My fascination is the exploration of experiential empathy and embodied cognition through reflective -nonlinear encounters; elevating individual distinctions as a means of expressing universal themes – a meditation on cooccurring realities – realities that the audience/user will encounter, and contribute to, in different ways through different mediums.

While I haven’t found exacting language to shape my thesis question yet, per se, I know I plan to make an interdisciplinary, concept driven, transmedia project with at least three distinct components: aural, kinesthetic/tactile/ and an interactive web based application (or perhaps visual/audio components that are intended to be experienced in different contexts which inherently engage different senses (public space, private, in conversation, etc.)

Illuminating paradox, embracing ambiguity, and witnessing without assessing is, I think, the foundation for insight. Insight, to me, arises when a crystallized connection with a specific perspective becomes intimately linked with a previously unrelated idea, and generates a more inclusive, panoramic assessment of other possibilities. For example, this occurs in metaphor, with koans, in moments of change, heartbreak, uncertainty, awe, etc.

My assumption is that thematically consistent, multi-faceted, temporally layered encounters that engage multiple sense organs will be uniquely effective in facilitating user insight  that endures long beyond the particular interaction(s).

I’m interested in shining light on the process of meaning making – creating new ways of relating to self, other, and the environment with nuance and flexibility in a landscape that feels at once ever more reductive and increasingly complex.

I believe awe is a potent change agent that arises when engagement intersects with mystery (aka. uncertainty). I think it’s possible to harness awe, and my case, I want to use the experience of slight disorientation and transcendent wonder to create new experiential imprints that raise awareness of multiplicity in oneness – user subjectivity AND interbeing.

This, I think is the cornerstone of a more conscious, empathic society: distinguishing fact from interpretation/assessment, recognizing binaries, and including a dialectical perspective of “and“. Doing this means caring about the user, meeting them where they are, and gently upending expectations and rerouting habitual assumptions of time, language, identity, and memory – reintroducing them as fluid, ephemeral, co-creative elements.

Optimally, this all occurs in a way where transformational experience belongs to the user and that is located in particular environments. In a perfect world, the mechanisms of technology and design feel invisible, and the user experiences personal revelation in relationship with themselves and the space around them through the prism of the art.

ARTIST/PROJECT INSPIRATION:

  1. Marina Abramovic 512 Hours  Empty space as a living mirror, an organic, ever-changing reflection of what is  – as it changes. I think this piece expresses the ineffable magic of the Heart Sutra  , the Buddhist Prajna–Paramita playfully deconstructs all things, including sacred Buddhist doctrines, all ideas of form and emptiness, until subject and object no longer exist.
  2. The Artist is Present and Rhythm Zero One of my first (rhetorical) questions blogging about my thesis was, “What does it look like to make art that is interwoven and in dialogue with the the dynamic tapestry of an audience? How can creative work witness, reflect, and transform alongside users over time like an organic complex adaptive ecosystem?” Reflecting on this question, I realized Abramovic’s work is emblematic of this transformative dialogue, and The Artist is Present and Rhythm Zero are truly co-creative,  the audience is essential and has significant power over and responsibility for the way the work unfolds. I’m interested in creating experiences that push the user out of passive spectator mode – the mirror/projection like effect of the artist in these works is infinitely inspiring and provocative.
  3. Ann Hamilton Event of a Thread    “Tapestry”, weaving. the intersection of diverse elements, is central to my worldview and creative drive. This work makes fascinating use of space and emptiness in ways both similar to and very distinct from Marina Abramovic’s work mentioned above. The large room is filled with language, material, movement light, shadow, laughter, music – and there is simultaneously an expression of intimacy and grandeur that speaks to my interest in traversing back and forth between universal themes and specific instances or moments. I’m also interested in the ways different types of experience resonate in the nervous system, and how that resonance impacts meaning making. Does it matter? This work engages multiple senses, and plays with time and perception in fascinating ways – I appreciate the theatrical elements of the piece, and I’m curious what it might look like to create something so magical and impactful at a small scale. 
  4. Motto Before I ever opened and tried the Motto app, I was entranced by its description because it so closely mirrored what I want to create. My first journal quotes at length the specific language that resonated for me. Here I’ll just highlight a piece: “a mirror ball that refracts its audience’s imaginations, rearranging the way they look at the world”.  Stylistically, I don’t love it. Neither the aesthetics nor the storyline speak to me. However, the concept of co-creative interaction that demands participation and vulnerability from the user is congruent with my intentions. 
  5. Learning to See, Gloomy Sunday /Learning to See: You are What You See  /Memo Akten   Memo Akten is an artist to whom Craig recently introduced me, and with whom I feel strong conceptual affinity. Learning to See is an ongoing series of works using ML algorithms to reflect on perception and empathy. Sight is a construction of reality filtered through expectation and biases – conscious or not, Learning to See uses an artificial neural network loosely inspired by the human visual cortex – looking through cameras, trying to understand what it sees, and like us, it can only see what it already knows. Conceptually, if not stylistically, this work aligns with my intentions on this project. 
  6. Ocean of Air Aesthetically, I think this is pure magic. This project also does an incredible job making invisible connections apparent, bringing the participant fully into the experience in a way that, I can only imagine, is transformative and unforgettable. When I imagine the ineffable quality that bridges emptiness and form, I imagine something alive and all encompassing, like this. It’s impossible to calcify anything in this atmosphere that pulses, breathes, flows, and sings with constant transformation. There are patterns and rhythms, but to try and nail something down here it seems, would be to deaden it – that is essential to the quality I want to create in my work  – I call it liquid boundaries, and I feel awe, but really, it’s complex adaptive systems dancing together in ordinary ways that typically go unnoticed.
  7. Jenny Holzer: Projections  Jenny Holzer’s Projections speak powerfully to my interest in juxtaposition, loose threads, and imbuing public spaces with provocative, magical, or strikingly unfamiliar elements to create an intensity of present moment awareness and wonder.
  8. Cosmos & Mind Through Six Interactive Art Installations in “As Above As Below I love the interdisciplinary nature of this project. It speaks to the cosmological interdependence that is intrinsic to my work, and it seeks to make invisible connections more visible.
  9. Invisible Sculptures This is a beautiful project that plays with embodied perception and performance in a compelling way, I’m not sure what my analogous version would be, but it is aligned with my project intention and asks similar questions. 
  10. Meditative Story This podcast has an interesting concept. It plays with experiential empathy, occasionally interrupting the narrative to invite the listener to get present and connect with their own body and imagine themselves experiencing what the storyteller was going through in an embodied way, then the listener is invited to shift into their own related experience, and to make a connected. Or be still, something intentional. My work as an actor, therapist, crisis intervention counselor, yoga/meditation teacher have repeatedly shown me how powerful it is to practice imagining someone else’s felt experience, ironically, it helps us keep in mind that even if we deeply relate to someone, we never  know what it’s like to stand in their shoes. This promotes empathy rooted in curiosity and openness, rather than pity or presumption.
  11. Let’s Take a Walk I’ve been thinking about creating a version of this – interactions that invite intimate time with a stranger, since Craig first introduced me to this project in early Fall. Narrative frameworks that put the user “inside” someone else’s habitual experience seem an ideal opportunity to explore uncertainty and empathy as pathways to awe and insight. Envisioning guided audio vignettes, not dissimilar to Meditative Story (above) it could be interesting to set up guided rituals to experience at home. For example, maybe someone want’s to explore a new way of preparing to do creative work  – the narrator might guide the listener through a morning cup of coffee, stirring the cream and smelling the steam rising out of the cup, while doodling images on a scrap piece of paper, letting the mind wander aimlessly, in preparation for a timed writing session. I envision this as one of the three-ish separate components of my modular experience. 
  12. Dialogue Journalism   Spaceship Media’s dialogue Journalism process is a compelling framework for using conflict as the basis of a design system. I’m curious if I can borrow some of the tools for my project.

