Flashlight: Darwin's sensory-attention exercise

Flashlight from darwin grosse on Vimeo.

In-Class Sense Experience - Ally

Project One: Attention

There’s the dull drone of students talking and their shoes thudding up the stairs. The microwave beeps repeatedly, then hums lowly, producing a sickly yellow light, while the heater makes a soft growling noise to my right. The chair I’m sitting in squishes slightly under my weight. As I sit, my hand moves to my left, picking up a rectangular object. The texture is mostly soft and grainy, save for the edges, where it gets solid, but not enough to prevent my grip from crushing it slightly. As my hand starts to move back toward my face, I feel my stomach growl. Papers are being shuffled through to my right, and the contents of a bowl are being squished with a fork. My teeth meet together and my mouth is met with the same soft texture as my hand. It’s a rather nutty flavor that hits my tongue; coating and sticking to the roof of my mouth, where I can feel my saliva do little to keep my mouth from drying out.

My hand then picks up a box to my left, bringing it up, for my lips to curl around the small plastic tube poking out of it. Pushing the air back in my throat, my tongue is met with the liquid it desires. The liquid is watery and sweet, in stark contrast to the mass glued to the top of my mouth, which slowly dislodges and is muscled down. Bags are crinkling, and keys are jingling as people mill about the room, looking for a desirable spot to sit down. My next target is a plastic bag, which my fingers pull apart with a snap. The plastic is smooth, almost clinging against my skin – it’s strange. Regardless, I reach into the bag, and grab a few triangular fragments. They’re solid and grainy, and leave small particles all over my fingers. Salty, with a distinct crunch that seems very loud inside my mouth. When a piece gets stuck against the face of my tooth, my tongue flattens, trying to rub the piece out of the nook of my teeth.

Another day, another peanut butter sandwich with apple juice and chips in Driscoll commons consumed before class.

Reading Assignment 1 - Attention

I prepare by paying attention to my breathing, eyes closed. I am immediately distracted by how funny it is to have to prepare to pay attention, but come back to me breath. I feel the cold of the wood floor, smooth, almost soft, as a sink my weight down onto the soles of my feet. My body feels heavy and taut, my head cloudy and eyes shot from too much TV and the photon emissions of Portable Display Format text projected by my computer screen. I concentrate on my feet. They are planted firmly on the wood, warming it, about shoulder width apart. My heels are turned out and toes turned inward, like a snow plow skiing maneuver, but the tension is in the other direction, trying to rotate them out like a ducks feet. I feel the skin on the pads of my feet tugging at the floor, almost creasing or pinching with the tension. I feel tiny muscles on the top of my feet. I lift my pinky toes and spread them further, trying to get my entire feet on the ground, trying to feel it from heel to toe. From my ankles up to below my knee I feel my muscles and tendons straining, a cold/hot tingle. It looks whitish blue in my mind.

CLANG!! CLANG!!

The sound resonates through my body and I tense with surprise. It is tinny and sharp and has a spike that rises up above the rest of itself and pierces the ear like a needle popping a balloon and then a ring that is deep and vibrating. The light on the backs of my eyelids washes from red to yellow/white through black and red and yellow and white and back to black. I feel energy rush from my feet up into my head as I relax again. The sound continues with several more loud attacks and then the usual drop off into small bangs, and then silence again.

I hear the click-clack of un-cut, over-fed and under-exercised cat-claws to my right. And now I hear a lot of things, the refrigerator bouncing through the room behind and to the left of me, the hum of the computer monitor behind me, the sound of birds chirping outside. Two kinds, one with shorter chirps vocalized two at a time, and one with longer trills. There are kids yelling though it sounds joyful. And my breath. I focus back on my breath and concentrate on my body. My lungs expand and it feels like I could breathe in forever.

Twisting out at the knees, each in opposite directions, I drop my sacrum and push it out, imagining that a tail extends from my tailbone to the ground, acting as a post and as a place to rest. I lift my hands just in front of my pelvis and imagine a glowing blue ball that I support between my hands. I breathe in deep. I relax and find I can't. My shoulders feel slumped forward so I move them in several circles. It takes muscles from my lower back almost down to the kidneys, muscles in my neck, my pectorals, my arms to make it happen. I realize that I have let my sacrum relax, so I drop it again and reengage my knees. I slowly try to stand more erect, breathing into the base of my spine and working up vertebrate by vertebrate. I focus on it and then can't find it. When I do I can't tell if it's there or if I am imaging it, and finally I let it slip away. My mind starts wandering, picking over readings and planning a class.

