January 14th/15th has been pious, festive and cosmic. I'm glad to be living in a country which is so conscious of astronomical movements that it closes its banks, businesses and schools and instead prays to the heavens at this time.
Makar Sankranti is a time of Sun worship.
I accidentally watched a film on the TV. It happened to start in my field of vision and I was gripped firstly by its visual style, then by the story. It was called ‘The Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within’ written and directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently it comes from the world of gaming.
Anyway it got me thinking about my piece 'Array' and about recent conversations with Stephan Harding at Schumacher College (whose new book 'Animate Earth' has recently appeared) and David Abram (whose book 'The Spell of the Sensuous' has been influencing me for the last ten years.)
One of the final sequences in the movie particularly caught my imagination. It reminded me of those sumptuous ISKCON paintings in which the soul of each living being is pictured as a small golden light glowing in its heart. In the movie the soul force is pictured as a little light, like tinkerbell, floating up to meet other souls in a field of stars. As this inner fairy rises out of the body of a scientist, he gasps, 'It's warm!'
I can't see any stars from my Bangalore city centre apartment but on Makar Sankranti I'm reminded that they are there.
*
So it’s good that at least we are beginning to acknowledge our mother and our siblings on this planet. This is a small beginning in the search for intelligent life.
The contemporary re-acquaintance with Gaia is useful in helping to alleviate some of the suffering caused by self-centredness. It reminds us of the more-than-human world.
But it does not go far enough. In fact it is the Sun that sustains even Gaia.
The Sun is the Father
And our Mother, his Daughter.
And he himself just one amongst councils and communities.
And each one of us is, to oneself, a star
Making the lights of others almost invisible.
Being,
seen from far away
appears as an insignificant pinprick.
But it is experienced as heat.
Stars are burning crucibles
Creating from their bodies the material of life
And giving rise eventually to spirit.
While we are consumed in the sunshine of the self
We do not feel the heat of the countless stars around us
But in the cool detachment of the moonlight
We can broaden the mind to see the millions of souls hanging in the heavens
And know that each is a fire in space.
That is unless we light the night as if it were day.
Falling into the Milky Way
I see my own little heat as if from afar, as a point of light.
And if I lose that viewpoint, I lose my place.
And it will not be long before I am lost altogether
Blinded by my own fires.
Monday 15 January 2007
Language, Embodiment and Self-Hypnosis
I've been thinking recently a lot about how to make an image of the literate, symbolic scene overlaid, underlying, or embedded in the 'natural', ie non-human, embodied landscape. Like the 'code rain' from 'The Matrix' movies which has become almost a visual cliche now.
Here are a couple of beautiful plays on the idea that other people have made.
I think both of these artists have amazing bodies of work, in terms of range, depth and lightness. And, considering I'd never come across them before, it's extraordinary how much sympathetic resonance I feel.
Thomas Broomé's ModernMantra drawings.
And here you'll find three text pieces which seem to be realizations of my recent daydreams, 'Written Forms', 'Composition', and 'Text Rain'
The work of both these artists are well worth exploring in depth, so I'll leave you now to wander around their websites.
Here are a couple of beautiful plays on the idea that other people have made.
I think both of these artists have amazing bodies of work, in terms of range, depth and lightness. And, considering I'd never come across them before, it's extraordinary how much sympathetic resonance I feel.
Thomas Broomé's ModernMantra drawings.
And here you'll find three text pieces which seem to be realizations of my recent daydreams, 'Written Forms', 'Composition', and 'Text Rain'
The work of both these artists are well worth exploring in depth, so I'll leave you now to wander around their websites.
Friday 12 January 2007
Technologies of the Self
Here's a course description I've just written for students at Srishti. Start teaching next week.
Technologies may be considered very broadly as means towards ends. They can help in the constant striving towards health and wholeness. Their inherent danger however, is that the tools may overshadow the purpose. The design challenge is to discriminate between means and ends, to keep the end in view, and to negotiate the narrow path between useful and dangerous technology. This path has become razor sharp and it is now time to reassess the value of our technologies in terms of personal well-being and the health of the entire planet.
