frame

"Si le manque formait le cadre de la théorie...et si le manque était non seulement le manque d'une théorie du cadre mais la place du manque dans une théorie du cadre." Jacques Derrida, "Parergon" in La Verité en Peinture, p. 50) 

If distinctions are "frames" for observing and describing identities, we will need a theory of frames, including, as Derrida would say, a frame for the theory of frames. In the Parergon quote, Derrida twists the theory of the frame to directly connect its inside and outside. The lack of a theory of the frame is directly connected to the place of lack within the theory. 

But can a distinction frame itself? Or are we forced, by using a distinction, to forget the unity of the distinction, to leave its frame unattended? According to Niklas Luhmann, on a very abstract level, systems theory may offer a frame for a discussion of framing. 

"Art begins not with flesh but with the house. That is why architecture is the first of the arts. (...) It can be defined by the "frame." by an interlocking of differently oriented frames, which will be imposed on the other arts, from painting to the cinema. (...) But however extendable this system may be, it still needs a vast plane of composition that carries out a kind of deframing following lines of flight that pass through the territory only in order to open it onto the universe." (ibid). "Without a set of impossibilities, you won't have the line of flight, the exit that is creation." (Gilles Deleuze, "Mediators," in Negotiations, p. 133)In his study of the relation between the photographic frame and narrative in film, Steven Heath sees filmic narrative as the fulfilment of the Renaissance impetus for events to have their proper place. (see perspective / narrative.) 

For thinkers exploring consciousness and the mind, as well as the design of robots, the frame problem refers to the fact that an intelligent being has to deduce the implications of what it knows, but only the relevant implications. Unless it has all the time in the world, even the best logical inferencer has to guess which implications to explore, and which are likely to be blind alleys. A frame provides a "world view". it carves the world into defined categories of entities and properties, defines how these categories are related to each other, suggests operations that might be performed, defines what goal is to be achieved, provides methods for interpreting observations in terms of the problem space, provides criteria to determine success from failure, suggests what information is lacking and how to get it, and so on. (Barkow, Tooby, Cosmides eds. The Adapted Mind, p. 106) 

For Martin Heidegger, the "Western Project" (initially linked to geopolitics but now synonymous with ideology) led the West to develop a techné in relation to instrumentality that takes over, arrests, or enframes what it desires to manipulate or contain. (this is Heidegger's Gestell -- the global development of modern technics, and, as such, the completion of metaphysics)(see technology ) 

Newton's first law of motion links force to a change in absolute motion. For example, as the train pulls away from the station, the station may appear to be moving and it can be said that the station is in relative motion to the train, but the force is acting upon the train, and it is the train that is accelerating absolutely. Newton tried to establish an absolute frame of reference for the universe defined in relation to its center of gravity. (not necessarily identical with the sun) Absolute spatial movement and position could then be measured in relation to that point. 

The bulk of Friedrich Kiesler's work was devoted to the design of stage sets, exhibitions, Cinemas, galleries, and viewing devices. All of this work can be understood as a rejection of the frame, insofar as the frame functions to delimit the different orders of representation, in favor of an environmental co-presence, which Kiesler dubbed "Correalism." For Kiesler, "the frame is at once symbol and agent of an artificial duality of 'vision' and 'reality,' or 'image' and environment.' "

Gregory Bateson points to the process of therapy and the phenomenon of play as occurring within a delimited psychological frame, in which messages have a special and peculiar relationship to a more concrete or basic reality. 

In a meditation on his own brief paralysis (hysteric or accidental?) Oliver Sachs asks "How could one know one had shrunk, if one's frame of reference had itself shrunk?" (A Leg to Stand On, p. 129) (cf ) He vivdly describes this change in his " body image", which returned almost as abruptly when he began to walk on it again. 

"The sense of pain is a consequence of brain mechanisms that establish awareness of the existence of the body; the body, not a sense of absolute space, is the brain's absolute frame of reference." (Rosenfeld, The Strange, Familiar and Forgotten, p.45)