipe, to make the meal in a particular way… It is not easy to say why we have reacted like that at a certain moment, overwhelmed by shame, let our anger get the better of us. To verbalize emotions is tricky, but that is part of why I have chosen to write about it constructively. Hopefully I will find some clues to the process, and to better control the links of the chain, or, at least, to better learn how to live with the uncontrollable.
Emotional processing expresses a flow in movement, a liquid or at least a kind of substance that transforms in a moment of time, beginning and ending. Indeed, can we not feel this sensation of an energy growing in our body, when the heart is bursting with joy, like the cake rising gently? The invisible smell that escapes from the oven delightfully titillates our nostrils. This first stimulus of our senses is the prelude to hunger. In the sequence of emotions, the stimulus occurs first and the feelings last. LeDoux examines William James’s approach to the components of the chain of emotions. James asked whether feelings cause emotional responses or vice versa. In answering that responses cause feelings, he started a century-old debate about where feelings come from. For instance, he argues that we do not run because we are frightened; we are frightened because we run. There is the stimulus, a response, followed by a feedback to the brain, and then the feeling. James’s theory was generally accepted and completed; other theories consider the emotion as an arousal in our body that we detect and label, appraising a situation for action. The stream of feeling, whatever paths it takes through the thalamus to the neocortex, is a movement. There is in any case a region in the limbic system called the tonsil that plays a significant role for emotions.
It is interesting now to come back to the etymology of the word ‘emotion’, which is based on the Latin emovere, from e- ‘out’ and movere ‘move’. ‘Motivation’ is also derived from movere. Thus the emotion is a sort of change of an affective state involving a high level of activation, visceral changes and strong feelings. This movement is made in order to adapt to a particular situation and to protect from the environment’s aggressions.
Generally unconscious, almost invisible, emotions, linked to cognition and motivation, however drive our behaviour and decision-making, giving a sense to our relationships with others. Feeling an emotion is really the expression of an energy that is moving and pushing us. And surprisingly to me at first, Damasio has said that we are efficiently able to stop one emotion as we can prevent a sneeze...
4. Ledoux, Joseph, The emotional brain, Phoenix, 1998, p.43
5. http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/bci/
6. Ibid. p.16-20
7. Ledoux, Op.cit., p.43-45
8. Chevassus-Au-Louis, Nicolas, A quoi sert notre cerveau?, On se bouge!, 2007, p.43
mercredi 10 juin 2009
dimanche 24 mai 2009
dimanche 1 mars 2009
Chapter 3: The creative process
3) The creative process
After getting onto the process of emotion, this chapter is going to consider the concept of flow further, through opinions about ways of creation.
As we are becoming artist-designers, and wondering deeply about what it consists of, we hope to find some ways to come up to people’ needs and desires. And it requires seeking for essentials and principles in our work, to understand better the secrets of creativity, for instance, and the birth of an idea. After various experiments, I have always been very much interested in this mysterious creativity, as well as finding it to be something a bit frightening (I mean by this, that so many designers are famously scared of their lack of ideas), it is also a very exciting state of mind, that is, in fact, possible to control, more or less. And the characteristics of the creative process may inform other processes, such as emotional processes or processes of cooking, and vice-versa.
In my own way of doing things, I am convinced of the necessity of one sentiment: passion. The passion for researching, the passion for the nature of things, expressed through arts that conduct us to another reality, allowing the vision of beauty and truth. Nowadays, it is not easy to live simply and to not follow the incentives that come from our consumer society. Passion has to do with a sort of devotion to any object of love, from which we do not expect anything. We are just there to show the qualities, the beauty, the identity of the object, which are not obvious for others. And as in many cases, it is all about the question of perception.
I certainly go along with the thoughts of the philosopher Henri Bergson concerning what art is able to bring out. An artist does not really see a need in every single thing. He likes colour for colour itself, shape for shape, and actually the inside life of things. The highest ambition of art is to reveal nature, trying to find out the soul, highlighting music in order to move away from symbols to face up directly to reality in itself. And it is an overtone of the fact that reality is hidden under many veils, that artists are in charge of bringing them out into the open.
Well, how does this artistic perception work? This particular perception requires a detachment from practical concerns, a selective indifference. Artistic invention supposes first this perceptive availability, like floating, that lets images coming out. And the five senses might help to the opening of the perception.
Therefore, I would like to point out this floating state of mind, which crosses intermittently the state of concentration. Detachment and focus, far and close, the flow experience seems necessary in order for us to fix upon some determinate point. And here we come back again to this notion of “flow”, the flow that takes us away when an emotion is acting.
