Anatomy of atmosphere

2014

Pretext

The theme of atmosphere has gained significant currency in contemporary architecture. But the idea, its definition and its uses in architectural theory and practice remain vague and opaque. What we lack are an anatomy, inventory and codification of atmosphere. In Atmospheres, the architect Peter Zumthor advances a kind of alchemical lexicon to describe the phenomenon of atmosphere: enchantment, emotion, mood, magic, feelings, touch, body, radiance, presence, beauty, seduction, sense of place, sublime, trancendental ... words left in suspense, uncrafted, open to whatever interpretation, their potential meanings wandering and uncontextualised: “I don’t know how to describe it actually, but I’m sure you know what I mean” (Zumthor 2006: 53). On the other hand Zumthor’s reading of what produces atmosphere in architecture does hinge on what he calls “craft and graft” (2006: 21); on a certain rigor to do with the transactional and `reactional’ potential of adjacency in the combination of different materials for example; their tendencies to form “their own attachments” (2006: 43). This implies a science with distinctive tectonic strategies and tactics, a framework and practice of precision in the understanding and assemblage of component parts, together with their capacity to be, in different ways, in isolation and in conjugation: a systematic architectonics of atmosphere. Yet the shape and contents of this framework are not explicitly articulated. They remain latent and dissimulated in the artisan’s innate and silent (hence uncontestable) practice. What we lack therefore is an anatomy of atmosphere, an inventory, codification or classification of atmospheres—aesthetic, certainly, but also metaphysical, political, religious, ethical, communitarian, political, theoretical, literary, musicological, spatial, temporal, theatrical, performative, environmental, climatic, civic, technological, computational, and so forth. This important work remains to be done in order to avoid the concept of atmosphere in architecture remaining yet another unproductive trope; a mere figure of speech or turn of phrase whose dissimulated political function is to maintain the status quo.

In this project, a set of parallel, multimedia investigations was used to venture an anatomy of atmosphere, together with a possible inventory of atmospheric conditions and affects extending across semantic, aesthetic, textual and architectonic registers of design. An iterative process of inquiry and research‐through‐making was deployed throughout the process. Keywords were co‐investigated through filmmaking, photography, philosophical and lexical scholarship to articulate new insights on the theme of atmosphere. Initial etymological and metaphorical analyses led to a list of sixteen recurrent key words that circulate in the ambiance of the word (anatomy, ambiance, atmosphere, aura, colour, ekstasis, emanation, halo, interstice, milieu, porosity [parousia], scenography, Stimmung [mood], tactic [touch], theatre, wonder). These were then investigated through a filming and editing process that grew out of the potential implied by the keywords.

The project and exhibition were designed as the work was being produced; thus capitalising on the contingent, unexpected, accidental, circumstantial and serendipitous opportunities presented at every stage. The project developed along three simultaneous, mutually informing fronts, which together defined an iterative research trajectory and praxis:

1. Identifying and analysing keywords and themes related to the theme of atmosphere using various lexical resources—language and etymological dictionaries, concordances, encyclopedias of symbols and the like;

2. Undertaking preliminary critical and theoretical work on systems of categorisation, classification and typology (Foucault 1966, xv-xxiv, 125-165; Burton 1621), followed by critical analysis of much cited works on the theme of atmosphere in philosophy, architecture and the arts (Latour 2003; Böhme 1993; Zumthor 2006); the aim of this being to develop an inventory of use leading to an anatomy of the theme in architectural thinking and practice, with the potential to mobilise strategic shifts away from the simplistic and opaque forms currently holding sway;

