The "Oriental approach" to propaedeutics in the context of "somatic-oriented" design

Filonenko Nadezhda Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0003-1459-9272 PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Graphic Design, Ural State University of Architecture and Art named for N. S. Alferov Karl Liebknecht str., 23, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, 620075, Russia philonenkonadezhda@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Designers and architects today often talk about the need to connect mind and body, idea and phenomenon, since a design idea implemented in a specific object-spatial environment is lived "not conceptually, but physically" ^[1]. However, according to the fair remark of the media philosopher V. V. Savchuk, the "skill" of perception with the whole body" in modern man is either lost or not developed at all" ^{[2, p. 348]}.

The first attempts to connect mind and body in the process of project creativity were made back in the Bauhaus, however, the focus gradually shifted towards a purely "tactile pedagogy" ^[3]. Once again, the desire to restore the unity of mind and body appeared within the framework of the so-called "environmental approach." So, in the Senezh studio, design began with "getting used to the project situation." However, it required from the designer, first of all, an artistic vision. Later, his non-artistic "theory of feeling" was proposed by the Finnish architect Yu. Pallasmaa, again preferring touch ^[4]. Nevertheless, "body-oriented" design is still insufficiently conceptualized. However, in our opinion, the main problem lies in the fact that Western designers, in principle, understand the bodily experience somewhat simplistically.

It is significant that in Western design studies, the body is considered as the "central materiality of experience" ^{[5, p. 46]}, that is, researchers' attention is focused on the five sense organs and the perceptual image that arises with their help in the head. Criticizing this understanding of the body by Western design theorists and practitioners, the famous Japanese designer Kenya Hara emphasizes that Eastern designers, on the contrary, think of the whole body as a single "brain" ^{[6, pp. 64-65]}. This tradition is realized, for example, in the art of oriental calligraphy, where the work is written out and then "perceived by the viewer not only with the eyes, but also with the whole body" ^{[7, p. 121]}.

In this article, we will try to show what it means to "perceive with the whole body" from the point of view of the "oriental approach", and how this skill can be formed in a propaedeutic course for future designers. To do this, we will turn to the works of Oriental philosophers who explain the specifics of the Eastern worldview to a Western audience (Yuk Hui, V. V. Malyavin), since in the East the relationship between man and the environment is perceived not just as subject-object or even subject-subject, but as mutually generating.

In the course of the research, we suggest that exercises based on samples of avant-garde Oriental calligraphy can perform a propaedeutic function in terms of developing a designer's bodily self-awareness (first of all, we highlight the works of the largest Japanese calligrapher in this field in the twentieth century. By Yukei Teshima). We argue our position by the fact that, as in classical calligraphy, they implement a model of space-time that was originally generated by bodily consciousness (that is, with a center and a periphery), but at the same time they have almost no limitations.

With the help of lines, the writer captures the inner kinesthetic pattern of the surrounding things in their dynamic relationship with each other. In the perspective of design education, this can contribute to the formation of a type of thinking where the designer "sees" a new object where it does not exist yet, but where it cannot help but be – that is, where its appearance seems absolutely natural.

Historically, our position is closest to the views of the founder of the Senezh Studio, E. A. Rosenblum, who believed that the developed aesthetic sense of an artist-designer allows him to "anticipate future changes in both material and spiritual human needs" "based on barely noticeable, disparate signs" ^{[8, p. 104]}. However, in the Senezh studio, the propaedeutic course dissolved into the practice of design and "thereby ceased to be propaedeutics, becoming a means of solving a specific design problem" ^{[9, p. 43]}. Therefore, in the propaedeutic plan, we will rely on the experience of the Bauhaus (first of all, on the phenomenological interpretations of the ideas of P. Klee and V. Kandinsky by the Russian philosophers V. A. Podorogoy and A. V. Yampolskaya).

1. Towards the concept of "body-oriented" design in the context of the Eastern understanding of "physicality"

1) From an environmental approach to a "body-oriented" one

In the Senezh Studio, design was understood as "solving the conflict between the content of the form of a product, considered as an element of the object environment, on the one hand, and the content of the form as an expression of the functional essence of a thing, on the other" ^{[10, p. 16]}. As far as we can tell, there was also a contradiction between man and the environment, and the designer's task was precisely to "pacify" the environment.

