Supervisor: Professor Rebecca Fortnum

Institutional email:  christina.mamakos@network.rca.ac.uk

How is meaning generated – how does meaning make sense?  Through a critical and cross-­‐disciplinary approach, this project investigates an account of how meaning is constructed.  Using as a starting point Didi-­‐Huberman’s inquiry into what it actually means to have knowledge of an artwork, this project explores a combination of theoretical research and empirical study to investigate meaning as derived from the physical nature of our brains, bodies, and physical  experiences.  Analytic philosophy emphasizes the logical analysis of concepts through the study of language. This is contrasted with continental phenomenology’s approach to meaning as  arising  from  the representation of appearances. Embodied cognition builds on this perspective, engaging a number of fields including linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, art, biology, and robotics, to explore how abstract concepts are derived from the body. By examining the structural components of embodied cognition, including metaphor, mapping, and integration, and how they bear on intentionality, this project aims to lead to a provocative point where the disembodied voice of analytic  philosophy interacts with more embodied aesthetic approaches to knowledge, to form a clearer picture of how meaning is constructed within the wider context of art history.  This practice-­‐lead investigation is conducted through a body of artwork created specifically to explore the haptic qualities present in the relationship between handmade and digital as a means to explore the point where distinctions between natural and artificial cannot be drawn. Foundational material will create a base upon which to conduct associated experiments in  collaboration  with  the  above parallel fields, exploring how meaning is generated in the visual domain.  Though the subject of meaning is broad, this project is specific in that it seeks to map and explore meaning  through  feeling/sensation  (aesthesis)  –  brought  to  bear  through  the  study  of  embodied  cognition, and manifestly brought to light by its application in a practice-­‐based art platform.