Com o objetivo de realizar um estudo sobre a dança com pessoas em sofrimento psíquico e produzir reflexões sobre a arte em um campo de ações em saúde mental, realizou-se intervenções em um Centro de Atenção Psicossocial (CAPS) na cidade de São Paulo. Pelo caráter qualitativo do trabalho, optou-se pela pesquisa-ação que permitiu o planejamento, a organização da intervenção em conjunto com as necessidades de atendimento dos participantes e das diretrizes da atenção em saúde mental do CAPS, e as transformações do processo investigado durante seu desenvolvimento. Para a abordagem das especificidades do processo de criação em dança vivenciado, elegeu-se os princípios teóricos de Rudolf Laban sobre o movimento humano e aspectos da fenomenologia da percepção abordados por Merleau-Ponty. No decorrer das intervenções, percepções e reflexões tomaram corpo e visibilidade com o surgimento de expressões corporais e de outras linguagens nas atividades realizadas. No percurso do trabalho percebeu-se que a essência da experiência encontrava-se no processo de criação em dança. A proposta produziu intervenções que promoveram novas formas corporais e relacionais e constituiu aos participantes uma experiência como atores em processos coletivos em espaços comunitários. Como prática estética, sensível, a pesquisa apresentou-se como uma ação interdisciplinar situada na interface da arte e da saúde mental. / With the objective to conduct a study about dancing with people in psychological distress and producing reflections about art in a field of mental health actions, we made interventions in a Psychosocial Care Center in the city of Sao Paulo. By the qualitative characteristic that the work has, we chose action-research that allowed the planning, organization and transformation process that was investigated during its development. Approaching the specificities of the process of creation lived on dance, we elected the theoretical principles of Rudolf Laban about the human movement and aspects of the phenomenology of perception approached by Merleau-Ponty. During our interventions, perceptions and reflections took shape and visibility with the emergence of body expressions and other expressive languages in the activities practiced together. Throughout the work, it was realized that the essence of the experience was in the process of dance creation. The proposal produced interventions that promoted new body and relational forms and constituted for the participants an experience as actors in collective processes in community. As a esthetic practice, sensitive, this experience was presented as a proposal interdisciplinary interface of art and mental health.

Esta tese se divide em duas partes. Na primeira parte serão expostas as escolas e teorias mais importantes para o conceito de sentido. Na segunda parte será exposto o conceito de sentido espectral. A primeira seção é monográfica e trata de investigar o conceito de sentido em quatro diferentes campos das ciências humanas: a lógica, a linguagem, a fenomenologia e a teoria dos sistemas. A segunda traz a proposição teórica do conceito de sentido espectral e o discute em função de diagramas de comunicação e sentido. Com isso, a discussão da primeira parte deste trabalho deverá introduzir as dimensões do conceito de sentido que, por sua vez, serão relacionados com certo padrão de difusão e consumo da informação. Essa relação entre os modos de produção das matrizes de media e um determinado conceito de sentido é explorada ao longo de todo o trabalho. Espectral, com isso, é uma metáfora para a particular produção de sentido do ambiente digital. Esse campo do sentido eletrônico será descrito e delineado em contraposição às metáforas não-espaciais de difusão do ciberespaço, que sugerem um campo aberto de aceleração e expansão não comensurável. Desse modo, o conceito de sentido espectral apresentará dois blocos de elementos complementares cuja finalidade é vincular as metáforas não-espaciais, exteriores e difusas do ciberespaço, com uma descrição dos mecanismos interiores desse sentido digital. Esses mecanismos serão descritos teórica e graficamente por meio de cinco componentes: serialização, aglutinação, seleção, nódulos e disrupção. Essas operações, por sua vez, percorrem uma superfície cujos movimentos são simultaneamente concêntricos e arborescentes. A descrição desse movimento será feita por meio de três circuitos: círculos interiores, círculos exteriores e círculos crescentes. A superfície, por sua vez, será descrita com o conceito de anéis de cebola. A vinculação entre as camadas concêntricas e a superfície do ciberespaço conforma o próprio conceito de sentido espectral. / This thesis is divided in two parts. The first part discusses the most influential schools and theories regarding the concept of meaning. The second part presents the concept of spectral meaning. This first section is monographic and consists in an investigation into the concept of meaning within four different fields of human sciences: logics, language, phenomenology and social systems theory. The second section presents the theoretical thesis concerning the concept of spectral meaning and discusses it in the light of communication and meaning diagrams. Therefore, the first part of this work introduces the varied understandings of the concept of meaning which, in a second phase, will be related to specific patterns of information and communication. This relationship between modes of production across different media matrices and a given concept of meaning is continually explored throughout the thesis. Spectral is, therefore, a metaphor for the specific production of sense in the digital environment. This field of electronic meaning will be described and portrayed in opposition to the non-spatial metaphors of diffusion that haunt the cyberspace, regularly depicting it as an open and incommensurable field of acceleration and expansion. Accordingly, the concept of spectral meaning will present two sets of paired elements in order to connect the non-spatial, diffusive and exterior metaphors of the cyberspace with a representation of the electronic meaning and its internal mechanisms. These mechanisms will be described theoretically and graphically along five main components: serialization, netclustering, gatekeeping, nodes and breakthrough. These operations, on the other hand, go through a surface whose activity is both concentric and arborescent. The description of this movement will be target along three cycles: inner circles, outer circles and growing circles. The surface itself, conversely, will be described with the concept of onion rings. The connection between the concentric layers and the cyberspace surface comprehends the concept of spectral meaning itself.

