Meaning construction and colour schemes: an enactive paradigm
Résumé
The aim of this paper is to consider to what extent studies in colour perception reveal the complexity of a seemingly straightforward event, and how those findings shed light on the way we conceive our environment and account for it. Interestingly enough, enactivists whose main figurehead is the late Francisco Varela, have chosen this topic in order to bring to the fore the gist of their doctrine, namely that perception was governed by sensori-motor processes (Varela & alii 171). Although sometimes felt as the mere reflection of pre-existing worldly properties, colour perception is not a passive phenomenon, nor does it involve the sole projection of our cognitive system onto our environment. Instead, it depends on a constant and everchanging interaction with and within our surroundings; an interaction that affects the meaning given to our experience precisely because it shapes the means at our disposal to make sense of it. Enactive analyses therefore provide a new insight into the way our understanding of the world displays itself the minute we open our eyes. More specifically, they may be useful when questioning the link between sensation, representation and conceptualisation which tends to be confined to a strict hierarchical upward order. This bottom-up structure typifies the image/word dichotomy, the more sensual and perceptual standing in sharp contrast to the more conceptual and abstract backdrop of verbal expression and interpretation. Yet, the opposition between the two might not be that clear-cut, as is evidenced when exploring the way abstract art pieces stage colour according to rather elaborate patterns. This will eventually give us an opportunity to examine how abstract colourists’ works of art lend themselves to analysis.