3. Editing and compiling a film, using video footage and montage techniques that engage with, clarify and extend the project themes. Themes emerging through this editing process were folded back into steps 1 & 2 as a way of iteratively developing the conceptual framework of the project while systematically refining the textual and filmic material being produced. Thus the process demonstrated a research-by-design approach. Making and editing the film produced innovative ideas that eclipsed the film itself; just as theoretical and precedent research produced novel directives for film making and editing that eclipsed the textual limits of research. In this way, the project pushed the boundaries of what can be considered design research - that is, not research `about’ design; research that construes pre-existing `intentions’ that will then be manifest `in’ or `inform’ design; or indeed research that `explicates’ a design produced in isolation from it. Instead, this project indicates a form of research whereby textual and filmic practices are mobilised in parallel and mutually interact to establish a productive ambiance (or atmosphere) in/from/through which the work emerges. The process contends that design is not the direct implementation of a predetermined idea, but a process of iteration and transaction; a shuttling between different kinds of materials, affects and conditions which, as the process proceeds, prompts the emergence of the designed artifact in the gaps and interstices between the various registers being investigated through thinking/making.

Anatomy

Latin and Greek anatomia; from ana-, `up’, `again’, `throughout’ (cognate with English `on’, `in’ and `into’) and temnein, from the etymon *TEM, `cut’, `cleave’, `split’ (cognate with English `tome’, the section of a book)—hence dissection, division, diremption: literally `to thoroughly cut into’. The surgical and entomological senses of cutting, slicing, sectioning or segmenting are curiously paralleled in the word `epitome’, meaning `abridgement’, `abstract’, `representative type’—from epi- `into’ and tome, `cut’. That the essence of something can be obtained by a process of dissection (or analysis—from ana- up and leu/lusis, loosen, undo, divide, cut apart) to reach its inner structure, arrangement and order (Greek taxis) is a persistent trope. Tactic, tact and technology are correlates, through the sense of discrimination, discernment and articulation, both founded on the jointedness (that is, the point or surface where different parts of a whole `touch’) and hence the potential disjunction or deconstitution of a being.

Any anatomy of atmosphere would demand studious attention to the interfaces, joints and gaps between different words, meanings and senses that wander and circulate within and manufacture its ambit.

Ambiance (ambiguity)

“It is observed in the solar eclipses, that there is sometimes a great trepidation about the body of the moon, from which we may likewise argue an atmosphaera, since we cannot well conceive what so probable a cause there should be of such an appearance as this ... that the sun-beams were broken and refracted by the vapors that encompassed the moon.” (Wilkins 1638)

A key theme in the words `ambiance’ and `ambiguity’ is the sense of `going-around’, a `shifting double-meaning’, or, literally, ‘being-driven-to-wander.’ The ambit that connects ambiance and ambiguity to the equivocal also connects it to the metaphorical and the analogical, which are not merely figures of language but fundamental, constitutive tactics. As Mary Hesse observes in relation to Aristotle’s treatment of analogy, “in a sense all discourse is metaphorical... all predication is analogical.” (1965, 338) Metaphor enables language to be transactional. The different senses that wander within the ambit of a word defer to others so as to produce webs of interrelated, circumstantial meanings. These interrelations are like the discrete, aerated texture of atmosphere. They take place in the gaps and interstices of meaning—through the circulations and circuits of sense that cross those gaps, rather than on any fixed terminology or definition that a particular word `has’. Sense is not a matter of possession but of sharing. Words and ideas `make’ sense by producing meanings out of the resonances they mobilise in relation to other words and ideas. If we say that in architecture atmosphere is a metaphor, this is not to devalue or dismiss the word, but rather to say that it makes no sense apart from the circuits of sense that circulate through it.

See Atmosphere, Wonder.

Atmosphere

Latin atmosphaera; Greek atmos, `vapor’, `steam’ and spharia, `sphere. The etymon of atmos implies a sense of `blowing, inspiring, arousing’; hence of breath or spirit. Yet, strangely, the words `vapor’, `quell’ and `kill’ are cognate. Consider for example Old English cwealm, `murder’, `agonising death.’ The vaporous is clearly equivocal. It can equally mobilise the nefarious and constitute a threat; hence the well-known alliance between the vaporous and the miasmic, together with its important role in processes of erasure and `disinfection’ that characterise the origins of the modern city.

See Ambiance.