Before long I remember to pay attention, immediately feeling a burning in my hips. Or not actually my hips, but my side-thighs, the muscles right below my hips on the outside of my legs. And my knees. And it's sharp, yellow. I direct my breath into my lower body and try to push the discomfort out with its force. As I breath in I visualize the air filling my lungs and my muscles relaxing as a exhale out. I breathe in through my mouth and taste my breath, stale and thick, mouth dry. I consider stopping to get some water, but decide to try and stick it out for a couple more minutes.

The breath comes in, muscles from chest and abdomen expanding, and goes out as they contract. A cold and dense sensation begins climbing from the base of my spine up my back. I try to feel it without losing focus on my breath. Which makes me feel the tension in my back, right at the small around the kidneys and, now, all the way up into my shoulders. I try to focus on the breathing as my mind tells me to go ahead and stop. The pain in my shoulders builds and I can't divert my attention. Finally I raise my arms above me and shake it off. I lift my feet and rotate them around the ankle, flexing and stretching my toes, first the left then the right. The pain moves from sharp to soft, from icy to warm. This is so much easier when I do it all the time!

Much of this experience is very close to my memory of it. I am not 100% sure about the chronology of all sensations, but the physical sensual experiences are all accurate recountings. I wrote it in first person because it helped me reconnect with my memory of it.

The activity was a simple standing meditation practice and the loud clanging was a water hammer problem with our radiator. I really enjoyed this exercise and was particularly fascinated by the way that many of my sensations had a visualized component when I had my eyes closed. The experience of tuning into and analyzing a subtle feeling to the point of not knowing if it was real was also really interesting. Another thing that struck me was the impact of the sound of water hammer, a sound that is extremely jarring but that I have become totally accustomed to in my day-to-day life.

Cory

Awareness - Darwin

There is a slight throbbing of the underside of the tongue, and a roughness of the back of the tongue on the roof of the mount. There is also a tightening of the upper throat, along with an indistinct pressure in the sinuses. Saliva glands activate upon the thought of relief, but produce little output – although the attempts can be felt. The tongue thickens, and seems to fill the entire mount, pushing against the teeth and forward section of the hard palate. Lips seem hard and rough, self-gluing at the slightest opportunity.

Other parts of the body activate, drawing attention to a sense of need. Nail folds and fingertips become slightly itchy, leading to an overall sense of discomfort. The stomach tilts slightly, as if to draw inward. Breathing becomes shallower, to allow for the most flexibility in gasping for a last breath.

The device is smooth and cold, and makes a slight ringing as I grip it lightly. Picking it up causes a slight juggling act, as muscles tense and release to maintain balance without upset. Cantilevers and supporting structures move into action, a complex set of angles are automatically generated for a complex three-dimensional movement that is visually similar to Calder mobile.

Approach causes many simultaneous reactions. The head bows, neck relaxed and loose (although tight only a minute ago). Salivary glands give one last attempt, to no avail. The entire mouth becomes enraged as blood vessels prepare glands for stimulation. My lips form an embouchure designed to protect sensitive teeth from collision and shock.

There is, thankfully, no smell, since no smell could be pleasant. There is also no color, reinforced by a steady gaze through to the bottom of the device – a determined effort to prevent any contaminants from entering the process.

First touch signals relief throughout. Lips immediately become soft and supple. The tip of the tongue reaches out to meet the entrant, breaking it into two rivulets that each find their own way back to the center, automatically cupped section of the tongue. My eyes close. A ripple of the back of the tongue, top of the palate and back of the throat removes the first wave.

My teeth jolt with the change in temperature. Every filling announces itself with a slight blip of pain, while current dental problems produce an almost audible twang.

No taste. Thankfully, no taste.

Initial actions push waves to the back and down, but subsequent waves are pushed to the side and downward by the tongue, acting as the oral logistics manager. The entire mouth becomes softer and less intrusive. The tongue seems to shrink, better fitting into its place of equilibrium. More waves are taken, with relief throughout the body. Fingertips and nailfolds relax. The stomach expands to take its new cargo, returning to normal. Sinuses relax as well, leading to reduced tightening of the throat.

The lever mechanism continues its task, due to the changing requirements to access the material. Head tilts back, forcing the waves to now push directly to the back of the throat. My eyes reopen, reinforcing the completion of the task.

The levers’ process reverts with almost mechanical precision. No mental or sensual activity is required to return the device to its origin. The mind is so taken with satiation that it seems impossible to sense any of the feelings of its journey, other than the gentle bump that signals its end.

{Drinking a glass of still water when thirsty. Device = glass, material/waves = water}

It is difficult to remove the context from the activity, but I attempted to do so as much as possible. Having performed this activity almost since birth, it was difficult to force myself to notice things that had become automatic. I also noticed the idea of sensory masking: for example, the feelings and sensations of satiation were so significant that there was practically no sense of returning the glass to the table – even when I tried to pay attention!

