As an artist what motivates me is a desire to create systems and situations that support us to become more alive to the worlds around and within us, and to be able to experience and engage with this aliveness with a sense of grace, delight and care (even when engaging with processes that may outwardly appear quite abject, humorous  or mundane).

Care is a word I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – and its absence in so much of what we experience in the worlds around us (I get so sad when I see people littering in the street or on trains and busses – dont they care about the spaces they live in – are they so numb to their environment that they couldn’t give a f#%ck?).

We could think of the art experience as an extension of this idea of care (not disimilar to concepts of  ‘conviviality’ or hospitality that circulated around discussion on ‘rellational aestheics’) – coupled perhaps with some flirtation (thinking here about the careful touch of two people dancing) – or the uncontainable  of an experienced enthusiast as they share the source of their joy to a new commer or fellow affcionado (look at THIS! and THAT!). Through this contact we bring something otherwise hidden – out from eachother – and that we together bear witness to for a breif moment that we may or may not call an ‘art’ experience, a lesson, a workshop, a meeting of friends etc.

The question then changes from what we as artists are ‘interested’ in – to what specifically we care about, and how we manifest this care through our actions and foci, through the situations and exchanges we create for other people.

So for me – with this project – I’m trying to articulate how I can extend a caring and enlivening touch to other people (and myself!) through experiences that allow us to become sensitive and aroused by subtle and not so subtle qulaities of touch, movement and proprioception. To this end – I have to temper my habitual impulse towards large intense experience – with the knowledge that its not via extreme, cathartic actions that we learn to refine our capacity for sensitivy and discernment

- but on the contrary -

its only by learning to be still, and attentive to small actions/sensations that we can start to gain a deeper awareness of where we are opperating FROM.

This blog has been written fresh after listening to a wonderful concert presented as part of Liquid Architecture, and in particular – an amzing set by Asmus Tietchens that featured a truely sensual use of dynamic volumes, sounds that caressesed and wove in and our of audibility, with lilting forms that had me swaying on the edge of my seat like a snake charmer’s cobra! The delicacy of this sound was supported by the strength of the sound system (occasional use of deep bass – confidently hinting at its full potential), and the improved listening acoustics (huge curtains drawn around the space at the start of his set). This experience left me deeply touched, and determined to acheive a more considered use of sound and volume dynamics in my forthcomming interactive art show at St. Vincent’s Hospital. To create a situation where to use an analogy – the snail feels safe to venture out of it’s shell – and to extend its ommatophores (eye stalks) out of its head – and into its surrounds (in this instance – a biofeedback system that is an environment that is both inside and outside). To extend this metaphor a little further – one doesn’t get the snail to extend its eye stalks by poking them with your fingers!

Following from Maggie, Catherine and Lian, here are a couple of points about my plans for the Sensorium Gymnasium at Pspace.

I’ve been thinking alot about this challenge I have faced all the way through this research project of working as a curator/facilitator without pushing people (or myself) towards “outcomes”.  In Bundanon I made some important discoveries about the relationship between my own curatorial practice and my physical or embodied engagement with artworks/collaborators/exhibition spaces/audiences…  I decided to make a conscious effort at Pspace to “be” (in relation to all these things) rather than to “do” (as I do normally).  Sounds a bit vague  I know – but that’s part of the point.

So i’ve decided to inhabit a little corner of the residency space for the duration of the lab. Picking up on from Maggie and Catherine’s plans I’d like to call it the Living Room.  I’m going to have some comfy chairs, coffee and tea making facilities, lots of books and articles, a heater, lots of documentation of everything we’ve done so far, a bowl of fruit and some other munchies.  I’m going to install myself there and mull over everything we’ve done, do some reading and writing, and be generally availalbe in case anyone needs help or wants to talk about anything.  I hope that you will all come to The Living Room and visit me whenever you want to have a sit down or a think, or look at some photos/books, have a chat, have a cup of teac etc etc…

Ideally that Living Room will be a good friendly place on the last day for visitors to come and find out more about the project too.

Garth – I’d love to borrow your recordings of Bundanon so that people can come and listen to those sounds.

I’m also making a little zine that documents some of the experiences we have had so far working on this project.  There will be enough of these for you all to have some to give away and keep as mementos.

Any suggestions or thoughts on this gratefullly received.

Here’s a summary of developments so far by Catherine and me for our explorations at Sydney Performance Space, July/August 2009

Research Question:

How do we stay in touch with who we are in essence, at the level of the body, when we are using/interacting with technology?

Context:

Along the continuum of travelling between worlds indifferent, imagined & emergent, we are in transit.

Set-up:

“Travellers” have entered the “Sensorium Gymnasium” (SG) via the “Living Room” space where they learn about our (proposed) “Awareness Through Movement/thinking through the body”/mp3 player/voice guided journey” through the SG.

Travellers, tuned in to their mp3 player, leave their personal belongings safely in the “Living Room” and are free to interact with all or any of the SG’s various installations.