Aura

Latin/Greek aura, `breeze, wind, air, breath’; aerein, `to raise’; from the etymon *AWER, `air.’ Latin aerem is the lower atmosphere, weather. Like atmosphere, the aura is associated with the anima—the spirit or breath of a being or place; an aerial emanation that lifts or rises around it; the characteristic impression or mark of its bearing, its mien. In that latter sense, the aura is cognate with Latin ager, `field, land, acre, place of origin’. Walter Benjamin famously described the aura as what pertains to originary being, but which can no longer hold in the `age of its mechanical reproducibility.’ The aura is a mark of its “presence in time and space”, a measure of authenticity; while its absence or “liquidation” in the reproductions, images, avatars and simulants that follow is a mark of inauthentic, counterfeit being (Benjamin 1992, 214-215). Hence the aura is the ekstasis of a being, setting or arrangement; such as the complexion of a face, the demeanor of a person, the aspect of a place or the mood of a setting. This `out-standing’ quality evokes the concept of the `halo’: the eminence and emanation of someone, something or somewhere that is its spatialised and temporalised `being-there’—what Giorgio Agamben called “the imperceptible trembling of the finite that makes its limits indeterminate.” (1993, 56)

See Ekstasis, Emanation, Halo, Stimmung.

Colour

Gernot Böhme reads atmosphere as the palpable manifestation of a medium, milieu or situation (2010, 27)—as when rays of sunlight enable us to perceive dust-laden air. In architecture, it might be the “emotional tinge” or “tuning” of a space. Tinge and tincture are chromatic aspects; a matter of colouring and hence of calor, of heat and calories. Colour is the outward sign of an inner constitution that surfaces and shows itself. Tinge and tincture can also be a matter of tuning and tone; in other words, of alignment and resonance. Here, sound parallels colour in bringing an inner constitution into audibility; in making it possible for us to `hear’ it.

Colour originally meant `complexion’, `appearance’; yet, again curiously, the etymon of the word, *KEL, gives Latin colos, a `covering’, and means to `veil’, to `conceal’, as well as celare, which means to `hide.’ Consider the word’s various cognates: cell, clam, helmet, caldron, hall, shell, cellar, hole, hell. Complexion is a condition of revealing and concealing; or, of simultaneously revealing and concealing, presenting and absenting. To cover is to dress-up, to invest—hence to initiate, install, establish or name. It is a key term in the motifs of decoration and ornament, which are in a sense the `complexion’ of the decorated thing or being. The word `complexion’ is itself revealing; the literal meaning being `entwined-together’, or `complicated’, through the etymon *PLEK, to `plait, braid, weave, ply, fold.’ Latin complexus, complecti mean to encompass, surround. Complexion is a sign of the complex intricacies of a being as they present themselves to view. `Chromatic’ is from Greek khroma, from khros, `surface of the body’, `color of the skin’; a term also used to mean `ornaments’, `embellishments’ and which relates to khrozein, `to touch the surface of the body’, to `tinge’. Here, the etymon is *GHREU, `rub’ or `grind’, probably from the sense of obtaining pigment by grinding ochre. More significant is the reference to touch, which connects tinge and tincture to tact, and thus to an entire ethics if not tactics or techne of the surface. (Derrida 2005)

See Tactic (touch), Stimmung.

Ekstasis

“Tone and emanation—in my terminology, ekstases—determine the atmosphere radiated by things. They are therefore the way in which things are felt to be present in space. This gives us a further definition of atmosphere: it is the felt presence of something or someone in space. For this the ancients had the beautiful expression parousia. Thus, for Aristotle, light is the parousia of fire.” (Böhme 2008)

Greek ek-/ex-, `out of’, `from’ and histanai, from the etymon *STA, to `cause to stand’— hence ekstasis is `what stands out.’ Cognates include ecstasy and exist (to stand forth, emerge, appear).

See Atmosphere, Aura, Colour, Emanation, Halo, Porosity (parousia), Stimmung, Theatre, Wonder.