It is thus appropriate to quote the Hungarian author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the main representatives of an American school of thought called the “positivist psychology”, who conceptualized the “flow” theory. It is “the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”
According to Csíkszentmihályi, the flow experience seems to meet some of the following characteristics: a clear goal and a good concentration to lose the feeling of self-consciousness and the sense of time. After the activity it may give a direct feedback and be rewarding. Lastly, the activity has to be a balance between ability level and challenge in order to have a personal control over the situation.
So I feel as if these components of flow apply to various fields and give clues about some a priori tangled states. Because a particularity of the flow is to be uncontrollable, as we have seen for the emotional process just before we can name it as emotion, it happens also during the creative process; we need to let it go, to lose the control and enlarge the base to be surprised by instinctive ideas from the boundaries… Pushing further, an emerging idea, whether we are actively absorbed or not, enables an indescribably pleasant feeling that our role will be afterwards to transcribe again, but this time focusing on it, and allowing others to feel it. And to go just beyond this, the accomplishment of a piece of art would be, to me, to prepare someone for the flow experience, so that it crosses somebody’s mind and body, offering a different and true look at everyday life.
9. Dupont, Odile, Art et perception, Itineraires philosophiques, Delagrave, 2004, p.21-23
10. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly,Vivre, La psychologie du bonheur, Pocket, 2004, p.68, 70, 79, 107-120
After getting onto the process of emotion, this chapter is going to consider the concept of flow further, through opinions about ways of creation.
As we are becoming artist-designers, and wondering deeply about what it consists of, we hope to find some ways to come up to people’ needs and desires. And it requires seeking for essentials and principles in our work, to understand better the secrets of creativity, for instance, and the birth of an idea. After various experiments, I have always been very much interested in this mysterious creativity, as well as finding it to be something a bit frightening (I mean by this, that so many designers are famously scared of their lack of ideas), it is also a very exciting state of mind, that is, in fact, possible to control, more or less. And the characteristics of the creative process may inform other processes, such as emotional processes or processes of cooking, and vice-versa.
In my own way of doing things, I am convinced of the necessity of one sentiment: passion. The passion for researching, the passion for the nature of things, expressed through arts that conduct us to another reality, allowing the vision of beauty and truth. Nowadays, it is not easy to live simply and to not follow the incentives that come from our consumer society. Passion has to do with a sort of devotion to any object of love, from which we do not expect anything. We are just there to show the qualities, the beauty, the identity of the object, which are not obvious for others. And as in many cases, it is all about the question of perception.
I certainly go along with the thoughts of the philosopher Henri Bergson concerning what art is able to bring out. An artist does not really see a need in every single thing. He likes colour for colour itself, shape for shape, and actually the inside life of things. The highest ambition of art is to reveal nature, trying to find out the soul, highlighting music in order to move away from symbols to face up directly to reality in itself. And it is an overtone of the fact that reality is hidden under many veils, that artists are in charge of bringing them out into the open.
Well, how does this artistic perception work? This particular perception requires a detachment from practical concerns, a selective indifference. Artistic invention supposes first this perceptive availability, like floating, that lets images coming out. And the five senses might help to the opening of the perception.
Therefore, I would like to point out this floating state of mind, which crosses intermittently the state of concentration. Detachment and focus, far and close, the flow experience seems necessary in order for us to fix upon some determinate point. And here we come back again to this notion of “flow”, the flow that takes us away when an emotion is acting.
It is thus appropriate to quote the Hungarian author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the main representatives of an American school of thought called the “positivist psychology”, who conceptualized the “flow” theory. It is “the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”
According to Csíkszentmihályi, the flow experience seems to meet some of the following characteristics: a clear goal and a good concentration to lose the feeling of self-consciousness and the sense of time. After the activity it may give a direct feedback and be rewarding. Lastly, the activity has to be a balance between ability level and challenge in order to have a personal control over the situation.
So I feel as if these components of flow apply to various fields and give clues about some a priori tangled states. Because a particularity of the flow is to be uncontrollable, as we have seen for the emotional process just before we can name it as emotion, it happens also during the creative process; we need to let it go, to lose the control and enlarge the base to be surprised by instinctive ideas from the boundaries… Pushing further, an emerging idea, whether we are actively absorbed or not, enables an indescribably pleasant feeling that our role will be afterwards to transcribe again, but this time focusing on it, and allowing others to feel it. And to go just beyond this, the accomplishment of a piece of art would be, to me, to prepare someone for the flow experience, so that it crosses somebody’s mind and body, offering a different and true look at everyday life.
