What is it to perceive/feel/understand your own body into space?

Perceiving your own body, it’s shape, it’s reach, it’s possibilities and it’s limits into space is very important to grasp the world surrounding you. What are the differences between the outline of my own body (a limited portion of space) and the rest of the world? The body is an object, with a certain form, with delimited borders, which evolves in a more global space occupied by a multitude of other objects. It can be measured, drawn, sculpted, even cut out. I have internal access to my body. I can close my eyes, and know the position of my own limbs. In addition to the information given by the five classical senses (vision, touch, hearing, smell and taste), we are constantly receiving signals about the state of our body from a series of sensory receptors. These internal "senses" are specialized in processing information about this range of bodily experiences.

However, our sensory system is not limited to the 5 senses standardly mentioned; our body also registers other sensory information such as those related to the position and movement of our body in space (like the kinesthetic sense, and the vestibular sense). Having a good perception of space is first of all the ability to position oneself, to move around, to orient oneself, to make multiple decisions, to analyze situations within our environment and the relationship of our body with them.

Rudolf Laban, devoting himself to the study of dance movement, theorized the representation of the human movement potential: the “kinesphere”. This model refers to the space directly accessible to a person, it extends all around them, determined by the extension of the legs and arms, in all directions without changing the base of support, and taking into account anatomical limitations. Laban’s choreutic prototypes exploit a spherical movement space around the center of gravity of the body using symmetrical trace-forms swinging up and down, from side to side, and in front and behind the body. His representation is similar to De Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”, taking into account the measurements of the body, only applying them to all 3 horizontal, vertical, and sagittal plans. This imaginary sphere placed around the person is mainly used in dance and in theater to symbolize the personal space of the artist and it’s physical reach.

The possibilities of your body with breathing, expanding, dancing, performative art.

In order to explore this idea of the perception of your own body into space, it’s physical reach and limitations, I participated in a workshop with the juniors of the ICK Amsterdam dance company. It consisted in experiencing a dance method that “helps the body to expand in order to achieve a certain sensitivity. It allows the body to create a direct connection with the skin and the mind.” Since ancient times, Aboriginal culture has used gestures and lines to describe forces that are felt through the body.

This “Dreamings” painting represents the travels of the Ancestor Pintupi women as they travelled through the desert, performing dances and songs.

In addition to the movement of bodies in space, there is the movement of space within bodies. This workshop aimed to experience an inner energy "world" that unfolds in space. However, as shown by Laban, our bodies express themselves within a restricted movement vocabulary because our gestures are restricted by anatomical structures. In order to explore the limits of these restrictions, the instructions for this workshop were first, to make oneself small, as compact as possible; then to stretch out to the maximum towards the ceiling in order to reach the limits of gravity right down to ones fingers; and finally to do this extreme stretch a dozen times. By dint of repetitions, stretching, twisting, and combinations of these, I realized that I was able to make myself smaller and smaller, then more and more elastic. The whole point was to circulate my own motor energy in my own body: you need to take something somewhere to be able to redistribute it elsewhere. I then take my place in space. Carolina Verra, one of the junior dancers present during this workshop said: “this body, since we were born, holds in itself the whole of us; our body, through its movement, is able to put us in communication with others and with nature; and it allows us to express emotions, passions, dreams, feelings, impulses and intuitions.”

With this performative art technique, you become aware of the internal state of one’s own body, how to articulate it, but also to give it an intention in a given space. In that same idea, I experimented paced breathing which is known to impact body mechanics and to be tied with body awareness. Paced breathing is a slow, deep, diaphragmatic breathing. With normal breathing, you take about 12 to 14 breaths a minute. By comparison, with paced breathing you take only 5 to 7 breaths a minute. The paced breaths are smooth and deep enough to move your diaphragm (the muscular wall located beneath your lungs) as you take deeper breaths. By focusing on where to breath, you truly focus on the muscle-to-mind connection: you visualise/perceive your own body moving, actively engaging the targeted muscle as you engage in movement with the intention to do so. You feel the air moving through your nostrils, into your abdomen, expand your stomach and the sides of the waist, while keeping your chest relatively still. This technic is the basis of almost all meditation or relaxation techniques. It takes in more air which oxygenate your muscles better. This makes them work more efficiently and reinforces proper body mechanics that put less stress on your body as you move, thus allowing less restricted movement.

The limits of your body and cognition diseases.

