Online Lecture and Blog Text
2022
RESONANCE is an essential basic concept of our time: the resonance of different systems. SHA. got to the bottom of this phenomenon - from the perspective of a holistic view of the world. We have now put the result online for you: as an online lecture and as a blog text.
Let's start by giving a definition of what we are talking about here:
The term resonance originally comes from acoustics, where it has been used since ancient times to describe the clearly audible resonance of certain strings with certain tones.
Example: If you put 2 guitars next to each other and strike one string, the guitar next to it will resonate. We know the same phenomenon from the strings of the piano ...
Only in the 20th century the so-called mechanical resonance became relevant - it was the time when technical mathematics was used to improve the safety of buildings, e.g. bridges. In this context, I cannot withhold from you perhaps the most famous resonance example of all time: The Tacoma Bridge.
In this little film we see where resonance can lead:
So - resonance is defined in physics and technology as the increased resonance of a system when it is subject to a certain time-varying influence. Thereby, the system can deflect many times stronger than if it is subject to a temporally constant influence. This can be seen here in an impressive way!
This is probably how a biologist would start his lecture about resonance ....
But WE are talking here today about resonance in communication - about social resonance.
And a book on this subject was published a few years ago and received much attention.
In his book Resonance, sociologist Hartmut Rosa, who teaches in Jena and Erfurt, makes the claim that it is not resources or moments of happiness that are decisive for the quality of human life, but the resonance relationships - the state of the relationship to the world.
Rosa postulates resonance as perhaps even the most essential basic social philosophical concept of our time: resonance is a mode of relationship that generates mutual vibrations. Resonance is always relational - but not only in the external relationship of the human being to his environment, but also in the internal relationship between his body and his psyche.
Social resonance is also consciously derived from acoustics, where, after all, two bodies capable of vibration enter into a relationship with each other ("resonare" = to echo or sound back). Social resonance seems to be a basic human need - and a basic ability. We can be resonant with other people, with things, with nature, art, religion.
While in physics bodies are set into vibration by external influence, humans experience a reaction or a change in the "inside" by certain resonance experiences, i.e. experiences.
Resonance means resonating. Rosa, a sociologist who is very much in favor of a different school, namely a "school as a resonance space," gives the example of a pedagogical professional who gets involved with the child's feelings and movements and tries to align her movements, breathing and voice with the child's expressions.
In general, Rosa has succeeded in this book in creating a great closeness to everyday life through many examples. I was touched by the story of the two talented young painters who both take part in an art competition - but ultimately have completely different approaches:
One procures the appropriate materials (a sturdy easel, a high-quality canvas, and a rich selection of paints and brushes) takes care of the proper lighting before refreshing his memory of classical composition theory ... then realizes that he has run out of time ... before he has even made the first brush stroke.
The other acts rashly, digs out his last chalk scraps and charcoal pencils in an old sketchpad and immediately starts painting ... Little by little, the first sketches come together as if by themselves to form a coherent work of art.
The first works focused on resource provision. He wants to prepare himself optimally to achieve the best possible result. But his resources alone do not paint a picture. Worse, they ultimately inhibit his creativity. And here comes the crux of the matter: We all already suspect that the other - the spontaneous - will win the competition.
Yet many of us lead our lives like the first. We strive diligently to optimize our starting position - to improve our chances with money, knowledge and relationships. We gather the resources to live well. Unfortunately, we're so busy doing it that we lose sight of what exactly that means. A house and a family. Health, wealth and possessions. I own, therefore I am.
No. It merely creates preconditions! The search for meaning itself is not done with it. Whether we feel our life to be successful depends on how much we feel connected to the world. Hartmut Rosa would say: A fulfilling life stands and falls with the quality of our relationship to the world.
Imagine you are a musician and the people, things and resources in your life are your instruments. Happiness does not mean accumulating the instruments and letting them stand silently in the corner. It means playing them, making them sound. The resonance between you and the world gives your life music - and that's what you need as a musician: resonance.
In addition to all these stories, Hartmut Rosa can, of course, also scientifically substantiate his claims in a serious way. Thus he describes possible resonance relationships in three basic axes: Horizontal resonances take place between two (or more) people, so in love and family relationships, as well as in friendships. Diagonal resonance axes are relationships to things and activities. Finally, vertical axes of resonance are relationships to the great collective experiences - nature, art, history, or religion. In all of these contexts, intense experiences are possible, making life experienceable as an intense encounter or as a relationship for its own sake.
In the larger perspective, however, Rosa ultimately expresses strong social criticism. He analyzes a current crisis of modernity, where the mode of progressive acceleration leads in its result to a loss of resonance possibilities. He sees this crisis as defined by three major manifestations:
1) The ecological crisis and the overstepping of our planetary boundaries due to the finite nature of natural resources versus a quasi-unlimited rate of increase or growth.
2) The political crisis due to too slow and tough democratic negotiation processes, which are considered ineffective or even obsolete by accelerated technological changes.