É recente a preocupação com as experiências dos portadores de tumor cerebral e as de seus familiares. O intenso impacto físico e psicossocial da doença sobre os pacientes e as repercussões em seu meio familiar, as adversidades do tratamento e o prognóstico desfavorável traçam um quadro muito severo, até mesmo em comparação com outros tipos de câncer. Neste contexto, o objetivo do presente trabalho é realizar uma aproximação compreensiva às experiências vividas por pessoas com tumor cerebral e pelos seus familiares. Os colaboradores da pesquisa, pacientes com diferentes diagnósticos de tumor cerebral e seus acompanhantes, freqüentaram sessões de grupo de sala de espera no Ambulatório de Neurocirurgia Oncológica do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto – USP. Para constituir o material discursivo, base da tarefa compreensiva, sete sessões de grupo foram gravadas em áudio e, posteriormente, transcritas integralmente. A orientação, em questões de método, segue uma perspectiva qualitativa em psicologia fundamentada na fenomenologia e as reflexões sobre o vivido fundamentam-se no pensamento de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Na compreensão dos relatos analisados, duas questões ganharam evidência. Primeiramente, a de que a experiência do adoecimento para os pacientes, e decerto para os familiares, é marcada pelo sentido de que a vida presente é muito diferente da de outrora. Há como que um choque entre o eu-corpo atual e o eu-corpo passado. Em segundo lugar, é notável a restrição pessoal que marca esta experiência do enfermo. Tal restrição revela-se nas perturbações da motricidade, da linguagem e da sexualidade; nos temores e angústias que o assaltam; nas relações estabelecidas em família, marcadas por uma superproteção que cerceia e pela dependência em relação aos cuidados do outro; e nas experiências com o meio social extra-familiar que despertam vergonha e o ímpeto de se isolar. Quanto aos familiares, a sua experiência é pautada, sobretudo, no esforço para oferecer um cuidado que favoreça o bem-estar da pessoa enferma. Contudo, os cuidadores vivenciam uma intensa carga de preocupações e temores que os levam a uma atitude, por vezes, superprotetora. Ademais, os familiares da pessoa portadora de tumor cerebral também experienciam perdas pessoais e um grande desgaste físico e emocional. Alguns elementos da filosofia de Merleau-Ponty possibilitaram a elaboração e o enriquecimento das compreensões anteriormente destacadas. Somos um corpo dirigido incessantemente para o mundo e este corpo que somos não é o corpo do qual se fala no âmbito do conhecimento biomédico, mas um corpo fenomenal, o corpo vivido. Por conseguinte, nos casos mais graves de tumor cerebral, o movimento da pessoa em direção ao mundo pode ser severamente prejudicado. Destaca-se, ainda, a noção de que são construídas atitudes frente ao adoecimento, ou seja, movimentos do ser no mundo regidos por uma estrutura de conjunto existencial que contém, de maneira essencial, o acontecimento orgânico limitante. Por fim, explorou-se a idéia de que qualquer atitude frente à doença mobiliza todas as dimensões do ser, tendo sido abordadas, mais especificamente, a temporalidade e o ser com o outro na experiência dos colaboradores deste estudo. / Preoccupations with the experiences of brain tumor patients and their family members are recent. The disease’ intense physical and psychosocial impact on patients and the repercussions for their family environment, the adversities of treatment and the unfavorable prognosis result in a very serious picture, even in comparison with other types of cancer. In this context, this study aims to understand the experiences of brain tumor patients and their family members. The research collaborators, who were patients with different brain tumor diagnoses and their companions, attended waiting room group sessions at the Oncological Neurosurgery Outpatient Clinic of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto Medical School Hospital das Clínicas. For the discourse material, which formed the base for the comprehension task, seven group sessions were audio-taped and fully transcribed. A qualitative method was adopted, using a phenomenology-based psychology, while reflections on the experience were based on the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In understanding the analyzed reports, two issues stood out. Firstly, for the patients, and definitely for the family members, the sickening experience is marked by the sense that the current life is very different from the past. There is as if it were a shock between the I-current body and the I-past body. Secondly, the patient’s experience is marked by a noticeable personal restriction. This restriction appears in movement, language and sexuality disturbances; in the fears and anguish the patient is attacked by; in the family relations that are established, marked by a limiting overprotection and by the dependence