9. Dupont, Odile, Art et perception, Itineraires philosophiques, Delagrave, 2004, p.21-23
10. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly,Vivre, La psychologie du bonheur, Pocket, 2004, p.68, 70, 79, 107-120
vendredi 27 février 2009
Chapter 4: From the child's eyes
4) From the child’s eyes
Even though there is a universal approach to the recognition of particular emotions, signs on faces, body language, and corporeal temperature changes, which are visible in people’s behaviour, recognition is also related to our personal past experiences and tastes, themselves invisible. That is why it makes each emotion so individual, and why it is perceived with so many nuances. Indeed, our first discoveries during childhood obviously influence our perception of what is for us one or another emotion. Some emotions might then be suppressed, such as anger, and certain significations might be understood in the wrong way, according to how parents qualify and communicate with their own emotions.
Anyway, I would like to highlight the fact that, through an innocent child’s eyes, as we all have been first, and learned necessarily from it, emotions are properly experienced, lived quite purely, as if we have eaten them raw. To me, raw sensation evokes something fresh, but not totally digested, unfinished. Conversely ‘cooked’ emotion presumes some learning, understanding, growing, cultivating, which still has a capacity of evolution. So the first raw emotions we had were true of course, impressed upon our life, but they were kind of missing other cooked acquisitions, as emotion is such a particularly unique feeling, each time different and surprising.
I shall start with two important memories in my mind – very personal and detailed – keeping the flow of the narrative. I am telling these stories through the eyes of a child from this period of time, trying to capture the correct emotion in context. Context seems to be slightly linked to the emotions in question, or rather emotions occur in a specific way, dependent on a particular context, with an order of things that can amplify the intensity of one emotion. We must not forget that an emotion arises in order to adapt to certain changes in the surrounding environment.
First personal memory: How a sweet everyday “gouter” turns into a drama…
Every Wednesday, after taking drawing lessons in the Beaux-Arts of Cherbourg – I was about nine years old – I was walking to my grandmother’s house, thinking about the snack awaiting me… In France, it is called “gouter”, a full-fledged moment like afternoon tea, and is especially meant for children. The snack consists of a baguette, with butter, nutella and a drink. I knew she was expecting me, so I couldn’t be late.
I have twenty-three cousins, my father being the last one of his eight brothers and sisters; we are consequently the youngest for my grandmother, nicknamed “sweet grandma”, because she always has some sweets in her pocket…
My grandmother had a particular house built at the foot of the hill, which was very impressive and frightening – all the larger when you are a child. I always had to climb quickly up the precipitous, completely irregular stairs to the leaning garden to avoid rocks, which could have fallen from the enormous hill…
This particular afternoon with my younger brother and sister, we stepped over a barbed wire to go and play in the closed garden. As we were playing the game “Bioman”, fighting to death, I was dragging myself along the ground, and suddenly, a broken glass gashed deeply my knee… Scared by the blood, I didn’t want to look at it, but I knew directly it was very serious; so still focused, I forced myself to climb back quickly down the dangerous stairs without falling… Realizing that my old grandma would probably not know what to do, without my mother, I just sat down, and fainted. Fortunately I think my mother appeared as my saviour minutes after and took me to our doctor friend. He stitched up my wound directly. Eight stitches. Still a mark today, after fifteen years, though not so serious, but it certainly connects me to those to emotions of that moment.
Things happened so fast, and my emotions changed radically as well… Though this memory that is still so clear to me, I can count happiness, I was playing innocently, enjoying time with my family, frightened already a bit by the hill and the garden, as a premonition, but with excitement, of course, being not reassured to be in another forbidden garden, and totally turning to another trouble, feeling faint and breathless, in distress, seized by fear.
A second memory with the other grandma: the murder of a hen…
I am lucky that contexts encourage my imagination to get involved in the story, in places, which are not surreal, but that are all well and real…
On holiday in my grandparent’s big farm, it was like a dream to gambol and discover many places, between attics, barns and henhouses. There were many animals, horses, cows, a dog, cats, and lots of hens and chickens. And you can imagine the daily work to feed all of them. My grandmother left us the funny task of looking for eggs, which were carefully laid and dropped off everywhere on hay bales. In a sense, they were members of the family, and we took care of them everyday.
Now and then, a special ritual took place. And I did not know what to think about it. My grandmother would say: “All right, this coming Sunday, I am going to cook a chicken; one is ready.” She forbade us to go out for a while. The moment of the murder for sure… Sometimes afterwards she would ask us to help to pluck the chicken, which was still warm – my God!