Emanation

Latin emanare, `flow out’, `arise’, `proceed’; from ex-, `out’, manare, `flow’ and the etymon *MEN, `jut-out’, `throw’, `project’, become `prominent.’ The words `menacing’, `monument’ `remembrance’, `monstrous’ and `eminence’ are cognate, in the sense of something advancing and looming-forth—whether it be a threat, a structure, a recollection, a spectacle, a conjuration or a presence. In Medieval astrology, emanations are celestial powers that `flow-into’ human beings and the world, influencing their destiny.

See Atmosphere, Colour, Halo, Stimmung, Theatre, Wonder.

Halo

Greek halos, `salt’, in the sense of hyloclasty, or the production of salt crystals as efflorescent encrustation. The halo is the nimbus or aureole of icon painting that surround holy beings, or the gossamer vestments of grace that surround the paradisiacal state (Agamben 2011, 55-90); but it can also refer to other phenomena, more or less sublime, more or less nebulous—for example the Platonic `Music of the Spheres’ (Plato, The Republic, 619b-621d; 1999, 838-844), which is the audible sound produced by the `mechanism’ that keeps the cosmos on track (that is, the perceptible correlate of an imperceptible order); or even the ubiquitous hum of unidentifiable servicing machinery in office buildings. Both are emergent crystallisations of sorts, both produce halos, both produce atmosphere.

These readings of aura and the halo imply that atmosphere is not something detached that skins or hovers around and outside a being. Rather, they are the radiance of its taking-place; the evidence and announcement of its internal order or arrangement, its constitutive complexities—in short, its taxis: again a matter of touch, tact and ethos. The countenance and look or gaze of a being (not only what it `looks like’ but also how it looks) convey something fundamental about the person or the place. How we look (whether we calculatedly lock and violate or incarcerate the looked-at; whether we look- after or look-out-for it; whether we look with kind regard, with an eye to solicitude and care), can debilitate or enable, destroy or create. The look of a being, its appearance, is the aura that forefronts it, that brings it into view even as it takes place; but it is also a sphere of influence, with affective and inductive powers of transformation.

See Atmosphere, Aura, Colour, Stimmung, Theatre, Wonder.

Interstice

Latin inter-, `between’ and stare, to `stand’—hence `what stands between’. The word parallels `interval’; from Latin inter- and vallum, `wall’, through the etymon *WEL, to `turn’, `roll’ or `fold.’ The wall encloses by folding itself back-around to produce an interstice. The interstitial is a necessary condition of difference, otherness and multiplicity. The discontinuities it makes possible by keeping things disseveral are also the potentialities it enables and the capacities it preserves for an interminable process of negotiation, interpretation and reconstitution. The interval makes possible many things. It makes place possible: this space apart from/as well as/and that space, one time rather than/as well as/and another time, this sense apart from/as well as/and that sense. Multiple epistemological registers, multiple sedimentations of meaning, multiple narrative lines, multiple arenas of operation, multiple scales of affect, multiple networks of relay, multiple dimensions of a being, multiple transactions of solicitude. The excess delivered by these kinds of epistemological, operational, spatiotemporal and architectonic transactions manifests as surfectant circumambiance and atmosphere.

There is another sense in which the interstitial is important for atmosphere. Such a sense hinges on the necessary structural condition of unaligned multiplicity—that is, an ordering system of multiple, coexistent components that resonate without fusion, that defer one to the other without ever being resolved into a singularity, that are open and hence porous to one another. Such a system might be semantic and consist of multiple coexistent meanings that produce consilience between them while remaining separate; or it might consist of multiple spatial or geometric systems overlaid within a single building, but without coinciding. In such cases the resultant order remains discrepant and incommensurable—that is, it maintains porosity. Yet, in their interstices, the concatenation or conjugation of these systems within the assemblage begin to produce emergent conditions that were not present in any of its component parts. (Delanda 2006, 2012)

See Ambiance, Emanation, Ekstasis, Milieu, Porosity (parousia).

