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From Ingold And Clark: An Explanation On Making And Mind

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By Micah Sébastien Zhang

So…Ingold……

Tim Ingold, the author of the book Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, has presented an innovative perspective into media studies, especially the realm of production. Rather than viewing the production as a fixated, point-to-point linear path, Ingold sees production as a cumulative process that goes beyond the traditional, distinct boundaries between the creators and the creations. To further define that, Ingold thinks that the creation, or "making" as suggested by this book’s title, is a self-evolving process that entwines with the materiality and thought within creation itself.

This view into creation and media can be peeked within the chapter 7 — Bodies On The Run, in which he explored his topic deeper on the concept of body. Upon reviewing the two sculptures shown in the figures — in which one of them (Simon Starling, Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore)) was covered with mussels — he critically compares the forms between the original sculpture, Warrior with Shield by Henry Moore, and the modified piece and claims "where the former is a movement of opening" while "the latter is bent on closure" (Ingold p.94). His explanation is that the infested piece with mussels denoted a fact that "its surfaces have opened up to the surrounding medium" rather than being "wrapped up in itself that any residue of animate life has been stilled" (Ingold p.94). Drawing from the theorist Joshua Pollard, Ingold argues that the process of "making" takes similarity between the relationship between objects, subjects, and things as they "can exist only in a world already thrown, already cast in fixed and final forms; things, by contrast, are in the throwing – they do not exist so much as carry on" (Ingold p.94). Within this process, people are also "processes, brought into being through production, embroiled in ongoing social projects, and requiring attentive engagement" (Ingold p.94 via Pollard 2004: 60).1

Of course we have bodies – indeed we are our bodies. But we are not wrapped up in them. The body is not a package, nor – to invoke another common analogy – a sink into which movements settle like sediment in a ditch. It is rather a tumult of unfolding activity.

—— Tim Ingold, p.94

Nevertheless, this article’s focus is not on Pollard or any other theorists. The focus will be on the arguments proposed by Tim Ingold and Andy Clark, and we will see how their views come close together.

So Who’s Andy Clark (out of all the names from the reference list)?

Andy Clark (he/him/they) is a cognitive philosophy professor from the University of Sussex at United Kingdom. According to his biography page, his research interests include artificial intelligence, embodied and extended cognition, robotics, and computational neuroscience. He has proposed the idea of "the extended mind" and co-wrote the article The Extended Mind — the article that Ingold has also cited2 — with the Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers.

So What Did They Say?

Clark and Chalmers argued in their article that the cognitive process does not completely rely on an internal process, but rather having external environments as attributes that constantly play a role in cognitive processes. They have made a pretty straightforward and summative description on this idea at the start of their article, in which they " advocate a very different sort of externalism: an active externalism, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes" (Clark and Chalmers p.7). Ingold has personally described that their theory "postulates that the mind, far from being coextensive with the brain, routinely spills out into the environment, enlisting all manner of extra-somatic objects and artefacts in the conduct of its operations" (Ingold p.97).

We propose to take things a step further. While some mental states, such as experiences, may be determined internally, there are other cases in which external factors make a significant contribution. In particular, we will argue that beliefs can be constituted partly by features of the environment, when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes. If so, the mind extends into the world.

—— Clark and Chalmers, p.12

We can take a look at a simple way to comprehend Clark and Chalmers’ theory by examining the example they gave in their The Extended Mind article. In their example (Clark and Chalmers p.12-14), an exhibition is happening at the Museum of Modern Art at 53rd Street. One person, Inga, recalls in her mind that the museum is at 53rd Street, so she successfully goes to the right place. Another person, Otto, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and can’t recall the museum’s location in his head, but he also successfully arrives at the museum by looking at the note of the museum’s location from his notebook. Inga used memory retrival to get the information from her mind, and Otto did the same thing by retriving the same information from his notebook. Clark and Chalmers argue that since they achieved a congruent result even while retriving information in a physical and tangible or cognitive and non-tangible way, Otto’s notebook in this case can be recognized as the congruent component to a cognitive mind, as "the information in the notebook functions just like the information constituting an ordinary non-occurrent belief" (Clark and Chalmers p.13). Considering that Otto constantly uses his notebook, it can be viewed as "central to his actions in all sorts of contexts, in the way that an ordinary memory is central in an ordinary life" (Clark and Chalmers p.13).

And So How Do They Connect To Ingold?

Both viewpoints from Clark and Ingold presented an acknowledgement to the nuances and complexities lying within the process of mediation. Considering that both Clark and Chalmers have worked as cognitive scientists, we, in my humble opinion, might be safe to assume that they started off their idea on a more scientific approach, in which their theory draws more similarities and explanations from natural sciences than humanities.

However, Ingold proposed to push the idea further and more expanded in the realms of humanities and mediation. He argues that the sole "interactions" between the mind and materialistic objects do not fully constitute as the integral process of making (Ingold p.98). He argues that this general idea focuses too much on the external materialistic attributes to constitute or to define the whole cognition experience of engaging with the world. Rather than embracing this idea, Ingold was drawn more to the concept that regards thinking as more of a kinetic and dynamic flow, which reflects on another opinion by Sheets-Johnstone (Ingold p.98).

My Own Thoughts?

Even though we could see some differences between Ingold and Clark’s ideas, their theories and interpretations still provide some abundant insights to explain media studies in some more innovative perspectives. Personally, I found that their ideas are sufficient enough to explain my thought of interpreting mediation as a dimensional perspective. This idea will be further explained and discussed in my upcoming blog article here.

Thank you so much for your attention.

Works Consulted

“Andy Clark.” University of Sussex, profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p493-andy-clark. Accessed 27 Oct. 2025.

Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis, vol. 58, no. 1, 1998, pp. 7–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3328150.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

Media Usage Statement

The feature image in this article was published under the CC0 Public Domain License. The source of the image can be found here.

Footnotes

  1. Here’s the original citation of Pollard provided in Ingold’s book: Pollard, J. 2004. The art of decay and the transformation of substance. In Substance, Memory, Display, eds. C. Renfrew, C. Gosden and E. DeMarrais. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, pp. 47–62. ↩

  2. The book’s original citation: Clark, A. and D. Chalmers 1998. The extended mind. Analysis 58: 7–19. ↩

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Scrolling: The Regression of the Hand and the Decline of Material Correspondence

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‘Scroll’ in its most literal sense refers to a rolled up sheet of paper or, more commonly, parchment, which was used for documentation. However, the word ‘scroll’ is now more commonly used as a verb rather than a noun, referring to the action of moving the display of a screen up and down. Moreover, apart from the gesture of moving one’s hand up and down a screen, the range of movement that can take place on the tiny phone screen is limited, yet it can still produce significant effects. The process of drumming one’s fingers seems to be completely unrelated to the forms that appear on the screen in the form of text or image. The physical movement of the hand on the screen does not directly translate into the form that is produced on the screen. This phenomenon relates to what Ingold refers to as the ‘regression of the hand’—the decline of the tactility and relations between manual movement and the material traces it yields.

I would like to explore the ways in which the actions involved in being on the phone lead to processes of creation and, most importantly, communication. Furthermore, I am interested in how modern electronic devices, particularly those with touch screen interfaces, challenge or even defy André Leroi-Gourhan’s idea of graphism. Leroi-Gourhan defines graphism as “relatively durable traces of dextrous manual gestures”(Ingold 116). In simpler terms, this refers to the marks that serve as a record of actions.

Heidegger, in commenting on the typewriter, expresses distaste for it and discusses how this device transformed the nature of writing (122). The transition from typewriter to computer keyboard intensified this separation. Unlike the typewriter, which immediately imprinted letters onto paper, the computer displays words on a screen separate from the physical act of typing. If the text displayed on a computer screen is eventually printed, the act of inscribing it onto a material medium is credited not to the one who typed but to the machinge, the printer. 

With cell phones, this separation becomes even more complex. The keyboard itself is no longer a an individual, physical machine but one of many virtual functions of the device. Ingold argues that the act of typing leads to a disruption in the process of transduction, wherein the ‘ductus’—the actual kinaesthetic action does not directly correspond with the form that appears on the screen (Ingold 122). Ingold’s transduction refers to the process through which gestural action produces a transformation in material form (102). In the case of touch screen devices, this relationship is fractured. The physical action required is minimal, and the materiality of the medium being operated upon is ambiguous. The material that the hand comes into contact with is the surface of the phone, yet the change that takes place is in the code that exists in a virtual realm. This change in code is then represented by images and icons displayed on screen, giving the user an illusion of interacting with the material within the digital realm. 

