[-empyre-] Sense as space

[Renate Ferro]

Thanks so much Alexander for sharing your work particularly your project The
Hinge Dimension.  It has been a brutal transition back to reality this week
after the amazing sights of Paris.  Tim and I were able to taks some time
after the Sense Colloquium to see the FIAC Contemporary Art Fair.
Additionally we roamed the streets of Paris for day without any itinerary
just sensing the streets and using our whims to direct us from one place to
the next.  There are many choreographers and performance studies scholars
who work from the departure of movement and criticality within space.  In
fact in May of 2009 we hosted a discussion on the topic of Critical Motion
Practice.  Sedimentation  in relationship to the ³architecture of sense²
appears to be contradictory in my mind especially in your desire for the
³people to test the spaces they inhabit, entice people to stop taking spaces
as unchanging and determining factors of their bodily movements.² In regards
to sedimentation, the body still follows the land structures.  Can it be
that we have an environment where the land follows and morphs the movement
of a critical, discerning, thinking and sensing body?

If Johannes, Sally, Erin, Ashley or any of our other empyre subscribers have
thoughts about sedimentation I curious about what you think?  Renate



On 10/26/10 4:35 PM, "Alexander Wilson" <01ek at parabolikguerilla.com> wrote:

> 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 sense¹s
> 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
> ³flow² of the entire space. This flow factor and it¹s 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 architecture¹s topology. (An inspiration for
> Hinge Dimension was Cedric Price¹s ³fun palace² which was an architecture
> which reinvented itself cybernetically to adapt itself to it¹s 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 ³architecture of sense² can be
> understood along the lines of ³sedimentation² (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 one¹s 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
> ³understand² 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, ³all truths are just
> old lies², he meant that we forget through habit that our world of meaning is
> constructed: we¹ve 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
> ³practice makes perfect², 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 Pavlov¹s 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

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