Milieu

Latin medius, `in the middle’; and the etymons *ME/*MEDH, `middle’, `in-between’; French mi-, `middle’ and lieu, `place’; hence `middle-place’, `half-way-house’, `midst’, in media res or the mythical Midgard (middle-garden/yard/enclosure; middle-earth). Interstice, interval, milieu—these constitute a surrounding medium, a mathematical mean, a tectonic intermittence and an ethical mediality, mediatedness or mediance (Berque 1990): that is, a way of being-with-our-self, being-with-others and being- with-the-world. This is Heidegger’s Mitsein—the authentic manner of being-there-in- the-world as encounter, necessitating attentiveness towards things and others that is characterised by care (Sorgen), concern (Besorgen) and solicitude (Fürsorge). As Bernard Stiegler notes, “the self is indissociable from care (soin) in as much it has a double dimension that is psychic and social, so that to take care of oneself is always already to take care of the other and of others.” (2008, 283) The solicitude that characterises care `cares-for’ by having regard for the welfare of the other, liberating and making room for them to be there also (Heidegger 1962, 158-9), soliciting out of potentiality and thus enabling something, someone or some `ones’ to emerge and surge-forth-into- presence. The medial topographies of the porous, the interstitial and the interludic must be resolutely ethical.

See Ambiance, Interstice, Porosity (parousia).

Porosity (parousia)

“Cities are enormous madrepore in whose tangle, and in the midst of whose concrete or chalky matter, there will never pass enough passages and bridges and canals and ventilating chimneys and flowing spaces and interstices and clearings.” (Gaudin 1992, 122; Goetz 2011, 113-136)

If, as etymology suggests, atmosphere is vaporous circumambience, it might be something like the mist that renders a landscape indistinct, permeating and liberating form by rendering its contours indeterminate and immanent (Jullien 2009, 129); or else a sphere of arousal: the “great trepidation” or haze that blurs the moon’s outline and marks its advent as emergent radiance or parousia (Wilkins 1638). Greek parousia is from para-, `through’ or `forward-from-close-beside’ and ousia, `advent’, `arrival’, `presence’, `being’, `essence.’ Parousia shadows ekstasis as `anticipated prospect of arrival’ or `immanent presence.’ It is antithetical to the aporetic condition or impasse where we find ourselves `without-passage.’ Between potentiality and actuality, the material and the immaterial, one idea and another, existence is always through something that resists and prohibits; it is always a trajection of some kind, a perforation of some boundary, plus the material obduracy of that boundary. There must therefore be a kind of porous, aerated, permeable materiality to the structure of atmosphere: a distributed network of hollows, a disparate consistency made of gaps which never close up or fuse into a unity—and which are thus resolutely unconfused. Like the vaporous fog that dissimulates things into an undifferentiated matrix, atmosphere maintains all in a suspended state of potential, keeping it always provisional, on the verge of arrival and taking-place.

See Ambiance, Atmosphere, Interstice, Milieu.

Scenography

Gernot Böhme, the eminent philosopher of atmosphere, considers that architectural design is essentially mise-en-scene; that architectural environments are ultimately scenographic. (2008) In Atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects Peter Zumthor thinks likewise, referring to the “art of seduction ... within the powers of an architect” that hinge on finding “a way of bringing separate parts of the building together so that they formed their own attachments, as it were.” (2010, 43) Without doubt architecture constructs symbolic, sociocultural and physical environments or conditions that can evoke moods, trigger reactions, promote engagements, convey meanings, prompt the recollection of memories and so forth. Architecture is theatrical, operatic and performative in that sense. But is the import of architectural settings thereby reducible to apparatuses for theatricality and conjured-up spectacle? Beyond its skenographic register, might atmosphere be deliverable through the consolidated material assemblage of architecture—its inherent geometric and formal structures, its spatiotemporal patterns and dynamics, its existential concrete presence and capacity to frame, reveal and amplify the complexions of place in an enduring, constantly unfolding way?