This “muscular sens” meaning the capacity of identifying the location of our own muscles and limbs, was named “proprioception” as soon as 1906 by the English physiologist Charles Sherrington. Proprioception is scientifically explained as all the nervous information transmitted to the brain on the location of the different parts of our body in relation to each other and of our body in space. It is used to regulate our balance and our posture through the contraction of certain muscles which corresponds to the deep sensitivity of the body. This information comes from receptors called proprioceptive receptors located on the muscles, tendons, ligaments of the joints, as well as on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet.

However some disorders can cause a “proprioception dysfunction” that affect any part of the proprioceptive system between the sensory receptors that send the signals to the parts of the brain that receive and interpret them. Proprioceptive Dysperception Syndrome being one of them, it affects the regulation of postural tone, sensory spatial localization and multisensory perception. The symptoms are having impaired if any nervous information transmitted to your brain on the position and sensations of your movements and limbs in relation to our environment and according to the other parts of our body. The programming of the internal schemes of the movement is not done or only partially, thus the subject coordinates with difficulty his gestures which are clumsy. In severe cases, any daily task is difficult as if you do not look at your limbs and surroundings, you cannot place them in space. Moving around then requires a wheelchair since it is impossible to constantly watch your legs and feet to be able to induce movement. Similarly, grabbing a glass of water then requires looking at your arm and hand to be able to place them at the correct hight and close your fingers on the glass. These types of cognition diseases truly show the limits of the body and how the perception of it in space plays a role in every move you make, from walking to eating and drinking.

Losing the information of sensations is to lose the ability to inscribes onself into the world in which it can interact. Man have already “lost” some more instinctive senses like animals sense the arrival of an earthquakes. This perception of our own body aims to adapt it to the world. Sensations make it possible for us to understand something of the feelings expressed in movements, the behaviors that each other must adopt in reaction to others, like a type of language.

The origine of language, it’s purpose and it’s tools.

The sign (whether it is graphic or not) is a device capable of translating heterogeneous languages. This makes it possible to conceive a commensurability between different syntaxes, such as the syntaxes of verbal, gestural, perceptual and visual languages. Commensurability is meant as the capacity of describing the world for what it is exactly. It is made possible not through a relationship between isolated units, but through relationships between discursive forms belonging to different semiotics (verbal, visual, gestural, etc.). The sign is therefore a device allowing translations, even transpositions. Identifying commensurabilities thus allows to signify beyond the expressive capacities of verbal language.

Honorary Professor of Applied Linguistics Charles Goodwin wrote in 1994: “A theory of discourse that ignored graphic representations would be missing both a key element of the discourse that professionals engage in and a central locus for the analysis of professional practice. Instead of mirroring spoken language these external representations complement it, using the distinctive characteristics of the material world to organize phenomena in ways that spoken language can’t, for example by collecting records of a range of disparate events onto a single visible surface”.

When Goodwin approaches the phenomenon of translation between speech and inscriptions, he asserts that the search for commensurability aims at the construction of a totality. For exemple, with the activities of scientists, archaeologists or geologists. This totality can be understood as the result of a demonstrative process. This process, by bringing together and translating diverse signs through a single perspective, leads to knowledge.

I consider the idea of transcription as an example of the systemization of experience, as it concerns gestures, looks, and perceptual movements within shared action. Through transcription, man seek to represent heterogeneous syntaxes and to form them in a totality where the diversities are still perceptible.

The problem facing theorists of the relations between verbal, visual or gestural languages, such as Benveniste, is the presumed freedom of non-verbal languages. Gestures, sounds and images would all lack a finite repertoire of signs and syntactic rules to control their sequences. There would be no universally accepted notation so no grammatical rules that would guarantee the intelligibility of gestural or visual statements, the predictability of their occurrences, or their transmissibility.

The "spoken work" in comparaison to visual language.

These so-called bodily semiotics aim to go beyond the semiological conception of language. Therefore, there challenge is to demonstrate that the image of the body has a level of articulation such that it can produce predicates in total autonomy from verbal language. Language practices then function as forms of laboratory experience that provide answers to our hypotheses.

In general, all notation system tries to make discontinuous and regulated what is continuous. Think of more or less formalized gestures such as dance, conducting an orchestra or a performance. In a way, the notation of oral verbal discourse could be seen as an approach to language similar to the complexity of a musical performance or a ballet. Indeed, it is not the meaning of words that essentially guides us in the transcription, but the gestural forms, the rhythms. They are arranged according to the practical relevance of the situation, and not through a codifications of verbal language and its system. Therefore the segmentation is done by the rhythms of the perceptual flows of attention and by visual prominences. It is then respecting the consistency of visual (and gestural) language. Finally, it respects the fact that any opposition between signs is always tensive and gradual.

