Chanced on this clip after following up on some links about binaural beat frequencies and the use in the entrainment of brain wave rhythms.

I really enjoyed looking at the faces of the people interacting with the work – the generosity they brought to it – giving themselves over to this peculiar light experience – and the strange sense of expectancy on their faces. Its not something you see people doing very often in contemporary art spaces these days.

Thinking back, I’m reminded of Ulf Langheinrich’s stroboscopic ‘Waveform B’ installation at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art – mesmerising and deeply unsettling at the same time.

There’s a strong history of artists working with technology to access/facilitate radically altered states of consciousness. The machine in this clip was designed by Brion Gysin, a contemporary of William Burroughs. I’ve been very interested in this territory for a long time now – ‘fringe’ media technologies – is a term I’ve used for want of a better name – to encompass the range of devices and systems developed to facilitate/entrain alternate states of being. I’m totally aware that this encompasses a whole host of totally out-there New Age practitioners, UFOlogists etc., and its interesting to look at how these practices are altered by their placement within or beyond official ‘contemporary art space’ contexts i.e. at a dance party, new age workshop, psychology lab etc.

I’m curious about how I can model these different contexts, and interested in how each of these contexts  offer different terms and conditions for audiences to enter into various forms of transgressive, cathartic or otherwise transformational experience.

At a practical level, this has relevance for how we present body-focused experiences – in public or private space: how to support certain extremely intimate forms of engagement and reflection, and examining the boundaries of such  an experience – how long should/could the interaction last, what is the artists/curators/practitioners duty of care in rellation to individual participants, and what resources should we ensure are on hand for followup/debriefing when eliciting potentially cathartic experiences. Knowing a few people who have had serious psychiatric problems after leaving intense meditation retreats, I’m all too aware of the potential risks involved with these types of experiences.

This connects in with some of what Somaya has talked about re post-traumatic-stress-disorder. My intuition tells me to focus on minute sensations, rather than lightning bolt sensorial overload. Somatic bodywork methodologies have a lot to say on this subject – build on the clients capacity to sense, notice, compare small changes. What interests me about the use of parapsychology and body-focused interactions is the possibility of facilitating an intelligent and poetic engagement with our structure and its potential – and to do this in a way that can reverberate throughout a person’s wider life engagements.

I have no doubt that there’s a place for actual violent cathathis and trauma in cultural practice (as distinct from vicarious, as in film), but this is not something that can be easilly achieved between strangers, such as is usually the case in a contemporary art space/live art event. ‘BDSM’ and body modification subcultures provide a very vivid example of the use of intense, cathartic and body-focussed interactions in contemporary urban culture, as undertaken within carefully negotiated and consensual rellationships, but such interactions are far from the distanced anonymity of most contemporary arts centre exhibitions and events programs.

This example of sub-cultural practice brings me back to a consideration of context, institutional values and boundaries, and the plasticity of these values and boundaries in radical creative arts practice. In my own practice, I’ve sought to be inclusive as possible with regard to audiences, but I know in reality, that each gallery that I show with has its own overlapping audience constituencies, more or less permeable to various ‘general publics’ depending on the venue. Often I’m happy to work within  existing curatorial niches i.e. ‘live-art’, interactive-art, body-art, community-art etc., but I do think that if we are serious about supporting ‘critically engaged practice’ – then the terms and conditions of audience/community engagement in ‘contemporary art’ require some re-negotiation. Must our engagement with contemporary art always be at a distance, casual,  fleeting, and anonymous? Or could there be a space for a more intimate, personalized and enduring rellationship between artist, arts organisation and audience/participants, one that unfolds over a period of months or years – one that can encompass the type of enduring, long-term relationship and duty-of-care  akin to that provided by a traditional familly doctor (general practitioner) or local medical practice?

If we are going to engage with audiences at the level that some of us are proposing (cathartic, transformative, intimate, psychological etc.) then these issues of endurance and personalised care will certainly need re-negotiating.

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.

Video demonstrations and discussions by Andrew T. Austin

I would like to explore some of these principals at the next workhop, coming up in January. This research goes to the heart of my inspiration for TTTB, at least in so far as the proposal for ‘explorations of touch and proprioception’ go.

Phantom Limb Pain and The Mirror Box #2

Phantom Limb Pain and the Mirror Box #3

Have just read a great paper by Paul Dourish, titled “Implications for Design”, thought you all might be interested as it relates well to the video-cued-recall workshop that Lizzie led at our Campbelltown workshop.

Really hits the nail on the head re what people (artists, audiences, curators) expect from ethnographic studies and the materials they produce, and getting me thinking about The Heart Library Project and where I should take it next.