In this regard, the etymology of skenographia is instructive. The word derives from Greek skene, `curtain’ or `tent’—in the sense of something that `casts a shadow’ and thereby marks out a place on the ground. The etymons are *SKEU, to `cover’, `conceal’ and *SKEI, to `cut’, `divide’, `split.’ The list of cognates is extensive and builds exactly the kind of incommensurable assemblage that might give rise to an ambiance or atmosphere of wonder: shadow, shade, shed, shekina/mishkan (Hebrew tabernacle, pavilion), sky, scene, scenery, skiagraphy (to trace shadows), skiamachy (to fight with shadows), shine, sheen, sheer, rescind, scission, shear, scotia, scale, skull, shield, shell, skin, ship, skiff, skipper.

A semantic keynote permeates this list, pivoting on related antinomical motifs of uncovering/covering, appearing/disappearing, lightening/darkening and separating/ connecting. The process of scenography, integral to the symbolic (and magical) character of theatre at its origins, is therefore charged with tracing and dramatizing the arrival and entry of the sacred—that is, the sequestered, the out-of-frame or off-screen—through a `veil of existence’, the skene, from darkness into light. What is most important to retain here is the condition of semantic deferral and play—a kind of inter-ludic transaction between various and multiplying thematic associations implied by the idea. Scenography is only pragmatically about setting up tableaus geared to producing atmospheric effects. More significant is the way in which a scenographic setup (theatrical, cinematic, or architectonic) makes possible something like a delinquent practice of tracing the recuperation, recollection, return and reabsorption of meanings, together with their interminable transactions, transfers and transformations.

Keeping meaning virtual, provisional and in a state of unactualised potential, as I am suggesting throughout this provisional lexicon and the film that it accompanies, should not be taken to mean that the setup is without accuracy and rigor, or that it is unsystematic in any way. The discrepancies, incommensurabilities and misalignments must be designed-into the assemblage so that they co-operate productively, so that they are afforded the capacity to produce emergent conditions. Otherwise, the discrepancies might become counter-productive, they might interfere with or cancel each other out. The organisation of incommensurabilities must therefore entertain a high level of rigor and precision based on a sustained process of predictive modelling of potential outcomes and a reiterative adjustment or tempering of the system. This quite different concept of design(ing) engages the interstices between different layers or registers in a system; it is interested in the capacity and productivity of the in-between - the potential of the milieu—rather than the lineaments, edges or forms that gather around it. Without such precision and rigor the outcomes are likely to be tangled, muddled and confused; and this is exactly the difficulty one encounters in the rhetoric of atmosphere in architecture. Either the discourse becomes snagged in an unfortunate, unproductive fog of allusion and enigmatic confabulation, or it serves to maintain a mystique of uncontestability around the charismatic, even prophetic, thaumaturgical figure of the architect/`philosopher.’

See Stimmung, Theatre.

Stimmung (mood)

Stimmung (mood or attunement) is not a subjective colouring applied onto an objective world. We are always `in’ a mood as in a particular countenance or disposition that represents a distinctive co-embeddedness and manner of belonging to the world. As Heidegger noted, mood “comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such being.” (Heidegger 1962, 176).

According to Agamben, the Stimmung is in the category of “untranslatable” terms, and expresses “the unity of the feelings experienced by man face to face with his environment (a landscape, nature, one’s fellow man), and would comprehend and weld together the objective (factual) and the subjective (psychological) into one harmonious unity.” (1997, 89) Agamben notes the presence of the word Stimme, voice, in Stimmung, and hence its original “acoustico-musical” register, its sense of “attunement, accord, harmony”—as well as the term’s semantic migration to the psychological, and thence to references of mood and feeling. (1997, 90)

For Heidegger, Stimmung is not an inner `psychical’ condition. It is the “fundamental existential mode” that brings Dasein, Being, into an encounter with its `there’, its situatedness. The Stimmung denotes an originary accord and consonance between being and world, which is at the same time a discord—a being thrown and abandoned, or “excribed” as Jean-Luc Nancy would say—apprehended as thaumazein: astonishment and wonder. Stimme is from Greek stoma, `mouth’, `muzzle’ and stomachos, `throat’, `gullet’, `orifice’. The word is cognate with Middle English steven, `(loud) voice, shout, petition, song’; but also, through the etymon *STA, to `stand’ (upright, as in, the warp thread of an upright loom), with the idea of `place’ or `standing.’ The Stimmung thus enjoins motifs of opening, mouth, voice, language and place; that is, a topo-logical condition of Being encountering the threshold of language as an aporetic, liminal experience between silence and sound, disarticulation and articulation, the unpronounceable and pronunciation.

