Title

Interaction and correspondence

Description

In our terms, this is the distinction between interaction and correspondence – that is, between the dance of agency and the dance of animacy. A straight line drawn between two points, as Simmel describes eye-to-eye contact, leaves each point motionless and unfeeling. Such contact may be rational, but it cannot be sentient. Like walkers who have turned in discord to square up to one another, or passengers in that kind of carriage known as the vis-à-vis, …, there is no way forward. The implication of the prefix inter-, in ‘interaction’, is that the interacting parties are closed to one another, as if they could only be connected through some kind of bridging operation. Any such operation is inherently detemporalising, cutting across the paths of movement and becoming rather than joining along with them. In correspondence, by contrast, points are set in motion to describe lines that wrap around one another like melodies in counterpoint. Think, for example, of the entwined melodic lines of the string quartet. The players may be seated opposite one another, and their bodies fixed in place. But their movements and the ensuing sounds correspond, seeking a blend … neither here nor there but in-between.

Designer

Ingold, Tim

Date

2013

Source

Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture

Bibliographic Citation

Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group. Figure 7.10. Pages 106-107.

is composed of

English Spiral

has attribute

English Arrow

English Solid Line

depict things of type

English Conceptual

Coverage

anthropology