BOOKS

  1. The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel Van Der Kolk, I read this book years ago and return to it often. It’s about the ways trauma is stored in the body.  The applications go beyond trauma victims and have implications for relationship and orchestrating behavior and perception change.
  2. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism – Chogyam Trungpa I first read this book as a teenager and refer to it often. It is a concise articulation of a Vajrayana worldview expressed for a Western audience. It gave me a framework for understanding the seduction of “problems to fixed”, and the trap inherent in seeking to escape discomfort with “commendable” entertainment, or with activist aggression . Later expanded by John Welwood through the language of spiritual bypassing, I’m wary of using my professional and creative work as anesthesia. I don’t believe in fighting against the inherent messiness of the human condition or denying social gridlocks, Rather, I want to work with seeing reality as it is differently – as something inherently workable. I don’t know what that means for my thesis, but it’s important.
  3. The Years of Lyndon Johnson Robert Caro – These books helped me understand the ways in which biography has the power to illuminate a cultural zeitgeist over a period of time, and that ethically questionable behavior is expressed more powerfully with compassion and equanimity than through condemnation or whitewashing. I’m interested in using story and diverse personal perspective as part of work. I’m not sure how to frame it, but Caro’s work is a lighthouse.
  4. The Art of Is – Steven Nachmanovitch
  5. The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value – Edward Purcell Traces the roots of modern  American political culture with equanimity and clarity.
  6. Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari, An epic transdisciplinary meditation on meaning making.
  7. NonViolent Communication: A Language of Life  Marshall Rosenberg: The bible of radical responsibility for precise communication under any circumstances.

MY IMA WORK

  1. D4C Final Project: Mirror, self/other, projection, deconstructing identity, challenging assumptions, cognitive bias, multimedia, meaning making, examination of language
  2. CritEx Project 1:Climate Modeling – analogy, empathy strategy, audio visualization, embodied awareness, obstacle as path, meaning making, self/other. 
  3. CritEx Project 2:Radical Uncertainty    Embodied non-dualism as a collaborative, alchemical process. Obstacle as path. Naked monsters, befriending demons, welcoming rejected people, experiences, characteristics, to transfigure enemies and obstacles into teachers.  Liquid boundaries, dialectic of absolute and relative truth, meaning making, visualization, metaphor, fluidity of language, etc. 
  4. ConLab Project 1 MINDLAB: CBT, intro to embodied awareness, meaning making, micro-interdependence, language as embodied experience, 
  5. ConLabProject 2 Inside an Open Question  What does it look like to create an immersive experience that encourages a user to actively lean into uncertainty and disorientation? Is it possible to disrupt fixed ideas about the nature of self, truth, reality, etc. while maintaining user engagement? How might I puncture the illusion created by dualistic thinking?
  6. ConLab Project 3, version 3: SCREENTIME (and aborted version, Introspeculation) Multiple perspectives, macro-interdependence, multimedia, mirror, identity pluralism, self/ other. 
  7. Untethered Echo Interdependence, mirror, obstacle as path.

OTHER:

Shilpa Gupta With elements of both Ann Hamilton and Jenny Holzer, Gupta subverts expectations to shift perception and meaning. The work leaves a powerful, haunting residue.

James Turrel  The master of transcendence, awe, and the ineffable.

Shirin Neshat Awesome irreverence.

Maimouna Guerresi: Mysticism. Fantasy. Wonder. Beauty. Her work speaks to the invisible connective tissue of human imagination imagination.

 

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT? (max 150 words)

My thought right now is to build out a working prototype of an interactive nonlinear narrative app in Twine, http://twinery.org/ for the early April deadline, and depending on how far I get, and the feedback I receive, TouchDesigner https://derivative.ca/is something I found that has capabilities to do much of what I’d love to explore in a more fully fleshed out version of this concept. Unreal, Unity, or MAX might also work – Unity was challenging for me. 

My hope is that once I have my project prototyped in Twine it will be clear what programming engine is the best fit to take it further.

I’m also thinking that I’ll do a podcast for 50 days of making, so i’ll have a separate audio component that I can integrate later. That will leave me with figuring out how to actively incorporate sensuality/embodiment.

OPTIONAL QUESTIONS (approx 2-3 sentences each)

  • WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH? Research, documentation, ethics, empathy, performance. 
  • WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON? CONSTRAINT, technical skills, organization/time management, spatial reasoning, creative confidence – challenging perfectionism, increasing playfulness. 
  • TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH? Machine Learning/NLP, 3d scanning

TAGS

#presence #emptiness #bisociation #dialectics #interbeing #cosmology