Catherine blindfolded us today and asked us to make ourselves in clay.  I thought of myself lying in bed.  I always lie on my side. Unable to see what i was doing my felt-sense of the volume and shape of my body became very vivid.  It was a peculiarly intense sensation, to use my own hands to form my head, my neck, the curve of my back. Later on Somaya gave me a back rub, and I had the strangest feeling that it was the second one of the day.

When we took our blind folds off we saw that almost all of us had sculpted ourselves lying on our sides.  We had also all got our proportions almost exactly right.

The power of the blindfold is very inetersting to me right now.  Our visual sense so dominates our experience of the world – and it feels to me today that it is also linked firmly to my own analytical stance.  I appraise things with my eyes, i judge them.  Unable to see, I felt my way through the clay – i explored its properties, I worked with it and did not try to impose my version of the world on it. What would be the equivalent of a blindfold when I write?  What would help me work with the words and feel my way through them rather than trying to wrangle them into a form that I expect to be pleased with?

An opportunity to play with a range of sensor-based prototypes/tools and costume. The session was structured so that each person had 3 minutes to try out a prototype, followed by a quick group discussion.

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

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… 

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…

Watch how you can trick your brain by stroking a fake rubber hand and your real hand at the same time. Link from New Scientist online

I’ll be working on presenting this illusion at the Bundanon workshop! I think it opens the door for all sorts of poetic body transformation – wondering how we could include some more subtle/imaginative body metamorphoses… some research has been done on virtual/mixed reality displays and this sort of re-mapping of bodyimage – I’ll follow up soon.

Hi all

Long time between drinks

The trip away was fabulous- a clearing of the air inside and out.

There’s one particular day of my travels that stands alone. A day I’d like to tell you about – the day we flew down to Culver City to visit a museum which has a touch of the miraculous about it : The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

On the surface of it I bet you’re thinking: what has this got to do with Thinking Through the Body?

Well, I think it’s a story about engagement and absorption and pure wonder and undefined truths- of being immersed in a wondrous state of not knowing anything, yet at the same time feeling as though all of one’s senses have been tweeked into life.

We booked our flights on the net. A day’s adventure- flying early morning from San Francisco down to Culver City, Los Angeles – coming back on the evening plane.

The getting there took less that an hour. We landed, jumped into a taxi and sped off into the wide bleached yonder.

It’s a dry and dusty part of the world. Wide streets busy with trucks and dirty cars and neon lights flashing Big Burgers at you. One withered wind-blasted palm tree every two kilometres.

The taxi driver is completely mystified. The Moooseum of Jurassic Technology???????Nevrrrrrrrr hrrrrrd o’thaa’ one beforrrrrrrr. Ya shrrrrrrrr ya got the name rrrright? On Venice Boulevarde right?????? Hmmmnnn.

Oh my god! Tharrrrrrrr tis…wow…nvrrrrr did see that beforrrre. Must’ve driven past it a hundred times orrrr morrrre… What the hell is in tharrrr?????

Well what could I say, having never been here myself before.

Just here on a whim. A waft of something entirely curious. Promising.

A strange little façade:

Its announcement to the outside world is a little quirky, but definitely understated compared to the bellowing signage of the fast food industries also sharing the street.

It’s single-fronted, of a different era, with a green door and worn brass door-bell . There’s a wee classic fountain complete with fine reeds and two niches in the walls at either side- one containing and ostrich egg and the other with a storm of dried moths erupting from a stone vase. The glass is smudged with fingerprints. It’s hours of operation are as measured and precious as these strange vitrines.

But we get there just on opening and enter expecting such a small museum will take us off the streets for an hour to two at the most.

The first thing I notice is that the young woman behind the cluttered from desk is completed unmoved by the fact that there is a highly excited middle-aged tourist trying to impress on her the amazing commitment we have made towards getting there…half way around the world just to visit this museum…this day…for these few hours…all that way from Australia. Hmmn…nope…not impressed.

I twig it must happen all the time- people seeking this place. Oh well, I figure I’m here on my own compelling journey anyway, no need for reassurance about that one.

It’s so dark ,the lighting is unique. Small mounted lights aimed at a rickety collection of roughly cut squares of mirror mounted on wire ricochet the light and split eerie beams onto their targets. There are few other light-sources. I realize nothing is direct in here.

The first exhibit :

I walk up to a glass case jutting out at eye-level from a wooden veneer-clad wall and find myself gazing into a magnifying lens trained on a single Carved fruit-stone mounted in a very old-fashioned way on a metal rod and a turned wooden base. Yeah…I think….there’s some carving there…but I’ve see a few of these carved fruit-stones before…..why is this so remarkable??????????? So I pull my head away and look for some explanation. There’s some writing on the wall near by. I look around…there seems to be a lot of text on the walls near strange objects and various doorways leading of in several directions to other rooms. People from all parts of the universe ( some I suspect from other planets) are here sharing the search with me…but I feel alone. Someone occasionally gaffaws with laughter, others have wry smiles, whilst most look completely mystified. People are so interesting when they are lost.