Grip and Gestures

While using a phone, a person typically grips the device between the pinky finger and the thumb, with the back of the phone resting against the other fingers and balanced on the pinky. The thumb, which helps to secure the phone, also performs most of the navigational movements on the screen. Though the position of the hands often changes depending on the activity being performed, the actions being done on the screen are all done by the fingers. In particular, the tips of the fingers. This is in line with Ingold’s idea that the progress of technology is characterized by the shift from use of hands to fingers (123). In using a cell phone the tasks of typing, editing, clicking pictures are carried out as the fingers move across the surface of the screen. But the actual content being produced through these actions exists within the screen. The fingers make contact with the surface, yet the resultant forms remain entirely virtual. When you pinch to zoom in, the visual content on the screen enlarges, but the physical scale of the screen itself does not change. 

Ingold discusses how repetitive manual actions during the process of creation physically affect the hand in ways that contribute to or even enhance the process of making (117). He gives the example of string makers and cello players: their hands become coarser and develop calluses. The hardened skin protects the fingers from pain, allowing the musician to play longer and the craftsperson to produce better strings. Thusm these injuries, far from being a hindrance, actually facilitate the craft. In such cases, the deformation of the hand becomes integral to the process of creation. 

In the case of operating touch-screen devices such as phones, however, this relationship between bodily transformation and creative process becomes disrupted. The body still undergoes change; users experience repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, the so-called ‘iPhone pinky,’ where the pinky finger becomes bent from supporting the device, and even soreness in the thumbs from constant scrolling or typing. However, unlike the callused hands of the craftsman or musician, this alteration in the hand of the phone user does not affect the process of making in any way.

This is because the gestures required by touch-screen devices are minimal and effortless. On a touch-screen interface, the physical gestures enacted by hands such as toggling, swiping, or pinching, are reduced to nothing more than pre-programmed features. Though these features are derived from bodily gestures, when incorporated into digital devices they become standardized features designed to trigger certain responses on the screen. This is in line with Ingold’s analysis that such actions have become metaphorical rather than genuinely physical or material (124). The gestures no longer result in real manipulation of substance but instead, represent symbolic actions whose effects are purely virtual.

This transformation creates a kind of simulacrum, in which gestures acquire meaning only through their digital consequences rather than through any tangible engagement with the material. The hand’s action ceases to produce traces in the Leroi-Gourhanian sense of graphism, instead reducing manual gesture into a sort of abstraction.

Human and Posthuman Writing

Heidegger suggests that the typed word lacks the humanity of handwriting. Ingold argues that the perfect, mechanical typescript robs the writing of any traces of being produced by a human, and  reduces it to a mere means of communication rather than a way of telling (Ingold 122). In this light, the movement of the hand is what imbues the produced handwriting with its humanistic dimension.

Ingold, drawing on Leroi-Gourhan, argues that while machines can extend human capacities and enhance certain forms of production, they also subtract something essential (122). The integration of mechanical devices into human action pushes us toward what he describes as a ‘posthuman‘ condition. He argues that even the simple act of pressing a button removes part of the humanity from the process, reducing it to an interaction with an intermediary rather a correspondence with material. Leroi-Gourhan’s argument raises the question: what happens when the entire process consists of nothing but pressing buttons? And those buttons are not even physical? On touch screens, the buttons are mere visual representations of electronic codes designed to simulate real-life, tactile surfaces. The gestures we perform do not affect real objects; they activate digital representations that mimic the appearance of materiality. The result is a detachment between human movement and material change.

Moreover, the rise and incorporation of Generative Artificial Intelligence into many applications has further flattened the process of creation. The art of inquiry, the ‘thinking through the making’, that Ingold propogates in ‘Making’ ceases to occur, as creation is increasingly reduced to typing short prompts for AI systems that generate text, images, or designs automatically (6). The hand’s role shifts from making to merely initiating a command.

All that remains now is scrolling. Most app interfaces are designed for endless scrolling, condensing all human interaction into a single repetitive gesture. Earlier in the essay, we discussed how effortlessness has become the priority in technological design. Yet it is precisely in effort that the humanism of creation lies. By removing friction between the hand and the material, we move further and further away from genuine making. As Ingold says, “It is precisely where the reach of the imagination meets the friction of materials, or where the forces of ambition rub up against the rough edges of the world, that human life is lived” (Ingold 73).

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055

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We Shape the Algorithm, and It Shapes Us

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Contributors: Adela, Lorainne, Maryam

Social media is at the center of everyday life. We scroll through endless streams of content carefully curated to our tastes, shaped by algorithms that “learn” from our behaviour. In this digital landscape, anyone can create and share media about anything, while platforms personalize what we see based on our activity. This constant curation keeps us engaged, presenting an illusion of infinite choice while subtly guiding what gains visibility.

Both creators and consumers play active roles in the system. Creators learn to work with the algorithm: choosing specific sounds, hashtags, and editing styles that fit its rhythm, while consumers customize their feeds to match their interests, following or blocking certain tags, creators, and engaging with select content. Together, these behaviours teach the system what “works,” creating a feedback loop in which both the user and the algorithm continually adapt to one another. It’s through this ongoing exchange that trends emerge.

In this blog, we attempt to extend Tim Ingold’s notion of correspondence to digital contexts, suggesting that users and algorithms are engaged in an ongoing process of co-creation: a form of digital correspondence where each shapes the other through continuous interaction.

We argue that, through the lens of correspondence, social media algorithms can be understood as both a system of control and responsive materials that evolve with user activity, forming a digital environment where trends are “made” collaboratively through attention, resistance, and adaptation.

Making as Correspondence

To set the ground, Ingold defines correspondence as the relationship we form with the world when we think through doing. For him, genuine inquiry is not at all about standing apart from the world and describing it from a distance, as if we were detached observers. Instead, it involves, as he writes, “opening up our perception to what is going on there” (p. 7) and responding to the world’s movements, textures, and changes. Therefore, correspondence is an ongoing, two-way process of mutual responsiveness between ourselves and our surroundings: we attend to what the world is doing, and our actions, in turn, answer back to it.

Ingold compares interaction and correspondence to the act of walking with another person. When two people walk beside each other, they are engaged in a deeply companionable activity, despite not speaking directly to each other and rarely making eye contact. Instead, they coordinate their pace, rhythm, and direction through subtle bodily cues and peripheral vision, and their connection unfolds through movement itself, rather than through communication or representation. This is not a verbal or face-to-face exchange but a lived attunement. It’s rather a way of “growing older together” (p. 106) in shared time, making the nature of the relationship dynamic, ongoing, and co-creative. Walking together, therefore, reveals what Ingold calls correspondence: a mutual responsiveness that arises through motion, and never through detached interaction.

Ingold extends this idea to the act of making, describing it as a dialogue between the maker and the material. The maker does not really impose form but learns from the material’s resistance and possibilities, adjusting gestures in response. Through this ongoing exchange, both the maker and the material are transformed. Therefore, we think to correspond is not at all to represent reality from outside, but to join with it: to move, learn, and evolve alongside it. It’s a way of knowing with the world, rather than knowing about it.

Correspondence in the Digital Sphere

Viewing algorithms through the lens of Ingold makes it clear that the relationship between them and social media users is one of correspondence. The production of and interaction with content on a platform is processed as data that continuously shapes our digital experiences. Every user’s contribution to the algorithm, regardless of whether they post content, is significant but often overlooked. The very act of liking, saving, or even swiping after a certain amount of time signals one’s level of enjoyment of a specific kind of content. Such simple actions give rise to personalized feeds, such as TikTok’s famous “For You Page”, that grow in effectiveness the longer one stays on the app. 