The fact of keeping us inside was understandable, but worst for our crazy imagination… Once older, we spied on the murderer and her crime; she attracted a chosen chicken, catching it by the legs; sometimes, the chicken would run away, understanding the game; sometimes, it would struggle with its wings, groaning horribly…
And the terrible thing is that, now, every time I enter their house, and recognize the smell of grilled legs (they need to be grilled directly on the gas to burn off the rest of the feathers), I instantaneously have a picture of the murder, symbolized by the legs. At least she was catching more chickens than my sweet hens!
Well, of course, we need to live on food, and we need animal protein, but in this example, it is quite a weird mix of joy, fear, disgust, sadness, guilt and, not to say, anger. From those two memories, purposely detailed but, perhaps, too long, I have noticed that our memory can recall perfectly a precise and complex emotion, especially when it is connected to food, or more generally to some physical feelings. Indeed, sensations are the first stage in the process of emotion. Through our skin and our five senses, all things we touch, smell, taste, see or hear provoke the first reactions. Like the “Madelaine” of Proust, as soon as I am confronted with a similar situation, or when the smell goes into my nostrils, it also enters my brain by association; the memory is occurring again in pictures and the context reminds me why…
Even though there is a universal approach to the recognition of particular emotions, signs on faces, body language, and corporeal temperature changes, which are visible in people’s behaviour, recognition is also related to our personal past experiences and tastes, themselves invisible. That is why it makes each emotion so individual, and why it is perceived with so many nuances. Indeed, our first discoveries during childhood obviously influence our perception of what is for us one or another emotion. Some emotions might then be suppressed, such as anger, and certain significations might be understood in the wrong way, according to how parents qualify and communicate with their own emotions.
Anyway, I would like to highlight the fact that, through an innocent child’s eyes, as we all have been first, and learned necessarily from it, emotions are properly experienced, lived quite purely, as if we have eaten them raw. To me, raw sensation evokes something fresh, but not totally digested, unfinished. Conversely ‘cooked’ emotion presumes some learning, understanding, growing, cultivating, which still has a capacity of evolution. So the first raw emotions we had were true of course, impressed upon our life, but they were kind of missing other cooked acquisitions, as emotion is such a particularly unique feeling, each time different and surprising.
I shall start with two important memories in my mind – very personal and detailed – keeping the flow of the narrative. I am telling these stories through the eyes of a child from this period of time, trying to capture the correct emotion in context. Context seems to be slightly linked to the emotions in question, or rather emotions occur in a specific way, dependent on a particular context, with an order of things that can amplify the intensity of one emotion. We must not forget that an emotion arises in order to adapt to certain changes in the surrounding environment.
First personal memory: How a sweet everyday “gouter” turns into a drama…
Every Wednesday, after taking drawing lessons in the Beaux-Arts of Cherbourg – I was about nine years old – I was walking to my grandmother’s house, thinking about the snack awaiting me… In France, it is called “gouter”, a full-fledged moment like afternoon tea, and is especially meant for children. The snack consists of a baguette, with butter, nutella and a drink. I knew she was expecting me, so I couldn’t be late.
I have twenty-three cousins, my father being the last one of his eight brothers and sisters; we are consequently the youngest for my grandmother, nicknamed “sweet grandma”, because she always has some sweets in her pocket…
My grandmother had a particular house built at the foot of the hill, which was very impressive and frightening – all the larger when you are a child. I always had to climb quickly up the precipitous, completely irregular stairs to the leaning garden to avoid rocks, which could have fallen from the enormous hill…
This particular afternoon with my younger brother and sister, we stepped over a barbed wire to go and play in the closed garden. As we were playing the game “Bioman”, fighting to death, I was dragging myself along the ground, and suddenly, a broken glass gashed deeply my knee… Scared by the blood, I didn’t want to look at it, but I knew directly it was very serious; so still focused, I forced myself to climb back quickly down the dangerous stairs without falling… Realizing that my old grandma would probably not know what to do, without my mother, I just sat down, and fainted. Fortunately I think my mother appeared as my saviour minutes after and took me to our doctor friend. He stitched up my wound directly. Eight stitches. Still a mark today, after fifteen years, though not so serious, but it certainly connects me to those to emotions of that moment.
Things happened so fast, and my emotions changed radically as well… Though this memory that is still so clear to me, I can count happiness, I was playing innocently, enjoying time with my family, frightened already a bit by the hill and the garden, as a premonition, but with excitement, of course, being not reassured to be in another forbidden garden, and totally turning to another trouble, feeling faint and breathless, in distress, seized by fear.
