Materialisation of concept for Surging Verticality

Video of Catherine having her movement initiated and supported by the tensioned cloth attached to her heels, after being guided by Maggie through a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement of lifting her heels and arms.

surging-verticality-catherine-001

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!

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!

-

Somaya offered “Idio”, an apparatus that generates sound in response to accelerometer data provided by two accelerometers, one strapped to each wrist. My impulse was to play with the relationship of the accelerometers on my wrists, to see what effect this had on the sounds generated. It reminded me of an approach to generating movement imparted by my dance teacher, Annetta Luce that had a particularly powerful effect on my own dancing. That is, by relating one part of the body to another, be it elbow to ankle, head to coccyx, or heart to ovaries. The positioning of the sensors on the body can facilitate this.

George had patched together a simple, yet mesmerising sound generator that took accelerometer data from a Wii remote handheld. His motivation was to encourage slow movements. The sounds generated were tinkling bells +. I decided to draw on my Butoh Bodyweather training in bizeku, where you move as slowly as possible. In doing this, I listened to the sounds produced – delicate and meditative – , but did not attempt to influence the nature of the sound through my actions. The delicacy and fragmented phrasing of the sound made me wonder about a group of performers composing a soundscape through the intermingling of their individual effects.

Jonathan had rigged up an array of liquid crystal panels that changed their opacity in response to data from a proximity sensor. The proximity sensor used ultrasound, with the distance calculated from the delay in the reflected wave. In playing with it, I tried approaching from different angles, at different speeds, to see where the envelope of sensing ended and its sensitivity to change in position.

My offering was costume, with a view to body augmentation, wearables and organic? environments. I had draped a skin-coloured stretchy fabric over a beam and stitched the ends together. This created a membrane or cocoon for people to inhabit and play with. The costume consisted of a plain skin-coloured bodysuit that could be stuffed with a variety of padded shapes filled with dacron soft-fill and/or popcorn. The popcorn gave a nice weightiness and texture to the pads. I was interested to see how people would react, explore, experience. And later to imagine the connections between the use of costume and the sensor technologies …

For many, the putting on of the garments was a performance in itself … and very funny.

George escaping the cocoon

Lizzie's big bust

Catherine's corrugated legs

Jonathan testing the limits

Maggie crawling to the cocoon

http://www.daniellewilde.com/iWeb/daniellewilde/hipdisk.html

In the meantime – here’s a taster of one exchange within the discussion between Adinda van ‘t Klooster (the convener of the discussion) and Brigitta Zics. They’re talking about the difference between active and passive interaction. I’d be interested to hear what the Feldenkrais pros think of the idea of “cognitive feedback art”

——————————————–
ADINDA:
I think this is a very useful distinction[ACTIVE AND PASSIVE INTERACTION.]
If I understand this right, you refer to the body’s subconscious
physiological response which is reflected in their heartrate, EEG, EMG, etc,
captured by the system. As these are then reflected in audiovisual content
created by the artist or designer of the interactive system, the viewer is
challenged to gain more control over these otherwise immediate responses. I
wonder if in this process of the participants learning to operate the
system, the interaction becomes conscious and thus becomes active even it
started as passive? I have been looking for a word for the whole of the
system of this ‘new’ form of aesthetic experience which differs from
interactive art, but is not purely responsive either. You suggest term
cognitive feedback loop. How would you place this is the context of art,
would you call it cognitive feedback art?
I wonder if this would do enough justice to the body itself, or if indeed we
have then lost it (the body) somehow?
———————————————

