Impact Conference Series "Can Blank Space Shape Peripersonal Space? Active Absence, Brush Affordances, and Quantum-like Contextuality in Calligraphy"

Atsushi Iriki

Professor at Teikyo University 

Advanced Comprehensive Research Organization (ACRO) Specially Appointed Professor

“Can Blank Space Shape Peripersonal Space? Active Absence, Brush Affordances, and Quantum-like Contextuality in Calligraphy”

Calligraphy is not simply a static arrangement of ink, but a compressed record of bodily movement, temporal unfolding, multisensory regulation, and tool-mediated action. I propose that blank space functions as an “active absence”: an unmarked region structured by implied brush trajectories, inhibited alternatives, attention, affect, and cultural expectation. Crucially, this context also includes how the brush is perceived—as an extension of the body with specific reach, flexibility, resistance, and coupling to the hand—because these properties can reshape bodily reference frames and peripersonal space. The central question is whether an unmarked region, together with the tool-mediated action it implies, can modulate perceptual and sensorimotor processing near the body. Quantum-like probability is introduced not as a claim about microscopic brain physics, but as a formal language for order effects, non-commutativity, and interference among latent action paths. Calligraphy may thus provide a distinctive testbed for collaborative philosophical and experimental research.