The sound track through the mp3 player is a sequence of mini Feldenkrais “Awareness Through Movement” explorations that will draw attention to the felt experience of the body and to the question of “how we stay in touch with who we are in essence, at the level of the body, when we are using / interacting with technology?”. Long gaps between voice-cued mini explorations allow for ease of participating in all that the SG has to offer. The content and timing of the mp3 soundtrack can be refined during our workshop days together. Catherine and I are currently working together to develop the basis before then.

As we’re imaging the SG, we see the Video-Cued Recall (VCR) installation as the finale, an exit point. Prior to that, we imagine the “Transit Lounge”, which can be as simple as 6 chairs lined up in a row. The mp3 soundtrack provides the instruction for what to do in each chair (See below). The traveller begins in chair #1 & goes through the 6 transit processes, then moves into the VCR booth for #7 (The Telling Wave).

If there can/is to be a sensor data component that can reflect in visual and/or sound scape the variations of movement quality in the 6 lounges, fantastic! For example, can there be a generative screen in front of the 6 chairs that can be experienced by other travellers from the other side?

IN TRANSIT: (experience is the test of reality)

Transit Lounges:

1.       The responsive wave

      I am waving just to get someone’s attention: automatic, external aim, achieves end, attention seeking; time is compressed

2.       The conscious wave

I am waving; I am a body waving in time; change of context; there has been a pre-wave influence (an imagined experience of my body/myself waving); there is reflection through the body’s experience

3.       The attentive wave

I am noticing how I am waving; I am attention; my wave is embodied; time is elongated

4.       The passive wave

I am feeling my arm being moved through the waving pathway; unbound experience through the body (in relation to the body of another). 

5.       The integrated wave

I am feeling the sensation of my arm, my whole body, myself waving; I am waving for the experience of waving 

6.       The double feedback wave

I am joined with another person; we wave; shared experience (in response to one another, waving as one)

7.       The telling wave

Reflective wave; considered experience; video-cued recall

EMERGENT: (aesthetic experience is the judge)

Here are some threads that I’ve pulled out from my Bundanon experience, that Ive been turning around in my head over the past week since the workshop.

George and Lizzie enjoying the view from the workshop space at the Bundanon Trust Boyd Education Centre, Riversdale.

ATTENTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES for an aesthetics of touch, movement and proprioception: having and/or developing the ability to attend to sensations and feelings arising from within their body – ‘knowing how to appreciate’ the significance of what is felt (like appreciating unfamiliar foods and flavors? or music? – needs to develop from social practice?).

This is something Catherine emphasized at the beginning and end of the Bundanon workshop, and through her ‘Distinct Body’ workshops – without this ability to listen and unfold insight from the sensation of our breath, skeleton, muscles and skin, how much can we more can hope to achieve?

We need an experiential vocabulary for thinking through the body, a vocabulary of tactile, proprioceptive and kineasthetic experiences and reflections, that can enable us to move from sylables, to words, from words to sentences, and from sentences to stories. This, like any other language, is something developed over time, with other people.

EXPERIENTIAL NARRATIVES – Dramaturgical Aesthetics of Interaction, Aesthetics of Participation. A focus beyond the technical aspects of the artwork, towards structure of the situation as a whole (location, entry-points, social context and conditions, etc.), and the development of the participant’s experience within it (how it starts, develops and comes to an end).

RELATIONAL SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES: Human-Human Interactions that explore proximal modalities as their primary modality (touch, smell, taste, temperature, movement, proprioception). ‘Live Art’ intimate performance forms: one-to-one engagements between a host and their guest. Taking full advantage of the incredible emotional intelligence and multi-modal sensitivity that we humans posses (in contrast to our machines). To what extent is my own fixation on exhibiting computer-based interactions a product of a tradition fixated on the so-called autonomy of the art object? Autonomy from what …other humans?
[Note to self:why do I feel obliged to exhibit my work as a stand alone experience - without someone there to guide people into the work, to listen  to their stories, to bear witness (and to value) their experience in the work?]

Maggie invited us to explore various forms of hand-to-hand contact incorporating skeletal sensation and contact

THE ART EXPERIENCE AS INVITATION, art making and curating as a form of hosting, induction, hospitality (hospice?). In connection with Making Strange – offering participants some support along their journey – a base from which explore, or temporary shelter and resting point along the way. [this brings to mind pilgrim cultures: wayside shrines, wells, cairns, storm-shelters etc. I wonder what their contemporary equivalents might be?]

SOMAESTHETIC GYMNASIUM: a place for cultivating somaesthetic abilities/sensitivities – consisting of semi-structured body-focused experiences, that stimulate the visitors capacity for somaesthetic pleasure, beauty and critical reflection.

‘INTELLIGENT’ BODY-FOCUSED INTERACTIVE ARTWORKS – Body-focused interactions that acknowledge, and are sensitive to the emotional dimensions of our physicality: the capacity for movement and touch to facilitate strong emotional recall, release, insight, inspiration etc. Maggie mentioned the idea of interactive art makers process as being one of ‘growing the computer’s neurology’, I think this is a powerful concept – to understand and expand on the computerised interactive systems ability to be in the world – to hold a representation of its environment, and its behavioyr within this environment – regardless of how simple this may be. [The memory of of our brain-mapping workshop comes to mind, with Lizzie's reflection that the maps she drew of her brain, could equally be a map of the world…].