See Aura, Colour, Halo, Interstice, Milieu, Theatre, Wonder.

Tactic (touch)

Greek taktike, to `arrange’, is from the etymon *TAG, `touch’, `handle’, `set aright’; Latin tactus, tangere, `touch’, `feel’, `handle’ and techne, the `art’ or `skill’ of `weaving’, `webbing’, `fabricating’ or `carpentry’ (texture, text, textile). In each case the pivotal sense is articulating, joining or connecting parts into an assemblage that is complex and that radiates its complexity as complexion, colour and atmosphere. Yet this touching remains tangential. A tactility that defers intersection, com-penetration or commixture, it is a matter of percussion, of the com-pressure of air that affects without violating any intervening boundary. What emanates compresses its circumambient environment. That is how we see it, as an alteration in the density, weave, texture or taint of a milieu. That is also what makes it touching and affective. To be touched is to experience the compressive circumradiance of another being.

What can we usefully make of these multiple allusions and semantic resonances? Firstly, that they together produce an ambiance, atmosphere or complexion of sense. Secondly, that they do so because of their being multiple and discrete, yet resonant. That sense emerges out of the circulation of their discrete senses; out of a kind of wavering ambit that condenses meaning into a gossamer mist. Thirdly, that a keynote nevertheless emerges; something firm yet provisional and transitional: that atmosphere is a matter of complexion, colour and tincture; that tincture reveals as it conceals; that the tinge of something or someone or some place is an emergent phenomenon or ekstasis that renders its boundaries indeterminate; that this indeterminacy is produced by multiple senses or systems that coexist without fusing; that this coexistence manifests as a kind of shimmering surfacing or surfectance that ornaments and embellishes; that the shimmering is also chimerical, evanescent, impermanent—or rather, that it has its own wavering temporality and dilated or aerated spatiality; finally, that this aerated circumambience is the fundamental structure of atmosphere.

See Aura, Colour, Ekstasis, Emanation, Halo, Stimmung.

Theatre

Greek thea, `seeing’, `spectacle’, `appearance’ and -tron, `place’. The thaumaturge is a conjuror and wonder-worker. Both words are cognate with `theory’—from Greek theasthai, to `behold’, `look’ and theates, `spectator.’ Thea is cognate with theo, god, Latin deus, Greek Zeus, Sanskrit, deva. The common etymons are *DHE, to `place, put, establish’ and *DYEU, `gleam’, `shine’ (hence the demiurgic fiat lux); which also gives the root of words for sky and day (Latin dies, Sanscrit diva, day, diurnal). At its origin theatre dramatizes (effects, solicits, produces, conjures-up) the (luminous/tenebrous) appearance/disappearance or emanation/absorption of the gods, the `shining ones’, for the staging of which an entire machinic (and eventually robotic) apparatus will have to be invented—hence deus ex machina: `god from the machine.’

See Ekstasis, Emanation, Scenography, Stimmung, Wonder.

Wonder

“Not knowing the way out or the way in, wonder dwells in a between, between the most usual, beings, and their unusualness, their ‘is’. It is wonder that first liberates this between as the between and separates it out. Wonder—understood transitively—brings forth the showing of what is most usual in its unusualness. Not knowing the way out or the way in, between the usual and the unusual, is not helplessness, for wonder as such does not desire help but instead precisely opens up this between, which is impervious to any entrance or escape, and must constantly occupy it.” (Heidegger 1994: 145)

Etymological dictionaries note that the word `wonder’ is of unknown origin. See Ambiance, Atmosphere, Stimmung.