Both men discuss the idea of perception within their works, particularly the perceptions that certain animals hold within the world and their environments. Depending on the animal's visual, effect, and environmental spaces (as well as general experiences), an everyday object becomes holds different meaning and possible utilization than it would to another animal, regardless of whether it belongs to the same species or not. Using the same example as Agamben, a forest is not "an objectively fixed environment," meaning that it is not one objective space that will never change. It gains a kind of fluidity depending on the animal or individual encountering it: "there exists a forest-for-the-park-ranger, a forest-for-the-hunter...a forest for-the-carpenter, and finally a fable forest in which Little Red Riding Hood loses her way" (41). In each of these cases, the forest becomes an environment, an objective space, that is different from one person to the next.
Agamben and Uexküll agree that there are "carriers of significance" that make the environment, or object within that environment, what it is perceived to be to the animal. There is a link between the animal and the external environment, and "everything happens as if the external carrier of significance and its receiver in the animal's body constituted two elements in a single musical score" (41). This means that although both elements, the carrier of significance in the external space as well as the animal's receiver, seem entirely exclusive, they veritably come together in one unit.
This made me think of music and the ways in which it captures and embodies these same ideas, only through a different outlet. Consider the following YouTube video as an example:
Both women are playing parts of the theme song from the video game Elder Scrolls Morrowind: Skyrim on two different instruments, the piano and the violin. Both instruments are different in their own ways, and so are the women playing them. The performers bring their own perceptions (and, of course, skill) to the music, for they have their own way of playing, and one will still perceive the music slightly different than the other, even though it is the same song. This comes from being different people as well as the transposition of the musical score for one instrument to another changes it slightly. Both instruments have different tone colors as well. Yet somehow, just like the animal recognizes certain signifiers in the environment around it, receiving them, even though both forces are different in space and perception, they come together to form a connection that is unified and harmonious. According to Agamben, both "the external carrier of significance and its receiver in the animal's body constituted two elements in a single musical score...though it is impossible to say how two such heterogeneous elements could ever have been so intimately connected" (41). In other words, both the external force that carries significance to the animal and the receiver are two separate, heterogeneous entities, yet they are still intimately connected somehow.
Both women are analogous to the animal, containing the ability to receive the external carrier of significance, which is analogous to their instruments. In other words, one woman perceives the piano differently than the other, and vice versa with the violin. Furthermore, each of the women are external forces to one another, carrying significance to the other person. They are, for the most part, playing separate parts of the same song, and with the combination of the two instruments/external carriers of significance, keeping their different skills and perceptions in consideration, they are still "equally perfect [in their own ways] and linked together...in a gigantic musical score" (40). Their separate elements combine, uniting harmoniously.
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