To resolve this conflict, the seminar participants "used the entire sum of the means of building an artistic form developed by the history of the development of fine art" (it was no coincidence that they called their activities "machine tool design"). If the existing artistic means for resolving the conflict turned out to be insufficient, they created new means – "new compositional patterns and new coloristic constructions" ^{[9, p. 43]}. For example, "machines and assemblies that are understandable only to engineers, designers, and technicians, far from everyday life, have been "tamed" by art in these pictorially designed search images that represent the machine from several points of view at once," that is, making it more convenient for human perception ^{[9, p. 41]}.

The Senezh Studio was the first school of environmental design in our country. Later, the understanding of the environmental approach changed somewhat: as far as we can tell, if in Soviet times the metaphor of conflict for defining a person's relationship with the environment was consonant with the dialectical logic of "unity and struggle of opposites," then in the post-Soviet "science" of design the emphasis shifted towards "unity." Design began to be understood as project activity "for the formation of a harmonious subject environment" ^{[11, p. 26]}.

It is significant that the reference dictionary edited by G. B. Minervin and V. T. Shimko, published by the Department of Architectural Environment Design of the Moscow Institute of Fine Arts in 2004, also included the term "harmonization of form", which meant "a harmonious, non-negative, coordinated combination of elements forming an integral work of design art" ^{[11, p. 25]}. Note that the definition referred to a certain [bodily] feeling of harmony, although the authors subsequently did not comment on this point in any way. The problem is that in the Russian "science" of design, in principle, it is not customary to refer to bodily experience.

In our opinion, the need to develop a "body-oriented" approach in domestic design is indicated by the words of the Japanese designer Kiyoharu Fujimoto, which have not yet lost their relevance, published in one of the issues of the magazine "Technical Aesthetics" in the early 1990s. He said that everything was fine in the sketches of Soviet designers, but "when we look at the same product in its finished form, then all the flaws are revealed," namely, "there is no nuanced elaboration," no attention is paid to the properties of materials, and there is also inattention to individual details ^{[12, p. 25]}. And despite the fact that Kiyoharu Fujimoto attributed these problems to the lack of technological development in Soviet Russia, we believe that, in fact, there was a need to change the methodological "paradigm" itself, in which the environment was considered as an "object" of human influence, albeit mild or "weak".

2) The Eastern understanding of "physicality" as more in tune with the attitudes of the "body-oriented" approach

At first glance, the "body-oriented" approach is more consistent with treating the environment as another "subject", which is typical, for example, for Western architects and phenomenologists (it is no coincidence that the Norwegian architect K. Norberg-Schultz uses the metaphor of the "spirit of the place", or "genius of the place", speaking about the uniqueness of the atmosphere of a particular locality). The problem is that the subject-subject relationship between man and the environment still presupposes their opposition (hence, for example, the eroticization of architecture by A. Perez-Gomez). In our opinion, this juxtaposition turns into prejudice against the fact that a design product can feel like an extension of the human body.

In this regard, the "oriental approach" is more productive, based on a different understanding of physicality, in which "a virtuoso master can "merge" with his instrument or material and not notice them at all, just as we do not notice our body" ^[13].

In an effort to explain to the Western reader what the specifics of the Eastern understanding of physicality are, the Russian sinologist V. V. Malyavin refers to the concept of the "flesh of the world" by the French philosopher M. Merleau-Ponty, or "texture, which is equally inherent in the visible world and the visible body" as a characteristic of all visible (felt) things ^[14]. However, he criticizes the use of the word "flesh" because, in his words, it "objectively points to a Christian context" ^[13].

As far as we can tell, we are talking about the fact that the word "flesh" emphasizes the dense, that is, the material, "textural" side of the world, while for the Chinese the body is always empty, and therefore man and the world represent an integrity akin to Leibniz's monad, all points of which are communicating and permeate each other ^[13].

Let's try to show more clearly the specifics of the Western and Eastern understanding of physicality by comparing the most "pure" examples – works of modern art.