It was also interesting to see how much physical reaction (and therefore sensory input) was involved in the emotional state of anticipation. My post-experience feelings are of exhaustion!

[ddg]

Writing Assignment 1: Ally

There is a light hum hanging over my head as I enter, in the atmosphere hangs a stagnant air that hasn’t moved since the last person came through. My eyes adjust to the new glare coming from above and reflecting in what stretches out in front of me. My fingertips grasp the threaded material and flex to become tight and pull up from my body, releasing slowly there is now a tightness in my forearms and slight uncomfortable feeling that leaves quite quickly.

The humming coming from above continues and is followed by the cool touch felt in my fingertips to my palm. Slowly my hand brings the cool object closer to my right and the humming noise is gone as the rush of streaming liquid overtakes the room. A slight echo flows through the space as the small room absorbs the loud sound. My hands come together; they experience the feel of each other’s counterpart while the liquid slowly and peacefully flows over each. The sound of pinging is heard on the hard surface below to which the liquid falls onto. My hands slowly retreat from the coolness to receive a drop of opaque gel to my left and the liquid runs down no longer loudly falling onto the surface below, but gently reaching it in a steady stream.

My hands clasp the gel in my palms and suddenly the slight smell of citrus and berry fill-up my nostrils. My hands connect into each other and become slick and smooth. My fingers continue to intertwine as small bubbles begin to invade the surface of my hands and a slight tickling feeling encompasses my touch. The liquid in front of me continues its stream hitting the bottom, but the sound is no longer as pressing and has been overtaken by the feeling in my hands as they continue fold into each other and the bubbles become more numerous. The slight squishing of small bubbles popping between my hands is now becoming louder as the friction increases and my hands become more slippery and the aroma fills the room.

Slowly my hands retreat to the cool streaming liquid and immediately my touch is heightened as the gel flows from my hands and my touch tries to adjust to the cool temperature. Ever so slightly my hands begin to turn red. The sound of crashing, thrashing impact resumes as the liquid hits the bottom and my hands try their best to scrub away all the bubbles. Soon enough the cold is too much to handle and my hand reaches for the cold metal handle. Suddenly the room returns to its quiet state as the stream of liquid stops and only the slight hum and dripping from my fingertips onto the hard surface below is heard.

My activity – washing my hands

awareness writing - andrew

I stretch and feel a pull across my whole body, and then a fine touch across my fingers. Softness as I see darker colors which begin to cover the lightness I had seen previously. I see loose curves, dark loose curves. I feel a stretch across my thigh, I see small gradients in light and less light. My hands begin to move and I feel a pulling and a pressure, and equal band of pressure across my fingertips and then a new pressure on my thumbnails as I feel a slide across my foot. I feel a resistance on my fingertips. I see ridges overtaking fine low contrast lighter details. I feel a slide across my foot, pressure at all points. I feel a confinement on the hairs of my legs.
The light is becoming darker as I pull and feel a slide across my leg. There is a new type of light and darkness with darker tones.
I stretch down with a feeling of pulling and a new weight, a pull downward. I feel pressure on my fingertips, my hands begin to move without full awareness of what they are doing. I see a brown form curved in the direction away form my body, towards my front, which is covered in more detailed symmetrical forms. I feel a push against my heel and a slide as my hands automatically move to a new position. I see a dark void framed by a gridded u shaped form. I feel pressure on my fingertips, the dark void is covered, and a slide against my heal with a final sudden release, warmth, and comfort followed a new mild pressure around my whole foot. My hands begin to move and pull hard. As they pull, the pressure and warmth against my foot becomes greater. The brown form twists and takes on a new dimension outward to my left ending in a sharp band of lighter color. As my hand starts to move, two very fine long forms come towards me going from curved to straightened and begin to fold in on themselves. My fingers move in elaborate patterns twisting and turning and pulling and as they do I feel pressure and sliding against different detailed parts of my hand in intricate patterns. There is an intricate shiny bright form which envelops the long form which then twists and pulls around the shiny one. Before I know it they stop. The long forms have and become two circular forms with two long forms coming out of them.
The pattern repeats but inversely, on the other side. My hands begin to move without me knowing exactly what they're doing. I feel pressure and warmth and a stretch across my thigh as I feel a slide and a pressure against my foot. I feel major resistance and pressure on my fingertips, squeezing and a pull, pressure down my arms. A pop as the pressure releases into a feeling of warmth, secureness and correctness. My fingers then begin to turn and twist, laying over each other, pulling, in strange patterns that I am not very aware of doing. I feel intricate pressure and sliding across different detailed parts of my hands. Suddenly its done and I feel a global pressure against my foot.