SENSUAL TACTILE AND KINAESTHETIC PLEASURE AND BEAUTY IN HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
“any use of a new tools and technologies involves new uses (and postures and habits) of the body, which means new possibilities of somatic strains, discomforts, and disabilities resulting from inefficient body use that cultivation of somatic self-consciousness could help  us to reveal, remedy or avoid.” – Shusterman, 2008, p. 13

Lizzie’s note: “What about the somatic pleasures and enjoyment that these technologies might also support?”

George testing a Wii controlled sound design - tracking slow movements

Artworks that depend on specific qualities of human action – tuned in such a way as to draw you into moving, standing, behaviong in unfamiliar and/ort enjoyable ways (in contrast to interfaces that draw you into familiar but painful and frumpy ways of being – i.e. laptops and bad mice).
[Can I imagine an inteactive art experience that was FUNDAMENTALLY, a pleasure and a joy to experience?]

After accepting/imagining this possibility, we  can go on to consider what kind of pleasure that such works might offer (obviously, there are many kinds of pleasure), and the philosophical and ethical ends (no matter how fragile or fleeting the gesture) to which these pleasures might be directed.

Tracing my outline in Catherine Truman

The map I drew of my outline and skeleton in Catherine's workshop

SUSPENDING OUTCOMES-ORIENTED RESEARCH PROCESSES, IN FAVOR OF GENUINE, OPEN MINDED ENQUIRY. Drawings made by feeling, paths made by walking. I’m still a little shocked to see how fixated I was on making a ‘correct’ drawing, going to extraordinary lengths to physically trace the outline of my own body, when Catherine’s instructions, were quite clearly to ‘draw an outline of our body, based on our felt experience’ …some more homework to do in this area!

-

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.

Notes from a discussion facilitated by Lizzie 2008 08 16

1) RESONANCE - something that has been raised that resonated especially with me was the concept of ‘People as mirrors’.
The idea of situations where people become the mirrors, instead of machines mirroring people: the process of organizing oneself-body in relation to a task (mirroring) – and how this connects in some way to the work Jonathan is doing with task oriented interactions for physiotherapy – finding out ons position/shape in relation to another – then connections between mirroring and empathizing – how this plays out in social interactions between people.

2) DESIRE - a desire (my desire), for a skill, method, experience etc. that I want to engage with over the coming 12 months.

To facilitate self-discovery and reflection in audiences through the use of touch (touching and being touched) – proximal modalities. To evolve a practice that engages people (and me as both maker and audience) through dialogues involving sensations of touch, movement, and communications (spoken, gestural expressions, graphic communications etc).

3) AN OFFERING – where I can make a contribution
In relation to my own practice as an artist-researcher – bio-sensing – research and development strategies for application in creative arts contexts – working with body experience in exhibition settings, then

Important discoveries regarding:

1. The need for calibrated systems, (how you come to know the material/dancer you are working with – and how this knowledge is translated into the artwork.
2. The limits of what can be achieved in relation to measurement and translation of things like ‘emotions’ i.e. the machine cant tell what you are thinking.

In relation to me as the producer – supporting research and collaborations within the ensemble.

4) Some reflections on the discussion around resonances, desires and offerings:
Communicating out from my own body - Catherine Truman.

This is something I’ve been wondering about in my own process – inside the process of translating sensor data into sounds and visual displays – having a strong sense of physical identification with the sounds I’m manipulating during that mapping process – getting lost in particular sounds, and the pleasure of that immersion/envelopment. When this happens, I’m reminded of the pleasure and deep satisfaction that this practice brings to me as an artist, but then also a sense of frustrations that I’ve not been able to implement this level of unity and fluidity in the artworks to the extent that I want.

This brings me back to the offering – what I now know to be important, only by way of realizing mistakes I’ve made so far: the need for artists to know the sensor data as a material – in the same way as a traditional artist/craftsperson knows their material – as points of contact between me, the work and the participant.

Another analogy that comes to mind is that of a costume maker, making costumes for a dance performance – thinking about the costume as a prosthesis, or talisman/amplifier, that amplifies and/or transforms certain qualities of action/presence. In order to for this costume to work – it has to embrace the dancer’s body in one way or another. Knowledge of the data – is knowledge of the form we are making – that is – knowing the way the participants actions – and the machines subsequent reading of these actions by way of various sensor data variables – are bound to a certain range of possibilities (i.e. my heart wont ever beat at 500 beats per minute, my will bend mostly in one direction only).

Without an understanding of this bounded form – the quality and extent of this contact becomes highly tenuous – this is the problem I’ve been struggling with for the past four years now – and its at the top of my list for the next 12 months, in addition to Thinking Through The Body.