Dalibor Vesely - The Modern Situation

The Modern Situation

When looking at the modern situation, Vesely finds that the problem is generally structured on the basis of an ontological difference that is intrinsic to representation itself. This is precisely the difference that allows modes of representation to emancipate from that which is represented, and from particular, given circumstances (pp. 4-5). The discussion of ontological difference therefore constitutes an epistemological difference affecting the conditions and possibilities of knowledge. And speculative thought, which we so associate with modern science, is built on this difference. Charles Taylor (1995) points out how the question for modern science is to fit a particular mode of representation to another, extrinsic representation: what we commonly call the "outer reality". The difference between the two constantly jeopardizes their epistemological value; and affects not only the way in which representation relates to what it means to represent, but also between different modes of representing it.

In response, Vesely's work explores how architecture constantly works between different modes of representation, through the difference between project and what is built, for instance, when it translates a whole city into a diagram, a plan or a map. The simple act of reading a map involves more than just the imagination to relate the map with the buildings and the surrounding space; it involves the reciprocity between different levels of representation, that may intake discrepancy and lack of information. According to Vesely, this kind of discrepancy might be useful to understand the nature of the question; and may in fact become a means to understand what impairs the communication between different levels of representation, and conversely, what happens when such communication takes place.

Vesely also takes up the example of an experiment that, paradoxically perhaps, was carried out in the hey-day of logical empiricism. The experiment was carried out by Schilder, and involved a temporary inversion of the visual field (pp. 46ss), leaving other perceptual fields untouched. Schilder's experiment addressed the discontinuity between the visual and other fields of perception, and exposed the situated human body as a basic structure of spatial reference (pp. 48-49). Vesely investigates how the subjects of the experiment found that their bodies were the first instance they could rely on when trying to situate in a visual world that was not only upside down, but also turned from left to right; and when trying to perform simple gestures like picking up a book, or reading. Although the experience was difficult to endure, the inverted vision could be partially reconciled with the original body structure (p. 47).

According to Vesely, the ability to reconcile the acquired inverted vision with the situational structure of the human body, points out to a deeper problem when dealing with situation, which is related to our ability to become situated on provisional grounds, even when lacking a fundamental 'ground' of spatial or temporal reference. The example from inverted vision also means to show that such a basis is far from being immediate; it is constituted in the process of a search within the actual space and comes about in the reciprocity between different levels and forms of representation such as visual, tactile, and so forth. Vesely elaborates on situation and the phenomenon of being situated as an example of how we contextualize spatial knowledge and on which basis; and on how a particular point of reference allows us to situate spatial knowledge. In the course of the argument, Vesely demonstrates that what constitutes the fabric of situation is a continuity of reference and experience through different forms of articulating spatiality down to an implicit structure that itself is neither visual nor tactile, and is only potentially articulated in the objective realm (pp. 48, 82-87, 378ss).