ASTRONOMIC TECHNICS (Wednesday)

By Maggie Slattery / 5 Feb ’09 / Conversations, Workshop Documentation / No Comments

Our afternoon, in my experience, was about MAKING REAL OF SENSING TECHNOLOGY. I was aware of the extent of preparation undertaken by each maker. Each one intently busy, doing, setting up, and I felt touched by this. We gathered around to learn about and interact with each design. Somaya’s ‘gloved’ accelerometers, George’s Wii stick, Lian’s transforming fabric creations and Jonathan’s proximity sensor light display evoked and augmented evolving choreographies. To my surprise my personal experience in each case was embodying, deeply satisfying and aesthetic. In context the conditions relied on invitation. We were invited by the makers to relate through felt experience to interactive designs. We were part of their not knowing and their wish to discover more about themselves, their own imagination and research. I experienced the fusion of the maker and participant through interaction. ‘Astro’ means, as in stars, ‘in composition’. ‘Astronomic’ refers to scale. ‘Technics’ refers to ‘the science or rules of a field of knowledge, especially a technical one’. That’s exactly how I experienced this afternoon. I felt able to interact with a vast field of knowledge about which I know absolutely nothing, to feel wonder and aesthetic pleasure, to be in composition.

About Maggie Slattery

Maggie Slattery was working as an actor in San Francisco when she commenced study of the Feldenkrais Method (1978) as part of her research to free her movement from the constraints of her personal history. The revolution in her experience of her body/self, led inevitably to taking professional training in the Feldenkrais Method (San Rafael, California 1984-1987). Maggie has continued her personal practice of the Method as integral to her life; She's run a professional private practice (hands-on) for 20 years, and has worked in a great variety of teaching settings, including tertiary dance and music faculties, with dance companies, and in Feldenkrais Training Programs as an assistant trainer. She has a great love for the work, enduring wonder at its scope and where it sits in relationship to Art, Science and Ordinary Life; and of late a developing engagement in and interest for the transposition of the work into other domains, particularly those involving music, design, and ESD (Ecologically Sustainable Development).

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