in relation to other persons’ care; and in the experiences with the extra-family social environment, which arouse shame and the urge to get isolated. As to family members, their experience is mainly guided by the effort to offer a care that favors the ill person’s well-being. However, caregivers bear an intense burden of preoccupations and fears that lead to a sometimes overprotective attitude. Furthermore, the brain tumor patient’s family members also experience personal losses and great physical and emotional wear. Some elements in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy made it possible to elaborate and enrich the comprehensions highlighted above. We are a body that is continuously directed at the world and this body we are is not the body discussed in the field of biomedical knowledge, but a phenomenal body, the lived body. Consequently, in the gravest cases of brain tumor, the person’s movement towards the world can be seriously impaired. Another notion that stands out is the fact that attitudes are constructed towards the sickening, that is, movements of the being in the world that are ruled by an existential structure that essentially contains the limiting organic event. Finally, the idea was explored that any attitude towards the disease mobilizes all dimensions of the being, more specifically temporality and being with the other in the experience of this study’s collaborators.

Cette thèse tente d’initier un dialogue entre la philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty et l’oeuvre théorique du cinéaste Jean Epstein. Située à la frontière poreuse entre la phénoménologie et l’esthétique du cinéma, elle souligne la profondeur de l’approche proposée et permise par la pensée de Merleau-Ponty, en particulier à travers les pistes ouvertes par ses notes préparatoires du cours Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression (1953), publiées en 2011. Cette recherche adopte donc une perspective réflexive et interrogative sur la posture du phénoménologue. La première partie met en avant l’importance du rapport ambigu de la phénoménologie merleau-pontienne au langage verbal et les difficultés qu’elle rencontre pour se penser elle même en tant que fait linguistique. Cette ambiguïté se trouve à la racine d’un « besoin » virtuel d’image,mais également de certaines « résistances » à la participation active du cinéma dans la constitution du savoir.Les deuxième et troisième parties de la recherche mettent directement en place la confrontation avec la pensée de Jean Epstein. Elles se concentrent respectivement sur la notion de réversibilité, à la fois comme concept et comme procédé cinématographique; puis sur l’idée du cinéma comme « pensée » artificielle,autonome et expressive. En retraçant l’évolution de la « parole du cinéma » dans l’oeuvre d’Epstein, on découvre certaines problématiques partagées avec l’ontologie de la Chair de Merleau-Ponty. La dernière partie de la thèse reprend une série de propositions critiques de cette ontologie fondées sur des concepts émanant de l’image en mouvement. Au final, cette recherche propose de voir dans les crises internes de l’appareil conceptuel de Merleau-Ponty, une possibilité de pratiquer une philosophie du cinéma. / This thesis attempts to initiate a dialogue between Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and the theoretical works of director Jean Epstein. Situated at the porous borders of phenomenology and visualstudies, it underlines the depth offered by Merleau-Ponty’s approach. It gives a specific attention to the newleads opened by the preparatory notes to his lessons « Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression »(1953), published in 2011. This research adopts a reflexive and interrogative perspective towards thephenomenological « posture ». The first part insists on the importance of the ambiguous attitude of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology towards verbal language, and on the difficulties it encounters to conceive itself as alinguistic fact. This ambiguity gives its roots to a virtual « need » for images, but also to several« resistances » against the active participation of cinema in the constitution of knowledge. The second andthird part of the research directly instigate the confrontation with Jean Epstein’s thinking. They focus respectively on the notion of « reversibility », both as concept and as a cinematographic effect; then on thenotion of cinema as an artificial, autonomous and expressive form of thought. By tracing the evolution of the« cinematic speech » in Epstein’s works, several problematics appear to be shared with Merleau-Ponty’sontology of Flesh. The fourth and last part of the thesis presents a series of critical propositions based on the concepts emanating from the moving picture. In the end, this research suggest the possibility to practice a« cinematic » philosophy within the internal crisis of Merleau-Ponty’s conceptual structure.

