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!

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!

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On the internet, there is an interesting article easy to encounter, written by Sergio Roclaw Basbaum, “Consciousness and Perception: The Point of Experience and the Meaning of the World We Inhabit”. He claims that “ consciousness is aculturally shaped phenomena, and that any conception that may emerge about it from a traditional Western scientific approach cannot go further than suggest a model of consciousness that, at best, can correspond to the experience of consciousness in the culture in which this very specific way of dealing with reality is embedded.”

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The anthropological dimension of synesthesia – as a metaphor or as neurological phenomenon- is usually avoided or forgotten. Van Campen alluded to this reality in “Synthetic Indians” with a commentary on the book World of sense by Constance Classen. Basbaum developed this idea of a synesthesia phenomenon conditioned by culture in a philosophical reflexion using references to Classen and Flusser. The last year I had told that we needed informations on synesthesia in the different cultures of the multicultural Mediterranean world. The emergency of an anthropology focused in the sensory worlds of different cultures enabled to put into perspective the western association between seeing and meaning.

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Quotation from the same article by Basbaum:

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“Different cultures emphasis in other senses gives birth to cosmologies based, for example:

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• in thermal sensations, like the Tzotzil’s of Chiapas, Mexico;
• in olfactory sensations, like the Ongee’s of Little Andaman Island, in Bengal Bay;
• in a highly synesthetic cosmology, like the Desana’s of Amazon, which make meaning of their world based on multisensory correspondences experimented under hallucinogenic plants trance; (Classen, 1993: Chapter 6)
• in such an emphasis on aural experience, like the Kaluli people of Bosavi, as to “reckon time and space by reference to auditory cues and entertain a fundamentally acoustic view of the structure of their physical and social universe.” (Howes, 2003:xvii)

These radically different sensorial arrangements (and there are many

more), the meanings they ascribe to the world and the ways of dealing with life that emerge from them, make reasonable for us to talk not anymore about a “point of view”, typical of Western culture, but of a “point of experience”, the kind of hierarchy of the sensorium that structures experiences and cosmologies in different cultures.” – Hervé-Pierre Lambert

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Our heat weary bodies gathered slowly, quietly in the day’s cooler opening to travel again to Bundenon. I hadn’t been looking forward to this second part of “The Situated Body” until to my great relief Jonathan invited me to join with him in the landscape where we are to ‘create an intervention’. Biz joined us too & we three wandered along, happy in each other’s company, switching at horse flies. The path, heat, flies, and ever increasing presence of dense bush directed our decision to retreat, and not long after our about face Jonathan prompted us to pause. His fancy was taken by a leaf, folded & glued lengthways by a crafty spider & suspended by a thread from the branch of a bush. We were not the passers-by intended by the fly to interact with its nifty refuge. Alas for it, Jonathan was moved by an urge to direct his nose to the distal end of the leaf and balance it thus. The spider stayed indoors, but this intervention went on, with me and Biz taking turns, and at one point he came out, but only briefly, to investigate. Where do three wanderers go after such an experience? We were, I thought, heading back to laze around on the English lawn, our intervention complete, but, no. Jonathan invited me to go off toward a rocky outcrop in the bush & “find an intervention”. That place again … wide open to a great void inside me, heart rate quickening, skin tingling. Body? What body? It’s indefinable, unfelt. Somewhere in me is accepting Jonathan’s invitation, my legs are taking me, moving mechanically, strangely outside of me and I know I will find me if I stay with this. The experience of transition into felt self has no words for this telling. I was one minute not, next minute there, seeing in the rock a body to be adorned with an exoskeleton of bark. The rest is imagination in motion, playful, timeless, absorbing and connecting. And there, alongside, was Jonathan, playing.

Jonathan’s workshop ‘The Situated Body’ invited to develop a response to our experience in the land around us, based on the sensitivities we’ve been developing towards our bodily experience.