A second memory with the other grandma: the murder of a hen…
I am lucky that contexts encourage my imagination to get involved in the story, in places, which are not surreal, but that are all well and real…
On holiday in my grandparent’s big farm, it was like a dream to gambol and discover many places, between attics, barns and henhouses. There were many animals, horses, cows, a dog, cats, and lots of hens and chickens. And you can imagine the daily work to feed all of them. My grandmother left us the funny task of looking for eggs, which were carefully laid and dropped off everywhere on hay bales. In a sense, they were members of the family, and we took care of them everyday.
Now and then, a special ritual took place. And I did not know what to think about it. My grandmother would say: “All right, this coming Sunday, I am going to cook a chicken; one is ready.” She forbade us to go out for a while. The moment of the murder for sure… Sometimes afterwards she would ask us to help to pluck the chicken, which was still warm – my God!
The fact of keeping us inside was understandable, but worst for our crazy imagination… Once older, we spied on the murderer and her crime; she attracted a chosen chicken, catching it by the legs; sometimes, the chicken would run away, understanding the game; sometimes, it would struggle with its wings, groaning horribly…
And the terrible thing is that, now, every time I enter their house, and recognize the smell of grilled legs (they need to be grilled directly on the gas to burn off the rest of the feathers), I instantaneously have a picture of the murder, symbolized by the legs. At least she was catching more chickens than my sweet hens!
Well, of course, we need to live on food, and we need animal protein, but in this example, it is quite a weird mix of joy, fear, disgust, sadness, guilt and, not to say, anger. From those two memories, purposely detailed but, perhaps, too long, I have noticed that our memory can recall perfectly a precise and complex emotion, especially when it is connected to food, or more generally to some physical feelings. Indeed, sensations are the first stage in the process of emotion. Through our skin and our five senses, all things we touch, smell, taste, see or hear provoke the first reactions. Like the “Madelaine” of Proust, as soon as I am confronted with a similar situation, or when the smell goes into my nostrils, it also enters my brain by association; the memory is occurring again in pictures and the context reminds me why…
mardi 10 février 2009
dimanche 8 février 2009
Chapter 9 : Analysis of the questionnaire
9) Analysis of the Questionnaire:
-Keep running the sense from answers and graphics- See a sample page 75 and 77
< The questionnaires comprise a main chart and three others to correspond to the six basic emotions to cooking and timing features, to one ingredient or a food category, and lastly to one colour. The last question was intended to encourage a more personal comment or memory about one emotion that cannot turn into another one, some food cannot be mixed with other food. >
< I received 35 answers that revealed certain tendencies. However, unfortunately, since most of the questionnaires were filled in by students (and mainly art students), I was not able to tell if the results would have been different depending on the age, activity or culture factors of the respondents. It would be interesting to continue the research in that direction. >
I have been creating these questionnaires from the beginning of my research. Being quite instinctive and presenting an unusual way of thinking, they bring out a good, stimulating exterior support for me. I honestly did not know exactly what would the results would be, but little by little, people were in fact according on certain ideas. And, to use them more effectively, I found it helpful at the end to produce a visual direct picture of the results. It offered me a clearer vision, with the graphic shapes that I purposely kept more or less expressive (do not forget to be cautious in speaking about the emotions…).
To consider the answers themselves, it is worth mentioning that “anger” produced unanimous agreements, felt as “hot” and “heavy” (31 out of 35 answers), “red” and “spicy”, and “in volume”.
I outline characteristics which have reached a score up to 20 responses:
Happiness seems also to express an obvious “sweet” sensation, reinforced by “sugar” selection, “light” and “in volume”, seen as a “yellow” colour, and “cooked”. We will come back to this “cooked” fact later.
Then, what we keep in mind is that sadness is a “heavy” and “flat” state, “blue” and “liquid”, lasting long.
Regarding disgust, more various and contradictory ideas came out, to me certainly because it is its property in a sense to be shapeless, transforming by rotting, neither cooked nor raw.
When a surprise takes place, it is unexpected, happens very suddenly; it is rather “raw”, embellished with “baking powder”, and the pleasure may depend on the surprise! Lastly, fear is a “heavy” feeling, since it is restrictive, “cold” and one longs to be free of it.
To another degree, let us try now to analyse what the graphics bring to light. What I have done is to combine certain information; for instance the first experiment is the visualization of the timing on the horizontal scale with the data for the shape and weight on the vertical one, given for each emotion by a colour. Each graphic shows different information and therefore reinforces a particular feature. It gives also a global view, in which you can compare the different spaces they take up, individually and as a group. Would it be at the end, a possible way to suggest that a graphic line that does not cross another one could amount to those emotions that do not live really together? The interest will be in understanding better happiness and its relationship with other emotions.
