Thinking Through The Body

I chose ‘Thinking Through The Body’ as a name for this project in 2006, for its ability to convey the dual nature of my vision for the project:

1) to critically examine the body and how we engage with it’s processes and structure as makers of body-focussed responsive/interactive artworks, i.e. ‘thinking-through’ what we are working with as designers, artists, composers,

2) to explore how knowledge is developed THROUGH movement (action), sensation, perception and reflection. This also relates to practice-based research process i.e.,  learning-by -doing. This is where the audience, and experience centered research tools come in - beyond the range of sensations and actions we provide/facilitate  to people engaging with our work - how can we begin to study the varieties of experience and  representation this stimuli evoke within and across individual participants?

There are number of other research projects and publications using the Thinking Through The Body (TTTB) title, most of them relating to this second interpretation, that is, critical research as an active and situated practice.

I’ll publish some links to these other TTTB namesakes in my next post.

Hi everyone,

I was thinking that it would be very useful if everyone were to write a definition of what Thinking Through The Body means to each of us.  

What do you think?

Cheers, Garth 

New experiences. Yoga beginning the day. A much richer experience than my only other class 25 years ago! Leading into our journey through techniques for documenting audience experience. Using ‘Semi-structured interview’ technique, we are to interact with someone who has participated in an interactive art experience. This added layer of interaction is shaped by questions, and there’s a level of skill in finding the right question. Hmmmm. In the context of my own practice I’ve had 21 years of learning how to ask the right question. In the gallery I am a “fish out of water” again, blundering through. Yet, so much unfolded, and as a privileged observer of another, especially in the “Video-cued recall” context, I learned to see possibilities outside of my own cognitive domain. And then over the lunch table, through the telling of my own awkwardness and disconnected impressions, new thoughts emerged, and language structures began to assemble, as if from nowhere. Less disjointed thoughts could be articulated, more personal, more authentic. Reflecting since, I see how being an interviewed participant left me feeling outside of the maker’s intent yet strangely part of the piece. The Thinking Through the Body context has enabled dialogue to continue, to inform, to evoke more questions, self relfection, open new corridors of experiences. One thing is leading to another!

The new dates for workshop 2 will be February 2nd - 8th, 2009, at the Bundanon Trust’s Riversdale residency.

• February 2nd will be devoted to set up and testing of technical gear.
• February 3rd, 4th and 5th will be devoted to the workshop proper.
• February 6th, 7th will be available to those who wish to stay on, and continue working on individual projects
• February 8th will be devoted to packing up, cleaning and travel back to Sydney.

From questions to elicit:

1. One thing that resonates

2. One thing I desire/want/need

3. One thing I can offer

1. So far, it’s immersion in new experience which is non-habitual, quite out of the ordinary, with others and with technology, exploratory & recursive

2. Time for reflection, unguided time, for indirect “seeing, for circling around.

3. Familiarity with movement based interaction

There could be a way of working with others, along with Awareness Through Movement and FI (hands on Feldenkrais “Functional Integration”) that is expressed through new form. Perhaps based on touch, and language emerging from experience of touch, touching, being touched, articulating what is felt through sensation. I’m interested between now and January to explore documentation of experience based on Lizzie’s work.

The shared desire to connect and express from the body and communicate this to each other…to attempt to strip our habitual individual language back may lead us to places unfamiliar. Uncomfortable places. But this is where we need to go with each other to uncover the questions driving this project. To find the points where we connect and dislocate.

I have to be open and patient in my negotiation with the boundaries of the technology between me and the art of the work in Mirror States. A big ask of a low tech girl. At the moment I feel it holds me a/part sometimes from a direct experience of the work.
But there is much richness here. And everyone on this project has much to offer me in this negotiation. It’s a priviledge to be in this position.

The openness of others to learning more about what I hold near and dear is also a priviledge to experience.

So, I’m going to feel the walls of my practice too. I’m going to see what moves, what bends, what folds, what gives.

One thing I can offer is my long experience of making objects with my body about the body-the physicality of the process feeding the concepts which underpin the work.

What is the role of our bodies in our own work? Can coming closer to an understanding of that on an individual basis change what we make and how we communicate it?

I’m interested in the methodolgy Lizzie introduced me to today. I had never thought of it as a vehicle for informing and developing an artwork before. It was my first interaction with this research method really. A desire I have now is to investigate the possibilities here- a kind of Mobius Strip of the work and people’s interaction with the work. People…everday…off the street people, not necessarily performers. Spontaneous interaction feeding into the meaning of the work itself. No longer static.