As one example, let us turn to the work of the Russian artist V. Lucca, in whose works (Figure 1) the media philosopher V. V. Savchuk sees "vague resistance to the digital offensive, both derealizing the weight of objects and suspending the environment in uncertainty" ^{[15, p. 171]}. V. Lucca makes the surface of the painting relief, moreover, not only due to the thick brushstroke: he attaches household objects to the canvas (for example, tin cans, sheets of iron or clothes), takes the canvas out of the frame, uses mounting foam, etc. The artist's "body" of the painting is always wounded and insulted, so it gives the viewer a feeling of physical suffering: the artist "looks into her wounds, sometimes, with the passion of a naturalist, he wounds even deeper, as if wanting to find out the limits of pain resistance, and sometimes – here the artist's whim – he heals them like a gardener cementing tree hollows and hammering them with roofing iron" ^{[15, p. 166]}.

Despite the materiality and heaviness of V. Lucca's paintings, there are no clear images in them: according to V. V. Savchuk, the artist renounces the "immediacy of the visible" in order to "begin to see the invisible," that is, to begin to see "the very condition of vision" (V. V. Savchuk explains his thought, quoting Lao Tzu: "Show everything – it means to hide everything") ^{[15, p. 157]}. We would say that V. Lucca's works capture the very experience of looking, moreover, looking overshadowed by personal – physically tangible – experiences.

We find a certain similarity in reproducing our own bodily experience in one of the greatest Japanese calligraphers of the twentieth century, Yu. Teshima (1901-1987). His most famous work at the time was "Landslide", selected for the Biennale of Art in Sao Paulo (1957) (Figure 2). The manner of writing hieroglyphs with a spray on top of gray lines gives rise to the feeling of clouds of dust from houses collapsing in front of the viewer from the explosions of aerial bombs during the Second World War. The structural strength of the signs is associated with concrete structures of houses and symbolizes the strong-willed pressure, which, in fact, leads to this destruction ^{[16, p. 173]}.

In our opinion, this work by Yu. These include the words of V. V. Savchuk, which he said about V. Lucca's paintings – "destructive in form and deeply creative" – with the difference that V. Lucca does not seek harmony, his works are deeply dramatic (even those that come out conditionally lyrical), while in the work "Landslide" there is a feeling of reconciliation between a person and his fate due to a bright flash of "light" in the center of the sheet, it can be said that it captures the moment when the author finds a sense of inner inseparability with the world.

Let's add to the above that Yukei Teshima became famous in his time for using gray shades of mascara. An interesting comment on gray is given by the largest Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa. According to him, the gray color allows you to combine colors that are not in harmony. He adds: "... it would be better to say that it [gray] promotes neutralization rather than harmony" ^{[17, p. 15]}. We can say that gray performs the function of an "intermediate space" (recall the "gray intermediate space" by architect Kise Kurokawa), which creates a "pause" that allows the viewer to feel the connection of everything with everything in this world.

It is noteworthy that Naoto Fukasawa himself six years ago designated his design approach with the word "embodiment", proclaiming the goal of "embodied" design to create objects that "immediately seem natural and inevitable" (that is, the world feels like a single "body"). For the Japanese designer, the design object is always "alive": according to him, the contour line of the object, which changes in the process of moving itself or the viewer moving around it, shows its changing "countenance" (English "countinence") ^{[17, p. 13]}. According to Naoto Fukasawa, intuitively, the consumer always reacts precisely to the hidden "facial expression" of the product, therefore, the Japanese designer needs to create many experimental samples in order to manifest a specific "embodied" image through the final product.

Propaedeutically, the first attempts to teach future designers to think physically were already made at the Bauhaus, however, at an early stage there was a lot of mysticism in teaching (recall at least the method of cleansing the skin by rubbing it with ashes and further piercing with needles, which was practiced by members of the student circle organized by G. Luche and J. Ittenom). Nevertheless, the Bauhaus teachers definitely felt the looming threat of alienating a person from their own bodily experience in connection with the advent of mass production and the Fordist division of labor.

2. In search of an "Oriental approach" to "body-oriented" propaedeutics

1) The first attempts at the development of "body-oriented" propaedeutics in the Bauhaus

Post-war skepticism towards a rational understanding of reality influenced the pedagogy of the early Bauhaus, which was based on the intuitive approach of its teachers. In its purest form, the intuitive approach was implemented in the framework of a propaedeutic course designed to introduce students to the universal language of abstract art, which, in turn, is a tool for "spiritualizing" crafts. As part of the course, the visual experience of artists was linked to the tactile experience of artisans.

