rhythm and the enactive sense of extent and duration SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI Sha Xin Wei Synthesis Center + AME @ ASU Topological Media Lab @ Concordia
Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, Ron Fricke.
financial dynamics Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, Ron Fricke.
Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net non-anthropocentric temporality Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, Ron Fricke.
multiscale rhythmanalytics SYNTHESIS • ASU Media SHA XIN WEI Gesturing (bodies) Organizations Cities 5
SYNTHESIS • ASU felt experience SHA XIN WEI parameter | predicate > effect time > temporality (lived) duration
subjectivity In my many years of research on how and when a mixture of sounds will blend or be heard as separate sounds, my own personal experience and those of my students has played a central role in SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI deciding what to study and how to study it. When I encouraged students to spend a lot of time listening to the stimuli and trying out different patterns of sound to see which ones would show the effect we were interested in, far into the academic year, and nearing the time that they should have been carrying out their experiments, they would get nervous and ask when they would start doing the “real research”. I told them that what they were doing now was the real research, and the formal experiment with subjects and statistics was just to convince other people. -- Al Bregman, CIRMMT McGill 2008 THE INHABITANT OR VISITOR 7
temporality ≠ time SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI
methodological [R]eject as abstract any analysis of bodily space that considers only figures and points [ sensor data ], since figures and points can neither be conceived nor exist at all without [convention | SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI context]. When I say that an object is on a table, I always place myself (in thought) in the table or the object, and I apply a category to them that in principle fits the relation between my body and external objects. Stripped of this anthropological contribution, the word “ on” is no longer distinguished from the word “ under ” or the term “next to . . .” Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 9
grasping | touching ≠ pointing One patient asked to point to a part of his body, such as his nose, only succeeds if he is allowed to grasp it. If the patient is directed to interrupt SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI the movement before it reaches its goal, or if he is only allowed to touch his nose with a wooden ruler, then the movement becomes impossible. It must thus be admitted that “grasping” and “touching” are different from “pointing,” even for the body. enaction Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 10
the body is not in space, it inhabits space If my hand executes a complicated movement in the air, I SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI do not have to add together all the movements in one direction and subtract the movements in the other in order to know its final position. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 11
If I possess the habit of driving a car, then I enter into a lane and see that “I can pass” without comparing the width of the lane to that of the fender, just as I go through a door without comparing the width of SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI the door to that of my body. The … automobile [has] ceased to be objects whose size and volume would be determined through a comparison with other objects. They have become voluminous powers and the necessity of a certain free space Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 12
man - cane - world The blind man’s cane has ceased to be an object for him, it is no longer perceived for itself; rather, the cane’s furthest point is transformed into a sensitive zone, it increases SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI the scope and the radius of the act of touching and has become analogous to a gaze. In the exploration of objects, the length of the cane does not explicitly intervene nor act as a middle term: the blind man knows its length by the position of the objects, rather than the position of the objects through the cane’s length. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 13
habit ~ musician’s “muscle memory” [Trained organist adapting to a strange organ]: Such a brief apprenticeship prohibits SYNTHESIS • ASU the assumption that new conditioned SHA XIN WEI reflexes are simply substituted for the already established collection, unless, that is, they together form a system and if the change is global, but this would be to go beyond the mechanistic theory since in that case the reactions would be mediated by a total hold on the instrument. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 14
spatiality ≠ space SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI sense of extension | spatial relation
We report on how people acquire a sense of spatial relation to each other and to our media rich environment. SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI We call this sense spatiality , after Merleau-Ponty’s treatment which resorts neither to physical abstractions external to subjective experience, nor to purely mental phenomena. 16
spatiality The sense of space requires taking subjective experience SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI as primary data rather than subject-independent measures (such as clock time or “objective” sensor data), which requires phenomenologically informed methodology. Ex. auditory illusions, Al Bregman, CIRMMT, McGill 2008 17
spatiality of own body If my arm is resting on the table, I will never think to say that it is next to the ashtray in the same way that the ashtray is SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI next to the telephone. …the body’s parts relate to each other in a peculiar way: they are not laid out side by side… My hand…is not a collection of points. [ allochiria example] space of my hand is not a mosaic of spatial values. I hold my body as an indivisible possession … Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 18
positional situational body spatiality I am not unaware of the location of my shoulders or SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI my waist; rather, this awareness is enveloped in my awareness of my hands and my entire stance is read, so to speak, in how my hands lean upon the desk Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 19
positional situational body spatiality if I hold my pipe in a closed hand, the position of my hand is not determined discursively by the angle that it makes with SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI my forearm, my forearm with my arm, my arm with my torso and, finally, my torso with the ground. I have an absolute knowledge of where my pipe is, and from this I know where my hand is and where my body is… Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 20
intertwined temporality spatiality SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI => study rhythm
rhythm = inhomogeneous matter Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net x body x relative movement
experiments Embodiment : Delay audio Embodiment : Delay video SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI Embodiment : Novel prosthesis Lanterns Correlation orientation - 23
interval ? SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI What constitutes a tick?
• •• “The difference 'between' Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net two things is only empirical, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic.… Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 28
• • Lightning, for example, distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it [the lightning].” Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 28 \
SYNTHESIS • ASU delay SHA XIN WEI
Sha • SLSA 161105 Ouija Experiments • Topological Media Lab Sha, Montanaro, et al. Ouija: Delay Hexagram Concordia Montreal 2006 synthesiscenter.net
demo: time filter SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI ( live: timespace : tml )
What is the measurable and the non- measurable? Isn't time (which seems to escape measure on account of its own fluidity) that which measures itself? Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004) The present tense is important.
Maturana & Varela: time as a dimension = description Sha • SLSA 161105 synthesiscenter.net Bergson: chain of instants is analytic artifact
“Time” as description [A] mode of behavioral distinction between otherwise equivalent interactions in a domain that has to do with the states of the organism and not with the ambient features which define the SYNTHESIS • ASU SHA XIN WEI interaction, gives rise to a referential dimension.… [S]equence as a dimension is defined in the domain of interactions of the organism, not in the operation of the nervous system as a closed neuronal, network.… Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980) 133.
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