Monday, January 18, 2010

invisible architexture and the teeny weeny trace

A Palimpsest for Tom (by Shannon Rose Riley):
...I ride the train - in the rain...
...weaving a thread through another world...
TEXT - "...that which is woven, web, texture, f. text-, ppl. stem of tex-{ebreve}re to weave." -OED
...unseen unseeing unseeable...
...not just graffiti small tent-towns...
...light motion acid (t)rails...
...not so much space but speed and texture...
"Art is invisible. [...] Most of us suffer from an illusion that might be called the completeness of perception. We think that because we have pointed our eyes at something, we see what is there to be seen.
But we are profoundly mistaken. We take in a scene holistically without realizing how partially we are seeing it, how schematic our perceptions generally are. For a truly intelligent eye, we need to get beyond the limits...."
-David N. Perkins,
The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art
...the teeny weeny trace... ...the spectacular ghost...
...did I scare you? -- it's such a silly trope...
"Cities are more than the people, buildings and geographical areas that define them. They are a nexus of connections creating active, vital communities. The size and shape of these connections may be invisible, even to the residents of a given city. And the location where one thing in the city connects to another thing is often on the move. Points of connectivity may be small, short-lived, visible only on a one-block radius. Connections mutate. Yet the way a city ‘looks’ from the outside (media) can remain proportionately static with the actual generation and re-generation of communities over time, the transit and intersections of people, water, money, memory, ballots, animals, concrete, water, labor, food and information." -Deep Oakland
...I limit my tools...
...like a raindrop...
...The limitation is helpful...
...My eye-hand does a little dance...

...the slow cell phone camera and the speed of the train require that i look ahead to see-no-to feel an image -- or just let it happen... press the small OK button...
...t(rain)-tracks...


...the image reveals...


...trace evidence...
...of I...
...more than eye
can see...


I am here.


Now.


I was here.



Then.



I was there.


Too.

"Neurologist Antonio Damasio postulates that what we mistakenly call 'the
mind,' as if it were an object located in the brain, is more accurately an interactive
relational process between brain, body, and environment. Specifically, the process
of mind is constituted by what he calls 'multiple, parallel, converging streams,'
coded as images, which flow throughout body and brain in response to the
environment, forming multiple temporary 'feed-forward and feed-back projections
. . . .' (Descartes’ Error 93). For Damasio, these images constitute what we
commonly refer to as thought. Mind is 'embodied, in the full sense of the term,
not just embrained' (118), and images are 'the currency of our minds' (Feeling
319). It is important to distinguish that for Damasio, an image is more than a
visual representation; it is a 'pattern in any of the sensory modalities, e.g., a
sound image, a tactile image, the image of a state of well being' (9). Thus, in
Damasio’s schema, the 'brain and the rest of the body constitute an indissociable
organism'; this organism 'interacts with the environment as an ensemble'; what
we call mind is the result of this process; and what we call environment is in
part a result of the organism’s activity as well as its matrix of activity (Descartes’
Error xvi–xvii). Environment here is meant to refer to the organism’s immediate
physical surroundings; it includes climate, space, and any proximate objects,
organisms, etc. Environment influences, and is influenced by, the organism.
Finally, it is important to note that within the organism, Damasio outlines 'two
principal routes of interconnection' between brain and body—the nervous system
and the bloodstream (87). Information, as imagery, moves along these paths,
exchanging neural and chemical signals at various sites.
-Shannon Rose Riley "Embodied Perceptual Practices" Theatre Topics 2004



I arrive in/am part of the city.






...window...
...door... ...tunnel... ...partial passage...

how can we see the invisible network of human traces?

deep pathways and raindrop bloodflow

where can we find the places of energetic constellation?

the image-mind-body-environment

---

how do I move through space?

how am/do I shaped

by this synaesthesia of bodymind?


What does the Eiffel Tower sound like?








Eiffel Tower soundscape by China Blue



Creative Commons License
"invisible architexture and the teeny weeny trace" images, videos, and original text by Shannon Rose Riley are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
contact SRR at misstranslation@gmail.com

Thanks, Shannon Rose Riley (for this marvelous post).
Next: Courage and Foundation


6 comments:

thinspace said...

our unconscious is a whole lot smarter than our conscious self; how can we get more conversation and porousness between them?

Shannon Rose Riley said...

for me that is the very aim of creative process... a whole range of tactics for sneaking up on myself... ;-)

Shannon Rose Riley said...

e.g. I've kept a dream journal since 1980 when it was an assignment in my first performance art class... I now assign it to my own students, not only teaching solo performance, but esp. in my seminar on the creative process... any chance operations; improvisation; working with imagery; etc. I find very helpful...

Tom Schulz said...

Does folding time allow us to experience the there and the here?
I like to arrange my chores so that I don't have to turn left. I call this nodular shopping. One must be cognizant of the purpose, the multiple destinations (and their relationships), and the return home to pull off a lovely composition.
Yet willing to stop off for a coffee, even if it is to the left.
Substitute performance, metallic paint, dryer lint, or adjectives for the word coffee - same thing.

Shannon Rose Riley said...

I think you are exactly right Tom ... I have written on this very idea (although not for some time now)... folding space too can achieve a similar effect... but quantum thinking -- i guess a kind of magical thinking -- is equally useful. xoxox

Jane Schulz said...

Shannon, how beautifully you write. I want to read it over and over. Perhaps I will. Then I will think about it; for now I'm just tasting it.