[-empyre-] Tina Gonsalves on "Bare LIfe" / forward from Tina

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

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FROM TINA GONSALVES:




Hi everyone

A few thoughts from a rare 30 degree day in London.

My work has always explored aspects of the intimacies and  
vulnerabilities of being human. Most of us go through life hiding our  
wounds and vulnerabilities, or trying as best we can to conceal them.  
Through the use of video, sound and technology, my work often tries  
to expose the fragilities, looking at the emotions and feelings often  
felt when we become exposed.

Nothing seems as private as the bodily experience of raw emotion.   
Emotions are a common thread that every human being can read,  
understand, and share. Emotions influence all aspect of behaviour and  
subjective experience; grabbing attention, enhancing or blocking  
memories and swaying logical thought.  Emotions spread in social  
collectives almost by contagion.  In cohesive social interactions, we  
are highly attuned to subtle and covert emotional signals, Our  
behaviours often mirror each other in minute detail.  At times, we  
may voluntarily suppress our emotional reactions, temporarily  
disguising our intentions or vulnerability, though ‘true’ emotions  
are nevertheless evident in a pattern of internal bodily responses  
that set an underlying tone for behaviour. It is these internal  
emotion responses that I am currently investigating with affective  
neuroscientist Dr. Hugo Critchley and through my role as AHRC  
research fellow and artist in resident at the Institute of Cognitive  
Neuroscience and Functional Imaging Laboratory at UCL, London.

Together, we are creating video installations (FEEL SERIES 2006/2007)  
that respond to the emotional feelings of the audience. Using a range  
of cues, (for example  sweat, heart rate, breath, prosody, movement,  
facial emotion recognition, temperature shifts) we are discerning the  
physiological signatures of emotional states to create software that  
recognize and respond to subtle changes in the body. We are then  
creating potent emotional narratives that create engender emotional  
changes in the body. These are tested in the lab for their salient  
effect on the body. As the emotional language of the body  creates  
the narratives of the work itself, we are tapping into ideas of bio- 
feed-back. As the audience adjusts their internal body, they adjust  
the video that surrounds them. Seeing, feeling and interacting with  
the work allows viewers to gain a personal insight and perspective to  
their emotional reactions. We are then interested in ways of  
influencing the emotional state of the audience, entraining different  
feeling states within the viewer. For example, how can you bring  
someone from sadness to happiness?

When an audience member participates in my video installation work, I  
want them to become very much aware of themselves. I want them to  
become sensitive to themselves; their breathing, their voice, their  
conversation, their sweating, their emotional responses.  I am  
interested in creating art experiences that allow the audience to  
have a more intimate relationship with their own body, to feel more,  
to notice the fragilities, to expose more.

It has usually been in my most vulnerable moments when I have truly  
felt the joy of others, and also true fear of life and all it offers.  
My senses are highlighted. The feeling of vulnerability elicits a  
very visceral reaction in my body. A knot builds in my stomach, my  
heart speeds up, I feel a little faint, hands begin to tremble, voice  
quavers, face flushes. Feeling of tightness rise in my throat. Tears  
well up in my eyes, and tumble down my cheeks. I can no longer  
disguise my emotional state.  My autonomous nervous system exposes it  
for all to see. All who surround me are now confronted with my  
emotions. Some people pretend not to notice. Other people try to make  
it go away. My work often tries to highlight how we deal with  
emotions in social environments. “Medulla Intimata” (2004;  
collaborator Tom Donaldson) , is a sensor based digital video  
jewellery prototype that monitors the wearer’s  internal emotional  
state by using prosody. Video self portraiture is transmitted  
realtime to the screen of the jewellery in response to the emotional  
tone of the wearers voice. Through video, the wearer reveals more  
than they usually might, and repressed and hidden emotions leak into  
the world of polite conversation. The jewellery changed the way  
people interacted. When people communicated me, they felt my  
jewellery was very vulnerable, so therefore in return, people began  
to have more intimate, deeper and more creative conversations.


I enjoy Joseph Beuys comment about what it was to be an artist.  “You  
weren’t showing your magnificence and your wealth of ideas and your  
huge creativity, you were showing your vulnerability. And it was your  
vulnerability that people picked up on, the perception of your  
vulnerability as a person and as an artist that sparked the  
creativity in other people”.

At one time or another, we are vulnerable, all scared. I create work  
that attempts to allow us to become more sensitive to our feelings.  
If we embraced vulnerability would we become more compassionate, more  
creative, more present?