One of the teachers of the propaedeutic course J. Albers wrote: "The tactility of weaving, structured by rhythmic connections between the warp and weft, shapes thinking and makes no distinction between touch, understanding and cognition." Methods of work of J. Albers' work with the material included touching, tearing, superimposing, and gluing ^[3]. The material needed to be felt, as its properties influenced the composition as a whole.

In our opinion, P. Klee, who taught a propaedeutic course at the early Bauhaus, understood bodily experience much more subtly. He was interested not just in tactility, but in the conditional representation of the "possible existence" of things based on the transformation of existing perceptual experience (probably, it was an attempt to "spiritualize" the world through imprinting his transformed images with thin, seemingly weightless lines). V. A. Podoroga shows P. Klee's creative process as follows: "Something it gets warmer, then it gets colder, then it turns around and makes the path difficult, suddenly it breaks off or, on the contrary, slides" ^{[18, p. 198]}. It is no coincidence that P. Klee created a whole dictionary of lines (active, passive, intermediary lines), the configuration of which is determined by the environment ^{[18, p. 194]}.

According to V. A. Podoroga, P. Klee's artistic position is best characterized by his work "The Tightrope Dancer" (1923), in which a tightrope walker keeps his balance with the help of a pole ^{[18, p. 199]} (Figure 3). It can be said that he shows the "will to balance", "denying the static of the earth's gravity", seeks to find a hidden balance in a world that seems to be absolute chaos to others. However, the most important thing for us here is that the image of a rope dancer with a pole refers the viewer to the bodily experience of balance.

P. Klee looks at the surrounding world to understand its power structure. For example, in his study notes, he writes: "Despite its primitive smallness, the seed [of a plant] is a highly charged energy center. It contains a definite impetus for obtaining clearly defined diverse results. One makes a violet, the other makes a sunflower (that is, we are talking about Platonic eidos)...". The "energy" of the seed is directed downward to take root in the earth, and then upward to begin growth ^[19]. On the other hand, the degree of energetic movement of the veined lines of a leaf determines the nature of its contour: "The sharper the rays [of the veins] come out, as in maple or sycamore, the sharper the angles of the boundary line [contour]" ^[20] (Figure 4).

The works of V. Kandinsky also record a variety of perceptual data without references to specific subjects. Explaining the understanding of his work by the French phenomenologist M. Henri, A.V. Yampolskaya points out that it is impossible without our appeal to bodily experience: we perceive a fragment of the canvas not as objectively red, but as red, which scares or pleases us ^{[21, p. 112]}.

V. Kandinsky himself writes about the inner sound of painting, comparing it with a sounding word that gives rise to an "abstract idea, a dematerialized object in the listener's head, which immediately causes a vibration in the "heart" ^{[22, p. 46]}. In other words, V. Kandinsky is trying to connect the sign with its content experienced by the body.

It is no coincidence that when presenting a graphic diagram of the Palukka dancer's jump, V. Kandinsky highlights the tips of her fingers (but not her toes) as the most visually active (Figure 5). We can say that the artist conveys the kinesthetic experience of human body movement through a graphic composition. He's writing: "A modern dancer moves on the podium along definitely precise lines, attracting them as an essential element of the composition" ^{[22, p. 291]}. At the same time, we are not talking about some abstract lines, but about meaningful lines designed to touch the emotional strings of the viewer. These lines can express "ups and downs, tension and its decline" ^{[22, p. 293]}. They turn the composition into a "musical-sound" record of feelings belonging to the viewer as much as they belong to the world.

Yukei Teshima followed a similar path, preserving the readability of signs while expressing "embodied" meanings through them. But whereas V. Kandinsky was forced to invent his own hieroglyphic compositions and saw this as his main task (however, like P. Klee), Yukei Teshima used existing hieroglyphs, but gave them a picturesque feeling of working with nature. It can be said that both artists followed the same path, but in opposite directions: in one case, there was a transition from a perceptual image to an analytical structure (which indicates the priority of conceptual thinking over "body-oriented"), and in the other, from the linguistic meaning of the sign to its "embodied" semantic content.

2) Propaedeutic potential of Oriental calligraphy

Back in the mid-1960s, Western design teachers wondered whether the basic course introduced since the Bauhaus was needed in design universities - whether it creates "platonic isolation" by destroying the "bridge construction" with real design ^{[23, p. 35]}.