Correspondence is not limited to just being between user and algorithm, but also among users themselves too. Ingold describes the scene of a string quartet: players do not interact nor move position, but create interwoven sounds that blend into one (p. 107). This music room, we think, can be seen as equivalent to the digital spaces of social media platforms, in which users continuously contribute to an ever-changing conversation that describes a song, however discordant, of collective consciousness. Only through the algorithms that push forth voices and encourage user responses can such dynamic conversations take place. TikTok’s “stitch” feature that allows a direct response to videos is one of many that illustrates how users engage in a mutual feedback loop of responsiveness, and hence correspondence – similar to a string quartet’s act of “listening as they play, and playing as they listen” (p. 106). 

This phenomena is largely seen through the prevalence of trends on social media. Thanks to the dynamic, ever-shifting nature of the algorithm, trends disappear just as quickly as they arise. When a post gains traction, the algorithm prioritizes it and pushes it out to users’ feeds, leading to further engagement and more user-generated content on that topic. And through the use of popular hashtags and sounds, and the continuous mutual responsiveness among users, trends proliferate, change and shift – then fall off just as easily. This way, we correspond with other users while also corresponding with the algorithm by answering to what it shows us, collectively contributing to a fluctuating digital landscape that shapes our perceptions of the world.

The ability of algorithms to tailor the content fed to users allows for the positive engagement with personal interest and the development of niche, creative communities. However, we think its detrimental impacts cannot go unmentioned. Algorithms are strong perpetrators of echo chambers, in which the development of “filter bubbles” limits exposure to opposing views and reaffirms users’ confirmation bias (Latimore).

Furthermore, we must realize the content filtered out by algorithms is not only derived from user interactions, but also from the biases ingrained within their very programming – biases that mirror existing hierarchies of visibility and power.

Power and Algorithmic Control

These built-in biases remind us that algorithms are never at all neutral, they are shaped by the same social, political, and economic forces that structure the world around us. What began as a relationship of mutual correspondence between users and platforms starts to reveal a deeper imbalance. The very systems that seem to “listen” and adapt to us are, in reality, governed by unseen mechanisms of power.

Through Ingold’s framework, when we think about how we interact with social media today, we see a similar kind of correspondence, but one that has been distorted by forces we cannot fully perceive. Every post, like, and comment feeds into the algorithm, which in turn “learns” our behaviour and shapes what we see, believe, and desire. It’s still a dialogue but one that has become asymmetrical, where one side listens with human curiosity, and the other responds through invisible forms of data-driven control.

The algorithm, through Ingold’s lens, starts to look like a “material” that has learned to push back. It resists our intentions, reshapes our sense of connection and perception of reality, and even determines what counts as “worthy” of attention. But this correspondence is never innocent, never neutral; it’s shaped by power. The algorithm actually amplifies certain voices while silencing others, rewarding what is profitable, making certain things visible and trending while burying what doesn’t serve power and its agendas – very often the stories and struggles that most urgently demand to be heard.

We see inevitable connections in Critical Terms for Media Studies, and we keep returning to the description of mass media as “the playthings of institutions… under the management of the palace, the market, or the temple” (p. 277). That feels truer than ever. What appears as a participatory and democratic space is, in fact, an infrastructure of control. Algorithms amplify what serves institutional power and suppress what threatens it.

We see this in real time as voices exposing genocide, colonial violence, and injustice are shadow-banned, flagged, and buried beneath layers of distraction and a public that has been numbed into passivity.

Reclaiming Media as Ethical Making

As media students, we have a responsibility to see through this illusion, to think critically, to question, and to resist. Ingold teaches us that making is an ethical act of correspondence, one rooted in care and attention. To “make” within algorithmic systems, then, must mean to intervene consciously and to create media that refuse erasure, that restore presence where silence has been systematically imposed. 

In resisting the algorithm’s pull, we think that our role cannot stop at consumption or critique, it must extend to re-making media itself. Re-making as a tool for truth-telling, for exposing injustice, and for reawakening correspondence as a living, ethical practice.

Contributors: Adela, Lorainne, Maryam

References
Latimore, E. (n.d.). The echo chamber of social media. Retrieved from https://edlatimore.com/echo-chamber-social-media/
Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge.
Peters, J. D. (2010). Mass Media. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. Hansen (Eds.), Critical Terms for Media Studies (pp. 261–276). University of Chicago Press.
Photo credit: Which? Trusted Trader, “How to use social media for your business”, June 1 2023. https://for-traders.which.co.uk/advice/how-to-use-social-media-for-your-business

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Heidegger and Humanity of the Hand: Smartphone Cynicism

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In the chapter “Telling by hand”, we see Ingold proposing a very interesting concept that is the “humanity of the hand”. Where the author argues, with help from Heidegger’s philosophy, that it is in the hands that the essence of humanity lies. Other senses of perception, the eyes, the nose and the ears, do not afford us the ability to tell stories the way the hand does. It could very well be said that with our eyes, nose and ears, we perceive the world while through our hands, we shape it into form. With our hands – the supreme among the organs of touch, we write, we draw, we thread and as such, we are able to tell stories to the world. 

Humans and the Language of Hands

According to the famous German thinker – Martin Heidegger, the hand is no mere instrument, for only with it came the very possibility of instrumentality. Supported by anatomist Frank Wilson’s claim that the hand exists as an extension of the brain and not a separate device under its control. The brain reaches out into the hands and from there it reaches out into the world. The hand is what separates us from mere animals, but it is not because we have opposable thumbs, nor the fact that we have flexible fingers that move independently, equipped with nails instead of claws. For Heidegger, it is language that holds the hand, which in turn is what holds man. For him, words as the essential realm of the hand provides the stable base in which humanity is grounded. 

For this exact reason, animals are considered by Heidegger to be “poor-in-the-world”, for they lack the essence of “world-forming” that characterizes man, an essence afforded to man by the hand. “Humanity” thus, challenges man by opening up for man a world that is not simply given, but one that must be unraveled to be properly understood. The task of the hand as follows is to tell, one must write, one must draw, only then may one’s world be properly formed.

As such, for the German philosopher, writings only truly tell (a story) when it is written by hand, as opposed to text produced through a typewriter. He argues that the human eye’s script is interpreted as the form of writing that tells and through holding the pen, the hand expresses our humanity. A humanity that starts with the essential “being” which then allows us to “feel”, and it is through that feeling that we start to “tell”. This is exactly what the typewriter has taken away from us – our humanity, for to type is not to write at all, and the typewriter paradoxically stops us from writing, an act that inevitably silences us from telling. 

Stories of Screens, Scrolling, and Smartphones

Ingold’s concept of the “humanity of the hand” can be further extended to the contemporary act of typing on our smartphones. This specific process of mediation reveals how our hands continue to mediate thought and feeling, even in a digital context removed from the material intimacy of pen and paper. While Heidegger mourned the typewriter’s detachment of writing from the hand, the way we send texts today further complicates this separation and disconnect. It can be argued that touchscreens still demand the tactility of our fingers, but the gestures we make with every tap, swipe, and scroll, completely transform writing into a choreography of minimal movements. Hence, the new generation is being taught both this choreography alongside writing by hand simultaneously, resulting in a generational difference and new ways of perceiving and telling stories. 

In handwriting, the thumb is peripheral and supports the pen that is the main object of mediation, whereas in texting, the thumb becomes the primary storyteller. Every new development to our smartphones reduces the thickness of our screens and consequently the distance between our fingertips and the world within our devices. The thin glass screen acts as an invisible barrier, creating the illusion that all forms of mediation are coming directly and instantaneously from our fingertips, almost as if we have become one with our devices.

Today’s digital age creates endless possibilities for our bodies to craft messages, emotions, and relationships. With every communication platform competing for users’ attention, people are always building connections through new innovative ways. Whether that is through texting, calling, reposting, sending stickers, or even Instagram reels, the overstimulating combination of text, audio, and visuals convey more than words simply could. The rise of meme culture on the internet invented a new way to express oneself, which is to make references to other preexisting media. This way, our internal thoughts and feelings, even those that we are unable to fully express, can be mediated with massive external reach, all from the from our fingertips. 

Through these rapidly changing technologies, our bodies constantly translate feelings into digital traces. Instead of leaving fingerprints on tangible objects we touch, we leave digital footprints after every interaction. Furthermore, this enables your smartphone to then reconfigure its role in mediation. Regardless of its convenience and innovation, nothing can compare to the feeling of holding a physical handwritten letter. There is power in the warmth of touch that is now reduced to the cold surface of glass. Ultimately, our fingers’ ability to edit before sending and our habitual scrolling creates a new expression of the hand’s humanity, emphasizing the negotiations between intimacy and distance in the mediated fabric of modern communication.