In this first picture (see graph 1, figure 18), I find it interesting to emphasize the intriguing shape made by happiness in yellow and sadness in blue. They appear symmetrical. That’s how they are formed of opposite characteristics on the vertical scale and similar ones on the time scale: while sadness is a very heavy feeling at the same time as expressing something flat, happiness contrasts being light and in volume. For both, we can sense briefly each feeling from a few minutes to hours and days. Whether 20 people answer a “few days” for sadness against only 7 for happiness, both feelings may also last for a few years, and maybe when happiness is caught, someone said “forever”!
And with disgust and sadness, these two feelings are softer, in the middle, less marked on the extremes, but lukewarm-cold, and salted-sweetish. That is the reason why they can cross happiness.
What else do we see? Surprise has a fine shape, starting from seconds to a short time, rather light and in volume (for a random nice surprise), but could be flat and heavy as well (for bad ones). The feeling of surprise does not have a strong visual impact (is it because it is not such an important emotion, or does not leave its mark on us?) even if it does cross happiness.
The red imposing shape is anger. When this feeling occurs, it is true to say that it sounds very violent, more sudden, but it can last a while. Just as it blows up in volume, it is felt as the heaviest emotion (31/35). Thus it can cross with other emotions.
Fear is also something quite heavy to carry. It hinders quite often the way to happiness, but all the same, they live together. More in volume than sadness for example, fear seems more invasive, sadness drearier, latent.
On this second visual (see graph 2, figure 19), it works differently, reinforcing one central pole (happiness) and different entities excited around it. Anger, fear and surprise appear in duplicate simply because the taste scale consists of different tastes (salty, sweet, spicy) and no really one right-ordered gradation. Anger is hot, rather spicy but also salty; fear is cold, salty and spicy; surprise is mostly hot, spicy and sweet.
About sweetness, what happens is that happiness is a great success and positions like that the yellow shape just in the middle. Hotter, but balanced with lukewarm-cold temperatures, it is like happiness is protected inside as well as locked between all the possible negative attacks. And with disgust and sadness, these two feelings are softer, in the middle, less marked on the extremes, but lukewarm-cold, and salted-sweetish. That is the reason why they can cross happiness.
In the crossing space between emotions, I tried to map out these three examples of mixed emotions. In a previous paragraph about mixed emotions, we have seen that for many people, shame and jealousy were expressing something sad and disgusting, and here on the graphic we see that the stars are included also in those areas.
I do just want to comment on the links between disgust and happiness, because it was not obvious to me at all. For instance, looking at the colour chart, if happiness is seen as yellow (17/35) more often, and disgust as green (13/35), they do share their colour, more than for other emotions. And the same happened for the ingredient choice, happiness is definitely “sugar” (21/35), but to a lesser extent is also “butter” (9/35), like disgust (9/35). The funny thing is that, when I think about it, I find old butter and fats disgusting, but they make at the same time any dish much tastier. I just remember the delicious taste of a real butter croissant (compared to one without). And we well speak also about coarse jokes that we make with very good friends, mixing disgust and laughter… Are they so far from each other? Or is it a question of humour and taste?
As a result of this visual analysis, I would like to point out that happiness, to be reached, seems to face sadness and fear. Anger and surprise might happen and interfere with the pattern, on bad but also good levels. Because they are mainly raw emotions, we have to deal with them, cooking them, making them softer in order to protect the fragile yellow substance.
-Keep running the sense from answers and graphics- See a sample page 75 and 77
< The questionnaires comprise a main chart and three others to correspond to the six basic emotions to cooking and timing features, to one ingredient or a food category, and lastly to one colour. The last question was intended to encourage a more personal comment or memory about one emotion that cannot turn into another one, some food cannot be mixed with other food. >
< I received 35 answers that revealed certain tendencies. However, unfortunately, since most of the questionnaires were filled in by students (and mainly art students), I was not able to tell if the results would have been different depending on the age, activity or culture factors of the respondents. It would be interesting to continue the research in that direction. >
I have been creating these questionnaires from the beginning of my research. Being quite instinctive and presenting an unusual way of thinking, they bring out a good, stimulating exterior support for me. I honestly did not know exactly what would the results would be, but little by little, people were in fact according on certain ideas. And, to use them more effectively, I found it helpful at the end to produce a visual direct picture of the results. It offered me a clearer vision, with the graphic shapes that I purposely kept more or less expressive (do not forget to be cautious in speaking about the emotions…).
