A discussion and lecture document: Prof. Phillip Baldwin ([email protected]) 917.385.2446
THE DOCILE BODY IN THE ACTION MATRIX
The docile body in the action matrix
We had a number of things going: we had the brain cap. This was amazing. It is a brain wave sensor cap that reads and then combines a matrix of emotions and thoughts to move a matrix. We had the kinect which isolated the three dimensional body in any lit or unlit space. With the cameras it could isolate the head torso, arms, and legs of the actor in the short field of the camera. This would work well getting the whole body in action and getting the couch potato off the seat in front of the computer. The new dimensions of activity, stretching and possible cardio utility unfolded before us. The existing commercial software was kitsch and vile. The possibilities of open ended expression-the use of film and sound textures-would greatly contribute to a type of freeing of kinesthetic expression. There was the web camera on any laptop. Thomas Martinez combined the generation of white pixel count to increase the volume of any given music or sound selection and then to randomize it within the given linear narrative of that work. We could use white pixels as well as film to increase speed and amplitude. The randomizing feature was interesting also.
There are a couple of other transducers that would become responsive to the sychchronous or real time body. Within each question that we posed of the body we see that the first binary remains the greater question of the difference and similarity between what is generated in real time…the audience, actor…and the situation of the stage and the Internet…and what is archived or is asynchronous. This tension exists in the life of most individuals who not only use the Internet for their ‘real time telephony but also their archived use of e mail. Within the body of each individual there is a larger question of their given DNA and the daily and momentary use of that DNA. Another binary that we isolated in the spring semester’s inquiry and use of these toys was a greater question of the relationship of body aesthetics to body utility: what are practices of ‘wellness’ over the practices of dance and movement. Another big question concerned the supposed dichotomy between the body mapping in the mind and the use or the engagement of mirror neurons. Within the last fifty years of the last century…pretty much at the end of a devastating war where many nations asked their young men to sacrifice their fives in the face of ripping ballistic steel…the second half was marked with an enticement to a spectator/consumer culture dominated by the television. The forms of propagandistic one-way communication with this medium tended to create passive audiences and the fabled couch potato embedded within the society of spectacle. As I write this now there is a full fifty percent of all Internet users in America also contribute to some sort of blog or social media feed. The concept of ‘pro-suming’ and not merely engaging your mirror neurons with spectacle has arisen in the twenty short years that the internet opened to the larger public in 1993.
So the larger inquiry concerns intersecting information with this new pro-summer. All of the body mapping will traverse the three combined geographies: the landscape of the psyche, the realm of the molecular world, which includes books to hold, and the new digital telematic world. With the tools at hand the playful and meaningful intersection of the body and mind that weaves through these newly combined geographies holds many fruits for expression and utility within in this current ‘mashup’ as the young call it. …’Integration’ sounds so constipated. A couple of the last elements…which I have structured on a horizontal axis…are the use of devices such as the smart phone and the database aesthetics emerging from the general and specific dataflow of any sorts of information existing on the internet. The line up for examination of the ‘docile body within the matrix of physical computing inquiry would include the brain cap, the kinect, the web cam, the sound sensors, the smart phone, and any sort of data flow coming from or entering into the internet. We can attach any other sort of sensor and transducers…such as a servomotor and other electronic devices that read heat, light, wind, and anything the molecular world dishes out.
On the vertical axis I have lined up a similar set of ‘tools’ that measure or express the various data in and out of these three geographies: the psychic, the molecular, and the digital. They would include but are not limited to: film, music and sound, game and narrative, a servo motor that would control anything molecular, a robot, any sorts of database aesthetics and the internet at large, and motion and physical performance. Within this matrix of bodies, transducers, and millions year old psyche and body we intend to write code that would allow for a modular application of questions, aesthetics, and therapies upon the intersection of these tools and formal inquires. The resulting code…written in max msp and delivered with inexpensive transducers that combine agent, message and receiver we hope to explore the aesthetic interweaving of the three geographies and produce works in progress and performances and exhibitions. There is a larger intersection between art and technology/science. Some of these intersections raise questions of whom the modern body and psyche intersect with a degree of health within the three geographies. We hope that a partnership with scientist and technologist within the fields of human factors, psychology, biology, information studies and many other fields will participate and find avenues for their own inquire after our larger aesthetic and even moral questions have been raised within the matrix.