Seems like he’s proposing ethnography as a way of understanding and reformulating relationships and understandings between community members and researchers (amongst other things). I think this is what good participatory/community art does already – but more work could be done in relation to the reflections and value these project’s offer their participant’s/communities/users/research subjects. This is a hard thing to measure, but you would hope this is precisely where ethnography and ethnomethodology could make a contribution. How do you evaluate ‘meaning’ and it’s evolution via reflection and dialogue – especially when the ‘meanings’ being evaluated are functioning at a deeply embodied, tacit level? Again – I’m reminded of Catherine’s interest in language and its relationship to bodily experience… I feel I’m on the edge of something big here, but need some help unpacking all of this! Any volunteers?

Those of you at universities will be able to download the paper from the ACM database.

–

Paul Dourish, “Implications for Design”,
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, Montréal, Québec, Canada, 2006. Pages: 541 – 550

“What has traditionally been more complicated has been to establish a deeper, more foundational connection between ethnography and design – to look for a connection at an analytic level rather than simply an empirical one [11]. The analytic contributions tend not to be seen as holding implications in the same way.

It is not that these do not have profound implications for design, because they do; indeed, often more profound than a laundry list of facts and features. Their impact, however, is frequently more diffuse. They provide us with new ways of imagining the relationship between people and technology. They provide us with ways of approaching design. However, they typically go beyond specific instances of design. More to the point, they draw, in general, on the fundamental repudiation of a traditional separation between designer and user, between technology and practice. To the extent that these implications are not formulated as “implications for design,” it is because the categories of design, user, and designer, are themselves in question.”

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

Just visited human ethologist Ellen Dissanayake’s website, and came across these brilliant quotes.

Her book “What is Art For?” was a powerful inspiration during my doctoral research when I was re-thinking notions of instrumentality in art practice, and looking to understand my own practice in relation to more encompassing view of the history of art and culture that looks beyond the narrow (and historically anomalous) scope of 20th century Western art history and aesthetics.

“We can begin a discussion of artmaking by noting that from very early (as long ago as 200,000 years), humans have been naturally attracted to the extraordinary as a dimension of experience and that at some point they seem also to have been moved to make the ordinary extraordinary—that is, to shape or elaborate everyday, mundane reality and thereby transform it into something special, different from the everyday.”

“Craft is ineluctably grounded in the life of the body, the physicality of material and material objects—their feel, their weight, their resistance, their fragility or durability.”

“At the core of ritual and art as I have described them is the emotional intersubjectivity developed and practiced in mother-infant interaction. Making and making special are inseparable from the innate human impulse to share feelings and from the need and ability to express ourselves in relationship with others. And we experience the works of others intersubjectively also. The gestural traces in handmade objects, like the bodily signatures in dance and song, contribute directly to another’s reception or appreciation of them.”

“For the perceiver, a made object implies not only a hand, but a person with hands—someone mortal like ourselves who fashioned this object, brought it into being.”

The new dates for workshop 2 will be February 2nd – 8th, 2009, at the Bundanon Trust’s Riversdale residency.

• February 2nd will be devoted to set up and testing of technical gear.
• February 3rd, 4th and 5th will be devoted to the workshop proper.
• February 6th, 7th will be available to those who wish to stay on, and continue working on individual projects
• February 8th will be devoted to packing up, cleaning and travel back to Sydney.

Garth asked a great question today, in relation to the question of our respective desires for the project: not sure exactly what he said – but it was something like – ‘How do we (as interaction designers) get to experience through touch?’

How do we get to experience through the touch we facilitate as makers in responsive electronic art systems? This translated into pragmatic questions around how do we, as makers of senor-based works, get at the processes happening during a tactile,intimate encounter, such as provided during a somatic bodywork session (i.e. the Feldenkrais hands-on work known as Functional Integration). Many of us are hoping that Catherine and Maggie will be able to help shine some light on this – one way or another.

For me this was one of the core motivations behind the development of the TTTB concept in 2006 – so important because its still so relatively unknown.

So what then of the pragmatics? Some areas that strike me as good starting points would be to compile an inventory of fundamental structures and life skills developed during infancy and early childhood: those basic reflexes and motor skills that underpin our ability to sense and act in the world – orienting our selves to the world/self, finding stability, responding to novelty/threat etc. My first experience of Feldenkrais Functional Integration started with a lesson on falling: I was asked to explore ways of falling, and see if I could find a way of falling that felt easy, soft and enjoyable – which seemed odd at first – since I had come because of a problem I was having with abdominal tension. What surprised me was how such a simple process – falling repeatedly – could reverberate so intensely at a much more personal level.

Its this capacity for body-focussed experiences to elicit intense personal realizations that is compelling me towards research into this area of touch and movement sensation

After watching Jonathan’s video-cued retrospective report – he later described the quality of holding those cubes as being like holding a snow dome. This immediately generated strong images for me of snow dome structures as interfaces: intimate hand held devices that comunicate a strong sense of fluidity, delicacy and intimacy, not just in the form of he object itself -but in the quality of contact and engagement we bring to these objects when we pick them up. Beautiful!