Today we see the rapid development of design in the East, where design propaedeutics with its "platonic isolation" could not even arise. It is noteworthy, for example, that when asked what contribution Oriental thinking could make to world design, the Greek theorist and design practitioner K. Terzidis, who teaches at one of the Chinese universities, answers that the advantage of oriental designers is that they theorize less, and if they do, then only about the already created ones. products ^{[24, p. 28]}.

Probably, for eastern designers, the rejection of the theoretical burden of projects in favor of bodily experience can and should be considered as a competitive advantage, since it determines the regional identity of "oriental design". However, in Russia, design began with theoretical developments. It can be said that propaedeutics, as a platonic "abstraction", turned artistic creativity into a "science".

Another question is which design propaedeutics are relevant today. Indeed, for example, the introduction of Sierpinski napkins and Peano curves into the basic course of the Ulm School in 1955, and then the discussion of the transition to parametric structures in the course in 1965 was a response to the rapid development of technology after the Second World War. It cannot be said that mathematical structures are no longer relevant today from the point of view of propaedeutic tasks, but it seems to us more important to pay attention to the one-sidedness of Eurocentric design education.

It is believed that the differences in culture are most clearly manifested in the special perception of space and time by its speakers. According to Yu Hui, in the West, space has been represented geometrically since antiquity. It had to be outlined in order to have a foothold for memory. At the same time, in the process of drawing, "the logical course of the time stream, that is, the mind that thinks, was maintained step by step" ^{[25, p. 191]}.

It is no coincidence, for example, that the American architect-phenomenologist S. Hall, introducing the concept of "parallax", characterizing a perceived change in space, means, first of all, a change in the viewpoint as a result of human movement in space (and not a change in the "facial expressions" of individual objects forming space, like Naoto Fukasawa). The architect writes: "If you turn your head, look away, or turn in the other direction, you will see another space that has just opened up. And you got this opportunity only because you made a move" ^{[1, p. 74]}.

The main characteristic of the space-time continuum in the East is its "median" (therefore, for example, structured space in China "was most often designated as the "six poles": the four cardinal points, the zenith and the nadir") ^{[26, p. 9]}. V. V. Malyavin explains: "The concept of the median perfectly expresses the central for In Eastern metaphysics, the idea of the non-duality of being: the middle does not exist separately from things, but it is not identical to them, it is quite real or, in Chinese, has a "body", but this body is empty" ^{[26, p. 10]}.

We are not talking about an abstract calculated middle, but rather about the feeling of the middle as a hidden quality of the world and, at the same time, as an internal state [in the body]. It is no coincidence that Yuk Hui expands P. Klee's idea, which is that "art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible", so that art makes the invisible "tangible" ("sensible") ^{[27, p. 133]}.

The transition from the invisible to the felt is denoted by the word "xuan" (Chinese: "innermost") ^{[27, p. 161]}, with the help of which, in the first chapter of the Tao te Ching, the principle of human development of subtle bodily sensitivity is revealed.: "In the innermost there is also an innermost: that's where everything subtle comes from" (translated by V. V. Malyavin). "Xuan" also means black and red, or rather purple (the ancient Chinese believed that purple is formed by mixing black and red colors ^[26]) – it is no coincidence that in the "Thousand Words" "xuan" is a characteristic of the Sky.

It is "xuan", according to Yu Hui, that generates "ten thousand things", the unity of which, in fact, is ensured by the establishment of their "middle ground", or in the Chinese tradition, the correspondence of the Tao. Traditionally, it is believed that the Tao itself cannot be depicted, but thanks to the strokes of ink, it can be felt ("resonated" with it) in the empty space of a painting or a calligraphic work.

For the Western reader, Yuk Hui explains this point using the metaphor of "resonance points" by the French philosopher G. Simondon. In his article on the way technical facilities exist (1958), G. Simondon wrote: "The lighthouse on the edge of the reef overlooking the sea is beautiful because it is inserted into a key point of the geographical and human world" ^{[28, p. 13]}. For Mr. Simondon, beauty is not defined by number and measure, but rather by relevance.

In our opinion, the example given by G. Simondon makes it possible to better understand the words of Naoto Fukasawa when he says that he creates a form that already "has a place" because it is embedded in human behavior. It can be said that Naoto Fukasawa designs, focusing not on the objects themselves, but on the "void" between them, on their "[potential] place in a dynamic ecosystem of people, places and things" ^{[17, p. 9]} (therefore, he does not offer customers several design solutions, focusing on the only relevant one the decision). Accordingly, he is not interested in the type of power structure of a particular form, nor in the "musical notation" of feelings embedded in it, but only in the kinesthetic image of the form, which makes it instantly recognizable to any person and determines its "facial expression".

