Ma (negative space)
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Ma (間) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause" or "the space between two structural parts."[1][2][3][4] The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.
Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.[5]
Usage in the West
In his 2001 book The Art of Looking Sideways, Alan Fletcher discusses the importance of exemplifying "space" as a substance:
Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modelled space. Giacometti sculpted by "taking the fat off space". Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses... Isaac Stern described music as "that little bit between each note - silences which give the form"... The Japanese have a word (ma) for this interval which gives shape to the whole. In the West we have neither word nor term. A serious omission.[6]
Thomas Pynchon's book The Crying of Lot 49 stresses the concept of waste in language, in terms of negative space determining outcomes of actual events.
Usage in Eastern Philosophy
The Taoist philosopher Lao Tse wrote extensively on the concept of ma such as in the eleventh chapter of the Tao te ching (of which the final line is excluded below):
- Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
- but the empty space between them
- is the essence of the wheel.
- Pots are formed from clay,
- but the empty space between it
- is the essence of the pot.
- Walls with windows and doors form the house,
- but the empty space within it
- is the essence of the house.[7]
See also
- Maai
- Mu (negative)
- Wu wei, a term in Chinese philosophy
- Negative space
- Liminality
References
- ^ Japanese language definition
- ^ http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/jgard/msg100248139141.html
- ^ http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Ne.html
- ^ http://www.mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ38/iimura.html
- ^ [1]
- ^ The Art of Looking Sideways. by Alan Fletcher. Page 370. Published by Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-3449-1
- ^ The Art of Looking Sideways. by Alan Fletcher. Page 369. Published by Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-3449-1
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