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!

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Maggie led a workshop today about attention and the brain.  She described the way we create new neural pathways by actively bringing attention to something new. This is a big part of feldenkrais – but also very reminiscent of John Dewey’s idea of the “work” of art.  An aesthetic experience draws our attention to the nature of our experience of the world in a fresh way, and allows us to make new connections, grow, learn and develop – to “expand”.

Maggie got us to draw a representation of our brains, and then to map onto them how our brain works, what it does, what it doesn’t do… A big task.  While we did this she reminded us, gently, to pay attention to how we were doing it.  As with all of our work here, the point of the task was not the map we were creating (though these were all lovely) but the process of making it, and what that tells us about ourselves and our habits. We were drawing a picture of our brain to help us identify our brain’s preferences, and its limitations.

I drew a mass of neural pathways and connections, then i began to identify things my brain can’t do (maths, map reading, drawing – general spatial and practical tasks), then i  drew the things my brain can do; write, explain, argue…then i wanted to draw love and relationships, family, friendships, general social interaction, then the animals i have relationships with (ruben cropped up in there), i drew listening and art, and money, then my relationship to the buildings i live and work in, the trees and rivers, the birds, sport… on and on it went.  Finally we stopped for a tea break.  I realised that i had begun to draw the whole world.  Then i looked at my picture.  Had I drawn the way the world exists in my brain, or had i drawn the way my brain exists in the world?  This picture reminds me of the wonderful reversibility of these two statements and ways of seeing our relationship to the world.
Look at the difference between my way of drawing my brain and Catherine’s.  She drew the way her brain feels.  I tried to analyse, categorise, and represent everything in it.  Guess who’s having more fun.

my brain

catherine's brain

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.