There is often a salient and deadly disjunction between ‘situation’ and simulation. As a military analyst has said of the prolonged battle in Iraq and Afghanistan: I would rather have mediocre actions taken on fresh and pertinent questions than brilliant execution of strategy based on tired and inadequate questions. The new set of art and technology inquires…in addition to the inquires over the strategies and ends of education are enhanced by a constant questioning of and within given ‘geographies’. We hope this matrix calls forth the pertinent questions of the expressive and ‘useful/healthy body within the three geographies.
THE PUBLIC INTERFACE IN THE SPACE OF FLOWSdiscussion document: prof. phillip [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE PUBLIC INTERFACE
The space of flows and the space of places:
Has public space eroded? Within the three geographies-the molecular, the digital, and the psychological-have we witnessed two hundred years of colonization of the psyche by consumerism? Manuel Castles has posited a dichotomy within the new telematic geography place over the old molecular (physical geography) and psychic. He states that those wishing to assert their economic and cultural being within these new and daunting flows must reinforce a sense of the ‘space of places’. The individual must ‘ground’ themselves in a heightened sense of the public: buying local, attending to neighborhood projects, using the public realms within their living radius…doing everything that that grounds the final telos of human value within the ‘space of places’. This seems to be a simpler imperative, as it is wise: the empathetic and sympathetic character of human charity and localized behavior extend a type of karma and community that benefits…ultimately…the fractioned within the space of places. Yet how does the ‘space of flows’ attack these spaces of place? How are the three geographies affected by the contrast of the new technologies of the space of flows and how is w to assume a critical, ethical, and aesthetic grounding in the space of places?
With these telematic interface experiments I have attempted to address the larger critical questions within the space of places. I have used the very new, consumer level gadgets to specifically address the dynamics within the space of flows to find some sort of direct impact within the space of places. How ill and enfeebled is the space of places? Certainly the sense of community with a telematic and diverse population such as found within the east coast of America doesn’t retain the sense of place found within an Italian pizza or even an English pub. Three or four times a week I conduct a type of public discourse in the form of a class lecture. I lay out the agenda for each lecture and then…repeated several times…I conduct a type of modern Socratic public dialog on the salient questions within this forum. At least this is what I think I do. Even after I explicitly lay out the readings and very linear arrangement of the material to be absorbed I am confronted with a type of apathy. If I don’t state…or threat to evaluate…the students absorption of material there is no inherent desire or curiosity to deal with the given material. The public discourses within the classroom of the university…something that has existed in this form for over two thousand years…is treated as a cynical joke or, at best, a type of punitive forum for the evaluation of rote-absorbed material. My attempts to isolate ‘binary relationships’ within contemporary entities will sit there inert in the face of a new space of flow: the smart phone text messaging. Often the students tell me that they are taking the notes of my class’s as they are sitting in this public classroom yet I know them to be connected to friends and events in social media. The ‘mask’ of their screens is usually hidden to me the performing monkey trying to engage them in a discursive grounding within the culture of the classroom. What suffers in this swift stream of connected information is exactly that type of critical grounding that is initially aesthetic, then it has an appearance as a moral exercise that consolidates the information that they will seem ‘to need’ when they assume a larger sense of the public.
