[-empyre-] Sense as space

[naxsmash]

>  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

hi Renate et al

Such is the premise of my 'seismic memory' work in the Carrizo  
Parkfield Diaries (2003-present)  From the Carrizo plain, "Cadillac"  
of earthquake landscapes, in outback California.

I explore 'seismic memory' blending post-traumatic visualization with  
geophysical data.

My premise is that the geomorphology of aftershocks maps / is mapped  
in the neurophysical pathways of post traumatic visualization.
The 'body' is my consciousness flowing between two 'islands' -- the  
patterns of nightmare image coming from the amygdala, where violent  
memory is cached in primitive high contrast black and white and red;  
and the patterns of seismic mapping as
developed by scientific graphic visualization from data following  
significant tremors.

The 'body' may follow the 'land structures' in general (or vice versa,  
probably).  Still more,  I like the really specific metonym of  
PTSD/'waking dream' hypnogogia  within geophysical manifestations of  
the quakes.  Travelling through the brain, walking through the Plain.   
You can actually watch the cracks moving in the earth after a shock  
around here.

I draw and shoot in the seismically 'drawn' landscapes of the San  
Andreas Fault near my studio.  Then I montage the drawings and digital  
photographs into an abstract field/array.  The array is articulated,  
or 'speaks' through the whole field, with graphic notations which I  
take from scientific literatiure. here's an example : Peak Ground  
Acceleration  http://www.christinamcphee.net/peak-ground-acceleration-carrizo-diaries/

For a very cool article about this kind of thing - this notion of the  
'land following and morphing moves' leads to a consideration of  
'spectacle and performance in re earthquakes.... please see April 2010  
Leonardo http://www.christinamcphee.net/spectacle-of-seismicity-leonardo-april-2010/

Here, Sydney based writer Ella Mudie examines the work of  artists who  
going beyond spectacular representations in their portrayals of  
earthquake activity. "Particular focus is placed upon performative  
techniques meant not only to engage audiences with the properties of  
seismic phenomena but also to stimulate reflection on the complex  
psychological responses they may trigger, as well as their analogous  
relationships to conditions of environmental and cultural  
crisis." (abstract excerpt)  Reviews of work by Natalie Jeremijenko 
+Ken Goldberg, DV Rogers, Christina McPhee, and Susan Norrie.


fondly

Christina




>
>
>
> 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 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
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