Nous comparons deux manières de refuser le « problème de la perception » – la perception permet-elle de connaître la réalité dès lors qu’existent l’illusion et l’hallucination ? Austin et Merleau-Ponty critiquant le présupposé qui pense la perception comme étant vraie ou fausse, et affirmant la différence de la perception et de la pensée, parviennent-ils à penser une authentique vérité ? La thèse d’un « silence » des sens pour Austin, ou son insertion dans le sensible pour Merleau-Ponty sont-elles sceptiques ? Nous montrons : 1/ Qu’Austin pense une objectivité du vrai, qu’il soutient en reconsidérant le langage – en mettant l’accent sur l’acte que réalise la parole –, la signification – dépendante, mais non remplacée, par la valeur de cet acte –, et la vérité – ni une correspondance pré- donnée ni un accord intersubjectif contingent. 2/ Que, de manière similaire, Merleau-Ponty se concentre sur la parole et critique l’idéal d’adéquation, mais que, soucieux de « l’origine de la vérité », il conserve l’idée d’une signification originaire du perçu (et donc d’un silence qui n’est que de degré) et engage une réforme pour intégrer le sens à l’être, mais ne réussit pas, in fine, à rendre compte de la vérité dont il cherchait la source. 3/ Que ces réussites diverses peuvent être rapportées à l’entente que ces auteurs se font des conventions linguistiques : là où le couple de l’échantillon et du modèle permet à Austin de penser un rapport souple, mais non ambigu, entre le langage et le monde, Merleau-Ponty conserve de l’idéalisme une conception rigide du langage, où la sédimentation du sens est une dévitalisation. / We compare two ways of refusing the “problem of perception” – given the possibility of illusion and hallucination, does perception allow us to know reality? While both Austin and Merleau-Ponty reject the presupposition that perception can be true or false, and assert the difference between perception and thought, do they still manage to conceive a proper idea of truth? Are the austinian thesis of a “silence of the senses” and the insertion of silence in the senses by Merleau-Ponty sceptical thesis? We show: 1/ That Austin does believe in the objectivity of truth, which he shows by reconsidering language – focusing on the act of speech –, meaning – dependent on, but not replaced by, the value of this act –, and truth – neither a pre-given correspondence, nor a contingent intersubjective agreement. 2/ That, similarly, Merleau-Ponty focuses on speech and criticizes the ideal of adequacy, but that he also cares about the “origin of truth” and for that reason maintains the idea of an “originary meaning” of perception (and thus of a silence which is only relative) and reforms ontology in order to integrate meaning into being in such a way that he does not succeed finally in accounting for the truth he was looking for. 3/ That these different results should be linked to the way both philosophers understand linguistic conventions: whereas the couple of pattern and sample allows Austin to think a flexible and vivid, but non ambiguous, relationship between language and world, Merleau-Ponty inherits from idealism a rigid conception of language, for which the sedimentation of meaning is always a devitalization.