If you can’t beat them join them: a couple of the defenses against the swift and destructive currents of the space of flows are my use of ‘crowd sourcing’ through their blog sites, the building of a larger public project, and the regular you tube interviews that I post from the beginning of the class. In the two hundred years or so of commodity culture (in the west since Adam Smith lets say and up to the beginning of the massive commoditization of culture in China) the capacity for the human psyche to commoditize itself has been criticized from Marx through Foucault. The landscape of desire has been overlaid and reacted ‘critically’ to the world of the immediate environment. Human brain development has been attributed to the capacity and the necessity of a being to ‘mind read’ the others in the local tribe. The size of a military company of about two hundred men hasn’t changed since the roman legions. The cave paintings that exploded throughout Neolithic Europe seemed to come from a need to digest the physical world of images upon a permanent medium (with strange similarity to the Magian or even platonic use of the cave wall as a doppelganger to the human psyche). As human cranial development hasn’t changed much in the past 200,000 years the need to express and reflect the physical world in terms of images seems to have happened around fifty thousand years ago. The current landscape of conscious and subconscious desire (the embracing of pleasure at the service of procreation, and the avoidance of pain) still has its cave walls though these things have a far swifter stream to fight against within the jet streams of the Internet. The grounding that I have attempted through assigning the blog site as a type of cave wall must struggle against an un-grounding in critical form in addition to types of add and cynicism…. a great cynicism that seems to be an effect of the telematic that nothing is permanent…. especially the desire to witness within the telematic.
After the use of the blog site I incorporated the use of the avatar social media sites like second life. This found no interest with my New York based students. I then sought to use the very simple and inexpensive mediums of film, music, game, drama, servo motors (that turn the digital into the physical movements) database aesthetics and motion created by performers. As I found amazement with the ‘magical’ use of these items I also found a type of blasé reception of these gadgets. The space of flows was still too swift and the comfort of their screens was still their most trusted ‘public portal’ to the other possible critical realms.
Is the screen of the laptop or smart phone ‘public’ in a grounded culturally critical sense? Perhaps not. If we have the imperative of sharing incorporated in the space of places we need to achieve more salient means of engaging a public discourse. The psyche has turned into a self-commoditizing mechanism in the swift stream of the telematic. What would turn this tide?
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
WORKSHOP IN CREATIVE METHODS: NYC, SEOUL
16
Creative method: A Travel Workshop. Seoul, NYC.
Initial responses to who what when why how to make this work.
Who: and exchange of primary and secondary school teachers from Korea and the United States. The ten-day program consists of exhibitions, symposia, personal blogs and vlogging, and workshop exercises in English and Korea in methods of creativity and how to impart educational curriculum to maximize creativity and innovation. With select teachers and administrators from Korea we will employ our method over various curriculum such as math, English and Korean literature, science, technology, and sociology/political scientist and economics to integrate these new methods of teaching the play down the rote method of teaching. The experience will culminate in a staged performance (dance, media, and theater) and a personal blog entry on how the workshop culminated. With the changing needs within educational reform this program will expand within a certain time a greater curriculum for the integration of innovation, creative thinking, and Socratic and critical synthesis within the educational system of Korea.
What: with an inspection of the various disciplines within the Korean educational system we approach the need for greater creativity and content synthesis in a new manner. Borrowing from the French semiotics of the 1920s and the film analysis of Lev Manovev we explore the two axis of critical and creative thinking within any content. Various critical contents, fields, disciplines, movements, and subjects exist on the vertical plate. We call these paradigms. At the intersection of any teacher, student or citizen's life they are expected by the economy to gain some facility over a discipline that is useful or profitable to society. The need for a high level of specialization often negates the chance for creative thinking. We also recognize that, in this highly technological global economy and society, the demands to find an expertise within a select disciple often puts the citizen -student in higher education and postgraduate institutions for a long time. The emergence of online instruction has done much to get rid of the time and space hindrances of higher education but the critical cohesion and creative is often lost in this online instruction. We recognize that there are demanding specializations that exist as paradigms to be encountered with what we call the syntagms or creative narratives moving on the horizontal or 'time based' chronology of the subject and the society at large. For example on third of all professions that are studied in college now will be gone from the 'market' within five years. The paradigm of 'technology' is a field that doubles in computational power and expansion every 18 months according to Moore’s law. We have included an idea of 'creative technology' to add the interest and the insertion of a curriculum within the 'time line' of the student grasping this subject.
