In Erik Shouse text “Feeling, Emotion, Affect” he discusses three therms; feelings, emotions and affection.
He describes feelings as personal and biographical, that depends on only your thought and your previous experiences and memories. Emotions are social, according to when we get effected by each other. Emotions depends on expectation, and that might be different from culture to culture. I once watched a television program, where they did investigations with people drinking alcoholic drinks in a surveillant room. A few of them did not have alcohol in their drinks, although they thought so. All acted in the same drunk way.
To Erik Shouse affect is prior, and “a non – conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and instructed potential”. “Affect is the bodies way of preparing itself for action in a given circumstance by adding quantitative dimension of intensity to the quality of an experience”.
As well as music can create affects, materials and proportions in architecture can create affects. I chose the material wood, because I get “affected” by the wood. It creates an atmosphere, where I feel safe and protected. The warmth of the wood makes you calm, takes away noise and creates a quiet zone. The touch of wood is warm and soft, opposite concrete, stone, bricks. By being very conscious about choices of materials and proportions in a room you can affect people and create different atmospheres. The human body needs a certain temperature, fits into certain proportions and feels comfortable surrounded by certain materials and atmospheres. Think about how the darkness and coldness affects many people during winter time.
When reading this text I was sitting in the library, at the reading section, and a lot of people were focused on their computers, their readings, their math and whatever. Suddenly some very thin lines of music were played outside, and everyone stopped their work and looked up. A different atmosphere was for a moment spread in the room.
/Anne Mette
Readings:
Nigel Thrift, ‘Spatialities of Feeling’ in Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge, 2008.
Eric Shouse, ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’, in Melissa Gregg, ed. ‘Affect.’ M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 25 Nov. 2011. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php
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