Let’s talk about affordances: some implications of the social-material affordances approach

Paul Voestermans

doi:10.1177/10597123211000172

Abstract

In Erik Rietveld’s inaugural lecture “The Affordances of Art for Making Technologies,” art is presented as a valuable avenue to enrich the environment with material and social affordances that may enhance human meaning giving practices. In this contribution, I make a distinction between conventional and unconventional practices and argue for an account of sociomateriality that covers the whole spectrum and not just the evidently artistic and artful ones. In this context, I plea for a cognitive science program that adds to the rich resources art has to offer for understanding the whole spectrum of practices and deals with the complexity of social, material, and cultural practices.

Highlights

I think I was one of the very few present at the birth of Erik’s interest in what eventually came to be known as the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF)—the program, in which intentional actions and stances of the embodied human being are investigated from the perspective of the life world’s dependence on the interaction of the organism’s capacities and the landscape of affordances
In Erik Rietveld’s inaugural lecture ‘‘The Affordances of Art for Making Technologies,’’ art is presented as a valuable avenue to enrich the environment with material and social affordances that may enhance human meaning giving practices
I plea for a cognitive science program that adds to the rich resources art has to offer for understanding the whole spectrum of practices and deals with the complexity of social, material, and cultural practices

Summary

Introduction

I think I was one of the very few present at the birth of Erik’s interest in what eventually came to be known as the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF)—the program, in which intentional actions and stances of the embodied human being are investigated from the perspective of the life world’s dependence on the interaction of the organism’s capacities and the landscape of affordances. Abstract In Erik Rietveld’s inaugural lecture ‘‘The Affordances of Art for Making Technologies,’’ art is presented as a valuable avenue to enrich the environment with material and social affordances that may enhance human meaning giving practices. I plea for a cognitive science program that adds to the rich resources art has to offer for understanding the whole spectrum of practices and deals with the complexity of social, material, and cultural practices.

Results

Conclusion