The Typewriter Returns

Comparing this with Heidegger’s pessimistic opinion of technology, and specifically the typewriter, we can imagine his stance on the disconnect between the hand and smartphone. Through a handwritten letter, we receive more than the words on the page. We see the erased or crossed-out attempts, the personality in the way each “i” is dotted, or even an ink smudge from writing too fast. As we adapted to using typewriters, we lost the sense of humanity and personality in handwriting. However, through the typewriter, we still see a lingering sense of intention beyond the words, we can see the “x”-ed out phrases, creased paper corners, or even a coffee stain on a message written late at night. Evolving into the smartphone, we lose more of these unintentional material stories that linger in each message. With the ability to unsend, edit, and pre-send our messages, we so ingenuinely mediate our communication to a point where we have lost our humanity.

In distinguishing ourselves from other animals, Heidegger emphasizes the strength of the hand in the realm of communication, or more importantly, storytelling. Despite the capabilities of this dexterity, we find our communication regressing to selections of premade facial expressions–emojis. When considering interpersonal communication, we see this grasp of personalisation among the monotonous, identical fonts in messaging systems. In place of personalised handwriting styles, some find ways to change their typing font. In place of crossed-out phrases and typos, some retype their messages rather than editing or deleting . As such, with the dramatic development from the typewriter to today’s smartphone, the typewriter maintains more personalised humanity in comparison to the smartphone. Perhaps if Heidegger could re-evaluate, his interpretation would cut the typewriter some slack. 

Courtesy of Kim Chi Tran, Maxine Gray, Nam Pham

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Shaping the World & Letting It Shape Us

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Shaping the World & Letting It Shape Us

In the Making

Oftentimes, we may think that making starts with an idea in our head that turns into a physical form in the real world. However, every time we make something, sketch an idea, or fix something broken, we are also learning along the way. Tim Ingold’s Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013) reconsiders what it means to create. Instead of viewing the act of making as simply turning concepts into objects, Ingold describes it as a process of growth and interaction with materials. Amongst many theorists and scholars, his thinking builds on the psychologist James Jerome Gibson, who argued that we experience the world through an “education of attention,” gaining knowledge by simply noticing the environment around us. As we live and learn amid the world around us, we continuously pick up creativity through exploring and responding to the interactions that shape our experiences.

About James Jerome Gibson

James Jerome Gibson was an American psychologist known for his influence in the field of ecological psychology, the study of the relationship between organisms and their environments, where an organism’s behaviour is shaped by “affordances”. Born in McConnelsville, Ohio, in 1904, Gibson earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton University in 1928 then taught at Smith College and Cornell University, where he began his pioneering research. 

https://monoskop.org/James_J._Gibson

Gibson explains in his most influential work, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), that affordances are the possibilities for specific actions that the environment provides and the perceiver’s abilities. (Gibson 119). For instance, how a chair invites us to sit and a path invites us to walk on it .

Gibson’s theory rejects the notion that the mind and body are independent from one another and emphasizes that our perception and actions work hand in hand to understand our world through our bodies as we move and interact with it. This is what Gibson refers to as the “education of attention,” which is the process of learning by noticing information through participating experience and movement, rather than by solely passive observation (Ingold 2).

The Art of Paying Attention

Ingold draws from James Gibson’s concept of the education of attention to explain how people learn by doing. Through every move we make in our bodies, we learn to perceive by being active participants in our environment. Ingold draws Gibson’s concept of the education of attention to argue that making works the same way, as the maker learns through attentive participation while being attentive to materials, developing sensitivity to their textures, resistance, and potential.

In Making, Ingold writes that learning occurs through “what the ecological psychologist James Gibson calls an education of attention” (Ingold 3). The maker learns by feeling, sensing, and responding to the materials, not just by following a set plan in their head. Ingold also says that we “learn by doing, in the course of carrying out the tasks of life” (Ingold, 13), explaining that creativity is an ongoing journey between the maker, their bdy, and then the materials that they interact with.

Affordance in Materials

Ingold provides an example in chapter 3 of Making, “On Making a Handaxe”.  Ingold describes the Acheulean handaxe, which was made from flint over more than a million years ago. The origin of this axe came about when knappers paid attention to how the stone reacted when struck, noticing how the sharp edge and shape of the axe formed naturally (Ingold 34–38). This example proves that  Ingold extends this idea into materials themselves when making, where they also “join forces” in possibilities for action (Ingold 21). For example, clay affords shaping, wood affords carving, and yarn affords knitting. Thus, the maker’s creative process is shaped by both their intention and by the affordances that materials and tools display through use.

“I want to think of making, instead, as a process of growth. This is to place the maker from the outset as a participant in amongst a world of active materials. These materials are what he has to work with, and in the process of making he ‘joins forces’ with them, bringing them together or splitting them apart, synthesising and distilling, in anticipation of what might emerge.” (Ingold 21)

Ingold’s approach to affordances indicates that materials and textures are not just passive tools because they indirectly participate in the creative process. Our duty is to respond to these affordances through attention so that making becomes a partnership between us and the world, rather than a one-sided action of control by humans.

Applying Gibson and Ingold to Our Media Environment

In terms of media studies, Gibson’s theory about affordances as well as the notion of “education of attention,” are relevant. Though Gibson’s ideas are connected to ecological affordances, we can use them to discuss media landscapes and what they provide us with. Ingold and Gibson’s theories surrounding anthropology, ecology, and psychology, when translated to understanding digital media, provide valuable insight about how we interact with, and use technology. 

A current example of Ingold’s application of Gibson’s theory can be seen in our digital habits, where we feel confused and overwhelmed with the features of emerging technologies. However, through continuous engagement, experimenting with new technological tools rather than repressing them, we slowly develop a system’s flow. Understanding the environment remains relevant now, beyond building axes and houses, as we are now experiencing a new type of environment, the media environment. Our perception and creative abilities evolve faster as media itself becomes a space of exploration between human attention and technological affordance.

By drawing on Gibson’s concept of “the education of attention,” Ingold shows that learning, creating, and perceiving all arrive from active engagement and participation with the environment. Though Gibson was mentioned only once throughout the entire book, the concept of the education of attention helps lay the groundwork for his later arguments on correspondence and material growth, where Ingold explains that perception, movement, and creation are all essential and related processes. Hereafter, making is a way of paying closer attention to the environment and being in touch with the world as it takes shape through our hands.

Contributors:

Kenisha Sukhwal, Aubrey Ventura

References:

Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

“James J. Gibson.” Monoskop, https://monoskop.org/James_J._Gibson. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

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Digging into Heidegger

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Upon reading Ingold’s “Making”, we discovered that Martin Heidegger, a German Philosopher and one of the most important thinkers of modern times, was cited numerous times to support the text’s main arguments. Born in 1889, Heidegger published his first major work, “Being and Time”, at the age of 1933, when he was recognised for his philosophical contribution to phenomenology and the movement of existentialism. In philosophy’s realm of metaphysics, Heidegger focuses on the study of fundamental ontology, which can be more easily understood as the study of “what it means for something to be”. In Ingold’s “Making”, 4 of his other works are cited, which are ”Poetry, Language, Thought” (1971), “Parmenides” (1972), “Basic Writings” (1993) and “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (1995).

From these works of Heidegger, his diatribe against the typewriter was used to support Ingold’s argument in the chapter “Drawing the Line”, as well as in the chapter “Telling by Hand”, where the philosopher’s criticism of technology’s effects on human essence was employed. His fundamental ontology was also greatly useful to Ingold’s, as in the chapter ”Round mound and earth sky”, it was drawn to make the important distinction between an object and a thing, where “people” are said to fall into the latter of these two categories of existence. So, in summary, we can see that Heidegger’s Philosophy laid the essential foundation for Ingold’s main arguments in these three chapters, but how exactly do they support the text in “Making”?

The Object at Hand…

For Heidegger, the category of an object is definable as being “complete in itself”. The confrontational “over-againstness” that characterises an object can be understood by the example of a chair. We may look at the chair and interact physically with it, but there exists an invisible distance between us and the chair as an object, for we are unable to join in with the process of its formation. In short, an object exists independent of our perception of it and is in itself complete. A thing, on the other hand, Heidegger defines as a “coming together of materials”; it is fluid and inviting. When we interact with a thing, we do not experience such a distance as with an object, and, as such, “people” would be considered a thing under this definitive categorisation.

