Corporeal Interaction

“corporeal” - adjective; physical and not spiritual, relating to the body

“interaction” - noun; an occasion when two or more people or things communicate with or react to each other

“corporeal interaction“ - an occasion when two or more things relating to the body communicate with or react to each other.

“For the body to function properly, its various parts and organs must communicate with each other to ensure that a constant internal environment (i.e., homeostasis) is maintained.” - Hiller-Stürmhofel

Corporeal communication

The human body consists of two systems to help ensure communication: the nervous system and the hormonal (i.e., neuroendocrine) system. The nervous system generally allows rapid transmission (i.e., within fractions of seconds) of information between different body regions. Conversely, hormonal communication, which relies on the production and release of hormones from various glands and on the transport of those hormones via the bloodstream, is better suited for situations that require more widespread and longer lasting regulatory actions. Thus, the two communication systems complement each other. In addition, both systems interact: Stimuli from the nervous system can influence the release of certain hormones and vice versa. (Hiller-Stürmhofel, 1998) nervous and endocrene system

INFORMATION INPUT

FEEDBACK INFORMATION (hormones)

DETECTION

PERCEPTION

Information (hormones)

REACTION X

Information (impulses)

REACTION Y

FEEDBACK INFORMATION (impulses)

Both systems have receptors that translate the external influences to the language of the accompanying system; in the case of the nervous system the language is electrical impulses and in the endocrine system the language is hormones. These systems detect changes through receptors and can elicit external responses only by acting on effectors. The effectors of the nervous system are muscles and glands, and the endocrine system only uses glands. A related point to consider is that these muscle contractions can have various expressions, varying from speech to facial expression and bodily posture. (Brodal, 2016)

The bridge between both systems is the hypothalamus. This gland, in the brain, is affected by the nervous system and reacts by giving off regulatory hormones to the other glands in your body. In a sense the hypothalamus functions as the translator between the language of the nervous system and the endocrine system (Brodal, 2016).

Corporeal

translation

After the clarification of the communication systems of our body, it is important to understand how our body translates the perception of space to the language of these systems.

External information is perceived through receptors of the nervous system. The human body has 5 systems to collect information: the somatosensory, vestibular, visual, auditory and the olfactory system, respectively the systems for touch/pain/position/temperature, balance/orientation, vision, sound and smell. To perceive space, the human body mainly uses the vestibular, visual and auditory systems. (source)

The information that our body senses is put into context by our brain. According to Chatterjee and Vartanian aesthetic experience emerges from the interaction between three systems: the sensory-motor, emotional valuation and meaning knowledge systems, all together called „the aesthetic triad“. The sensory motor system is comprised of all the sensors (the 5 systems) we have in our body, the knowledge-meaning system focuses on context, culture and the valuation of expertise and lastly the emotion valuation focuses on everything related to the emotional reward system in the human brain. Although this triad often collaborates to create our aesthetic experience it is not stated that the observed object always equally influences all the systems, it is very possible to have an object only activating one of the three systems in the brain.

The emotion-value system and meaning knowledge system is where the perception of fragility and vulnarability is evoked, these terms are related to previous experiences and emotional references. As these experiences and references might show differences between people it is imperative to generalise`and understand perception theory.