3) The psychological crisis of the subjects, who see themselves overwhelmed by the acceleration and therefore exhausted (keyword: burn-out).
With this targeted critique of man and society, Rosa's resonance theory places itself in the tradition of critical theory from Marx to Adorno, Benjamin and Fromm to Habermas - since it shares the central finding of "alienation as an obstacle" to a successful life.
This or something similar is how a sociologist or a psychologist would start the lecture on resonance.
Well. I am neither a physics teacher, nor a biologist, nor a sociologist, nor a psychologist.
What can I add from my creative practice? How would I, as an artist, begin a lecture on resonance?
My first impulse was of course: WITH ART. But then I thought, nooo ... people deserve a real lecture. That's what I was asked to do, after all. Not a performance or anything like that.
And then a time window opened up - tomorrow Friday at 10:45 I was invited to create a so-called INTERMEZZO. There will be art. ResonanceArt.
But today I speak as a holistic designer from the point of view of a radical holistic.
And there I noticed a circumstance: While in the normal view of the world resonance is defined as a resonance of two systems or bodies, I have a hard time with it in a consistent holistic view of the world.
What can be meant by resonance in a world where everything is connected and can't vibrate with each other at all - because everything is one!
First, let me present the holistic worldview. Afterwards we want to question this world perspective on the meaning of the term resonance:
In the English word HOLISTIC resonates phonetically the word "whole" (meaning the whole), but of course also "hole", the hole.
The hole is not only a beautiful symbol for holistics, but - and I may reveal this already - also for resonance: A hole would not exist by itself - without its respective environment. Only through the relationship between hole and surrounding space, i.e. the non-hole, the hole as such comes into being at all. This is holistic.
The term holistic refers to a holistic understanding of the world and to a way of perceiving the world that is characterized by the view of the whole and the feeling of connectedness - of people, of things, of nature; of thoughts and feelings; of atoms and planets, ultimately of all world perspectives. The described quality is the connecting instead of separating, or more concretely formulated: the feeling of being connected instead of feeling separated.
It has existed since there have been people who think and feel and make concepts about themselves and the world. Especially in cultural circles outside Europe, the holistic approach has been firmly anchored not only in theory but also in everyday life for thousands of years, such as in TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine. But we in Europe also have such a strand, which can already be seen in Greek philosophy, where Aristotle formulated something like this: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".
Today, however, we are decidedly in the minority with this view of the whole and feeling connected - after all, our modern, industrialized world is largely based on a culture of separation. Most of our everyday thoughts and ideas are far from any holistic, connected view of the world. We like to talk about subjects and objects, entities that are obviously opposite to each other, like ego and world ...
Our Western culture has simply developed in a different direction over a long period of time: With "I think, therefore I am," the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes put the rationalist worldview into a catchy formula. Since then, our society has been shaped by a value pyramid of reason with material growth, increased efficiency and logic at the top.
In view of the numerous developments of recent years, we may well ask ourselves today
- whether the dominance of our intellect is still up to date?
- whether our rational thinking is simply overwhelmed by the technological complexity of the modern world?
- whether the belief in science and technology coupled with a financial-economic tunnel vision is really the answer to man's ability to develop?
In many areas, we are now reaching the limits of the paths we have taken so far. Yet the old value structures stubbornly hold on to power - just consider the resistance to change of our financial system despite several financial crises of global dimensions. The reasons for this kind of stability - one could also call it inertia - lie deeper, more fundamental.
- Be it a religious authority, where it is about the separation of competences between priests and believers and also between true and false.
- Whether it is a power-political authority, where it is about the separation between law-giving authority and law-receiving subjects, in further consequence also between good and evil.
- Be it a social authority that goes back to the archaic imprints of tribal associations, where - then as now - it is a matter of separating the known from the foreign, the friend from the enemy. Anyone who has ever come into direct contact with xenophobia can tell you a thing or two about it ...
But how can we overcome this apparently divisive, authoritarian dualism?
Holism, a holistic world perspective, is not an objectifiable promise of salvation for the whole society, but it addresses the individual human being in his individual responsibility towards himself and his world. With "I feel, therefore I am" the Portuguese neuroscientist António Damásio succeeded in a fitting characterization of this new movement - and this in a playful variation of the once great words of Descartes ...
With 3 very basic examples I would like to show you what "I feel, therefore I am" could mean for our world:
Our fundamental, western conception of the world is based on the separation of entities - humans from other humans, from animals, nature, things etc.. This concept of separation starts already in the womb, where we don't consider mother and child as one anymore, despite a felt unity but a certain week of pregnancy ... but as 2 ... And this separation concept ends at dying, where we believe that one being leaves the other beings - can separate from the whole. How would we view these two scenarios from a radical holistic worldview and what might this change in perspective mean for our understanding of life?
Another fundamental postulate of Western civilization seems to be the distinction and separation between body and mind (in many cases also soul) - almost as if these parts could act independently of each other and were to be addressed separately. In particular, the persistent notion of the human mind as something separate from the body has been questioned for some time, not least by neuroscientists. In a holistic view of the world, we speak of the unity of the human being, an indissoluble connection between physical and mental dimensions that constantly influence each other. What effect does this change of perspective have on our lives, on our idea of learning, on the whole school and educational system, and not least on our understanding of therapy and medicine?