In this lab we will look at spiritual as ecological technologies, emphasizing their complementarity. We will identify as a key issue the relationship between oral and literate culture, between listening and looking, between the vernacular and the institutional, between wisdom and knowledge, between science and superstition. We will trace, in the history of technology, a progression from embodied, participative experience to disembodied, abstract symbol. And we will also conjure future technologies to help to re-integrate and re-invigorate the body of the self and the world.
Technologies may be considered very broadly as means towards ends. They can help in the constant striving towards health and wholeness. Their inherent danger however, is that the tools may overshadow the purpose. The design challenge is to discriminate between means and ends, to keep the end in view, and to negotiate the narrow path between useful and dangerous technology. This path has become razor sharp and it is now time to reassess the value of our technologies in terms of personal well-being and the health of the entire planet.
In this lab we will look at spiritual as ecological technologies, emphasizing their complementarity. We will identify as a key issue the relationship between oral and literate culture, between listening and looking, between the vernacular and the institutional, between wisdom and knowledge, between science and superstition. We will trace, in the history of technology, a progression from embodied, participative experience to disembodied, abstract symbol. And we will also conjure future technologies to help to re-integrate and re-invigorate the body of the self and the world.
Monday 8 January 2007
Practice based Research
Writing is an invaluable aid to memory. But it can also be misleading. Over the weekend I've been working on a konnakol pattern beginning with ta-kitekitetake digutarikitetake...
The 'kitetake' phrase moves the tongue from the back of the throat, across the roof and right up to the teeth. It's very useful to have the written/visualised word as a marker of this movement. Particularly helps in those brain crash moments when everything becomes confused and all structure is forgotten. (Is that some kind of wholesale reconfiguration of the neurons?)
The words can engender a false sense of definition however. In fact it's the movement and the feeling which is important, a tiny part of which is photographed in the word. I have been discovering the immense variation that is possible even within this tiny phrase. It can be voiced at an infinite number of pitches, or unvoiced, in which case it functions almost as a stop to previous sounds and a coiling preparation for future ones. Different parts of the word take on different roles in the rhythmic flow. When it is whispered the 't' sound approaches an 's' and the phrase becomes almost a hiss - like the suck and sizzle of a hi-hat. The 'ka' becomes like the click of a rimshot and the 'ta' like a strong snare stroke. And this whole phrase is simply a substrate around which the bass and melody weaves in the 'Ta' 'Di', 'Thom' and 'Nam' sounds.
I used to think the fingers and limbs were capable of subtle expression and modulation - and indeed they are when they have been trained by a master musician - but the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, face, shoulders and breath are capable of mind-boggling permutations which I am only just realizing. The system is so finely interdependant that I can clearly hear the difference in my facial expressions. And I love the immediacy and constant availability of the voice. I now have a khanjeera and a bamboo flute but even those seem too bulky, fragile, expensive, complex, clumsy and limited in comparison to the voice. With the most fundamental resource, the body itself, direct work is possible on consciousness and musculature.
A question that keeps arising is whether I am pronouncing things properly. I'm seduced by the idea that there is one correct pronunciation. But perhaps, like any language, it is alive in the mouths and ears. It keeps wriggling and echoing in response to the changing environment. Any particular pronunciation is an instantiation by one particular person at one particular time. The joy I experience in my konnakol practice is in the mesmeric fascination with the effects of variations that orbit around the notated marker. The more stable and permanent the marker appears the more stultifying it is to my joyful freedom - or else the more vigorous and confident I must be in pushing and pulling it.
So I can imagine in some Dreamtime, where the words and rhythms originate, that they come in a spirit of pure, unbridled creation. The marks of the environment then help to remember the creation, human oral formulae fix it further, followed by handwritten notes and then printed texts. Finally when it becomes the object of 'scholarly' or 'scientific' study it becomes preserved. Having had some 'education' in this memory game which is so highly regarded in our culture - the ratification of knowledge - I notice the tendency to feel slightly alienated from the material being studied. Eg., I wonder how nasal the end of the word 'Thom' should be, or how aspirated the 'Di' should be. But then I throw off the data collecting -ologist and immerse myself in the performative moment in which the truth shines out. Is this practice-based research?