As the paradigm, the subject, and the modular study of 'communications technology' are studied there are types of benchmarks of study that the student should move through in order to account for effectiveness in a 'right now' and future economy. On the horizontal, narrative, or syntagmatic axis we have the student and teacher move through a to z method of completions. Absorption, recitation, and creative mastery of that paradigm might also mover through 'media arts', journalism, coding science, and semantics. Or creative method focuses on the individual teacher/student narrative movement through the paradigmatic disciplines. It is in this manner that we avoid a general anarchy of thought and focus in a narrative manner...building interest...in the larger and stipulated completion (using all of the tools of media including the internet, film, still image, 3-d modeling and light coding) to arrive at a new product service that is manifest to the student and an audience.
Need is the mother of invention. We face systems of collapse in economic, society, ethics, and other realms that we considered useful and necessary to the societies involved. A student today has to look around at the social political and economic upheaval that confronts them in their young lives. They often feel that these problems appear to be insurmountable. Yet, through this method of building the 'answers around the questions' we attend to an ancient 'Socratic' method of inquiring wile monitoring the metrics of education around the narrative level prescribed by the instructor. The impulse to the creative begins from many sources and origins.... large amongst these are both joy and lack. Out of joy the child creates and plays and the child’s figures this to be a natural training for later work. The contrast is homo ludens.... the human of play...and homo Faber.... the human of wok. This is a nature aspect that is experienced globally and is natural to the species. It is often crushed by institutions, families, and later work that needs as its product regimentation and conformity. The second aspect of the impulse to creativity is that of a 'negative' feeling which must not be fear but embraced. This is one of 'lack'.... it arises out of the original psychology of the individual experiencing the lack of the original paradise of the mother and continues from there into a lack of the commodities within a social narrative that tell the individual ...as exterior benchmarks that they are becoming successful. In this needs...especially in later life...innovation and invention spread. Rather than rewarding a subject for their conformity in a doomed system equivalent to arranging deck chairs on the titanic...the creative and 'Socratic ' teach places the problems and questions before the student and the produce...not consume their method out of the contextual...'narrative' problem.
In this way the database...the online store of information about a produce, service, or social or scientific fact or body of knowledge is aligned and intersected/contrasted...in a controlled modular method with the assigned 'time/space' narrative plane of the 'horizontal'. These structure...stet out as a modular method of study...is then contrasted with the selection of paradigms within a set bundle of study within a school system. It is in this method that e combine the skill and hard work of absorbing a particular study outside of personal expression, with a mean of creativity imparting and fabricating new products, services, or 'things in itself'.
Why?
From the method listed we have arrived at an answer to this question. The global social and economic tumults...coupled with sever questions of the environmental safety of our biosphere in addition to an inspection of the quantity of humans within the largely urban world we have a need to reform the very institutions that ask and formulate the original questions that could lead to innovative solutions to these larger...and overwhelming questions. The fact that current educational system where prepared with an idea of industrial and 'Taylorist' efficiencies in mind is obvious. The need to develop a changed curriculum with responsive means and ends to a fragile and interconnected planet will lead to a grater inspection of and, perhaps, might lead to a greater sense of fulfillment within the citizen students themselves.
When: for a period of ten days in New York City, and then a corresponding ten days within select environments in Seoul we will (with a larger idea of franchising the method for other places of call such as Rome...villas in the hill outside of Rome and Florence, Ankor Watt, a sea born study, and many other possibilities ...the subject will find that the stimulating surroundings will lead to a greater atmosphere of creative fruitfulness. This program is band its method is based online so that the curriculum, with the attending laptops, code, performing arts of the specific area, blogs, vlogs, and narrative creation in exhibition and film will succeed in various places because of the rigor and the open atmosphere created by the mentors and the situations that are found.
