temporary intervention - first pass

temporary intervention - second pass

temporary intervention - fourth pass

The Situated Body workshop was lead by Jonathan…. and so we headed off in the direction of the Bundanon homestead to choose a site with which we could find a place that felt familiar, and carry out an intervention on the landscape.

For the first time in weeks, no, months… I’ve had a day of being body-focused. although, its taking some time to switch out of previous work modes and into this one. this morning began with Catherine leading a session centering around the body. for the first time in my Feldenkrais, yoga, meditation or other semi-relaxing session, i didn’t drift off at all.

The first workshop saw us progress into drawing outlines of our bodies (and planting sketches of skeletons within): trying to focus on our felt experience of the body while drawing representations of ourselves.

self image in progress

The switching between the analytical mode of experiencing the world and the “felt” became really predominant during this exercise. so often i resorted to what i think or know about the proportions of my body… and so much harder to draw from a feeling of my body. this only skims the surface of what we are re-addressing at this workshop: for me, that shift into body space, where it has all been head-space in the months leading up to this Bundanon residency.  following on from the self drawn image of body, then the real moment of truth, another person (in my case george) tracking around my body with a different coloured texta. at this point, the confrontation is minimal, although i was hoping that i had exaggerated and proved wrong… but no, my hips really are that wide.

This immediacy of self image really brings both the notion and the reality into the fore of my consciousness. and using simple tools such as texta to drive creativity from my body (whether thats just from physical movement, or my position in space in relation to the object i am creating). repositioning myself alongside and “in” my body was a very necessary excercise to continue with the following workshops.

for the past four years i’ve been moving towards developing creative work (slowly heading towards research) around anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd). basically on putting audiences in an environment that heightens their awareness – perhaps making them anxious.

while i find the available research and discussion surrounding ptsd narrow – basically soldiers coming home from the war – there are one or two articles that start to reference technology in association with the management of ptsd… that i think are worthwhile

http://www.noahshachtman.com/archives/002189.html

i think the discussion on the relationship here between technology helping and hindering a process can be applied more widely. the knowledge that the wearer has something attached, only aggrivates the whole process

arduino lilypad

george, lian and i met up about 2 weekends ago to continue discussion on what we’d be doing at the next workshop (and beyond) as part of this i’d like to see a couple of small tools, methodologies or techniques that we can apply in future work.

for some time i’ve felt like i’m only beginning to scrape the surface on this research – in the relationship between body and technology – and developing meaningful engagement. whether that is for myself as a performer, or an audience member in an installation. and i’m still considering this weekly (or daily) depending on how busy i am….

so, perhaps one of the small components, should we want to make a wearable tool of sorts, might be a small arduino board called the lilypad. its just a microcontroller, but the board is laid out in a way that much easier to attach conductive fabric/thread etc to it.

thinking through the body people

just to let you know that a selection of the photographs i’ve taken as part of this project, i’ve uploaded to a set on my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/somayalangley/sets/72157606775570832/

all sensored up

finally i make an appearance on the blog again, a number of things have been whirling thru my head, but mostly going in circles without being concrete enough to put down as text.

a few weeks back, george, garth and myself met up at the VIPR studios at UWS to discuss options for the upcoming february workshop. we trialed a number of sensors that are included in the i-cube box. george was focusing on rotation where as i’m more driven towards looking at various emotional states – such as anxiety. we wired me up with a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor and i tried to build the anxiety within myself (and sometimes with a little help from george) – bring up old traumatic memories for example. i felt i was more stressed and anxious. the sensors indicated nothing apart from i was in the very same state that i began in.

eventually we figured the tech wasn’t working and then decided to try it out on george. immediately the responses were picked up and reflected in garths max patch that was visualising the GSR data.

reasons for this: apparently my skin was far too dry (despite moistening the part in contact with the sensor). so one consideration that is brought very quickly to the fore is the massive differences between different individual’s bodies and they way that sensor systems may really need to be calibrated for the individual and the data doesn’t necessarily reflect what is going on.

what are the repercussions of this in art-work that is designed for a large-scale (non-individual) focussed audience?

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….

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.

i need more body work. i need to understand more about how a physical presence in a space changes a person (user’s) perception of a situation – and potentially change their thinking about a certain situation.

can empathy really be developed / enhanced in someone? do they have to be open to that learning experience?? or are some things too strong that regardless of their desire/lack of desire to learn – they will change their thinking anyway?

for this i think i really need to understand the body, how a certain way of “being” in space and how this can be altered.

through my early introductions to feldenkrais and laban and through my reconnection with yoga practices i’m realising that each of us has our own very ingrained and personal way of moving and being in space. this has also been illustrated to me by doing the video-cued recall. suddenly i see how i walk and interact with objects and environments. like a mirror, but even better….

and fundamentally, i believe if i can work out how to shift my *own* ability to move in different ways and interact in different ways (and of course respond in different ways) then i’ll have a better understanding of how to influence this in others.

then, maybe, i’ll be able to apply it to my artwork.

so what i really need is more hands-on body practices – but ones that aren’t just yoga classes and lessons. i think i need a more abstract way of integrating these into my life, into my every day, and then i’ll be able to incorporate these into my  art practices.

i’m almost too exhausted to communicate my desires – and so what comes out now are the very basics…

so for starters, i desire:

an interface that doesn’t attach my fingers to a keyboard and lock the rest of my body into some frozen form. not just an interface for “performing sound” but an interface for being and working in the world, that takes into account my love for (and of) technology and doesn’t just require me to step away from the computer and do some stretching and yoga classes.  i’m looking for a way of real integration between physicality and technology on a day to day level. one that doesn’t have me tangled up in cords, hunting out power points in strange locations in strange buildings all around the world or have me constantly hunched over a laptop in a bed somewhere. i want tools that are as easy to work with as when i’m lying in a bed reading a book or scribbling a few notes on a scrap of paper. this is what i want.

* i also desire collaboration with the other geeky techs in the room  – that’d be you three boys (george, garth, jonathan) – who have experience with body sensing systems. part of this is that i want to work on phase 2 of the backpack and while the basic proximity sensing that i’m using at the moment seems to give a real and quite in-depth experience to the users/audience – i’ve always had the intent to have “people sensing” and “anxiety sensing” as part of the system. these were my initial ideas and of course budget/time has prevented this part from happening so far…