iii. Affordances and Ecological Perception

Affordances and Ecological Perception

As this thesis prescribes to the Place-Thought framework, it becomes essential to discuss the biological and sensorial shifts in perception required to assign an aesthetic value to the post-capitalist imagination viewed through said framework. James Gibson developed a theory of ecological perception that conceived “a perceiveing subject whose actions and interpretations are interwoven with the environment.” 136 This implied that self-perception is located within the perception of one’s environment and postulated an objective reality that is rooted in perception. 137 This objective reality relates back the concept of place-thought and the interconnectedness of the self in the place. While perception differs then based on the observer, the objectivity of the world is not distorted in any way—while the human may only be able to perceive its being in relation to the land, the interconnected relationships of the land, human and non-human remain tangible truths.

This understanding of ecological perception can be understood through the theory of Affordances developed by Gibson as well, which Amanda Boetzkes describes as, “limitless information that an environment yields, the possible meanings this information may have to the perceiver, and the full range of actions the perceiver may choose to respond with.” 138 It is, then, a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. 139 Current Eurocentric framework of thought reduces land, environment and technology to what it affords humans, but affordance theory refuses to reduce environments and objects to the basic function they may afford to the perceiver. “It permits a level of consciousness of the world beyond function.” 140

In the speculative post-capitalist world, then, both the land and the technologies of the Anthropocene afford certain functions to the scavengers. The scavengers perceive these functions to be objective realities viewed under the framework that the land and the technologies of the Capitalocene are beings themselves. Their understanding of themselves and the things/ beings they build are situated within this larger framework of reality. As Amanda Boetzkes mentions, “Through the concept of affordance, a behaviour may bloom and yield excessive meaning beyond the mechanistic balance of an ecosysetm, and thus new ways of thinking about ecological being become possible.” 141

136. Heather M. Davis, E. Turpin, and Amanda Boetzkes, “ Ecologicity, Vision, and the Neurological System,” in Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (London: Open Humanities Press, 2015), 273. 137. Boetzkes, 273. 138. Ibid, 273. 139. Ibid, 274. 140. Ibid, 274. 141. Ibid, 274.

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