Further in the chapter “Telling by hand”, Heidegger challenged the notion that human essence lies in the mind, proposing a focus on the hand instead. He argued that rather than being a mere instrument of the mind, the hand is the precondition of the possibility of having instrumentality. Hence is the saying, having a thing “at hand”, even when it is intangible, such as an upcoming event. For Heidegger, humans having hands is the fundamental essence that differentiates man from mere animals, as we are creatures capable of “world-forming”. On the other hand, he insists humans do not “have” hands, rather the hands hold the very essence of what makes us human to our core (Parmenides, 80). The hand offers us a world of contradictions; through our hand, we can enact greetings, commit murder, and even document the world. 

The Irony of Typing…

In his work, Parmenides, he deepens his perception of the hand to an extension of communication. He explains, handwriting is defined to be words as script (by the hand), and inasmuch as it holds the pen, it also holds one humanity; this is the essential difference between writing and typing with a typewriter. He describes typing as a transcript or a preservation of the handwritten word. In the realm of writing, the typewriter has essentially robbed the hand of its power. Now the act of typing affords a sense of anonymity over the more personalised counterparts; the handwritten words contain meaning beyond the text’s inherent interpretation. Ingold highlights Heidegger’s aversion to the typed word; “with scarcely disguised revulsion, ‘writes “with” the typewriter’. [Heidegger] puts the ‘with’ in inverted commas to indicate that typing is not really a writing with at all”(Making, 122). The hand loses its agency and signature on its writing. Stripped down to its core meaning by type, he claims the very essence of each individually written word is misunderstood when labelled as “the same when typed”. (Heidegger would NOT like this work…) To tell, or more specifically, write a story, one must feel the world and be in the world. Through type, experiences, stories, and lives are reduced to transmissions of encoded information.

Ingold’s Refute

Although Heidegger has some interesting interpretations on the human interaction with media, Ingold notes that Heidegger is a rather bitter older man. Most of his work is obsessed with picking apart the rise of technology and the decay of humanity in response. In comparison he showcases Leroi-Gourhan, a genuine technology enthusiast who encouraged the rise of technology in place of human’s inferior physiological forms. Through the many objects our hand holds, Ingold notes–above all–the hand of others to be held, both in guiding and to be led by the hand. He lingers on the distinct qualities of the human hand, down to the anatomy. Not only does he note the importance of the hand, but the hierarchy of fingers, for the finger may offer feeling and touch, yet it cannot hold without help from the thumb. Through the vehicle of typing, he compares other similar extensions of the hand. He questions a forklift driver’s ability to feel the weight of the load he lifts. Aside from the otherwise two-dimensional medium of typing, he also notes the sensation of the keys while typing, and questions if the typist notices the nuance in shape.

As a fierce guardian of the physical, manual space, Heidegger strongly disavows the integrity of technological assistance and its ability to portray a meaningful story. In this interpretation, the very act of typing in favour of writing, strips inherent depth from a piece. He emphasises the value of the human hand as the pinnacle symbol of the essence of humanity.

Maxine Gray & Nam Pham

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Jacques Derrida and Tim Ingold: Making Through Blindness

Image of Jacques Derrida

Introduction

What does sight and hand inform us about making? Through Jacques Derrida’s own theories regarding our use of sight and hand, Ingold supports his own arguments while also challenging Derrida via his book Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Throughout this work, we will analyze how Derrida’s philosophies on sight (and its contrast with blindness) alongside the hand (and drawing with it) has been cited to articulate its importance in making as argued by Ingold.

Derrida’s Background

Derrida is a French philosopher whose works involve theories regarding the humanities, which we have seen references of in class through the language and writing chapters of Critical Terms for Media Studies. With his background in philosophy, he puts forward his thesis with terms such as “deconstruction,” where he analyzes the flawed nature of Western philosophy and viewing concepts in opposition (e.g. culture and nature, speech and writing, mind and body, etc.). This sort of “deconstruction” of seemingly oppositional ideas is what will inform Derrida’s arguments, as we will see in his analysis of “sight and blindness” as well as “drawing and the hand” (“Jacques Derrida”). 

Sight, Blindness, and Weeping

Derrida’s hypothesis of sight postulates that it is “always set on convincing you” and is the “grafting of one point of view onto another”(2). Through this hypothesis, the definitions of blindness and sight develop ambiguity. Sight is both what we believe to be true, and an imparting of our personal perspective onto another, influencing them with our interpretation. Derrida discusses the space of blind as one that conjugates the “tenses and times of memory”: foreseeing “there where they do not see, no longer see, or do not yet see”(5, 6). Ingold furthers this temporal approach to considering sight when he describes it as “an activity of seeing forward” and a way to stay one step ahead of the material (69).

While Derrida’s discussion of sight concerns itself more with the metaphysical, distinguishing between “believing [what one sees], and seeing between” and explaining that the root of skepsis lies in the eyes and visual perception, Ingold applies his concepts to the process of making (Derrida 2). Ingold discusses drawing as a way to “look back on lines already drawn” to open our eyes, effectively making ourselves the “master of truth… who sees and guides the other towards the spiritual light” as Derrida describes it (Ingold 131, Derrida 6).

Derrida’s study of blindness eventually expands to a discussion of the eye itself. He defines eyes as the essence of the man and, as Ingold cites, its ultimate destiny is “not to see but to weep”(Derrida 125, Ingold 111). As such, the eye simultaneously veils sight and reveals the truth of the eyes (Derrida 126). In essence, the eye’s truth and what they observe is revealed as the world is covered, allowing a person to properly digest what they have seen. 

Similar to how Ingold claims technology is what separates humans from animals, Derrida differentiates between us in that we are the only ones who weep as an emotional response (126). Through weeping, humans “go beyond seeing and knowing”, using our eyes in both functions of telling: we understand the world around us through sight, and can convey our emotions through weeping (Derrida 126). Though we can not effectively observe our surroundings and openly weep congruently, Derrida’s emphasis on this dual use for eyes opposes Ingold’s theories of the individuality of the hand. However, Ingold stresses that the hand is distinct as it combines both aspects of telling, effectively clarifying any argument potential.

Drawing and the Hand

In Memoirs of the Blind, Jacques Derrida argues that “drawing is blind” (2) and that the act of drawing is dependent on blindness. To Derrida, drawing is an anticipating act, predicting what is to come. He describes how the hand moves across a surface before the eye can register what is being inscribed. He sees this process as taking initiative or “to take (capere) in advance (ante)”(4). The moment in which the artist first makes the first trace (trait), they are opening the path to invention. This trace is neither visible nor predetermined by what is already present. Even if there’s a model in front of an artist, the outcome is not predetermined. As there’s always a gap between the subject and the drawing, no matter how similar the deception of the subject is, a distance always remains.

As someone draws, their hands move ahead of their sight, meaning that they cannot see the entire line until it unfolds on the page. He argues that drawing “escapes the field of vision”(45) and rejects spectacular objectivity, which is the realm of everything visible and knowable. Derrida critiques the West’s dependence on this spectacle, holding onto the idea that vision provides truth. Drawing lives outside of this spectacle, as it goes against the idea that sight is all-encompassing, as it’s not a reproduction of what’s seen, because it occurs outside of visibility. Derrida’s overarching argument is that drawing is a process of touch, memory, and invention that isn’t beholden to vision.

Building on Derrida’s work, Tim Ingold’s Making reinforces his argument that making is a process of discovery rather than something representative. He rethinks the relation between drawing and writing, emphasizing that both originate from the hand, which he says works to tell the stories of the world. The hand is active as it probes and caresses; these actions precede visions and representation. In accordance with Derrida, Ingold argues that a mark is not in the realm of visibility but a lived movement: the practice of making. To Derrida, vision is haunted by blindness, but Ingold sees this haunting as fundamental to creativity. He sees the separation of sight and drawing as something that hinders how intertwined touch, memory, and perception actually are.