Garth asked a great question today, in relation to the question of our respective desires for the project: not sure exactly what he said - but it was something like - ‘How do we (as interaction designers) get to experience through touch?’

How do we get to experience through the touch we facilitate as makers in responsive electronic art systems? This translated into pragmatic questions around how do we, as makers of senor-based works, get at the processes happening during a tactile,intimate encounter, such as provided during a somatic bodywork session (i.e. the Feldenkrais hands-on work known as Functional Integration). Many of us are hoping that Catherine and Maggie will be able to help shine some light on this - one way or another.

For me this was one of the core motivations behind the development of the TTTB concept in 2006 - so important because its still so relatively unknown.

So what then of the pragmatics? Some areas that strike me as good starting points would be to compile an inventory of fundamental structures and life skills developed during infancy and early childhood: those basic reflexes and motor skills that underpin our ability to sense and act in the world - orienting our selves to the world/self, finding stability, responding to novelty/threat etc. My first experience of Feldenkrais Functional Integration started with a lesson on falling: I was asked to explore ways of falling, and see if I could find a way of falling that felt easy, soft and enjoyable - which seemed odd at first - since I had come because of a problem I was having with abdominal tension. What surprised me was how such a simple process - falling repeatedly - could reverberate so intensely at a much more personal level.

Its this capacity for body-focussed experiences to elicit intense personal realizations that is compelling me towards research into this area of touch and movement sensation

i’m still wondering what kind of skills i bring to the group. i’m very much a jack of all trades… i can do a tiny bit of loads of things, but feel like i’m not an “expert” in any one thing in particular.

but i think i’m realising that i am developing skills in being able to translate requirements between “tech” people and “non-tech” people. partly this is from working as a business analyst at the national library of australia, and partly this is through my own desire to be able to communicate with a whole range of people from different backgrounds and walks of life - *and then* being able to make things happen: build communities, get projects off the ground, start other people off with new networks. these feel like incredibly intangible skills that sometimes aren’t acknowledged - and its only very recently (in the last few months) that i’ve begun to acknowledge them myself.

so what i’m offering is:

* ability to conceptualise and model systems

* requirements scoping and writing

* digital archiving (in its many and varied forms)

*  max msp patching

* networks + contacts  - from the archiving to the art world - okay we can all offer this… but really this is what i’ve been building for the last 14 months while i haven’t had a “real” job

* sound + composition plus gestural  control work in this area

* random computery IT skills

plus the desire to be involved in projects that you’re already working on or want to start up….

a diagramatic representation of some of the discussion on video cued recall.

Cheers, Garth

we started talking about mouths and wearables at some point today. and it brought to mind: SWAMP - aka. studies of work atmospheres and mass production - www.swamp.nu

these guys (doug easterly and matt kenyon) whom i met recently when we presented our work at ISEA in the same session work with a range of traumatising performative art experiences.

i have recollections of asking about traumatising art experiences today at some point. i think that there can be a focus on rewarding art experiences - although, reflecting on the works in the mirror states exhibition now, i realise that many of these works aren’t exactly “fun” and “inviting”. david rokeby’s VNS growls and hisses as you move into the active space - and one woman who walked there got a fright the minute this occurred. mari velonaki’s bird fish is a heart-wrenching story of unrequited love between two wheelchairs that litter handwritten notes across the floor. and alex davies’ dislocation had a teenage girl let out a scream this afternoon in the space when one of the virtual bodies came a bit too close to her. none of these works are warm and fuzzy and make me want to curl up next to them.

but i do want to spend time with them (the more distressing and challenging works), much more so than sickly sweet cute japanese animated girls.

i think i’m really interested in developing challenging art pieces that push people into zones of discomfort and risk bringing about a potentially negative experience and response. but that doesn’t have to be the case. of course just because the content/concept of the work is hard to cope with doesn’t mean that the response is negative. here i’m thinking about my own response to the gusen sound walk (audiowalk.gusen.org) i undertook at ars electronica last year. the sonic material was heartwrenching - but it did change my world. i still think about this work every few weeks.

so getting back to my point - we were talking about interactive works using the mouth today, and it reminded me of the SWAMP guys who have developed a work - called the Consumer Index - with a barcode scanner placed in their mouth and wires that run through a hole pierced in matt’s cheek (thats dedication to your art…). then he wanders through wallmart scanning barcodes with an open mouth.