Some artworks by Mark Jenkins exerting action potential, according to ecological accounts of perception based on Gibson’s Theory of Affordances…
1. Typical ‘sitting affordance’ of a trunk
performed by a fictile person, that is a puppet.
2. Actual affordances of a sidewalk and ball
performed by a ‘fictile’ child,
exerting the action potential featured by
the ‘real’ landmark and object
by means of a puppet.
3. Fictile dogs exerting action potential
entailed by rubbish dump
4. fictile ducks exerting action potential
entailed by sidewalk chute.
5. The real guy smiles at the fictile one
caught in the typical gesture of
‘asking a cab driver for a ride’.
6. objects may suggest potential affordances
based on cultural references,
as the crucified puppet
on top of the lightpole
7. basic (even tho pretty much unusual) affordance of a pole
performed by a baby-puppet
8. culturally-tagged affordance of a pole
performed by a grown-up puppet
9. ‘real’ mom instinctively protects her curious daughter
while walking next to the drop-out sitting on the floor,
that is a puppet exerting the ‘sitting affordance’ of the sidewalk,
socially-labeled as the distinctive tract
of an homeless person asking for a coin.
10. A ‘real’ person checks the sitting drop-out
trying to figure out if he is ‘real’
11. Fictile person suggesting
body-part related affordance of his arm.
The question that very likely arises
about the missing part is ‘where is it?’
12. fictile human objectified
Where did you find this! He seems to be creating activity-space by his figures.
I tried to read what he was thinking himself:
“Interfacing street sculpture in public space creates an installation environment that /turns regular space into art space. Signs and people and everything around a street sculpture—they all become part of it/.”
“I think my point is that visual outliers are /what’s needed to keep the environment stimulating/”.
You are right about the hint to the affordances i guess – he thinks of the statues as some activity potentials narratively visualised for people.
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