In doing this exercise describing my sensation tying my shoes, I found it much more of an exercise in language than necessarily awareness. It inevitably made me become more aware of the activity, but most of my awareness was towards how to convert intricate finite sensations into language. I found this conversion beyond thought, into awareness and sensation, and then into language very strange and interesting. Certain parts, in fact many parts, were way to intricate for language. The process of tying the laces of my shoes was so complex, and so vastly controlled by the automated process of my hands, that I found the intricacies I was experiencing untranslatable. I also found that any description of my sensory experience would have to include for things like environment as the experience was in no way separable from my surroundings. Yet I was forced to exclude environment or my sensory monologue would have gone on forever. I'm curious Ben what you meant by enacted and received sensory experiences. All my sensations seem to fit into both of those categories.

Syllabus (Brief)

Special Topics: Sense, Perception, and the Mediated Body

Overview

This special topics course seeks to explore questions of our physical senses in relation to

the experience of our surroundings, with an emphasis on reception of meaning through aesthetic and technological means. By combining a critical examination of the senses of the body with applications of digital technologies, we can begin to form a basis of understanding how media can extend, truncate, alter or augment our experiences. In turn, this may also provide meaningful direction to the implementation of new media tools.

Objectives

1. To pursue a survey/overview of historical, philosophical, and scientific ideas about sense and perception.

2. To engage in an exploration of the senses of the body in physical space. Look at an expanded view of sense and perception. Look at how the body perceives and responds to space/spatial systems.

3. To enact empirical investigations into the senses. Student-designed experiments into perception and sensory systems. How the body perceives through our various senses. Exploration of the combination of senses.

4. To develop student-initiated creative projects that explore a renewed relationship of digital technologies and human sense perception with the intention of conveying specific meanings and/or experiences.

Course Structure

By combining seminar and studio formats, this course will employ pedagogies of rigorous

intellectual inquiry and focused creative design output.

The course will be broken into four themes: Attention; Memory; Movement; Space & Time. Each topic will provide a frame through which we will investigate the senses, and will also form the basis for student creative projects. By using a thematic approach, we will be able to freely move between isolated study of individual senses and a combinatory approach.

With each topic we will follow a similar process: Reading and discussion of background material; observation, experimentation and documentation; development and presentation of a creative engagement of the senses. Course material may be augmented with field trips and/or guest lecturers, TBD.

Tools and Means

Students will be encouraged to work with the technologies available in the new

C3 Digital Media Lab. Students will also be encouraged to take their explorations out of the Lab and into other environments, and to seek out individual and community interfaces, and implications and opportunities provided by unique environmental and architectural contexts.

GOALS

Upon successful completion of this course, students should have an understanding of the range of issues and concerns regarding the physical senses and how they pertain to emerging digital practices. Students will be able to demonstrate:

1. the ability to synthesize ideas presented in the readings and apply them to the practical aspects of the course;
   
2. a knowledge of terms and concepts in general use in the field of study;
   
3. a general fluency with the possible sense-interfaces with new media technologies.
   Additionally, Students will produce portfolio-worthy creative projects and document those projects in a publishable form that will stand as a record of your efforts.
   
   
   TEXTS

Required reading will be on reserve at Penrose Library, on Google Books, or will be provided to you in PDF format on the Course Homepage, or as photocopies in class. Suggested texts are provided as a resource to you for your professional development.

Recommended Reading:
Jones, Caroline.

Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art

MIT Press, 2006

Jütte, Robert.

A History of the Senses

Polity Press, 2005

Barbara, Anna, and Perliss, Anthony.

Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places through the Sense of Smell

Skira Editore, 2006

Howes, David (ed.)

Empire of the Senses

Berg, 2005

Marks, Laura U.

Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media

University of Minnesota Press, 2002

Noë, Alva, and Thompson, Evan (eds.)

Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception

MIT Press, 2002

ASSIGNMENTS/PROJECTS (Brief)
1. Students will contribute weekly entries to the class website based on the current topic of study. Specific assignments will be given.

2. Each student will facilitate one class session during the quarter, leading the class through reading, discussion, and creative exercises formed around a chosen topic.

3. Students will develop and present small-scale creative projects for each of the Topics covered in the course (attention, memory, movement, space & time). These will will employ the digital media tools of your choosing. Documentation of each project will be uploaded to the class website.

4. Reading, writing and discussion. Students are required to complete reading assignments and be prepared to discuss them in class.

5. A final creative project will be due at the end of the quarter. Students will use the space and equipment of the new eMAD Hypercube facility to present final projects.

6. Documentation of all projects will be collected and kept by students, and will be collected in book/DVD format at the end of the quarter.

Cultural Event write-ups are required of undergrads.

GRADING

Class Participation (attendance, discussion) 20%

Weekly written assignments 10%

Research and class facilitation 15%

Biweekly creative projects 25%

Final Project 20%

Book/DVD (documentation of work and formatting) 10%