Perceptual Image Schemas and Spatial Frames of Reference: Naissance and its Spatial Architectures
This paper presents enactive image schemas operating and interacting in the computer game Naissance. The main aim is to show how some of the most pervasive image schemas serve as problem-solving mechanisms to discern different kinds of dynamic orientation processes based on spatial frames of reference. Naissance is particularly well-suited as it offers a range of game-specific affordances based on a brutalist spatial architecture. Hallways, staircases and different geometrical objects anchor spatial reference coordinates. Arguably, it is a game based on the impossible world in M.C. Escher’s lithograph print ‘Relativity’. Impossible worlds with upside-down staircases impose rather odd perspectives and viewpoints. In Naissance, these worlds keep emerging and vanishing as the game proceeds, affecting and challenging the viewer’s habits of perception and canonical knowledge of spaces and places.
From an enactive perspective perception is not merely a matter of passively structuring incoming information. It rather relies on dynamic bodily activity, and thus also on embodied image schemas. Naissance is a case in point of constantly changing image schemas requiring online adaptation processes. This paper shows a) that the game presents an intriguing spatial architecture on its own differing from most other jump-and-run games, b) is a vivid example of how image schemas interact in game environments, and c) asks for continuously shifting combinations of image schemas based on the game-specific affordances and its spatial frames of reference.
Keywords Image Schemas, Enactive Perspectives, Computer Game/Puzzle, Spatial Architecture in VR, Affordances,