[-empyre-] Sense as space

[Alexander Wilson]

Hello again,


Thanks to those who responded. I feel encouraged to expand on these ideas of
sense as space. Insofar as the topological body can take part in sense’s
production, there are several different angles from which this production
can be explored. For a time I explored this idea from the point of view of
architecture. An architecture is a built space, an artificial one. However,
most of us never take part in the production of these spaces: most of us
merely follow the corridors they offer us to move through. If we reduce the
idea of architecture to two essential characteristics : walls which restrict
movement, and passageways which allow movement. Like a labyrinth, sense
allows movement in certain directions while hindering others. For a while my
art was invested in offering people more ways of modifying the spaces they
inhabit.


In 2007 I collaborated (with architect and interaction designer, Karmen
Franinovic) on a project that would experiment with this idea. The project
was called Hinge Dimension and was commissioned by the Enter Festival in
Cambridge, UK. We built a two-dimensional array of freely pivoting walls
that could be rearranged in various ways to form corridors and rooms. There
was embedded circuitry in all of the walls that allowed us to analyze the
the “flow” of the entire space. This flow factor and it’s directions drove a
surround-sound and a visual representation of the flow which was projected
onto the ceiling of the space. (it was a monster of a project) We installed
it in Lepers Chapel in Cambridge. The goal was to demonstrate how different
topologies of space allow for different movement, and to encourage people to
test the spaces they inhabit, entice them to stop taking spaces as
unchanging and determining factors of their bodily movements, but to
actually start taking action to reorganize the architecture’s topology. (An
inspiration for Hinge Dimension was Cedric Price’s “fun palace” which was an
architecture which reinvented itself cybernetically to adapt itself to it’s
inhabitants needs and desires.) (Though somewhat different, this work
resonates with Gordon Matta-Clark's as well.)


If sense is spatial, then the production of the “architecture of sense” can
be understood along the lines of “sedimentation” (phenomenology). Sedimentation
happens when that which is flowing becomes the structure through which it
flows, when the particles flowing through the river become the land
supporting the river, directing it. In a way, all sense is imperatively
conjugated: we tend to allow ourselves to be guided wherever the current is
the strongest and wherever one’s body can most easily steer clear of
obstacles, avoid running up ashore or hitting bottom, avoid friction. For to
avoid the sediment is to avoid death. The poet, the artist, on the other
hand, digs his heels into the mud and draws water from unknown sources. I
see sedimentation as a physical process in which sense is constantly
involved. It is the other arrow of time, the reason why memory always moves
from from explicit to implicit, from conscious to reflexive, from creative
action to automatic gesture. Language, it could be said, has physical
properties. As made explicit in the sculptural writings of Valère Novarina,
words attract each other, repel each other, bounce off of each other,
neutralize each other, etc. They make the body and mind move in and out of
specific spaces. And though words take on a new world of possibilities each
time they are spoken, there is something about them that remains constant
with every utterance: part of their mode of distributing our inertia is
maintained from one event to another. This is why we feel we “understand”
words and sentences: because we recognize the spaces they bring us back to.
But, if sense is a channeling of movement that draws in gestures and directs
them, how did words come to channel movement in their respective directions?
I think the answer to that is : "as a result of habituation or
sedimentation". Over time repetition reinforces memory, as it hardens the
spaces words guide us too, crystalizing their topology into the background
of our experience. When Nietzsche said something akin to, “all truths are
just old lies”, he meant that we forget through habit that our world of
meaning is constructed: we’ve been fooled by our own poetry. Truth is
invention which has hardened, sedimented, crystallized through the
reinforcement of repetition.

On the level of the brain, we see this in a very concrete manner. When we
say “practice makes perfect”, we actually refer to a real physiological
process  that moves memory from short-term to long-term. Repetition
reinforces the synaptic connections between sensory neurons and motor
neurons: repetition of stimuli floods the sensory neurons with serotonin,
which causes part of the protein Kinase A to enter the nucleus and attach
itself to specific strings in DNA, which causes the neuron to start
manufacturing more synaptic connections with the motor neurons. Hence
repetition hardens memory, makes it concrete, physical. Common sense is the
result of a socially distributed repetitive conditioning (think of Pavlov’s
dogs, if only they could, like we do,  share meanings for things. Their
dictionaries might indicate that the definition of food is: "that
satisfaction of hunger which is accompanied by the sound of a bell"). The
past thus impinges upon our receptivity to the future: it structures our
interpretation, our reaction, our anticipation of novelty. An artist, a poet
is, I think, one who tries to pierce these structures to allow chaos to flow
into the system.

OK, time to shut up again.

Thanks for taking the time to think about this with me.

Alexander Wilson

-- 
Alexander Wilson
http://www.parabolikguerilla.com
http://www.encodagesdeloubli.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20101026/36f2f2a1/attachment.html>