This work of comparison is important because it approaches the visual and the gestural systems as autonomous languages compared to the verbal language. But also because it calls into question the approach of the verbal language as a fixed system of units. Thus, it shows the usefulness of analyzing it as a continuous gesture in a practical multimodal framework.

What is necessary to systemise body language?

In order to create a body language system, it is important to record a stabilized base of language habits. This happens during exchanges for the construction of new skills and knowledge: “New structures for the accomplishment of consequential action are progressively created by performing systematic transformative operations on what already exists” says Goodwin. This base would therefore be identifiable with a collection of uses multiplying throughout history which it intervenes in the structuring organization of local action.

In semiotics, this relationship between novelty in the current action and the multiplication of practices makes possible the relationship between what is feasible, relevant, possibly programmable, and what is produced by the actual adjustment of the actors. This schematization of the movements essential in the production of meaning has, in my opinion, the merit of making visible the complexity of our language operations from creation to the multiple stages of this process. This is why it is important to record these recursive language practices of the body and to create a basis for a body language “spoken” and understood by a greater number of people.

"Universal" language systems: attemps and limitations.

This ideal of creating a “common language of man” has been attempted by several people over the centuries. Esperanto created by Ludwik L. Zamenhof in 1887 is the most successful in still being spoken today. Being born in Russian occupied Poland in 1859, he traced back the conflicts emerging in his culturally split native country to miscommunication. Therefore, he decided to create his own “universal” language based on a combination of pre-existing words from different languages. The grammar is simple, verbs are never irregular, spellings are always phonetic. Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and pronounce. Users of this language are estimated to be from 100,000 to 2,000000 active or fluent speakers worldwide. However, they only do use this language within their own, small community. The problem emerging here is that we can not have a “universal language” because we don’t have a “universal community”.

Languages live by being used between people, they are connected with human culture. Based on our culture, we attach names/labels and meaning to objects around us, for what they stand for. However what they stand for may vary depending on your personal background. Even more so than culture, language is connected to identity. Like rap music using urban dialect on purpose to communicate an idea of the person they are to the rest of the world. Man aspire to have their own distinct identities, therefore, they form different groups. The same aspirations that drive us to wave different flags, root for different sports teams, listen to different music and have different cultures mean we'll continue to have different languages, derivatives, and pronounciations.

However, not only script languages can be used as an instrument of communication and expression of thought, sign languages also are. “Pasigraphies” is a term invented by Joseph de Maximieux in 1797 to define visual notation systems readable in any idiom. Coming from ancient grec πᾶς, “all”, and γραφή, “writting”, pasigraphies are meant to communicate but not to be pronounced.

Blissymbolics created by Charles Bliss in 1942 and published in 1949 is one of them. It is considered the most successful universal language to this day.

The idea of constructing an ideographic writing system that is much easier to learn then letters forming speech sounds (in English, using 26 latin letters to write 36 phonemes) had already been attempted by Gottfried W. Leibniz. The German critical thinker thought that a “A Universal Symbolism, very popular, very agreeable to the people...might be introduced if small figures were employed in the place of words, which would represent visible things by their lines.” However, the Characterisca Universalis was only able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts, thus making it usable only within the framework of a Calculus Ratiocinator.

With Blissymbolics, the idea is to construct a semi-pictographic/ideographic writing that represents concepts rather than speech sounds. Charles Bliss spoke 6 languages, he stressed that "the different languages are one of the greatest obstacles to the understanding of man”, and wished to “help mankind” to understand each other. He was well aware of the of the cultural factor and wanted to see his invention put to practice in order to make it evolve based on it’s use. In fact, it is still used nowadays in US hospitals to help children and adults who have lost the ability to speak learn to communicate in a different manner. Covid-19 ideograms have also been created to update this visual language.

"Many teachers have asked me, how many hundreds or thousands of signs and symbols have you invented? And I answered, only 50, to which I added 30 international symbols such as numbers. And I combine them into thousands and thousands of expressions.” Bliss said in the documentary Mr Symbol. This system works in such a way that the combination of signs and symbols is very descriptive. “Language” intended as the spoken language for exemple, is composed of the symbols ear and mouth. It seems simple enough that it can be used in many culture and thus be “universal”. However, it was conceived from the idea of English logic: “toilet” is composed of a chair over water, which is what it looks like in western culture, but what if your toilet is a hole in the ground, then the combination of symbols creating this image does not represent your concept of “toilet”. Thus, you cannot understand the meaning of this “word” if you have never seen it that way.