Finally, another fundamental approach to separation is found especially in Western religions - namely, the separation of man from God. The image of God as a separate being, detached from man and opposed to him, makes the full penetration of man with the divine impossible. The resulting basic deficit of man's being must have been in the interest of the founders of religion and/or the administrators of religion and must still be today. Does the relatively recent belief in the West in a holistic presence of the divine in the unity of man and God perhaps carry the potential to replace a long age of authoritarian religious systems?
As we can see, the holistic worldview is applicable in all our spheres of life with unpredictable impact; HOLISTIC is unconventional and fundamentally dynamic - a world-practice in which new connections are built again and again, often even where until then there were obviously no possibilities for connections. Therein lies the real social power of this phenomenon.
And while formulating this sentence, it "clicked" with me myself - and a new connection could be built:
Because this motif of creating connections-where-none-were-before reminds me myself strikingly of the basic motif of every creative and innovation process: after all, the actual achievement of great thinkers and inventors lies not in thinking and inventing, but in creating a fertile breeding ground on which they can create new, unconventional, previously unfeasible links and synapse connections - which then enables them to formulate new thoughts or even invent real innovations. This cross-connection between holistic worldview and creativity is, of course, a particular joy for me as an artist and designer!
For the course of our world, this holistic change of perspective means taking the focus away from the problem-centered criticism of the world as it is and the associated demand for a world as it is not. Instead, attention is directed toward a reassessment of the world as a whole, where a finely woven network of interrelated and interdependent factors becomes discernible in a resource-oriented look at the different qualities of life.
A new culture for connections, relationships, but also responsibilities and dependencies can be derived from this. From the view of the whole and from the knowledge of the inevitable interconnectedness, a natural feeling for tolerance and empathy ultimately arises on a social level as well. Here, there is no longer any need for good people who do good and are thus better than the bad people who do not. Good and bad are different qualities of the same whole. It is a perceptible world, full of connections, full of interconnections; a net world; ultimately a reflection of the highly complex structures in our own inner holistic cosmos - in our brain.
So. And resonance?
What could be meant by this in a holistically connected world view? I searched for a long time, thought about it ... and formulated it around. And I have developed an offer:
Resonance is the ability to perceive more connections than separations at the moment.
So it is a question of perception.
And if the perception is ready and the ability to connect is pronounced, then this creates the special feeling of "resonating". Then all that remains for me as a designer is the question:
Or is it given to us?
As an artist, I say: Both. I was given the ability to make the feeling of resonance possible. The fact that this succeeds again and again is perhaps the most important reason why I became an artist.
In our media-dominated world, where locating - feeling in the here and now - is one of the rare moments, we may even be able to stimulate the decisive answers to the moving issues of our time with resonance experiences.
Well - now I have landed at my ART after all ;)
In fact, the aesthetics of my spatial art is fundamentally characterized by a deep need for wholeness and resonance. For this I try in my art, quite in the holistic sense, to connect the traditional opposites of humanity. 3 examples:
- VASTNESS AND NEARNESS
The vastness of space, as it is often perceived in my sensory spaces, reflects the longing for transformation, for immaterial dissolution of the physical space-time continuum. The sensual proximity of multisensory stimulation necessary for this stems from the deep human need for touch, emotion and security. I let people immerse themselves completely in art, instead of merely confronting them with works of art.
- ARCHAIC AND FUTURISTIC
I combine futuristic aesthetics based on modern medial technology with a primal, even archaic effect - namely so that people can have healing, sensual primal experiences in the midst of our high-performance society. SinnesRäume are at the same time archaic and futuristic.
- INSIDE AND OUTSIDE
With my art I want to sharpen perception - both inwardly and outwardly: the strengthened connection between the immaterially felt "inside" of the human being and the materially perceived "outside" of the world is a core motif of all SinnesRäume. With the creative merging of these opposite directions I want to strengthen the holistic resonance: between our learned entities human and space, I and world and between material and immaterial. Often this happens "quietly" ... at the boundaries of human existence, when pre-natal perceptions are reported or spiritual imaginings from the distant future.
In this now 20-year work with SinnesRäumen I have learned one thing:
Allness is the feeling when I am "All".
In all my designs I let immaterial energy become perceptible in material space: I let spaces be touched. And I let touches be spatialized. In this way, sensory spaces are perceived on the one hand spaceless and timeless, on the other hand full of time and full of space - just FullTime and FullSpace.
In this holistic approach of FullTime and FullSpace lies my own personal secret of sensual design.
In a time that likes to focus on the deficits - on what is missing - I understand my SinnesRäume as a herald of a message of salvation to the perceiving, resonating individual: "You are everything. Complete. Whole. You are whole. Nothing can be missing. Everything is there."
And can ... vibrate