RESPONSE:
I would not agree with the point that you make about passive interaction
i.e. that through the learning process/control of the user the work become
active. I think we talk about similar phenomena with slightly different
network of terms, which attempt to explain body-mind actions with a diverse
hermeneutic sensitivity. As I pointed out earlier the bodily passive status
means the way the body is used for interaction and not the quality whether
the art work activates conscious-subconscious processes. Passive interaction
refers to a bodily passive status, which activates
a sensitivity towards cognitive responses of the user (like emotions).
The interconnectivity of conscious-subconscious events or, from another
point of view, the relationship between embodied and new knowledge is
crucial to art works. However I describe this not with the differentiation
of active and passive but with the aesthetic conceptualisation of learning
processes in the interactive art work. To account for the learning process
(or as I term the ‘mastering the tool’ processes) means to operate between
embodied knowledge and action and the novelty of technology and content (new
knowledge and. non-predictable actions). As such, the aesthetic conception
of the mind-body nexus implies how we artists design the conscious-subconscious
relationship in the user’s experience.
I think the term Cognitive-feedback Art is too restrictive for me (similarly
Biofeedback Art). I think we already have to work with difficult terms such
as Software Art / Virtual Art or Internet Art which from my point of view do
not bring creditable differentiations to art as they only refer to the
medium but not to the content. I would describe this simply as
technology-based art, which focuses on cognitive qualities, the body-mind
nexus and the embodied/ novel knowledge. I would suggest that this is an
emerging form of interactive art, which introduces cognitive-driven
interaction (if we suggest that bodily status reciprocally provide
information about cognitive states). As such, in my interpretation
‘cognitive-feedback loop’ also refers to a bodily status. Even though the
semiotics of the body do not have particular role in this kind of
interactive works, this is why I called them passive interactions. The
cognitive-feedback loop however is an important term to explain a system,
which builds on cognitive qualities. Thus, the system attempts to evaluate
the data according to a cognitive status and according to this outcome the
‘instant affection technologies’ (see in my earlier email) attempts to act
upon the user to lead him/her to particular cognitive states. Therefore
‘cognitive-feedback loop’ is an interactive system which applies affective
computing and technologies.

Notebook sketch for movement-tracking video paint brush. Minute (often involuntarilly jerky) shoulder or pelvis rotations are turned into wall-to-wall caligraphic circles around the room.

This is an idea I’ve had for some time now – a basic image in physio and bodywork: imagine your (insert body part here) as a paint brush, painting circles on the ceiling. I was thinking about ceiling projections at first, then imagined using a giant broom to paint horizontal stripes around the entire room.

This could easilly done using a 4 projector array – one on each wall. I’m thinking big, messy super-wide brush strokes, like painting with a broom.  You’d use variations in smoothness/jagginess  of the body movement to control things like brush preassure, saturation, bleed etc. What it needs is an accurate, high resolution way of tracking these minute movements i.e movements within an area of between 1 to 2 square inches, and to bea ble to have an opperator manually zoom into to the appropriate area of the body.  More details soon…

1. On the one hand, I am cautious about finding a description at this point, and I am including my thoughts about that. On the other hand, the question has had me thinking a lot over the past week, recognising the era in which we are living and the place of body-focussed responsive/interactive artworks wherein technology is the crossing point. In that recognition there is a new wondering about the reasons for exploring “thinking through the body” and a sense of how work like Feldenkrais can be a medium for understanding.

In “The Elusive Obvious” Moshe Feldenkrais 1981, he asks with emotion “If you come across something obviously new to you, in its form at least, please stop for a moment and look inward” . He discusses at the end of this book the place of technology in our current world, in terms of replacing slavery; how in the past, “slavery was essential for the growth of cultures, allowing the ‘masters’ to learn, to build, to write, to think” etc. But he recognises the trouble we are in, how we have to relearn, for today’s world needs a new “calibre of brain”. He predicted that “…the middle aged will have to provide for the young until the age of 25 and for the old over 55. We can now see that unless we learn to think about things we know in alternative ways, unless we widen and deepen our freedom of choice and use it humanely, the real abolition of slavery will begin as a disaster” 155

So, “thinking through the body” can be defined as an absolute necessity for our times, as a means of accessing more of ourselves (our brain, nervous system), therefore learning to think in a new way by looking inward, by knowing ‘oneself’.

Feldenkrais as a method asks the practitioner to move with another from within the reality of another’s body – for the sake of re-membering the way of the body’s movement.

[The quotations at the end of this post from “The Case of Nora” address more about the “how”].

2. About my concern about defining just yet. The challenge in articulating what we think “Thinking Through the Body” means at this point is that we might form an “agenda” of sorts, and risk contracting toward our tendencies to shape our experiences to satisfy an end, and all the while we may have strayed, missing possibly …the point …

The subtle nature of the process sparked by our physically coming together in Workshop 1 might be missed. Can we hold the question open, so that we are continually thinking, engaging without knowing and feeling the sensations of being stimulated yet not understanding, seeing what we rely on to know where we are and what we think?

Regarding Garth’s earlier question “How do we (as interactive designers) get to experience through touch?” to George’s iteration “How do we get to experience through the touch we facilitate as makers in responsive electronic systems?” could we find a question around verbalising awareness of sensation of movement as a means to making meaning? Lizzie has provided us with a tool. I am curious to explore ways of applying the recall processes in a Feldenkrais context. I’ll be sending recorded “Awareness Through Movement” lessons to everyone & it might be interesting for others to independently consider how an experiment might take shape.

I recommend reading Moshe Feldenkrais, 1977, The Case of Nora, Harper & Row, in which Feldenkrais unravels… “learning in which quantity grows and changes to a new quality, and not the mere accumulation of knowledge”… Learning that is elusive and “can go on for more or less lengthy periods of time, apparently aimlessly, and then a new form of action appears as if from nowhere”.

I have pasted excerpts below to perhaps mirror something of what I’m trying to say.

Quotes from ‘The Case of Nora’ :

[MS_Moshe is referring to how he is working with Nora (who suffered a severe & unusual stroke) toward relearning the function of writing]

p. 71. “It is a large step to make a body stimulation into a designed movement on a surface of the environment. Just think how simple sensations of movement become meaningful when one can verbalise awareness of the sensation or the movement or both.”

p. 68 “I realized that people can have a sensory experience and have no awareness of it. A sensory stimulation is really not an experience, just a sensory stimulation. There is no meaning to it before there is an internal query as to what one feels. Unless one looks for a meaning, there is none in the stimulation and none in the sensation of the stimulation.”

p. 69 “Stimulations below the threshold of pain have no significance without awareness; awareness gives them meaning. Or maybe the discernment of meaning means awareness”.

p. 72 “Differentiation is discrimination with initiative and is the evidence of the successful process of learning. Note the wording I am using. It is important to follow the steps of action instead of thinking in abstract words. Nora’s action was passive until something grew in her which bubbled over somehow, one way or another. Then the passivity gradually turned into action…Learning is turning darkness, which is absence of light, into light. Learning is creation. It is making something out of nothing. Learning grows until it dawns on you.” [MS_I am reminded here of George’s description of his FI lesson – having the “aha” experience]

p. 78 “The first years of a baby pass in learning to see, to walk, and to speak, and the infant is still largely sensory and auditive”.

p. 79 “We have no inkling of the outside world when we arrive in it. The stimulation of the senses carries no information except that senses are being stimulated. The beginning of our acquaintance with the outside world is sensory and entirely subjective, and so for a long time we know only a sensorial entirely subjective reality. 80 We are, however, never alone; we are always in communication with other human beings such as parents and teachers. Without ever stopping to think, we behave as if all the others have the same subjective reality. Yet there are as many subjective realities as there are subjects… Objective reality …is reality as experienced by all men. It limits and restricts your subjective reality and mine to that on which all others agree. Subjective reality is anchored in us and is as real as our bodies; objective reality is the measure of our sanity”.

p. 91 “Body awareness enables us to know we orient ourselves. In (adults) the complexity is even greater. For an infant orients himself as an animal does, but an (adult) knows how the get “there” and in “time”.”