Why a Box Frame?
Where the idea of using a box-frame as a model came from, along with a
picture of one:
In the early 1980's I was using these frames for artwork -- soft fiber batting that I
needed to protect from dust and curious hands. It occurred to me that I might do a series
of artworks that were like people. From there, I focused on how to alter the frame
expressively. I played with the meaning of various spatial phrases I might evoke by visual
means. That was the genesis of my whole intellectual investigation of metaphor, which I
had never paid much attention to before.
Also, it might help to remember the box-frame is not a literal model of a person. I don't
look like a box-frame and neither do you. Rather, the idea is to use a fairly familiar
object as a diagram of the spatial ways we think about the body's meaning, exclusive
of individual details of race, shape, looks, etc.
Here's a picture of me with a box-frame put to its usual use as a practical container for
displaying artwork.
| The Body and Box-frame have the Same Axes |
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| Figure 2 and Figure 3 |
Finally, we will now add a viewer to the room and take note of
the light/shadow contrast, which is often used to speak about consciousness and
intelligence. We arrive at the overall conceptual metaphor of the MetaSelf model -- a
person in a room looking at a box-frame model of the self on the wall.
Just as a desktop is a conceptual metaphor for understanding things on a computer screen,
a box-frame is a metaphor summarizing many figures of speech by which we understand the
self. Explore the contrasts in this picture:
Figure 4 -- Box-frame, Viewer, Room
 Tables: front/back  left/right
light/shadow up/down inside/outside.
Discussion: front/back left/right light/shadow
up/down inside/outside.
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