To consider the answers themselves, it is worth mentioning that “anger” produced unanimous agreements, felt as “hot” and “heavy” (31 out of 35 answers), “red” and “spicy”, and “in volume”.
I outline characteristics which have reached a score up to 20 responses:
Happiness seems also to express an obvious “sweet” sensation, reinforced by “sugar” selection, “light” and “in volume”, seen as a “yellow” colour, and “cooked”. We will come back to this “cooked” fact later.
Then, what we keep in mind is that sadness is a “heavy” and “flat” state, “blue” and “liquid”, lasting long.
Regarding disgust, more various and contradictory ideas came out, to me certainly because it is its property in a sense to be shapeless, transforming by rotting, neither cooked nor raw.
When a surprise takes place, it is unexpected, happens very suddenly; it is rather “raw”, embellished with “baking powder”, and the pleasure may depend on the surprise! Lastly, fear is a “heavy” feeling, since it is restrictive, “cold” and one longs to be free of it.
To another degree, let us try now to analyse what the graphics bring to light. What I have done is to combine certain information; for instance the first experiment is the visualization of the timing on the horizontal scale with the data for the shape and weight on the vertical one, given for each emotion by a colour. Each graphic shows different information and therefore reinforces a particular feature. It gives also a global view, in which you can compare the different spaces they take up, individually and as a group. Would it be at the end, a possible way to suggest that a graphic line that does not cross another one could amount to those emotions that do not live really together? The interest will be in understanding better happiness and its relationship with other emotions.
In this first picture (see graph 1, figure 18), I find it interesting to emphasize the intriguing shape made by happiness in yellow and sadness in blue. They appear symmetrical. That’s how they are formed of opposite characteristics on the vertical scale and similar ones on the time scale: while sadness is a very heavy feeling at the same time as expressing something flat, happiness contrasts being light and in volume. For both, we can sense briefly each feeling from a few minutes to hours and days. Whether 20 people answer a “few days” for sadness against only 7 for happiness, both feelings may also last for a few years, and maybe when happiness is caught, someone said “forever”!
And with disgust and sadness, these two feelings are softer, in the middle, less marked on the extremes, but lukewarm-cold, and salted-sweetish. That is the reason why they can cross happiness.
What else do we see? Surprise has a fine shape, starting from seconds to a short time, rather light and in volume (for a random nice surprise), but could be flat and heavy as well (for bad ones). The feeling of surprise does not have a strong visual impact (is it because it is not such an important emotion, or does not leave its mark on us?) even if it does cross happiness.
The red imposing shape is anger. When this feeling occurs, it is true to say that it sounds very violent, more sudden, but it can last a while. Just as it blows up in volume, it is felt as the heaviest emotion (31/35). Thus it can cross with other emotions.
Fear is also something quite heavy to carry. It hinders quite often the way to happiness, but all the same, they live together. More in volume than sadness for example, fear seems more invasive, sadness drearier, latent.
On this second visual (see graph 2, figure 19), it works differently, reinforcing one central pole (happiness) and different entities excited around it. Anger, fear and surprise appear in duplicate simply because the taste scale consists of different tastes (salty, sweet, spicy) and no really one right-ordered gradation. Anger is hot, rather spicy but also salty; fear is cold, salty and spicy; surprise is mostly hot, spicy and sweet.
About sweetness, what happens is that happiness is a great success and positions like that the yellow shape just in the middle. Hotter, but balanced with lukewarm-cold temperatures, it is like happiness is protected inside as well as locked between all the possible negative attacks. And with disgust and sadness, these two feelings are softer, in the middle, less marked on the extremes, but lukewarm-cold, and salted-sweetish. That is the reason why they can cross happiness.
In the crossing space between emotions, I tried to map out these three examples of mixed emotions. In a previous paragraph about mixed emotions, we have seen that for many people, shame and jealousy were expressing something sad and disgusting, and here on the graphic we see that the stars are included also in those areas.
I do just want to comment on the links between disgust and happiness, because it was not obvious to me at all. For instance, looking at the colour chart, if happiness is seen as yellow (17/35) more often, and disgust as green (13/35), they do share their colour, more than for other emotions. And the same happened for the ingredient choice, happiness is definitely “sugar” (21/35), but to a lesser extent is also “butter” (9/35), like disgust (9/35). The funny thing is that, when I think about it, I find old butter and fats disgusting, but they make at the same time any dish much tastier. I just remember the delicious taste of a real butter croissant (compared to one without). And we well speak also about coarse jokes that we make with very good friends, mixing disgust and laughter… Are they so far from each other? Or is it a question of humour and taste?