The 'kitetake' phrase moves the tongue from the back of the throat, across the roof and right up to the teeth. It's very useful to have the written/visualised word as a marker of this movement. Particularly helps in those brain crash moments when everything becomes confused and all structure is forgotten. (Is that some kind of wholesale reconfiguration of the neurons?)
The words can engender a false sense of definition however. In fact it's the movement and the feeling which is important, a tiny part of which is photographed in the word. I have been discovering the immense variation that is possible even within this tiny phrase. It can be voiced at an infinite number of pitches, or unvoiced, in which case it functions almost as a stop to previous sounds and a coiling preparation for future ones. Different parts of the word take on different roles in the rhythmic flow. When it is whispered the 't' sound approaches an 's' and the phrase becomes almost a hiss - like the suck and sizzle of a hi-hat. The 'ka' becomes like the click of a rimshot and the 'ta' like a strong snare stroke. And this whole phrase is simply a substrate around which the bass and melody weaves in the 'Ta' 'Di', 'Thom' and 'Nam' sounds.
I used to think the fingers and limbs were capable of subtle expression and modulation - and indeed they are when they have been trained by a master musician - but the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, face, shoulders and breath are capable of mind-boggling permutations which I am only just realizing. The system is so finely interdependant that I can clearly hear the difference in my facial expressions. And I love the immediacy and constant availability of the voice. I now have a khanjeera and a bamboo flute but even those seem too bulky, fragile, expensive, complex, clumsy and limited in comparison to the voice. With the most fundamental resource, the body itself, direct work is possible on consciousness and musculature.
A question that keeps arising is whether I am pronouncing things properly. I'm seduced by the idea that there is one correct pronunciation. But perhaps, like any language, it is alive in the mouths and ears. It keeps wriggling and echoing in response to the changing environment. Any particular pronunciation is an instantiation by one particular person at one particular time. The joy I experience in my konnakol practice is in the mesmeric fascination with the effects of variations that orbit around the notated marker. The more stable and permanent the marker appears the more stultifying it is to my joyful freedom - or else the more vigorous and confident I must be in pushing and pulling it.
So I can imagine in some Dreamtime, where the words and rhythms originate, that they come in a spirit of pure, unbridled creation. The marks of the environment then help to remember the creation, human oral formulae fix it further, followed by handwritten notes and then printed texts. Finally when it becomes the object of 'scholarly' or 'scientific' study it becomes preserved. Having had some 'education' in this memory game which is so highly regarded in our culture - the ratification of knowledge - I notice the tendency to feel slightly alienated from the material being studied. Eg., I wonder how nasal the end of the word 'Thom' should be, or how aspirated the 'Di' should be. But then I throw off the data collecting -ologist and immerse myself in the performative moment in which the truth shines out. Is this practice-based research?
Sunday 7 January 2007
The Digital Wild
In The Vital Machine, scientist-historian David Channell says, 'One of the most important issues facing us as we move toward the twenty-first century is a new relationship between technology and organic life.' Pointing to medical procedures and engineering technologies that extend life and make survival possible, he argues that the boundaries between the natural and artificial have become less clear. This ambiguity - which he calls 'liminality'- between humans and machines brings discomfort to humans, and for that reason he argues that we need to engage in a reexamination of the relationship between humans and technology so that we can 'intelligently and responsibly deal with [the new technical developments]' (3-4).
The dichotomy of machine and organic suggested in Channell's argument is interesting when we consider that a driving force underlying much of what we humans do is a need to set ourselves apart, not only from the artificial but also from other organic life. As far back as Aristotle, we have classified, categorized, and codified organic life, arriving at the idea that what sets us apart from other life forms is that we 'liv[e] by art and reasonings' (Metaphysica 980b 26-7).
So, in a sense what this special issue, 'Wild Nature and the Digital Life' is meant to do is to refine Channell's call for reexamination by stepping back from distinctions of humanity and technology and looking instead at the liminal spaces between nature and humanity mediated as both are (or can be) through computer technologies.
Perhaps by doing so we will come to understand that that technology is not a category of objects that exist outside of humanity but within it. The essays, art, and ideas that Sue and I have put together for this issue tell us that a more productive response to new technical developments may be one that does not focus on distinctions between the natural and the artificial but rather one that articulates what humanity gains and loses when the natural and artificial come together. Is it not the unknown, the lack of understanding of their relationship, that makes either (and both together) "wild"?
