thinkingthroughthebody

CON – STRAINING (Wednesday)

posted by maggie, February 4th, 2009 • Leave a comment

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.

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are you feeling yourself today?

posted by lizzie, February 4th, 2009 • Leave a comment

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?

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Machine sense and felt sense … playtime!

posted by Lian, February 4th, 2009 • Leave a comment

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

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Distinct Body 2

posted by Lian, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

Working with clay – what a treat! I absolutely loved it. I felt like Auguste Rodin, shaping human form out of a lump of clay, so malleable, yet requiring physical force, an engagement of the whole body not just the hands. Imagining the flesh, the volume, the density, the boniness, the receptivity to touch.

In the first session Catherine asked us to sculpt a body out of clay. In the second session we sculpted our own body while blindfolded. The body was to assume a posture or gesture familiar to us. In between these two sessions, Catherine lead us on a Feldenkrais exercise working with tilting the pelvis, articulating the spine and rotating the entire arm from the shoulder. At the beginning of the exercise, she asked us to register where the act of sculpting still resonated in the body. For me, I felt a glow in my abdomen, lower arms and hands.

My first body sculpted out of clay

The first clay sculpture had an almost chicken-like lower half, swollen abdomen, drumstick thighs. The chest was like heavily whipped water, almost ravaged. I wanted to show the intensity of emotion experienced in this part of the body. The clay allowed a easy translation of the dynamic, emotive qualities of human experience.

My body in clay ... sitting cross-legged

I felt a freedom being blindfolded, not caring so much about getting the visual form “right”. The pleasure in the body moving and making, feeling and stroking the clay, came to the foreground. I sculpted standing up, feeling the force of the earth under my feet feeding through my body and hands into the clay. I took heed of Catherine’s reminders about taking care of my body in the act of making … where was I holding tension, where did it hurt … shifting to a new position.

I notice my sculptures were both incomplete forms, offering suggestions, ambiguity in interpretation.

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RIVERSDALE, BUNDANON, TUESDAY, BLISS

posted by Catherine, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

RIVERSDALE, BUNDANON, TUESDAY, BLISS

Can aspects of Awareness through Movement® be applied in the creation of interactive artworks to broaden the scope of the artwork and expand the individual participant’s experience of the work?

In our initial discussions about TTTB, fellow Feldenkrais practitioner Maggie Slattery and I decided that engaging with attention to sensation was something we valued.

As practitioners and participants we’re being asked to feel something and then articulate it. We’re not necessarily interested in the outcome, more in how and why the participant in an interactive artwork engages with the process. However, we do feel there needs to be an acknowledgment of Quantum Physics here – that any phenomenon being observed is changed by the observation.

As practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method we normally remove as many external agents that will interfere with one’s engagement/relationship with oneself. The student becomes both the external and external agent and the boundaries in between.

I’m now at Riversdale. Such a breath-taking view from here. Breath-taking. I’m wrestling with my desire to just stare down the length of the Shoalhaven River as I sit here now and blog….
Today I began experimenting with a workshop I’ve developed over a number of years called “the Distinct Body”. The TTTB project allows me the luxurious opportunity of stretching it further, turning it upside down and inside out with the other participants.

Specifically the experiment of the Distinct Body is aimed at an exploration of felt experience and perceived notions of the familiar and unfamiliar body through themes of internal structure, volume and outline. I’m curious to extend the relationship between Feldenkrais and self-definition.
And so on day one of this two-day Distinct Body workshop the participants of TTTB are sharing in this experiment with me. The level of attention each participant contributed today was so fruitful. Rich.

How clearly can we define and express the nature of our own bodies to ourselves and others?
Clear distinctions were injected into the language during this first part of the workshop: Draw an outline of a body and fill it with a skeleton .
Participants’ drawings were highly individual, yet similar at this stage.
Then they were led through a Feldenkrais-based session focussed on specific aspects of their own bodies- in stillness, in movement, in balance. Bones in relation to outlines, form and volumes.
Again they were asked to draw and this time the scale was more specific- 1:1.
However it was stressed that they now draw their own bodies- their own outline and skeleton.
During this drawing session I asked them many questions focussed upon translation of the direct experiences from the lesson as opposed to the drive for anatomical accuracy and the role of self-judgement. Participants were encouraged to stop regularly and stand on a chair, placed in different positions to view their drawings.
Following this they worked in pairs – one lying directly on top of their drawing whilst the other traced around their actual outline.
In most cases the traced outline was very close in scale and proportion to the outline drawn freehand.
Was it the Feldenkrais, the guided attention, the growth of awareness?
Tomorrow we’ll experiment more with volume, with making bodies in three dimensions.
More to follow….

