We rose early in the morning to avoid the heat of the midday sun and travelled back to Bundanon to continue the Situated Body workshop. Equipped with cameras, water bottles, sunscreen and hats I invited Maggie and Biz to join me into the unknown and explore the location I was previously drawn too on the Cedar trail. Having surveyed the location we decided to continue walking further along the path to see what lay beyond. As we continued to walk we could feel the heat and humidity begin to rise uncomfortably against our bodies. Not far up the track we were joined by large noisy horse flies. As we travelled further we came across a part of the trail shrouded by Lantana bushes (considered a noxious weed in Australia).

Our motivation levels to continue on the trail began to reach limits. The heat, humidity, flies, insects and noxious weeds compounded our sense of alienation in the landscape. At this point my body felt compressed and small in these unwelcoming surroundings and we all felt the urge to quickly leave. I had a sensation of invading a territory that was intimidating and trying to keep us out. This was similar to my first experience when the Kangaroos encroached on my location in the previous session. Essentially I was in a space where my body’s senses were telling me I didn’t belong.

As we hastily retreated (once again) a small curled leaf suspended from a tree caught my eye. The leaf appeared to delicately float in mid air just to the side of the path. The leaf was in fact a spider’s nest suspended in air by a single thread of cobweb. In what was a spontaneous and improvised act of movement I decided to attempt to balance the leaf on the tip of my nose, using my entire body to crouch below. This simple playful act focused my entire attention. My body was activated in space and I was suddenly captivated by the action. I sensed my attention was focused on my body as I tried to balance the leaf. Rather than my body being pushed away from the landscape I felt completely engaged in the moment. My body felt presence had increased.

I invited Maggie and Biz to play with the leaf. Soon the oppressive heat and buzzing insects receded into the background as we took turns crouching and balancing. Our focus, attention and play had activated our presence in the landscape. Our bodies had proclaimed being in a space, albeit fleeting and temporal. This magical moment amplified when the spider crawled out of its nest to see what we were doing. These simple bodily interactions encouraged us to play more when I encouraged Maggie (who was initially cautious to partake) to find another location to interact with. More playful actions ensued between us, and within the landscape.

This brief experience on the Cedar trail made me think about the qualities of the felt sensations, and acts performed, when engaging with our demonstration projects earlier in the week. An invitation to engage, attention, focus and play came to the fore in both of these experiences and throughout the workshop.

Leaf Balance - Jonathan

Leaf Balance - Maggie

Leaf Balance - Biz

untitled - maggie, biz, jonathan

The first full day of the second TTTB comprised of the ‘The Distinct Body’ lessons with Catherine Truman and my own experimental approach, ‘The Situated Body’. Compressed, expanded, heavy, symmetrical, light, small, large….these are some of the words we have used to describe the raised awareness of our bodies through Feldenkrais methods. These two workshops both asked us to experiment with ways to communicate the tracking of interior shifts in attention in our awareness of the feelings of voids, solids, cavities and densities of our corporeal selves.

For The Distinct Body workshop we used large sheets of paper, felt tip pens and charcoals as drawing tools to map our evolving sense of body image through an experimental Feldenkrais process. The process of drawing our selves at 1 to 1 scale revealed how each of us initially perceived our own anatomy. A distorted view of our sense of scale, proportion and skeletal structure were evident, but gradually refined as our attention to our corporeal selves intensified. Armed with a heightened sense of our physicality we hit the bush for the second workshop!

The Situated Body workshop came about in dialogue with Catherine. I was interested for our group to explore another method to articulate a felt sense of the body through space. Using the landscape of Bundanon as a point of departure, we were asked to explore the experience of our body in relationship to the environment. How does our awareness of scale, distance, proximity, time, temperature, texture, light and airflow change our perceptions of the exterior environment and self? What sort of external typography did we identify and what does it invite us to do? In what form might this be communicated?

Just as I had identified a possible location I was ambushed by a herd of Kangaroos, probably curious about what I was doing, and perhaps I had stumbled too far into their territory? Not wanting to take any risks I hastily retreated. I will be interested to see what will emerge from this workshop when we return later in the week… 

Another packed day at the TTTB workshop. In the morning we started with an energizing yoga workout with Lian. This was followed by an introduction to techniques for documenting audience experience of interactive art works with Lizzie. Paired together, Maggie and I tried two techniques – Video-cued recall (VCR) and the semi-structured interview techniques. We used the exhibited works in the Mirror States exhibition as our testing bed. Changing roles between interviewer and interviewee we experienced two separate works, one by Mari Velonaki’s “Circle B: Fragile Balances” the other by David Rokeby’s “The Giver of Names”. Unfortunately one of the works temporarily was not working as intended which tainted the VCR experience a little. However, recording user frustration and how one reacts when installations fail halfway through is also valid data collection.

I will think about these three key things some more………..in the meantime some material I found interesting on mirror neurons. These little critters may strongly influence empathy, language and intention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons

Day2 has concluded at the TTTB workshop. So much has been covered that it’s difficult to know where to start. Day 1 began with an introduction to Feldenkrais with Maggie and Catherine. Day 2 covered Laban movement analysis, facilitated by Lian. For me, both Feldenkrais and Laban provided new insights and ways into experiencing, ‘listening to’ and visualizing my body.

During these sessions I became more sensitized and aware of my shape, weight, volume and position in space. This new found awareness and attention to movement could be observed later in the day when we began to interact with the Mirror States exhibition. I observed others in the group playfully engage with Fish-Bird. I felt that our movements in this installation not only mirror the possible interactions the system allowed, but also how we mirror each other before we interact. What does this all mean…I’ll have to wait until the newly felt awareness of my body become quiet again.