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


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Painting My Home (Invisible Architecture and the Personal Myth)


Sheila asks all of us these questions,
"Do you think your family is "well pleased" with you?
Does it matter?
Have you given up on the notion?"

I don't have an answer, but I have this response:

___________________________________________________

"The most effective kind of propaganda, is the kind where the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons he believes to be his own."

National Security Council directive (1950)
From "The Cultural Cold War" - Francis Stoner Saunders 2000


My palette is imbued with the 'colors' of my experience.



"Albert, a Rhesus Monkey" © 2008
From the 1850 Codex ©

If the scene shifts, I may adjust my canvas.

"The joy of the unbridled eye: you can hear better like this. To hear you have to see clearly."

Jaques Derrida A Silkworm of One's Own
From Veils : Cultural Memory in the Present Helene Cixous / Jacques Derrida, 2001 - trans. Geoffrey Bennington


Scanned Photograph circa 1958
Systemic Amazement Factorial©


My brush is carved from the fallen tree.

"We are not, therefore, claiming to show how men think the myths, but rather how the myths think themselves out in men and without men's knowledge.

"Nous ne pretendons donc pas montrer comment les hommes pensent dans les mythes mais comment les mythes se pensent dans les hommes."

John and Doreen Weighman, trans., The Raw and the Cooked 1969
Quoted in
Claude Levi-Strauss, Edmund Leach 1970




"#12, Virginia Creeper on Pine"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


I heard it. Makes way for new growth.



Press Arrow to Play Video.

"(re)volution"© 2010
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©



Next: Guest commentary by Shannon Rose Riley.
"Invisible Archite(x)ture, the ungodly hour, and the teeny."


Thursday, December 31, 2009

"Invisible Architecture and the Road Home"


"My childhood was full of confusions like these, almost willfully acquired,
since I would never admit when I didn't understand something. Not just because I was afraid of looking stupid but because the natural order of things appeared to me to include dusty obscurities, intended to remain unclear."

Suzanne Berne, The Ghost at the Table


"I-77 / Lake Norman"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


I.

I travel. I travel a lot. My excursions are, of course (and as is in keeping with the very nature of the course), bracketed by the leaving and the returning. You may find it ridiculous that I would even mention what appears to be such an obvious notion. But as I spiral away from my home, towards some destination (some destination that most certainly involves - at the very least - both the allure and the anxiety associated with the unknown), I feel the need to remain aware of the spiraling back. Such is the folding back upon that gives me my greatest sense of Home.



"Magnolias / Wendover & Randolph #6"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


II.

I move. I have moved a lot. And while I have been an active
(some might say driven or possessed or even obsessive) participant in the development and construction of each of the houses in which I have resided, the actualized physicality is a very small part of the defining qualities of Home (I would be remiss if I did not recognize here the amazing skill with which my wife Sheila, transforms each new domicile from a Shell of Possibilities into Our Home). Yes, plaster, brick and wood are components. But so are safety, comfort, love, memories of all types: envelopment.



"#9, Canopy Portal"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


III.

But how many times do I breeze through the heart and hearth of my Home as if it were some arbitrary pasture along the Pennsylvania interstate? Familiar in content, but not fully explored?
How often do I live in my Home as if I were a child, or a guest, or a scripted actor?

Scientists speculate that we only know about a mere fraction of the Matter comprising the Universe (and given the transient nature of knowledge itself as it traverses and unravels the strings and mysteries of History and The Future, even that understanding of Matter may be circumspect). Such are my self imposed limitations in the understanding of Home.

As I build and re-build, I aspire to consider the distinctions between habit and ritual.
In this expanded moment, there is the road Home.



Press Arrow to Play Video.

"Higgs boson Luminosity"© 2009
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

"It's like art. Is art useless? Yes and no. The concepts [of particle physics] are so beautiful in their simplicity. And they answer most fundamental questions. Physics and art are two forms of the same wish of human intuition, to understand nature."

Fabiola Gianotti - quoted in The Genesis 2.0 Project / Vanity Fair Jan. 2010

Next: "Painting My Home"


Thursday, December 17, 2009

"Invisible Architecture and the Lure of the Moon"




"Moon Labyrinth"© 2009
from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset


"I thought only of the Earth. It was the Earth that caused each of us to be that someone he was rather than someone else: up there, wrested from the Earth, it was as if I were no longer that I, nor she that She, for me. I was eager to return to the Earth, and I trembled at the fear of having lost it. The fulfillment of my dream of love had lasted only that instant when we had been united, spinning between Earth and Moon; torn from its earthly soil, my love now knew only the heart-rending nostalgia for what it lacked: a where, a surrounding, a before, an after.
Italo Calvino

Cosmicomics / The Distance of the Moon
(1965)



"#8, Blue Moon"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


I have studied the speculative history of the ancient labyrinth, and its close connection to the moon, the myths of the moon, and to rituals related to the moon. Fascinating stuff. Made more fascinating because of the thought-filled conjecture surrounding the study. So much History lost beneath the dust and sea. So much History twisted and knotted. For example, the fourteen turns of the Cretan Labyrinth are supposedly connected to the fourteen phases of the astrological moon cycle. The arguments are compelling and the evidence rich and dense. But who's to say?

Right in this moment, however, I am more interested in my more localized notions of the phrases of the moon: moments of awareness where I bask completely in the light, times of tumbling headlong into the abyss of darkness. I turn and am illuminated, but only as part of me is exposed to the void. I turn again and am caught between the fullness of being and the uncertainty of the new. Waxing and waning.
Apogee and perigee.