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Distinct and Situated Bodies

posted by jonathan, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

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…

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Listening to the wind in the leaves…

posted by George Khut, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

…and thinking about observing my breathing.

Attending to the sounds in the landscape, and realising I could bring the same quaity of openended attentivness to sensations inside my body. Observing breath (something I’ve been interested in with a previous interactive artwork ‘Drawing Breath’), listing to ‘the wind’ in the ladscape – realising that the wind it self has no sound – what I can hear is the sound of surfaces being moved by the wind: the leaves, the grass, a stand of trees, etc. Applying this insight to my experience of studying breath – not the air moving in and out of me per se, but feeling how this movement of air influences, and is influenced by various details of my body: stomach, pelvis, trachea, nostrils, tongue, ribs, diaphragm. Sensations weaving in and out of eachother, like my eyes and ears wander through details of the landscape around me.

Seeing if I could attend to both landscape and body at the same time: in counterpoint.

Turbulence, flutter, ebb and flow.

Reflecting on the passage of seasons, multiple time frames, from minutes, to hours, days, years, centuries: in a landscape, in a body, in a succesion of bodies (familly).

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experiential anatomy and the situated body

posted by Lian, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

EXPERIENTIAL ANATOMY

In the act of drawing my own body outline and skeleton, i found myself ocscillating between drawing from the felt sense (how my imagination traced the edge of the body, the weightiness of bones and flesh pressing into the floor) and drawing on known anatomical models and ways of depicting bones. My sketchy knowledge of anatomy, the exact shape of bones, was challenged in this exercise. But then, that wasn’t what the exercise was about.

modes of representation, how to draw a bone, limited/limiting resources/skill, falling back on known ways, not really attending to the felt sense of my body

body image – constructed, imagined, lived, distorted

For Merleau-Ponty, the body image is dynamically constructed according to the value of the task.

I had difficulty gauging and translating the actual length or dimensions of my neck (i live with a long neck) into a visual representation, drawn on paper. I drew my neck longer than it actually was, despite using my hand to measure its dimensions. When drawing my body and checking visually what a certain part of the body looked like, I got mixed up between what it looked like in a prone position and what it looked like in a standing position, as the fall and twist of the limbs is different in each. At some point, Catherine made the statement, “what are you trying to do”. I then realised that I was attempting to achieve an accurate visual rendering from the outside, rather than a rendering from the felt internal sense of the body. In response, I began to vary the quality of the linework to suggest the quality of the felt sense of the limbs and bones, in particular, the heaviness or lightness, the torsion.

the felt contour of the body, focus of sensation, wavering line of coincidence, staying with, dropping out

Drawing from felt sense ... or not

THE SITUATED BODY

Wandering in the pastures and bush at Bundanon. Taking note of the effect of the environment on my bodily sensations and in turn, whether the attendance to the felt experience influences or changes my perception of the external environment.

A tall, spindly tree holds my attention. Its surging verticality commands an uplift in my own posture, a rising and thinning, a thin energetic line upwards. The surrounding trees conspire in this uprightness.

A surging sense of verticality

Further along the track, the peeling orange bark like a contagious skin disease rivets me to the spot. I stay a while, watching, listening. The sound of a leaf falling on the dry ground startles me. I feel a grabbing in my chest, the space above my diaphragm spasming. Another leaf or branch drops. I tune in to the staccato cascade of sounds, twitching and turning towards each sound. On the alert, ready to gather and move … my own small drama in the bush.

I stay with this listening. My own foot steps sound clomping and insensitive, out of place in the delicate warble of the bush. The steep slope invites a small musical phrase of footwork. Dry leaves rustle and crunch under my dancing feet.

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Drawing from the felt experience of my bones

posted by George Khut, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

This morning’s workshop with Catherine:

Drawing a life-size outline of my body, then filling it in with bones as they felt to me.

We were instructed to focus on drawing from experience, and not worry about what what we think it ’should’ look like i.e. a picture of a skeleton.

Easier said than done, and I immediately started to literally trace my body with the marker, only realizing 10 minutes later that the task was to draw this outline from FELT experience. A beautiful drawing that helped to connect me to an experience pf my self as organized energy; a set of energetic flows and radiations.

