Tim Ingold

Introduction

In this MDIA 300 course, we continuously learned that media is not a tool we use unilaterally, but rather an environment in which we co-generate meaning. Tim Ingold’s “Making” offered a completely new perspective. It reminded us that academic research should not merely be about “analyzing objects,” but about understanding the world through interaction, action, reflection, and creation.”Making” made us realize for the first time that knowledge itself is a “generation,” not an “extraction,” and that research is a practice of co-participation with the world.

When we reread Ingold’s other works with this perspective, we find that they continue to deepen the same line of thought in different directions: the relationship between humanity and the world is not static, but constantly woven together through perception, movement, and response. “The Perception of the Environment” makes us realize that “living” itself is a collaboration with the environment; “Lines” re-describes the generation of life using “lines” and “network structures”; and “Being Alive” combines movement, knowledge, and description, pointing out that understanding the world is itself a form of participation.

Therefore, in this blog post, we hope to draw inspiration from “Making” and rethink, through these works, the role of the media in the co-creation of meaning with the world, and how we can form new paths, relationships, and understandings through our interaction with the media.

The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill

To understand how Ingold’s thinking begins to take shape, this book offers one of the clearest entry points.

Published in 2000, this book comprises 20 chapters and a compilation of essays published in the 1980s and 1990s, and it is often seen as marking the early formation of Ingold’s larger intellectual project. In this work, Ingold criticizes the worldview that separates humans from the environment. Instead, he explores the meaning of “being alive” through the daily lives of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, arguing that the act of living is an interaction with the environment.

He reconsiders the modern human attitude of simply utilizing resources, emphasizes the importance of environmental perception, and underlines that humans (e.g., bodies and knowledge) are woven together in response to nature (e.g., environment). Furthermore, he adds a perspective that overlaps with Heidegger’s “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” recognizing the world as “a place to dwell,” that is, a place where humans “live together.”

Ingold also suggests that skills are created in response to nature. Skilled practice is a concept proposed by Ingold, which clearly states that knowledge and the environment mutually generate a dynamic relationship. For example, the process by which hunters predict the movements of animals is not based on theory but is sensory knowledge experienced physically.

Lines: A Brief History / The Life of Lines

If The Perception of the Environment focuses on dwelling, this next shift toward “lines” shows how Ingold starts thinking through movement, pathways, and the forms that shape culture.

“Lines: A Brief History” is a six-chapter book by Ingold, published by Routledge in 2007. Ingold attempted to understand human lifestyles, ways of thinking, and culture as connected to “lines.” Ingold argued for two types of lines: traces and threads.

Traces refer to fixed signs such as maps, borders, and letters, and Ingold criticized modern society for placing too much emphasis on them. This is because fixation leads to a way of thinking that divides the world and severs dynamic relationships. Alternatively, Ingold advocated the concept of a living thread, woven fluidly. This idea opens up a different way of thinking: that thought and artistic practice begin not as fixed objects but as lines in motion.

In 2015, a philosophical sequel, “The Life of Lines,” was published, expanding on the theory of “Lines.” In this book, he proposed the concept of a meshwork, in which the world is made up of a dynamic network of lines, and life is a mesh of countless intertwining “threads.” Ingold emphasized that the entities in the world interact with each other based on this theory, creating a meshwork.

Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description

By the time we reach Being Alive, Ingold’s ideas begin to converge, weaving together the themes of dwelling, lines, and everyday practice.

Published in 2011, this book explores life from a philosophical perspective through three major themes: movement, knowledge, and description.

Movement, as argued in The Perception of the Environment, refers to the constant movement required to live in the world. Knowledge, as argued in Lines, refers to practical knowledge that emerges through interaction with the world. Third, description implies that anthropology and science are not objective descriptions but rather the act of participating in and describing the world.

In this way, Being Alive brings together all of Ingold’s theories. It reads almost like a synthesis, a moment where his threads of thought come together. This book has had a profound impact on many fields, including anthropology, education, and art theory, and it offers an accessible way for us to think about how life and meaning emerge through interaction and movement.

Inviting Further Reflection: What Do We Notice When We Look Again at the Media?

In summary, Ingold’s work constantly reminds us that understanding the world is not about analyzing it from the outside, but about co-creating meaning with the world through action, perception, and participation. Putting these ideas back into MDIA 300, we begin to rethink: should media also not be seen as a fixed “object,” but rather as a line, environment, or path in a relationship with our continuous growth and development? If skills stem from our ongoing interaction with the environment, then do our daily media practices such as watching videos, searching, publishing content, forwarding, and clicking also constitute a kind of “skill”? If life itself is a process of many interwoven relationships, then what new connections and influences does media create within it?

In this blog post, we don’t aim to provide a definitive conclusion, but rather to open up more questions: In your daily media use, what content becomes fixed, like “traces”? And what is constantly changing, leading you on a journey of exploration? Are there moments when you feel that media is not just a tool, but something that truly influences you and accompanies you in understanding the world?

We hope to invite everyone to continue sharing their observations through this article. Whether it was surprise, confusion, interest, or frustration, these all allowed Ingold’s reflections to continue to extend in our classroom conversations.

Rai Yanagisawa, Mio Hashimoto, Saber Wang

Works Cited

• Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, 2000.
• Ingold, Tim. Lines: A Brief History. Routledge, 2007.
• Ingold, Tim. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge, 2011.
• Ingold, Tim. The Life of Lines. Routledge, 2015.