For (you see) whatever History dictates, whatever fate portends, for however the tides pull - this,
this is my walk.




Press Arrow to Play Video.

"La Luna"© 2009
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©


"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
Hannah Arendt

Please enjoy this musical interlude: for all my Huckleberry friends...........and me.

Next: "Invisible Architecture and the Road Home".


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

"Invisible Architecture and the Topology of the Labyrinth"




"Delivering You (Hair Ride)"© 2008
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

“The only thing to do,” I gulp, “is to put this lantern shinin right in front of your feet, kiddo, and follow that lantern and make sure it’s shinin on the road rut and pray that it’s shinin on ground that’s gonna be there when it’s shining,”
Jack Kerouac
Big Sur (1962)


"Water Labyrinth #10"© 2009
from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset

The mystery of the Labyrinth has been primarily absorbed within three beautiful and meaningful interpretations. During the era of the Great Cathedrals, walking the Labyrinth became a substitute for a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. When re-discovered by Lauren Artress and other prescient advocates, the Labyrinth journey became a contemplative one; impressing upon its acolytes to leave their concerns in the center, and so cleansed, return (renewed) to the 'real world'. In recent years, the power of the Labyrinth has been embraced by the Medical Community for its recognized contribution to Healing.


"Spider Labyrinth # 9"© 2009
from The Spidey-Hole Series / Autumn Missed Subset

After several years of studying the attached and recognized symbolism of the Labyrinth. After several years of laying out and drawing, painting and making labyrinths, I began to access (what I think of as) the Native Significance of the Labyrinth as an appropriate model for life action. To begin to consider the Labyrinth as going beyond its accepted dimensionality and recognize its axis as well as its axes embraces issues of topology. As time is included then, the Labyrinth becomes a marvelous and expansive tool. Within its patterning exists a folding back upon - an opportunity to review what we have once experienced even as it laps over and around that which we are doing and that which we are to do.



"Disambiguation, 12-06-09"© 2009
Brilliant Notebook ©Project

In what has become a conventional interpretation, a sojourner enters the Labyrinth from the outside, and winds towards the center. I am coming to an understanding that we, each of us, start in the middle. We find our way outwards along the most circuitous path, which becomes our personal and individual story. The gift of the Labyrinth is in the knowledge that inscribes our ability to find our way back into the center. Replenished, we may then get back to busyness. It is symbolic, for sure. But more:
it is in the webs of spiders, the limbed Gestalt of the Water Oaks. Laugh lines, snail shells. It may be regenerative. It may be comfort. It may be part of grieving or of healing. In this moment, let us consider it Home. And fold back across its most available and receptive threshold.




"Analysis Situs"© 2009
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©


Fascinating article here: "The Circular Logic of the Universe"
Next: Invisible Architecture and the Lure of the Moon.

"....part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time"

Sunday, November 29, 2009

"from her little room (invisible architecture of Eudora Welty)"


Contributed by: Carrie Schulz, MArch.


"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time,

but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order,
the continuous thread of revelation."
-Eudora Welty

Appropriate(d) Detail circa 1989.


I have had to perform exercises in mapping.
Some for classes. Some for getting lost. Some for telling a story.

All involve sequencing.

Concrete Contrast, Philadelphia 2009




Does a map start with a point?
You are here:
in the center.


Grace Barrier, Philadelphia 2009


Or does a map start with a limit?
This is the edge:

Concrete Landscape, Philadelphia 2009



As you plot points, events, places,
what happens to the space between?
Do you remember the coast when you visit the mountains?


Appropriate(d) Detail circa 1988.


Do you take new surveys to verify old measurements?

Appropriate(d) Detail circa 1989.



(I went down to the lake, then, and gathered old details for new memories.)

Appropriate(d) Detail circa 1989.




Does a map tell you the past?
Do you capture a place, a memory?

Or does it give you a choice to venture out again,
and give cause for a new map?


Appropriate(d) Detail circa 1988.




(I walked a bag of lemons from one house to another: they brought out the light.)

Kingsport, TN 2009

Ten, still:
"All serious daring starts from within"
- Eudora Welty


Many thanks to Carrie Schulz for her thoughtful posting.
Empathinc. is currently exploring issues of (Being) in Space.
Next: "Invisible Architecture and the Topology of the Labyrinth"


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

"Invisible Architecture and the Drip Line Cathedral"



"I don't really know how to explain it, but when we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both here and at the same time not here because we're already in the process of going elsewhere, if you see what I mean."
Muriel Barbery
The Elegance of the Hedgehog



"I-77, Exit 33 / Sumac"© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


In my backyard, the Willow Oaks knot their limbs into boughed Basilicas. Shallow beneath the surface (hemmed in by asphalt and gravel), their roots reach out parallel to the drip line of the limbs above. A curtain of nether space defines the parameters: issuing fair warnings to
those who deign enter this implied Cathedral.

I should remove my shoes.



"Hybrid Maple / E. 5th and Monroe Rd."© 2009
"Autumn Missed Subset"
from the Convenient Non-locality Series©


Caromming from portal to portal (from project to project), I skitter across the broken pavement of this, My Country. In my expansive backyard, the personalized drip line
becomes inclusive of destination, return and the vastness between.
Does freedom hitch a ride in this sufeit of available and abundant opportunity?

Only as I part the scrim that is my practiced format of being.

Let us all risk stepping barefooted across the established demarcations
of what has become known to us.
That's just good living.




"Laika in Orbit"
Video Collage
From "The Systemic Amazement Factorial"©

1. Escape gravity.
2. Eject boosters.
3. Release.
4. Repeat as necessary.