To avoid being lost I diligently read on….

FRUIT-STONE CARVING

Almond stone(?); the front is carved with a Flemish landscape in which is seated a bearded man wearing a biretta- a long tunic of classical character, and thick soled shoes. He is seated with a viola between his knees while he tunes one of the strings.

In the distance are representations of animals including a lion, a bear, an elephant ridden by a monkey, a boar, a dog, a donkey, a stag, a camel, a horse, a bull, a bird, a goat, a lynx and a group of rabbits: the latter under a branch on which sit an owl, another bird and a squirrel.

On the back is shown an unusually grim Crucifixion, with a soldier on horseback. Loginus piercing Christ’s side with a lance, the cross is surmounted by a titulus inscribed INRI. Imbricated ground.

Dimensions: Length 13mm. Width 11mm.

I read and read and read. Hmmn…Peer at the stone again…

Hmnn…(I’m straining now to see the detail)… hmmmn…well…possibly…yeah maybe it’s all there…on this wee stone…not sure….but…maybe…but how would it fit… well…perhaps…hmmmmn?

I think we think too much, there’s always fertile ground in disbelief.

Suspension of belief though is an entirely different ball-game.

But I reckon this is how to access the absolute wonder of this place.

It’s what being human is all about- having the ability to become consciously absorbed in not knowing. Well…maybe?

I’m keen to step further inside … curiousity leads me in deeper…to another question, led by a grain of truth…maybe, maybe not…can I go in deeper still, all senses opened wide.

The second exhibit:

I can hear a howling from another dark room. OOOOhhhhh. It’s eeirie . Dark. The howling. It’s a wild dog…a coyote I think…it’s penetrating.

I’m looking with my ears. Into the dark. Feeling with my ears into a small room and in the middle another glass box. There’s a viewing contraption at one end and at the other a chair inviting me to see this work from a particular angle. I recognise an animal taxidermied and dislocated – a coyote’s head mounted on the glass jutting into the internal space of this vitrine- lips pulled back over gnarly bared white teeth, red angry tongue.

On the floor of this transparent box is a micro-environment of desert terrain, dust stones and driftwood. The howling is relentless and I sift around in my senses for clues. I feel drawn in compelled inside this case and climb into the chair to get closer.

My eyes are met with cubes of glass like clumsy spectacles focused at the place one would expect the coyotes brain would be. I imagine. I look and can hear with my eyes now. The sound of the howling is uncovered. There is a moving picture projected on the side of the animals head….I feel inside it. It’s a small man, sitting on a chair…dressed in white…alone in white and he is raising his head baying in the darkness…howling like a wild dog.

The image is moving. I can still feel it clearly. Haunting. Profound.

Beautiful. Solitary.

On an on:

A sculpture of the Pope made from a single human hair , coloured with a brush also made from a single human hair –on strokes made between heartbeats……on and on……a fully-functioning Russian tea-room complete with exquisite samovar and tea-maid and live lounging Russian wolfhounds….on and on …..the story of………..a tale of…

on and on…….on and on………..

I look at my watch finally….four hours have evaporated and I still want more of this ….not knowing….not understanding.

Am I dreaming?

No I haven’t fallen asleep.

I’m not in the least bit bored or frustrated.

Every neurone, every cell is tingling.

A rare tingling.

I’ve let my body do the thinking.

Catherine Truman. October 2008

thermographic image of a cold blooded tarantula on a warm human arm!

enjoy…. garth

One thing that resonates from this first workshop is the refreshing openness and intimacy of everyone here. An openness to listen, a willingness to share. The focus on the body perhaps supports this.

One thing that I desire is to make things in the weave and wash of stirring, inspiring conversations. To shift from a focus on the development of design methods and tools, to the application of these methods and tools, together with the methods and skills of others in the project, in the production of an actual interactive work. Or should I say, experimental prototypes! Or perhaps new ways of working to produce such things. I do desire that new spaces are created that draw out and seduce us into more playful, curious and novel ways of moving … that bring an aliveness to our everyday existence.

One thing that I can offer to the group is the ability to mediate between the danced, the felt and the designed. This is an ability that I am still in the process of cultivating. In my design research practice, I am interested in ways of traversing between the felt, experience (particularly of movement) and ways of representing movement that can act as resources for design. Some of the methods and tools I work with include movement-oriented personas and scenarios, Laban floor plans for representing spatial trajectories of people, scenario enactment and movement improvisation scores for prototype and user testing. I am especially interested in the creative potential of the moving body and how we can generate design ideas and concepts from the experiential, moving body. The notion of making strange with the moving body is one approach that demands we interrogate our assumptions about our bodies in movement through a range of movement-based techniques.