Yukei Teshima strives to capture the characteristic movements of objects at the moment in order to reveal the bodily content of the sign in his calligraphic works. An example is the work "The Swallow" (1960), in which the master, using a line and an active empty space of a sheet, conveys the feeling of a bird flying and, at the same time, a physical feeling of silence ^[16] (Figure 6). There is a feeling that the work is written from nature.

From a propaedeutic point of view, the moment of "resonance" is important for us in this work – when, in the process of writing a specific hieroglyph on a sheet, a hidden image of a bird's flight suddenly appeared on the sheet. On the other hand, the "lens effect" (spherical empty space) inherent in the writing of the sign is important to us, since it shows an alternative to the Western "mental image space".

Let's add to the above that if the Japanese, representing the universe as "the body of a Buddha found in the bodies of specific people", focus on "a specific bodily action" ^[29], then for the Chinese, the orientation of the body to the cardinal points is important. It is already embedded in the most ancient spatial matrices of China – the so-called magic squares of Hatu (Map from the Yellow River) and Loshu (Writing from the Lo River) ^{[26, p. 11]}.

Note that Hatu was considered a [cosmic] body-"ti" (although in our tradition we would rather say "soul"), and Loshu – its application-"yun" (although we would, on the contrary, say "body"). If we draw a parallel with a calligraphically written hieroglyph, its true "body" will have to be considered the inner empty space of the sign, and the lines themselves will only be an "application" of this emptiness (traditionally, lines symbolize the physical body of a person, therefore in Chinese calligraphy it is customary to use anatomical terms to evaluate them: "bones", "veins", "muscles", etc.).

Let's use the image of Yuka Hui, who explores the mechanism of traditional Chinese logic: we can say that the lines of a sign relate to its emptiness like waves and the sea. It should be noted that the "sea" should be understood here as something unchangeable in time, the "fabric of being", having an "ideal" structure (visually it is reflected by the marking of the inscriptions for calligraphy in the form of nine squares). The "waves" of a calligraphically written hieroglyph, on the contrary, symbolize the continuity of changes in time, so their pattern (or, more precisely, the "pattern") only vaguely correlates with the lines of the marking of the sheet. Nevertheless, one of the most important criteria for evaluating a calligraphically written hieroglyph is its structural strength, as if returning it to the ideal structure of a hollow "body" (therefore, for example, the modern Taiwanese calligrapher Zibin Dong, despite the almost complete dematerialization of signs in his works, necessarily retains their square structure (Figure 7)).

Realizing the traditional Chinese interest in the structural order of the world, we can understand, for example, why Zhoujie Zhang uses grid structures in his projects, and more generally, why he is interested in "evolutionary structures." It can be said that the Chinese designer "associates digital design with nature", using digital technologies "to create and simulate the rules of natural evolution" ^{[24, p. 52]}. Zhoujie Zhang does not design individual things, but the design process itself, groping the way to mass customization.

Conclusion

In the East, "to perceive with the whole body" means to pierce the world with the inner eye. It is no coincidence that the Confucian philosopher of the IV century BC Meng-tzu believed that "the heart thinks of the world as a whole as a single comprehensive body, and the external senses perceive only individual small bodies (things)" ^[30]. In other words, genuine contact with the world is possible only at the level of bodily consciousness, while perception by the five senses provides only an understanding of the external side of things.

Traditionally, the development of bodily self-awareness occurs primarily during contemplation of emptiness and its residence in paintings and calligraphy. Hong Kong philosopher Yuk Hui explicitly writes that bodily intuition is activated in the "bas" (Japanese: "place"), or a place of absolute non-existence, in which "transcendence turns into immanence" ^{[27, p. 263]}.

It is important for us that the void in calligraphy is filled with sensations and embodied meanings, since it symbolizes a single global "body" (while space in European painting is, to a large extent, the space of linear movement of the mind). Therefore, we believe that close attention to the embodied qualities of emptiness in the samples of oriental calligraphy can allow a designer to start thinking not only conceptually, but also, in a genuine sense, physically.