----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hi Sue et al
I thought it might be useful to respond with some writing around the nature of
experience and embodiment - I understand your frame for virtuality, but I am
constantly trying to really understand what that is from a kind of direct
experience and how it changes based on my conditioning and on the
socially/communally understood reference - I am asking myself all the time, to
what extent is the accepted paradigm valid - what does it miss, what does it
establish through aspiration rather than existent phenomena.
So here is part of a framework (edited down here) developed by myself and
several others at WISP2010 which I organised at Critical Path in Sydney in
2010/201. This section pertains specifically and only to notions of Experience
and Embodiment in interactive works and makes a distinction with pre-existing
paradigms of performance
Experience and Embodiment contains three subdimensions:
Porosity, Perception, and Presence.
a) Porosity. The content of the work, or the work itself (the artefact, musical
work, play, dance work etc), may be more or less porous or responsive to
real-time influence and, correspondingly, more or less sealed. Likewise, the
embodied movements of the performer or performers may be (and may be
experienced as) more or less open to influence in real time. For instance, in
standard mainstream performance a soliloquy in Shakespeare is, to some
approximation, a fixed artefact. The words must remain unchanged.
b) Perception. In many forms of interactive performance, the perceptual
attention and experience of both performers and audience is more diffuse and
multisensory or multimodal. Rather than restriction to sight and sound,
embodied interactive performance often draws on and taps in to rich kinesthetic
or movement awareness, often aligning or confronting the proprioceptive and
motor systems of performers and audience members by way of unusual,
collaborative, mediated, or hybrid movement forms. Communication is thus not
solely the transmission and perception of explicit content, but taps more
implicit, habitual, and embodied forms of sensory-affective memory and
experience. The openness or porosity of the work may be more or less available
to performer and/or audience, and the evaluation of intention will not be
entirely conscious and explicit. The experience and perception of commitment,
of flow and focus, is a multisensory engagement with the work.
c) Presence. Performer/s and audience may be more or less immersed or absorbed
in the momentary experience of the work, or correspondingly more or less
experientially distant or detached. Presence or distance respectively can occur
at a number of levels which need not always coincide, and can be more or less
free from presupposition and morality. For performers, paradoxically, a
heightened sense of presence can sometimes emerge alongside a feeling of
detachment, when there is no longer a need for heavy conscious monitoring and
direct control of the minutiae of embodied activity, such that the sequences
and interactions that arise in real time seem to erupt from outside the
conscious self.
Cheers,
Garth Paine
ga...@activatedspace.com
On Jul 8, 2014, at 12:54 AM, Sue Hawksley <s...@articulateanimal.org.uk> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear John, Johannes and all
>
> To John -
> On 7 Jul 2014, at 13:06, John Hopkins <jhopk...@neoscenes.net> wrote:
>
>> I suspect that you perhaps have explored some of the aspects of breathing
>> modeled by yogic teachings -- as some of the play you describe here are
>> moving somewhat in that direction -- patterning, awareness, presence,
>> pacing, not-knowing, and even fear -- these are, of course, broad principles
>> of embodied energy flow... (Richard Freeman's teachings on 'pranayama' are
>> quite profound in their lucid descriptions of how to fully integrate the
>> breath into embodied and energized presence)
>>
> Yes, absolutely, the design of the breath experiment drew on yoga practices.
> I am not aware of Richard Freeman's writings but have read and practiced a
> fair bit within similar traditions and will look up his work. THanks for
> that.
>
> To Johannes -
> On 7 Jul 2014, at 23:13, Johannes Birringer <johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> How do you know what the others felt or feared? how to you share (reflect?
>> articulate) awareness after the presence/present and virtual moments (and
>> Simon must then not understand your work at all, does he?)?
>
>
> Of course I don't know anything about others or my own experience; just make
> the best attempt at approaching an understanding, using my practice and that
> wonderful technology of language. Phenomenological methodologies are useful
> and Don Ihde's proposals of the post-phenomenological make sense to me. I
> think the processes and outcomes of collaborative and interdisciplinary
> practices are also means whereby we sharing our knowing / not-knowing through
> doing.
>
> all the best, Sue
>
>
> SUE HAWKSLEY
> independent dance artist
> s...@articulateanimal.org.uk
> http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk
>
>
>
>
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