L'amitié entre Jacques Lacan et Maurice Merleau-Ponty est le fil rouge de ce travail comparatiste qui suit chronologiquement le dialogue ininterrompu entre les deux penseurs. L'étude des deux corpus est orientée par la question de l'autre, à entendre dans les deux sens du terme : question commune aux deux auteurs des possibilités de l'émergence d'autrui et, pour chacun, importance des questionnements et de la place de l'autre pour ses propres avancées. Comment psychanalyse lacanienne et phénoménologie merleau-pontienne ont-elles traité de la rencontre d'autui ? Comment ont-elles fait rupture avec les apories des conceptions philosophiques classiques et lutté contre l'impérialisme d'un positivisme objectivant ? Quelles sont les influences, les confluences et les divergences entre les deux auteurs ? Un lien est-il possible, pertinent, entre visibilité du monde et structure du langage, entre voir et dire ? Un rythme commun dans l'évolution des pensées est ainsi mis en évidence et après le tournant effectué par chacun à partir de la nouvelle référence à la linguistique saussurienne, c'est le primat de la dimension symbolique pour l'être au monde qui va être démontré. Le croisement, nécessaire chez les deux auteurs, de l'ontologie et de la topologie va actualiser les antinomies du continu et du discontinu, et réinterroger la genèse et la validité du couple sujet-objet. Les travaux de Lacan et de Merleau-Ponty invitent à une pensée renouvelée du sujet, perçu comme un être désirant toujours déjà engagé dans un environnement partagé, dont l'existence, incarnée par le chiasme de la Chair (du monde) et de la Chose (irrémédiablement perdue), devra affirmer son style entre contrainte de la structure et expression du sens

of Ph.D. Thesis Phenomenological Conception of Space Eliška Luhanová The thesis focuses on the nature of experience which a perceiving self has with other beings and on the conditions which make such an encounter possible. It emphasises the role of the spatiality, which is seen as a defining characteristic of corporeal sensible beings. Broadly speaking, the work belongs to post-phenomenological philosophy. The Introduction summarises the main methodological principles of a phenomenological approach and presents post-phenomenology as a specific discourse which rejects the egocentrism typical of classical, especially Husserlian phenomenology. The exposition proper starts with an outline of a phenomenological theory of perception (Chapter I) and continues by offering an outline of the basic ontological characteristics of sensibly given entities, especially of their trans- empirical nature (Chapter II). The following chapter briefly treats some issues related to the nature of a phenomenal field, which is described as a structure of possible ways in which beings can manifest themselves (Chapter III). The subsequent chapters form the main core of the thesis. They deal with the spatial manner of being of entities which manifest themselves (Chapter IV) and of the self which experiences them (Chapter V). The...

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / This dissertation takes up Maurice Merleau-Ponty's unfinished project of developing an ontology of nature whose concepts are drawn from the phenomenon of life, rather than from human techne. I argue that the question of life has been hopelessly obscured by the collapse, in the Modern era, of the distinction between nature and artifice. We cannot hope to understand the difference between life and non-life until we understand the difference between the living body and the machine. Merleau-Ponty's constant aim was to show that the living body is not a blind mechanism, and that the body has its own endogenous sense which is not projected onto it by a disembodied consciousness. Central to these efforts were the phenomena of learning and development, and the concept of form or Gestalt. Development is what distinguishes the living body, which is an open-ended process of becoming, from the machine, whose possibilities are determined in advance by its creator. In order to conceptualize the phenomenon of development, Merleau-Ponty appropriated from psychology the concept of form (Gestalt): a dynamic, self-organizing whole that cannot be decomposed into independent parts. Where the conception of nature as mechanism implies that everything is determined in advance, Merleau-Ponty's conception of nature as Gestalt allows for the genesis of genuinely new phenomena through nature's own self- organizing movement. We would thus be able to understand the genesis of sense in nature as a process of morphogenesis--the genesis of form. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to clarify the ontological status of form. He lacked the conceptual resources to explain form in its own terms, rather than by contrast with the decomposable wholes of human artifice. This dissertation attempts to locate these conceptual resources in the science of complexity that has emerged since Merleau- Ponty's death, and whose descriptions of complex systems are uncannily anticipated in Merleau-Ponty's writings. I take from this new science the conception of form as asymmetry or difference, and of morphogenesis as symmetry-breaking or self-differentiation. In order to investigate how meaning emerges out of form, I turn to recent work in biology and psychology that applies the concept of symmetry-breaking to the phenomena of anatomical growth and motor development. By studying the development of the living body and its behavior, I show how nature articulates itself into perceiver and perceived. In the movement of the living body, form folds back upon itself, giving rise to a new kind of meaning: a pre-reflective, motor significance that is neither mechanism nor mental representation. In Chapter One, I distinguish the living body from a machine or artifact by distinguishing between manufacturing and growth. This distinction, which seemed obvious to the Ancients, has been obscured by Modern science's pivotal decision to treat nature as if it were a product of human artifice. This decision has committed us to an atomistic ontology, which takes nature to be a synthetic whole composed of mutually indifferent parts. However, this ontology faces a basic problem, which I call the problem of form: how to explain the synthesis of indifferent atoms into the complex, harmonious wholes we observe in nature, without appealing to an intelligent designer. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in the phenomenon of anatomical development or embryogenesis. I argue that biology has been unable to explain this phenomenon in mechanical or atomistic terms: the Neo-Darwinist view of the living body as a synthetic whole determined in advance by a genetic blueprint or program has succeeded not by explaining development, but rather by ignoring it. In Chapter Two, I argue that the problem of form--and of living form in particular--can only be resolved by abandoning our atomistic ontology, and with it our synthetic understanding of form as a shape imposed on an indifferent material. Recent developments in the science of complexity have yielded a new definition of form as asymmetry or difference. On this view, the genesis of form in nature is not the synthesis of wholes out of pre-existing parts, but the self-differentiation of wholes into parts through symmetry-breaking. In order to understand how natural wholes become less symmetrical over time, I introduce three further concepts from the science of complexity: nonlinearity, stability, and instability. With these concepts in hand, I return to the problem of embryogenesis, in order to show how complex living forms can develop reliably and robustly without being determined in advance by a design or program. In Chapter Three, I turn from anatomical development to the development of behavior, in order to see how the genesis of form becomes a genesis of sense. I begin by criticizing three mechanistic theories of behavior--Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Connectionism--which suffer from the same problem of form that plagues mechanistic theories of anatomical development. Behavior grows like an organ: by symmetry-breaking, not by synthesis. Learning is not a matter of association, but of differentiation: the perception of increasingly subtle asymmetries in the body's environment through increasingly asymmetrical movements. It is the world that teaches the organism how to move--but a world that is only revealed to the organism by its own movements. Thus the living body and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more determinate through its own increasing determinacy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

In 2013, the 55th Venice Biennale, the world's oldest bi-annual international contemporary art exhibition, opened under the title The Encyclopedic Palace, organized by Italian curator Massimiliano Gioni. The international exhibition section is always flanked by an amalgamation of distinct national spaces, a dual exhibition model that has been the hallmark of the Biennale since 1998. In 2013, the United States pavilion was devoted to American artist Sarah Sze's work Triple Point and her signature arrangement of everyday objects and materials, such as Q-tips, water bottles, painter's tape, and desk lamps. The title of Sze's multi-room installation, culled from earlier works as well as created from new materials, refers to the thermodynamic equilibrium of any given substance--specifically, a "triple point" is the temperature and pressure at which a substance is solid, liquid and gas at the same time. The quasi-scientific installations provide constantly shifting viewpoints as the viewer circumnavigates the interconnected spaces of the U.S. pavilion, moving amid, around, and through the work, but also focusing on different individual objects before pulling back to catch glimpses of the work as a whole. In this thesis, I apply a phenomenological analysis to Triple Point in order to make sense of its scientific references in conjunction with its complex form. I view Triple Point as a culmination of the ideas that Sze has sustained and explored over the course of her career--such as the investigation of everyday objects in relation to site, space, and viewer--that situates the viewer in an experience caught between empirical order and individual perception. To examine Triple Point using the idea of "embodied perception," I formally analyze the work in relation to its scientific meanings as suggested by its titles of individual works--Gleaner, Planetarium, Eclipse, Scale, Orrery, Pendulum, Observatory, and Compass. I then trace the discourse surrounding phenomenology and the rise of installation art through the writings of art historians Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss, and Claire Bishop, before finally situating French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology as an apt theory for analyzing this work. In embracing both the scientific objectivity implied by Sze's installations without sacrificing the import of physical perception, I contend that Triple Point invites the viewer to look at--but also beyond--the array of familiar objects, emphasizing a shifting sense of the work that is never exhaustively fixed. Thus, Triple Point does not expose the classic dichotomies between art and science, natural and manufactured, image and object, but instead opens up the moment of their confluence--the paradoxical achievement of an embodied perception as described by Merleau-Ponty. Understood phenomenologically, Triple Point invites viewers to get caught-up in the dynamic experience of "between-ness" invoked by the installation's title and to engage with their everyday experiences of contemporary life in a new way.

This paper addresses the aesthetic encounter from the perspective of the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the visible and the invisible. It begins with the premise that from time to time we encounter situations which precipitate a sense of slippage in our experience of the world. The paper proceeds to argue that the arts can provide a point of access to this experience, and that aesthetic theory has, for example, responded to it through the development of the notion of 'the sublime'. The writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, in particular, aspects of his text The Visible and the invisible, are presented with a view to augmenting this aspect of aesthetic theory. Proceeding from a 'Merleau-Pontian' perspective, the paper explores how the arts can serve to disrupt our conventional sense of space and time - creating ripples in the substance Merleau-Ponty names as 'flesh' - so as to expose the chiasm or blind spot in our experience of the world. The methodology adopted is an experiential one, which draws on the writer's interaction with the selected works of various artists as well as her own practice in glass.