As a result of this visual analysis, I would like to point out that happiness, to be reached, seems to face sadness and fear. Anger and surprise might happen and interfere with the pattern, on bad but also good levels. Because they are mainly raw emotions, we have to deal with them, cooking them, making them softer in order to protect the fragile yellow substance.
samedi 7 février 2009
Chapter 10: A question of proportions
10) A question of proportions
Well, actually what was noticed by different people at the end of the questionnaire was the major importance of the proportions. As soon as you make a cake or adapt to a situation, you have to weigh the right amount of ingredients to go together with other ingredients that are already in place.
Because you do not have to change your entire recipe, you have to find a way to adjust it better. If it tastes too spicy, you put in less garlic and pepper. Or perhaps it was not the proper time when you inserted the milk, as you got into a passionate state of mind that was not there yet for the other person: the dough falls down faster than expected.
Asking the question of how it was possible to move from a sad state to a happier one, one friend of mine gave this accurate point of view: “I think that we can move from sadness to happiness by finding the ingredient missing (or too big a quantity of an ingredient) and then be courageous enough to take it away or add the ingredient we think is missing…the difficult task is to find what has to be taken away and what added… Happiness to sadness would be to realise that the recipe was wrong…” So find a nice measurement is like detecting your own tempo; the personal rhythm has to be considered.
Let us give another comparison. To measure the intense aromatic persistence of the wine in the mouth in seconds, the name “caudalie” was used to refer to this precious moment of the expression and flavours that develop, and these are estimated in a number of “caudalies”. I say that it “was” used, because it is regretfully disappearing from French dictionaries. Experts on wine tasting judge some of the best Sauternes as counting up to 25 caudalies, meaning 25 incredible seconds of sense effervescence.
I found interesting this particular measure proper to wine because we feel kind of the same persistence with a painful feeling or marvellous one that is in fact non-describable. It would be interesting to create a measurement related to the intensity of emotions. We can wonder then, as we need a level of protein, carbohydrate, lipid and vitamin to maintain nutrition and energy, whether we perhaps need a certain level of love and motivation to balance and come near happiness, if these are seen as a nutritive aim. At the end, proportions are something we fix up in order to create homogeneity between the ingredients. Our emotions are felt as positive or negative depending on the level of satisfaction we have fixed up before. Sometimes we certainly establish this level higher than what is honestly possible to get. We are generally too much unsatisfied and it is a real work to learn to become satisfied from small pleasures; it is getting a chance to whatever tiny joy we meet often.
Well, actually what was noticed by different people at the end of the questionnaire was the major importance of the proportions. As soon as you make a cake or adapt to a situation, you have to weigh the right amount of ingredients to go together with other ingredients that are already in place.
Because you do not have to change your entire recipe, you have to find a way to adjust it better. If it tastes too spicy, you put in less garlic and pepper. Or perhaps it was not the proper time when you inserted the milk, as you got into a passionate state of mind that was not there yet for the other person: the dough falls down faster than expected.
Asking the question of how it was possible to move from a sad state to a happier one, one friend of mine gave this accurate point of view: “I think that we can move from sadness to happiness by finding the ingredient missing (or too big a quantity of an ingredient) and then be courageous enough to take it away or add the ingredient we think is missing…the difficult task is to find what has to be taken away and what added… Happiness to sadness would be to realise that the recipe was wrong…” So find a nice measurement is like detecting your own tempo; the personal rhythm has to be considered.
Let us give another comparison. To measure the intense aromatic persistence of the wine in the mouth in seconds, the name “caudalie” was used to refer to this precious moment of the expression and flavours that develop, and these are estimated in a number of “caudalies”. I say that it “was” used, because it is regretfully disappearing from French dictionaries. Experts on wine tasting judge some of the best Sauternes as counting up to 25 caudalies, meaning 25 incredible seconds of sense effervescence.
I found interesting this particular measure proper to wine because we feel kind of the same persistence with a painful feeling or marvellous one that is in fact non-describable. It would be interesting to create a measurement related to the intensity of emotions. We can wonder then, as we need a level of protein, carbohydrate, lipid and vitamin to maintain nutrition and energy, whether we perhaps need a certain level of love and motivation to balance and come near happiness, if these are seen as a nutritive aim. At the end, proportions are something we fix up in order to create homogeneity between the ingredients. Our emotions are felt as positive or negative depending on the level of satisfaction we have fixed up before. Sometimes we certainly establish this level higher than what is honestly possible to get. We are generally too much unsatisfied and it is a real work to learn to become satisfied from small pleasures; it is getting a chance to whatever tiny joy we meet often.
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