Conclusion

As media theorists, both Ingold and Derrida pose crucial questions and ideas that pertain to our relationship with the media. Much like drawing, when we produce media, there is a sense of “blindness” where we are obfuscated by the process of production itself. The notion that creating as a process is seen in both Derrida and Ingold’s arguments, where we see them discuss products as an unfinished, ongoing process. Ingold uses Derrida’s work to reinforce his main argument that making is a correspondence between the maker and the material. Both scholars argue that making is not a process determined by preconceived notions of reality but rather a relation between body and material. However, Derrida highlights this through his philosophies on the hand and blindness, revealing that the artist “creates or makes” without full knowledge of what will be the outcome. Ingold builds on this perspective and focuses on materiality. He describes the lived experience of making and how the maker and material are constantly working with one another. Just with the artefacts and buildings that Ingold puts forth his analyses on, media, too, are unfinished products constantly being reshaped with what is unseen (blind) as well as the hands that create them under new contexts. We see this often with how media are constantly edited, adapted into different forms of media, and also recontextualized under new perspectives. As academics, understanding each medium, not as its own standalone finished project, but in a perpetual state of change, is what guides us and our studies in the media landscape.

Citations

Britannica Editors. “Jacques Derrida”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Derrida. Accessed 17 October 2025.

Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. University of Chicago Press, 1993. 

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

Written by:

Molly Kingsley, Christine Choi, Aminata Chipembere

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Learning to Learn: Bateson Through Ingold’s Making

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Image of Gregory Bateson

Contributors: Adela Lynge, Eira Nguyen, Maryam Abusamak

Gregory Bateson: The Mind in Everything

If Tim Ingold’s Making is a conversation between hands, minds, and materials, then Gregory Bateson is one of the most intriguing voices echoing through it. Bateson (1904–1980) was a British anthropologist and systems theorist whose curiosity ranged from communication and psychology to dolphin research and cybernetics. His big question was simple but radical: how do living systems learn and know?

Bateson’s most influential work, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1973), gathers essays that link culture, biology, and communication into one vision. He argued that the mind is not really locked inside a human skull but distributed across relationships between people, tools, and environments. This idea formed his “ecology of mind,” which essentially is a living system of thought that includes the world itself. 

One of his key concepts, deutero-learning or “learning to learn,” describes how organisms adapt not just by gaining information but by tuning into patterns of interaction. It’s the skill of learning from experience, of letting the world teach you. 

Bateson’s influence stretches far beyond anthropology; he inspired thinkers in systems theory, ecology, and even digital design. (Fun fact: he was once married to anthropologist Margaret Mead, and their joint fieldwork in Bali transformed how both understood culture and communication.) 

For Ingold, Bateson provides the perfect foundation. Making takes up Bateson’s call to think relationally: knowing and making are not separate from the world but arise within it. Bateson’s insight that “everything is connected” becomes Ingold’s guiding thread, the sense that to know is to correspond with the materials and forces that shape life itself.

Tim Ingold: Embodying the Ecology of Mind

We kept circling back to that opening scene in Making, where Ingold recalls the Saami people telling him, “Know for yourself!” (p. 1). At first, it sounds like tough love. But by the next page, it becomes the seed of his entire method. He realizes that “the only way one can really know things… is through a process of self-discovery” that knowing is movement (pp. 1–2). Bateson’s idea of learning within an ecology of mind (1973) suddenly becomes embodied. The world, Ingold says, “becomes a place of study… [we] learn from those with whom we study” (p. 2).

That insight, learning with rather than about, is the engine that drives the book — every chapter is a variation on it.

Bateson imagined learning as recursive feedback within an “ecology of mind” (1973): perception and action constantly reshape one another. Ingold keeps this loop but breathes life into it. He argues that anthropology itself must be a process of engagement rather than extraction. Participant observation, he insists, is “absolutely not a technique of data collection … it is enshrined in an ontological commitment … a way of knowing from the inside” (p. 5). To cut the loop into “data” is, he warns, to “turn the relation between knowing and being inside out” (p. 5).

Bateson’s deutero-learning describes how we acquire habits of response, learning to perceive and adjust to patterns across contexts. Ingold builds directly on this by introducing the concept of correspondence, which is essentially the mutual shaping that happens between the maker, the materials, and the environment. “The conduct of thought,” he writes, “goes along with the fluxes and flows of the materials with which we work. These materials think in us, as we think through them” (p. 6). To know from the inside is to inhabit that flux, to move and be moved, to think as life thinks.

Bateson’s theories become especially relevant in Making’s seventh chapter: Bodies on the Run. To Ingold, a body is alive when it leaks, exuding itself into its environment and engaging in a constant exchange of material between surroundings and self. Ingold once again relates this to the concept of correspondence, arguing that we are our bodies and experience ourselves moving in ongoing response to the materials surrounding us. Bateson’s concept of deutero-learning is referenced when Ingold expresses that the body, as a site of unfolding activity, is something to think from rather than about (p. 94). 

Bateson’s voice holds strong in Making when placed in conversation with other theorists. As Ingold ponders the mind’s role in the flow of materials, Bateson’s concept of the ecology of mind is used as an argument against Chris Gosden’s beliefs (p. 97). While Gosden is against studying the concept of the mind altogether, Bateson argues for our ability to retain an ecology of mind that complements an ecology of substance, the first dealing with information and the second with the exchange of energy and materials. Bateson’s legacy also ripples through later thinkers that Ingold references, such as Andy Clark, whose influential theory of the “extended mind” argues that cognition spreads across brain, body, and environment (p. 97).  

Tim Ingold, Lecture: “Telling by Hand: Weaving, Drawing, Writing Photography” at Text and Textiles Conference, University of Aberdeen, 2012. Photography by: Patricia Pires Boulhosa.

As a group, we were intrigued by how Ingold’s argument keeps circling back to the body in motion, particularly the hand. Ingold writes that, “Hands, in a word, can tell, both in their attentiveness to the conditions of a task as it unfolds, and in their gestural movements and the inscriptions they yield” (p. 116). Here, the hand becomes a site of knowing. He writes that its intelligence, “arises as an emergent property of the entire ‘form-creating system’… comprising the gestural synergy of human being, tool and material.” Ingold earlier in the book describes this as “a correspondence between mindful attention and lively materials conducted by skilled hands “at the trowel’s edge” (p. 11). 

This again echoes Bateson’s idea of learning as a continuous adjustment to patterns and relations, but Ingold grounds it in body practice. The hand learns by feeling its way forward, guided by touch, rhythm, and resistance. It knows through kinesthesia, the awareness of movements that connects body and world. In this way, Ingold transforms Bateson’s theoretical circuit of learning into a living, embodied correspondence, showing that knowing is not something the mind possesses but something the body performs in motion.

Ingold brings his argument full circle by linking the movement of the hand to that of the entire body, drawing a beautiful connection between dance, writing, and kinesthesia. The quality of movement when writing by hand shares the rhythm and tempo of one’s bodily gestures, and “extends into the lines that appear on the paper,” with these lines arising from experiences and in turn carrying us through life. Rejecting the idea of movement as the mere connection between points, Ingold argues that there is no singular end goal to learning as new opportunities are constantly emerging, and that one must wander the world at their own pace in a constant act of curious self-discovery (pp. 140, 141)

In this final sentiment that concludes Making, Ingold reiterates Bateson’s idea of learning as an ongoing process of adaptation within a living system, an ecology of mind where every gesture, like every thought, grows through its connections to what came before and what is yet to come.

Tracing the Source: Learning to Read Critically

As a group, we wanted to go beyond simply accepting Ingold’s use of Bateson at face value and instead ask: what happens when we go to Bateson himself? What steps does Steps to an Ecology of Mind actually give us that Ingold selectively uses for his own argument-making purpose? 

Ingold takes Bateson’s cybernetic loops and transforms them into lines of correspondence, which are less mechanical and simpler. Where Bateson spoke of systems and information exchange, Ingold speaks of walking, waving, and touching. As he says, “We owe our very being to the world we seek to know” (p. 5). So while Ingold emphasizes harmony through openness, Bateson was more cautious. Bateson’s notion of double bind also shows how communication can entrap rather than enlighten, which is something that Ingold barely acknowledges. 

We realized that maybe Ingold chooses the generative side of Bateson’s ideas, the more optimistic ones, sustaining growth. Still, this selective use of Bateson’s theory gives Ingold’s research a more distinctive perspective. He does not simply borrow Bateson’s idea, but as a companion to think with and bring his theory to life. 