I was interested structuring attention across internal and external environments, drawing on experiences of Feldenkrais work, meditation and environmental audio field recording aesthetics – to explore how I might bring the same quality of attention that I would bring to bear on listening to sounds in a remote rural landscape (birds, wind, insects, distant motors etc.) to my internal experience – visceral, postural, muscular, cardio-respiratory and skin sensations. Previously, in the context of meditations and body-scan exercises I’ve had a hard time maintaining my focus on these sensations, being easily diverted by complicated, self-conscious judgements as to whether I was doing things ‘right’ or simply drifting off into daydreaming about what I think I should be doing tomorrow, or something someone told me some time ago etc.

I’ve drafted a guided sensorial scanning experience, that could be presented as a form of listening meditation workshop for a group of people, or undertaken individually. I think it makes a big difference being in a beautiful rural setting like Bundanon/Riversdale, with its abundance of birdlife, rivers, insects, other animals and wide open spaces, but will be interested to see how I go doing this in an urban setting with lots of cars, music, people and various alarms and sirens.

The idea of folding internal and external experience picks up on Lizzie’s observations of the maps we created, when invited by Maggie to create a map of our brains: the maps many of us made, could just as well have been maps of our experience of the world, a diagram describing relations between modes of engagement.

Structuring experience and perception between internal and external environments.

Wet your hands with a little water, and wipe this water onto your face, neck and ears; focus your attention towards the sensation of the air as it moves around your body.
How do you register the direction and intensity of the breeze as it moves around your body? Can you imagine these changes in intensity and direction as changes in air pressure: the wind around you as a fluid moving around and within the landscape surrounding you …the ebb and flow of air pressure systems circulating over the land, and the gradual transformation of these currents from one minute to another; from one sunrise to another; from one season to another; from one year to another.

Now draw your attention inward, toward the sensations arising from your chest, thorax and pelvis, focusing specifically on sensations that describe changes in the state of the various muscles inside this area of your body: the expansion and contraction of the muscles in your chest and ribs that accompany your breathing, and the extension of your breath and subtle, moment-to-moment postural adjustments to the muscles in your pelvis and shoulders: subtle changes in tonus across the volume of your torso.

Consider the irregularities of these sensations as they rise and fall from your awareness, the meandering rhythm of these sensations and reflections, in relation to your recent experience of the air around you.

Directing your attention back outwards now, to the sounds of the environment around you: the birds, flies buzzing around you, the engines in the distance… Can you hold these sensations in your attention and also feel the acoustic quality of the landscape around you: the way that the various sounds you hear travel around the space: the subtle echoes and reverberations that tell you what kind of space you are in  – that you are here, and not in your bathroom; not in an underground car park; a desert, or a cathedral…

Imagine now a circle drawn around you, outward into the land around you, as far as you can hear. Listen for what you can hear that is located directly in front of you, can you hear anything at all? Use the sounds you can hear all around you to identify the presence or absence of sounds directly in front of you – as if a line where drawn from the front of your body, outward to the horizon.

Turning our attention back to the feel of the air around you, listening to the subtle reverberations and echoes that tell you about the place your in, can you imagine this experience as an experience of density? The air around you as a diffuse but tangible and dynamic substance. What do your sensations of your skin, smell, ear, nose and throat tell you about the quality of the air around you, and, by extension, the quality of the land you are in.

Moving back inside your body, turn your attention from the feeling of the air around you, to the feeling of the air inside you: the sensation of each breath on the inside of your nose, your throat, tongue and deep into your lungs, taking care to note the subtle shifts in what comes to your attention, between the sensations on the inside of your nose, the roof of your mouth, and inside your throat, taking time to appreciate the dynamics of your focus as it shifts between these sensations from the different parts of your respiratory tract.

Focusing attention back out the land around you, can you listen to the sounds around you according to pitch, listening specifically to sounds that lay in the higher frequency range: the birds, insects, leaves rustling, grasses. Can you experience these sounds as clusters of high pitched sounds increasing and decreasing in dennsity? Can you imagine the negative form of all the frequencies you aren’t hearing, as defined by what you can hear – where within this spectrum of frequencies is greatest amount of silence?

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.

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.