“All man are created equal to pursue life, liberty and happiness”

Another language system using symbols is music notation. “Music is the universal language of mankind” said Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Indeed, the Pentatonic scale consisting in five notes; “penta” 5, and “tonic” tone, conforms to the same time signatures, measures, notes, and dynamics to form the same sounds in every music sheets. No matter the culture or the instrument, this scale gives musicians a medium through which they can relate, communicate, perform, and ultimately understand each other to play music. This is why it was possible for the North Korean orchestra to perform alongside the Radio France Philharmonic orchestra, under the direction of the South Korean conductor Myung-Whun Chung to perform Brahms’ Symphony N°1 in 2016. Therefore, music notation not only can be understood all over the world but also has the power to connect cultures in a way we may not be able to otherwise. However, the way you read a sheet of music is indeed “universal”, but the way the sound is perceived and understood is not. Music expresses emotion but no clear message as to interaction between people. That is why a number of composers and artists such as John Cage or Cilla McQueen started treating music scores as medium to communicate emotions rather than only the sound to be made.

It becomes very clear that each of these language systems are context-dependent and contingent. Their ambition to be “universal” is thus bound to be incomplete and it is perhaps meant to remain elusive. The utopian ideal of the perfect “universal language” turns out to be primarily a catalyst for even more new forms with which the diversity and richness of the existing systems only grows. Our needs grow in different directions, so does our identities and cultures, and so will languages.

What it would take to create a body language system that tends to be universal.

Human biology is inherently social. Bodies communicate constantly, whether intentionally or unintentionally. As seen before, a “universal” language system seems impossible de create for mankind. However, what if we focus on body language as more of a natural instinct, a reflex. Since the movement would emerge from an emotional reaction, from the realm of feelings, our sensory and motor abilities should be less intertwined with culture and more with animalistic behavior.

The essential content of this body language is the mapping of the perception of your own body into space which is the unspoken part of communication that we use to reveal our true intentions and emotions. Much like Edgar Walthert in his work The Annex of Universal Languages, I have to start by collecting concepts of body perception. Then compare their form, and their meaning. Keeping in mind I want to be as inclusive as possible, I collected drawn feedback from 52 people. This flexible way of gathering content rather than having it written down allows me to not stay stuck in already accepted sign systems. As I am aware I am French, living in the Netherlands and surround by people living in Europe for over 3 years now, the content I have gathered is necessarily to be seen from a western culture viewpoint.

Through a series of 5 questions, I have asked people to explore the meaning they put into their intentions to communicate intuitively with their “own body”. In order to invite the person to reflect on this for themselves rather than because I asked them too, I left the sheet of questions in 3 different locations: my building’s lobby, my gym, the canteen. This also allows the participants to stay anonymous and to not be pressured in answering (their is no time limit and their is no right or wrong way to answer).

First of all, I asked people to pick 4 intentions they relate to the most from a list (Progressing – Ignoring – Engaging – Dominating – Rejecting – Collaborating – Accepting – Exchanging – Noticing – Touching – Listening – Fleeing – Serene). In that way, the intentions are not imposed on them and they are more likely to find interest in participating.

Second of all, I asked them “What is the leading part of your body to initiate these intentions?". As I want their reaction to be spontaneous, human figures were traced on the sheet to facilitate the exercise. I also left instructions to only draw 1 spot, this is the emerging place of the raw natural instinct that drives the movement. A Finnish research team carried out a study on 700 individuals to map out bodily emotions. Their heatmaps of basic emotions in the body indeed show hotspots of emergence.

Third of all, I asked them “Do your intentions have a directions?"" To this question, the instructions were to draw arrows, multiple ones if they wanted to. Human figures were also traced on the sheet to facilitate the exercise.

Fourth of all, I asked them “Do your intentions form a path?" Underneath this question, I traced a very light pattern to simulate spaces and counter spaces in relation to norms. This pattern is based on maps of mountain hiking trails as they are less likely to be linear. I find that spaces tend to force people to communicate through its physical structure: walls force us to turn right or left, and skyscrapers draw the eye up for example. It is the same thing on paper, a great majority tend to follow the set norms. A few however answered this question tracing all over the sheet, not taking into account the underlying pattern.

Finally, I asked them “How comfortably do you communicate your intentions through eye contact?” I find that eye contact has a huge influence on social behaviour and in posture. If you look away from someone, you’re head is going to follow, and even maybe your whole body will be turning away too. Therefore, your whole body language is going to walk away from interaction with another body.

The process of finding the right questions to ask in order to collect as much content as a basis for creating language system as close to being “universal” as possible was very difficult. Discovering which parameters I wanted to take into account for this system was a matter of trial-and-error. What was most challenging was finding the right words to ask about something that cannot be described by those same “spoken” words. This is why I am interested in creating an instinctive body language system in the first place.