This assignment really made us think about how theory travels, how one thinker borrows from another, reshapes their ideas, and sometimes leaves important pieces behind. Going back to Bateson’s theory helped us see that Ingold is rather reinterpreting it, molding it to fit his vision of anthropology as a living, embodied practice.

We learned that while authors may present strong and convincing arguments, the way theories are chosen, interpreted, and explained is often shaped by their own biases, purposes, and perspectives. This is natural. We are not neutral beings. It doesn’t mean that we should doubt everything we read, but we should stay aware of how knowledge is constructed and framed. 

As media studies students, we think maintaining a critical mindset allows us to engage more deeply with theory, to see not only what an author is saying, but also why and how they are saying it. It’s about reading with curiosity and care, recognizing that every interpretation is a creative act that both reveals and reshapes the ideas it draws from.

References

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

“Gregory Bateson.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.,https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregory-Bateson

Image credits: 

Haftner, Keeley. “Keeley Haftner.” Bad at Sports, 30 Jan. 2018, badatsports.com/2018/thinks-tim-ingold/

Vincent van, Vliet. “Gregory Bateson Biography, Quotes and Books.” Toolshero, 27 Aug. 2024, www.toolshero.com/toolsheroes/gregory-bateson


Contributors: Adela Lynge, Eira Nguyen, Maryam Abusamak

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Tim Ingold and Four French Philosophers Walk Into a Bar: The Fight Against Hylomorphism 

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Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image by Edgar Chaparro

Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a psychoanalyst and political activist were notable figures in French political thought following the Second World War. Deleuze believed much of philosophy consisted of bureaucracy, while Guattari sought to demolish “the hierarchy between doctor and patient” to achieve “collective critique of…power relations” (pp. iv-v). In collaboration with each other, they authored a series titled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, with the first book, Anti-Oedipus, being published in 1972, and the sequel, A Thousand Plateaus, in 1980. By quoting their arguments from the second book, A Thousand Plateaus, Tim Ingold demonstrates the correspondence between form and matter. This correspondence is exemplified by dichotomies of state and nomad science and machine and thing. 

In Chapter 2, Ingold (2013) quotes the “Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine”, the twelfth chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, in which Deleuze and Guattari extend “Simondon’s crusade against hylomorphism” (p. 25). According to Ingold, Deleuze and Guattari critique the hylomorphic model which illustrates form as static and matter as “homogenous’” (p. 25). Ingold extracts excerpts of this chapter to demonstrate the living, evergrowing state of materials. While doing so, however, he excluded Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) greater discussion of “the war machine”–a nebulous opponent that questions superiority and “impedes the formation of the State” (pp. 358, 422). Many attribute the destructive war machine to nonhylomorphic “nomad science”, which seeks to ‘follow…the “singularities” of a matter’, rather than “a form” (p. 372). While Deleuze and Guattari believe that nomadism produces the “smooth”, open space for the war machine’s “vortical…movement”, they also claim it enables radical change (pp. 381, 423). Its dichotomous other, “State science”, is derived from a separated structure of “governors and the governed” and “intellectuals and manual labourers” (p. 369). It remains inseparable to hylomorphism, as it assigns “matter…to content” and “form” to “expression”, keeping the two categories separate (p. 369). Furthermore, it creates a fixed society, grounded in a “constant form” of “reproduction, iteration and reiteration” (p. 372). Conversely, nomad science connects “content and expression”, with both categories combining “form and matter” ; unlike hylomorphism, nomad science produces a spontaneous “intuition in action” (pp. 369, 409). Ingold argues its “artisans” use matter for evolutionary rather than reproductive means (p. 25). Altogether, Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) demonstrate the importance of nonhylomorphic, nomad science; despite its catalysis of State-opposed war machines, its undisciplined, deterritorial nature can lead “to a new earth” (p. 423). 

Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image by Andrea Castro

In the beginning chapters of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari (1972/1983) introduce the concept of desiring-production as a process of making that is the “production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine” (p. 6). Desiring-production is material, social, and political all at once, it continuously creates and connects flows of life, matter, and meaning. To them, desire produces reality itself rather than expressing a lack of, which pertains to Ingold’s view of making as growth and correspondence as forms can arise through interactions between maker and material. Additionally, Deleuze and Guattari also introduce an anti-production concept of the body without organs, which describes the unformed plane of potential that resists organization and structure. However, this concept is not “proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/1983, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the body without organs is not nostalgia for a pure origin, but rather a positive and productive field for potential new connections and forms to emerge. These ideas are echoed throughout Tim Ingold’s Making through the rejection of hylomorphism and his emphasis on form as correspondence as an ongoing negotiation between maker and material. The body without organs is reflective of Ingold’s materials holding their own agency and potential, shaping outcomes through interaction instead of obedience. While both thinkers resist dualisms of form and matter, they also share an ethical stance on care, attentiveness, and openness toward the world through what Foucault promotes as a non-fascist life and what Ingold calls non-instrumental making. Ultimately, Deleuze and Guattari’s theories are effectively embedded in Ingold’s Making, imagining creativity not as domination nor mastery but as a continuous production of worlds through collaboration, responsiveness, and becoming. 

Deleuze and Guattari’s objections of hylomorphism could be compared to Descartes’ concept of mind-body dualism. Similarly to Ingold’s rationalization against objectifying things instead of understanding the entirety of the thing, Descartes separates the functions of the body by looking at comprehensive processing. 

“For example, when I imagine a triangle, not only do I understand it to be a shape enclosed by three lines, but at the same time, with the eye of the mind, I contemplate the three lines as present, and this is what I call imagining” (Descartes, 1641, p. 51)

The mind and body are separate entities. The mind is differentiated from the body by establishing that the mind is a soul which is a “thinking thing” (Descartes, 1641, p. 52). Descartes emphasizes Ingold’s point that humans are not the only “things” (Ingold, 2013, p. 17) that have a soul, yet differentiates that things such as plants and animals have a different kind of soul from humans (Descartes, 1641, xxviii). Humans have an immortal soul that satiates desires outside of basic necessities or nutrients. The body is a vessel of our mind, and even though the two cannot live without the other, there are functions that both entities can do that the other cannot. For example, the mind can think and the body cannot. Though the mind and body are different things, they work in synchronicity. Therefore, they are different but not separate.This concept is contrary to Aristotle’s theory, that form is the correspondence of matter (Metaphysics), without the idea of a soul. Thus, matter is what things are made of, which is contrary to the distinction that Ingold is making, where objects are not only made of matter but have their own metaphysical processes. According to Descartes, hylomorphism’s argument is not applicable to reality because it does not recognize the metaphysical elements of the world. 

Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image from Canva

Simondon’s original brick-making example in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (2005/2020) was one of the first to establish the developing cracks in Aristotle’s original hylomorphic schema in terms of individuation, which he defines as the process in which a thing becomes distinct from other things, thus influencing Deleuze and Guattari’s later arguments. He states that, in practice, it never truly works as notions of matter and form create a generalization that ignores the constant formation, genesis, and recomposition that occurs in the living world. With brick, the clay–its original form–undergoes changes through the process of pressing, moulding, and firing, which creates instances in which “the form is not united with the material” (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). The difficulty that emerges in the hylomorphic schema is that “it grants [form and matter] an existence prior to the relation that joins them” therefore it cannot indicate “the principle of individuation of the living being”–and hence “the manner in which the form informs the matter is not sufficiently specified” (Simondon, 2005/2020, p. 31). Individuation is an ever-emergent process that cannot be defined in advance, which “the form-receiving passivity posited by hylomorphism” does (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). Here, one sees how Simondon’s original argument begins to influence Deleuze and Guattari and thus Ingold in how hylomorphism is insufficient in comprehending the correspondence between beings, but also things and processes. 