Dene Grigar
"In Wildness is the preservation of the World."
Henry David Thoreau
In the introduction to the "Wild Nature and the Digital Life" Special Issue of the LEA, Dene Grigar asks: "How are humans reinventing 'the wild' digitally? What is the relationship between humans and wild nature, and has it changed with the advent of computer technology?"
The terms "wild", "wildness", and "wilderness" have undergone quite a few transformations -- from a designation of the beastly and savage to the sublime antithesis of "culture" to the rare and endangered spaces that need to be preserved. But in all cases, the "wild" has represented an instance that was opposed to civilization and the problems of humanity - a form of uncontaminated purity.
Both last two LEA's look very relevant to me.
New Media Poetics
and the November issue - Digital Wild
The dichotomy of machine and organic suggested in Channell's argument is interesting when we consider that a driving force underlying much of what we humans do is a need to set ourselves apart, not only from the artificial but also from other organic life. As far back as Aristotle, we have classified, categorized, and codified organic life, arriving at the idea that what sets us apart from other life forms is that we 'liv[e] by art and reasonings' (Metaphysica 980b 26-7).
So, in a sense what this special issue, 'Wild Nature and the Digital Life' is meant to do is to refine Channell's call for reexamination by stepping back from distinctions of humanity and technology and looking instead at the liminal spaces between nature and humanity mediated as both are (or can be) through computer technologies.
Perhaps by doing so we will come to understand that that technology is not a category of objects that exist outside of humanity but within it. The essays, art, and ideas that Sue and I have put together for this issue tell us that a more productive response to new technical developments may be one that does not focus on distinctions between the natural and the artificial but rather one that articulates what humanity gains and loses when the natural and artificial come together. Is it not the unknown, the lack of understanding of their relationship, that makes either (and both together) "wild"?
Dene Grigar
"In Wildness is the preservation of the World."
Henry David Thoreau
In the introduction to the "Wild Nature and the Digital Life" Special Issue of the LEA, Dene Grigar asks: "How are humans reinventing 'the wild' digitally? What is the relationship between humans and wild nature, and has it changed with the advent of computer technology?"
The terms "wild", "wildness", and "wilderness" have undergone quite a few transformations -- from a designation of the beastly and savage to the sublime antithesis of "culture" to the rare and endangered spaces that need to be preserved. But in all cases, the "wild" has represented an instance that was opposed to civilization and the problems of humanity - a form of uncontaminated purity.
Both last two LEA's look very relevant to me.
New Media Poetics
and the November issue - Digital Wild
Friday 5 January 2007
Making Sense
The ultimate lonely desolation is to be surrounded by nothing but reflections of my self and my own creations. Such a psychosis is the opposite of awe.
To inscribe the more-than-human into our writing we now need a computer that breathes.
For a computer language to be more than what we have decreed it to be it must be susceptible to more-than-human influence.
A computer with a multitude of sensors all affecting it would be capable of surprising, inspiring and frightening us.
A radio antenna, ECG electrodes, barometer, molecular analysers, cameras, thermometer, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, ultrasound sensors, mics, compass, spirit level. These would make a computer sensitive and emotional.
Communication with such a machine would be sensible. It would be possible to enter into conversation with such a machine. And what if it had the senses of bats, ants, potatoes? Or even rivers, beaches and mountains? How might it's logic be informed?
To inscribe the more-than-human into our writing we now need a computer that breathes.
For a computer language to be more than what we have decreed it to be it must be susceptible to more-than-human influence.
A computer with a multitude of sensors all affecting it would be capable of surprising, inspiring and frightening us.
A radio antenna, ECG electrodes, barometer, molecular analysers, cameras, thermometer, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, ultrasound sensors, mics, compass, spirit level. These would make a computer sensitive and emotional.
Communication with such a machine would be sensible. It would be possible to enter into conversation with such a machine. And what if it had the senses of bats, ants, potatoes? Or even rivers, beaches and mountains? How might it's logic be informed?
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