The ‘potential space’ of transitional creative notation

Abstract

In this paper, the author links what he terms ‘transitional creative notation’ to Winnicott’s post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory of ‘transitional object use’ and ‘potential space’. The paper explores the way in which ‘transitional object use’ and ‘potential space’ relate to Heidegger’s notion of the ‘ready-to-hand’ and to the use of what Kress has termed a ‘multi-mode’ set of signs that are open to possibilities of reconfiguration as well as a continual interplay between closure and disclosure. The paper argues that transitional multi-mode notation frees human consciousness towards emergent potentialities and possibilities and, as such, is a practical example of the enduring philosophical problem of potentiality and actualization, process and closure. While the paper highlights the materiality of creativity, it also looks to Kristeva’s notion of the ‘Semiotic Chora’ as a source of creativity that precedes the engenderment of ‘potential space’. Finally, the paper discusses transitional creative notation in terms of what the author terms Das Gegenwerk, or the work towards the work that is in opposition to definitive closure.