According to Ingold (2013), Deleuze and Guattari further refute the hylomorphic model through the field of metallurgy (p. 25). This is true, as Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) illustrate metallurgic flows as “confluent with nomadism”; metal continuously changes, thus demonstrating the “vital state of matter” that is universally concealed by hylomorphism (p. 404). Furthermore, metallurgy rejects hylomorphism, as it does not consist of distinct chronological stages of growth, but a “deformation or transformation” that “overspills…form” (p. 410).  As a result, Ingold borrows Deleuze and Guattari’s belief that metal changes continuously as it is fired, forged, and quenched (p. 410). Through promoting Deleuze and Guattari’s example, Ingold demonstrates the correspondence of matter and form. Thus, the idea of form and matter as separate from each other is only one side of the coin.

by Bridghet Wood, Emily Shin, Kim Chi Tran, and Xelena Ilon

References

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus. (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1). (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1972).

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol.1) (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980) https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf 

Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on first philosophy. Cambridge University Press. 

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055 
Simondon, G. (2020). Individuation in light of forms and information (T. Adkins, Trans.) University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2005)

Other

Dwelling: Roots of Life in Ingold’s Making

Growing Downward

A plant never rushes. It waits for the right moment — sunlight shifting through the air, a brief touch of rain — and then begins, quietly, to grow. Its roots grow downward, not to dominate the soil, but to become part of it. Above the ground, its leaves unfold to meet the wind, trembling but certain, aware that to stand upright one must first hold fast below. Observing a plant’s growth made us question what it really means to exist. Perhaps living isn’t about striving to move forward or reach higher, but learning how to maintain—with the ground, with others, and with the conditions that make life possible. 

A plant doesn’t stand apart from the world—it lives through it, shaped by what it touches and what touches it. Heidegger might call this “dwelling”: living in care and attention to what sustained us, being between earth and sky rather than above them. Ingold builds on this idea—he turns Heidegger’s notion of dwelling into something lived and practiced. In Making, Ingold writes about how knowing and creating are not detached acts of control but ongoing relationships with materials. We learn and make from the space between the earth and sky, where we actually live. Instead of being distant observers, we are part of the world’s unfolding. As he describes, when the traveller’s body merges with the “shimmering luminosity of the sky” and the “embrace of the damp earth,” earth and sky are no longer divided by the horizon but unified at the very center of being (Ingold 137). To “grow downward” is to understand this form of relationship—to see that we exist not by hovering above, but by rooting ourselves within.

Sorge: Turning Towards the World

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work reshaped how we think about being itself. Raised in a Catholic family in Messkrich, he began studying theology before turning to philosophy under the influence of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (Wrathall). Yet Heidegger soon moved beyond Husserl’s focus on consciousness. His work “Being and Time” marked this shift: rather than asking what beings are, Heidegger asked what it means to be.

At the center of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” lies the idea of the term “Dasein”, which is his preliminary explanation of human existence as constituted by our relationships to the practical and social contexts that give meaning to our actions (Wrathall). Yet this is never purely individual. Most of the time, we exist as part of the one, absorbed in everyday routines and social habits that pull us away from authentic awareness of our existence. Heidegger calls this withdrawal not an absence, but a reminder that being is never fully available; it always withholds itself, keeping us in a state of searching and care. From this tension comes sorge, or care—a way of being that turns us toward the world and others, responding to what continually reveals itself and then slips away.

The Mound

Ingold extensively utilizes the mound as a metaphor for his concept of the continuation of life. He resists the idea that life, like edifices, is built from the ground up. Instead, like the fluid accumulation of the mound, matter does not have a clear boundary of beginning and end—its very process of becoming is its reason for becoming. And human life, even though one may argue, ends at the decay of flesh, does not truly end as it transforms into layering, sedimentation, and decay (Ingold 77). Humans, as a “thing” and not an “object”, adhere to this principle. Ingold directly cites Heidgger to distinguish between “things” and “objects”, thus as to why “things” require unique interventions: “The object, he argued, is complete in itself, define by its confrontational ‘over-againstness’ -face to face or surface to surface- in relation to the setting in which it is placed” (85). Participation is key to the ongoing process of “things” on earth’s surface. Similar to the nature of the mound, Ingold’s experiment with the village houses demonstrated how dwelling required involvement and movement. Heidegger’s presumption enhances Ingold’s idea of dwelling as performance, “The spaces of dwelling are not already given, in the layout of the building, but are created in movement” (85). The moment of movement is the moment of gathering, and is the act of joining the mound rather than terminating the worlding of things.

The Thing 

In “The Thing”, Heidegger describes a “thing” not as a functional object but an instrument of gathering the fourfolds—a place where earth, sky, divinities, and mortals come into relation. A “thing”, for him, is not merely a tool or container. Instead it holds the world together through this act of gathering. Ingold picks on the earth and mortal aspects of this idea by inviting instances of lived experience. In his critique of the monument versus the the mound, Ingold claims that, “A cairn, for example, is just a pile of stones that grows as every traveller, passing by a particular place, adds a stone picked up along the way as a memento of the trip” (83). Essentially, the cairn embodies the earth (stones) and the mortal (humans adding stones), justifying Ingold’s belief that a “thing” exists beyond to be looked at. It exists by being in the moment of contact between movement and matter. It emerges in the very act of relation, in the meeting of weight, texture, and gesture.

Heidegger’s concept of the “thing” is vital because it shapes our understanding of Ingold’s theory of correspondence. Ingold doesn’t merely cite Heidegger–he reworks Heidegger’s thinking of the “thing” to a more sensory and material appraoch. He frames gathering into a process of mutual formation in which he coined as correspondence. As Ingold writes, “To touch it, or to observe it, is to bring the movements of our own being into close and affective correspondence with those of its constituent materials” (85). In this reimagining, correspondence is all established on the basis of the material and our movement, forming a dynamic flow of transduction–a continual exchange of forces that mutually transforms the maker and the material. In this sense, Ingold preserves Heidegger’s insight that being is relational but makes it tangible, where life itself is sustained through the harmony of making and response.

From Thought to Touch

Heidegger’s concept of dwelling is largely metaphysical, unlike the lived and sensory approach that Ingold pursued. Although Ingold inherits from Heidegger the belief that humans do not stand apart from the world but dwell within it (Heidegger 1971; Ingold 3), the poetics of the fourfolds cannot be fully defined but can only be evoked. Hence, to situate this Ingold turns dwelling into a lived process. For this reason, he doesn’t always cite Heidegger directly, and that absence is intentional. Ingold had already acknowledged Heidegger explicitly in earlier chapters, such as “The Materials of Life,” where he draws on The Thing to describe how touching and observing bring our being into correspondence with materials (21). Transitioning to the chapter “Round Mound and Earth Sky”, Heidegger’s influence has already been absorbed into the fabric of Ingold’s prose, as seen in his description of the earth as “not the solid and pre-existing substrate that the edifice builder takes it to be” but “rather the source of all life and growth” (77). That said, Ingold departs from Heidegger’s abstract meditation to ground dwelling in the immediacy of sensory experience. In the case where “buildings are part of the world, and the world will not stop still but ceaselessly unfolds along its innumerable paths of growth, decay and regeneration, regardless of the most concerted of human attempts to nail it down, or to cast it in fixed and final forms” (48), Heidegger would reflect the human impulse as an interruption of gathering, but Ingold would rather stress the ceaseless unfolding as the flow of material and life that is necessary of becoming.

Conclusion

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) expresses a perennial truth about human life that it is rooted in care, not command. Modernity, however, teaches us that to live is to rise—to build higher, reach farther, and transcend. Cities embody this logic in glass and steel, lifting us above the very earth that sustains us. Ingold offers a resolute reversal: to live is to grow downward, to take root, to correspond. A plant’s growth is not an escape from the soil but a deepening within it, an act of grounding rather than ascent. He translates Heidegger’s metaphysics into lived experience: the sky is what allows things to breathe, and the earth is what lets them grow. To “grow downward,” then, is not to retreat but to recognize our place within the flow of life—to live with the world, not above it. Anthropology, in this sense, becomes the practice of rooting knowledge. To understand, then, is to return to the ground: not to possess it, but to dwell within it—to let thought take root where life already grows.

Works Cited

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

Wrathall, Mark. “Martin Heidegger.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Jan. 2025, plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#:~:text=Martin%20Heidegger%20was%20born%20on,at%20the%20University%20of%20Freiburg.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2011.

Cover art: “Antonio Mora on Instagram: ‘Plant Fashion’ En 2025: Arte, Estatuas, Disenos de Unas.” Pinterest, 8 Aug. 2025, www.pinterest.com/pin/26247610323734509/. 

By Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao