Coming together for the third time, now at Performance Space, we have begun to develop small experiments around the conversation between somatic bodywork and the crafting of body-centred technologically mediated or augmented audience experiences. Seeking moments of transformation of the ordinary. It’s not as easy as you might expect. The idea that I had originally conceived was slowly dissected and reformulated as we began to test materials and insert the body. The body as always is the ultimate test. My doctoral thesis had this tenet at its core. Yet I was still surprised at how radically the body (the experience of individual bodies) can affect conceptual understandings or imaginings.

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

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!

In thinking through what I may be offering at the PSpace residency, I made a rough sketch of the elements to consider in designing the aesthetic experience.

• Contextual activity, tasks, trajectory
• Constraints, strategies
• Attention – internal/external, diffuse/directed
• Action – imagination/physical
• Roles – performer, witness, aide, co-performer

My initial proposal is to develop a work requiring the interaction of 2 people, connected and constrained in different ways. What is it like to move in a fettered fashion? For one participant, their movement is assisted and constrained by a walking frame and extremely high heels. Part of the ritual is having the shoes put on and removed by the witness/aide. Perhaps one person is blindfolded or masked at certain points. The witness/aide gently directs the participant to explore various states of being, through the reading of scripted cues. Cues are for directing attention and generating movement and experiential qualities, perhaps the use of imagery and artefact. Should biofeedback or motion sensors be incorporated? What would their role be? Amplification/extension/distortion?

Production requirements:

• high heeled shoes in a few sizes
• walking frame – OTS or custom
• motion sensors that can be attached to ankles and other body parts, eg. pelvis, head

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!

-

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

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.

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.

Maggie introduced her Awareness Through Movement class this morning, with a presentation on neuro plasticity: the structuring of experience within the brain, and the influence of Brain-Derived Neutrophic Factor (BDNF).

I don’t really understand how it works but she seemed to be describing a switching mechanism in the brains neuro chemistry that shift between the development of new patterns and the use of established patterns – well that’s a gross simplification, but it did start me thinking about how I might work in a more detailed way with audience experience at a neuro-psychological level.

After this talk we paired off and where asked to make contact with out partner by sitting in chairs opposite each other and placing out right palms together in front ourselves, and exploring what we do and feel. After a few minutes, Maggie invited us to talk with each other about our experience of this contact, and then asked us to give an account of what our partner told us to  the rest of the group. I enjoyed this test of our listening and recollection.

We then repeated this task with a focus on exploring how we could feel more comfortable within ourselves through postural adjustments, shifting our weight on the chair, initiating the forward/backward motion of our palms in space from subtle movements in our pelvises, and eventually through the inclusion of our sternums in the gentle push-pull action.

Paying attention to my own organisation on the chair, feet on the floor, and feeling through my hand, into Lizzie’s hand, through her hand and into her posture, provided me with a great experience of the Feldenkrais Functional Integration work as an interaction between two nervous systems: two systems, working together as a third system.

In the third part of the lesson we did an Awareness Through Movement lesson that involved ballancing books (folders) on our right foot, and exploring our ability to gently and easilly tilt this book in various axes: forwards/backwards and left/right. Afterwards, I was suprised at how softly this foot fell to the floor when we where asked to plonk it down onto the floor, and how much softer was the ripple effect of this action through th erest of my pelvis and thorax – the other foot by contrast caused a mild jolt through my pelvis upto my head (movement of spine).

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.

We enter a process led by Catherine, in which we are invited to work with clay to create a body. The sensation of drying wet clay on my skin is unpleasant, while the experience of a body growing beneath my hands is exciting. Sitting at the “head end” of people is how I spend a great deal of time as a Feldenkrais practitioner. It’s often how I begin, as I find a place of connection. It’s a tender approach to another human being; the least invasive and the most mysterious. My clay person grows from this intimate perspective; ‘he’ grows from head to toes. Knowing is from my body, my heart, through my hands. The body shapes the clay, becomes a being. Respect for a being enters my touch as I begin to find the shapes in this body described by an active skeleton. The interaction animates, livens the clay. ‘He’ lives while we interact. Afterwards, it’s an interesting piece, enlivening curiosity.

We come back to clay again after an Awareness Through Movement session, and blindfolded, enter into another process, making ‘MY body’. I bring my attention to the feeling of my body in that moment – what stands out? My pelvis is strongly present to me through my sensation, really alive, and so my hands trace into a small ball of clay an impression of what I am feeling. Whereas yesterday, pen on paper, the pelvis remained elusive, frustrating, now excitement rushes through me, into my hands finding the bone-rich forms in 3-D, echoing my sense of this in me, the power of the sacrum and lower spine. Working upward is not possible with clay, and I really want to express the lightness of my spine upward through my chest. I’m lost for a while, feeling the darkness, listening to the sound of George moving rhythmically, insistently, moulding his clay alongside me. I REALLY want to look! Resigned to constraint, I take another small clump of clay and find the form of my shoulders and thorax. Time runs out, eyes are uncovered, and I am surprised by how much I can see in this latter piece.