Question in Blue Original response in Black Revision / Commentary in Red
1. what have you noticed in the space that you would like to change or adapt?
I wish to affect a change in how the user perceives self, mind, and their position and relationship within space.
The thing I noticed is merely people perceiving space – marking it, recording it themselves. All in the same way.
2. once you have identified your area of interest through what you have observed, How would you like to change it? (think about this in relation of what you can do in a project)
I want to make a wearable device that affects the user’s perception in strategic ways. By unbinding their perception and understanding of possibilities inherent in space from their usual norm-reinforcing routine. But what the hell does this mean? It sounds great to say I’m doing this via renegotiating the relationship of their ability to perceive space, their position in it, and making them aware of the workings of their mind while negotiating space.
But I think it’s rubbish right now.
I saw a skateboarder on my way in to school today. He fell mid-trick and almost smashed his face. He was fine, but imagine the rush, the visceral chemical appreciation of space there; how the physical space of “narrowly missed” has real implications. Imagine the mental correlation of previous knowledge of the hardness of the surface, of the pain and damage possible. I could only hope to chart this.
He was doing what I’m trying to do in a much more effective way.
So my project is really about noticing that people use space in the same fucking ways, and shaking them out of that.
LOUD MUSIC
DANCING
SKATEBOARDING
DANGER
PERFORMANCE
If I make a device, it will be one that fights and impedes the person.
I hate all the over-intellectualizing I am capable of that gets in the way of DOING it.
So I am just going to “get in my own” way productively.
Before I wanted to throw all this on the trash heap, I saw this as having two components: the physical one listed above, and also an immersive Virtual Reality one. I wanted to use PureData, as part of a larger interactive system to generate geomantic charts, and alter a VR environment based on these permutations. The worn device attempts to affect a change in the wearer, but also is to be wired for exchange of this VR data. For example, if I use infrared Head-tracking, it would have the infrared lamps, etc.
Alternatively, (thinking out loud,) Could there be a feedback between two persons: one in a virtual space giving abstract nonvisual cues to one in real, who then in turn reports real-time data that becomes part of the information they negotiate, as obstacles, impositions, etc in the real world.
I seek to induce what some call the “zoom-out moment” wherein you get a sense of the larger scheme of things. Graphically, imagine the entire world, interior and exterior of the mind as a “sand mandala.”
Really “recontextualizes” a curb if you narrowly avoid smashing your face against it. Talk about a zoom-out moment. This still deals intimately with the praxis that is making a sand mandala.
Various people have called it a “Garden of Forking Paths,” a “Black Iron Prison,” or said that “All the world’s a stage.”
But it’s a grand construction within which we are all placing sand, grain by grain with often no understanding precisely why.
3. where would you like you project to take place? (is it an online project where you ‘project’ your enquiry back into the space/ or could it be that you insert something back into the space)
The project has three locations: inside the brain, on the body, and in exterior physical space – eg, I see Lavender Hill and Air Street as prototype spaces to be navigated and interacted using this system.
The project has one location – the territory of and around the body, as it relates to persons and spaces of all types. From the most prosaic to the most inherently dangerous. The mapping will be of the spaces created around the person – correlated with biological information.
4. Why are you doing this project? (are you trying to reveal something within the space itself that is somehow not obvious or challenged)
I seek the transformation of the individual (and the species) by transcending the limitations of our conscious minds.
Aspects of danger are always there, in the space negotiated by one person, in the interactions between two people, etc: and we just choose to ignore them. Sometimes it takes a 16 year old punk with a skateboard to get us to see what we’re really going after.
It’s only our a shared projection of the future (a “mutual delusion”) that stops someone from pushing you off a tube platform. “The most merciful thing about the human mind is its inability to correlate its contents.” HP Lovecraft.
It may sound grim, but being an optimist, and being able to mentally project into the future, I can tell you it will have a happy ending.
5. please list out the inputs to your project enquiry that you will source? (environmental data: wind,temp,light etc, social data: questionnaire through a website, hertzian data: radio waves, surveillance data, electromagnetic radiation)
See, the problem here is that my idea is much more slippery and “alchemistic” than remapping a physical property or indexable set of data. One possible thing to react to is the user’s stress level, via monitoring stress levels at the skin-level, and at the level of vital signs.
Recording biological information from a person while they are in various scenarios – heart rate, “stress” level, etc and discussing / recording (within the limits of language) the experience after it happened will be gathered information. I would like to incorporate some more subconscious means for information to emerge – drawing, automatic text generation, etc.
My Notes:
Properties with which I can work:
Presencing the invisible forces at play around us.
Is there a way to use immersive or augmented realities to manifest these?
Emerging new understanding of the existing senses and of relationship to space via synaesthesia is part of this.
The device should induce certain confusions and force negotiations with oneself in space to cause
Altering the viewer’s alpha-state of consciousness.
Using strobing lights, white noise, and sense data that comes from unexpected sources (via real or pseudo-synaesthesia) is part of this.
The idea of capturing the moment of heightened tension was there previously, but it takes on new meaning now.
Synthesizing what Bernard Cache calls the “interval” between cause and effect into the “architecture of the moment before…”
I think the closest to this I’ve come is throwing clay against my work surface in frustration, see the artifact. This needs more work.
Transcending the frame of everything we already know (the Noosphere) is part of this.
What is done for December, then? Because I am concerned with the amount of thinking that is going into this, and the lack of making things – in terms of aesthetics and craft.
I am not concerned now, because it has a direction – toward danger and performance, toward the body in space.
This opens up the aesthetic to being performance based, edgy, and challenging, even if aesthetically refined.