While creating this drawing, I was struck by how difficult it was to translate between my felt internal experience of my bones and the outline of my body, and the external, two-dimensional image that was accumulating on the paper before my eyes – a seemingly vast gap or language barrier. Later Catherine remarked that this issue of translation was fundamental to many forms of creative practice: how to articulate a feeling, or to reproduce something so radically internal, by way of an external media (i.e. clay, wood, paint, pixels etc.).

My felt experience of my skeleton was fragmentary, details fading in an out of focus, followed by blank spots of total mystery: what is that shape inside me? Some clues as to a general volume, but few specifics.

I think a complete skeleton mapping would take me a day or two, such was the difficulty I experienced – both in the articulation of the feelings, and in their description by way of a series of marks on paper. Its incredible that form of something so fundamental as the bones upon which we live should be so mysterious and elusive.

Looking at the skeleton Maggie had created, I was struck by the way that the bones in her skeleton seemed to describe lines of force and energy, rather than inert pieces of bone.

This process of articulation and translation: systematically feeling something inside your body, and then describing that feeling by way of some external representation, also raises questions for me about what’s happening on the other side of the process: the task requires a shift in point of view, in a way that you wouldn’t generally experience when drawing something external to yourself, i.e. a landscape before you, a bowl of fruit, another person’s body.

I assumed that this translation requires a shift in point of view from an experience of containment and extension, towards a third-person, externalized perspective, but there was nothing in Catherine’s request that required this – but it could just as well have been a seemingly abstract collection of swirls and knobbly things spread out across the sheet of paper – which makes me want to attempt this exercise again, with a different set of assumptions around what constitutes a ‘drawing’ of a (MY) skeleton, irrespective of whether anyone else recognizes it or not – the emphasis being on the lines and volumes of the drawing communicating my felt sense of various aspects of my body experience.

This workshop struck me as a very connected to the idea of ‘making strange’ – rendering something so fundamental, but taken for granted as our own skeletal system, and generating representations that seem bizzare and fantastic in rellation to how these structures are conventionally represented.

Looking at these drawings, I feel these skeletons inside me – I put on the artwork, and feel my self inside the body represented on the sheet of paper. I feel the peculiar distortions of volume, length and depth decribed through the marks on the paper – this is a big part of their charm and attraction for me, much like the experience maps created by participants in my ‘Heart Library Project’.

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2 self portraits

posted by lizzie, February 3rd, 2009 • Leave a comment

Bundanon is a great place to think about (and through) the body. Fresh air, horizon, river swimming, good food – all condusive to feeling pleasure in being a body in the world.

Today I made two self portraits. Catherine ran a workshop that made me reflect on the question of how well I know my own body from the inside, and how able I am to represent that from the outside. We lay for a long time on our backs imagining someone tracing around our body with a marker. Then we tried to draw an outline of our own body and draw our skeletons within the outline. When we had finished we teamed up with a partner and drew round each others bodies. You learn alot about being a body from doing this – though i’m not sure I can say exactly what i learnt yet. One of the interesting challenges was to get the proportions right. I kept trying to compress myself. I couldn’t believe how far my knees are from my waist. I was struck by how much space my body takes up in a room. How long my limbs and neck are, how long my whole body is.

Later Jonathan took us into the great outdoors and asked us to think about the relationship between our bodies and our surroundings. Out on the side of a hill, with bush all around me i suddenly felt very small. The feeling of my largeness vanished. I was drawn to a little hut – because the hut was built at human scale and seemed to help me modulate between me and everything else. Sitting on the verandah of the hut I thought – i wish i could fly up and see what size i appear to be from the outside, and compare it to what size i feel . I went looking for sticks that would be the same length as my bones so that I could get some perspective on the relationship of scale between me and the world. I gathered and measured and gathered and measured and slowly built a copy of my skeleton in sticks on the ground. My vertebrae were made of wombat poo (the driest poo of any mammal! – that’s a true fact). It was so comforting to be able to measure sticks against myself and then arrange them, rather than having to draw the way i imagined myself to be. When i’d finished my self portrait in sticks i walked up the hill and looked down at it from above. I am very very small. Jonathan took a photo of me and my portrait together so that i could check if i’d got the scale right. Not bad at all.

I worried that to anyone coming along it would look macabre – a stick skeleton by an old hut. But Jonathan thought it would be ok to leave it there.

self portrait with textas

Self portrait with sticks

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