How/how much: with a travel and living stipend of about $2000, coupled with the teaching and technical media fee of another $2500 we will move the members through these courses in creative and creative methods. This will culminate in a program that will expand the method of the creators, certificate course by and through Korean agencies, and other programs that can be picked up with completion of courses in stimulating and beautiful environments for 4500 we will begins these methods and hope that they expand not only in Korea but within educational reform of the west and eastern nations as well. Such as Italian villas and ruins in the Yucatan and Ankor Watt. We feel that these methods...coupled with an online study course will lead to the creates stimulation and effectiveness which will not only build the teaching subjects abilities to train and mentor this new creative method...but will also increase their salary within their positions.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
WORKSHOP IN CREATIVE METHODS: NYC, SEOUL
17
feel that these problems appear to be insurmountable. Yet, through this method of building the 'answers around the questions' we attend to an ancient 'Socratic' method of inquiring wile monitoring the metrics of education around the narrative level prescribed by the instructor. The impulse to the creative begins from many sources and origins.... large amongst these are both joy and lack. Out of joy the child creates and plays and the child’s figures this to be a natural training for later work. The contrast is homo ludens.... the human of play...and homo Faber.... the human of wok. This is a nature aspect that is experienced globally and is natural to the species. It is often crushed by institutions, families, and later work that needs as its product regimentation and conformity. The second aspect of the impulse to creativity is that of a 'negative' feeling which must not be fear but embraced. This is one of 'lack'.... it arises out of the original psychology of the individual experiencing the lack of the original paradise of the mother and continues from there into a lack of the commodities within a social narrative that tell the individual ...as exterior benchmarks that they are becoming successful. In this needs...especially in later life...innovation and invention spread. Rather than rewarding a subject for their conformity in a doomed system equivalent to arranging deck chairs on the titanic...the creative and 'Socratic ' teach places the problems and questions before the student and the produce...not consume their method out of the contextual...'narrative' problem.
In this way the database...the online store of information about a produce, service, or social or scientific fact or body of knowledge is aligned and intersected/contrasted...in a controlled modular method with the assigned 'time/space' narrative plane of the 'horizontal'. These structure...stet out as a modular method of study...is then contrasted with the selection of paradigms within a set bundle of study within a school system. It is in this method that e combine the skill and hard work of absorbing a particular study outside of personal expression, with a mean of creativity imparting and fabricating new products, services, or 'things in itself'.
Why?
From the method listed we have arrived at an answer to this question. The global social and economic tumults...coupled with sever questions of the environmental safety of our biosphere in addition to an inspection of the quantity of humans within the largely urban world we have a need to reform the very institutions that ask and formulate the original questions that could lead to innovative solutions to these larger...and overwhelming questions. The fact that current educational system where prepared with an idea of industrial and 'Taylorist' efficiencies in mind is obvious. The need to develop a changed curriculum with responsive means and ends to a fragile and interconnected planet will lead to a grater inspection of and, perhaps, might lead to a greater sense of fulfillment within the citizen students themselves.
When: for a period of ten days in New York City, and then a corresponding ten days within select environments in Seoul we will (with a larger idea of franchising the method for other places of call such as Rome...villas in the hill outside of Rome and Florence, Ankor Watt, a sea born study, and many other possibilities ...the subject will find that the stimulating surroundings will lead to a greater atmosphere of creative fruitfulness. This program is band its method is based online so that the curriculum, with the attending laptops, code, performing arts of the specific area, blogs, vlogs, and narrative creation in exhibition and film will succeed in various places because of the rigor and the open atmosphere created by the mentors and the situations that are found.
How/how much: with a travel and living stipend of about $2000, coupled with the teaching and technical media fee of another $2500 we will move the members through these courses in creative and creative methods. This will culminate in a program that will expand the method of the creators, certificate course by and through Korean agencies, and other programs that can be picked up with completion of courses in stimulating and beautiful environments for 4500 we will begins these methods and hope that they expand not only in Korea but within educational reform of the west and eastern nations as well. Such as Italian villas and ruins in the Yucatan and Ankor Watt. We feel that these methods...coupled with an online study course will lead to the creates stimulation and effectiveness which will not only build the teaching subjects abilities to train and mentor this new creative method...but will also increase their salary within their positions.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
WORKSHOP IN CREATIVE METHODS: NYC, SEOUL
18
methods. This will culminate in a program that will expand the method of the creators, certificate course by and through Korean agencies, and other programs that can be picked up with completion of courses in stimulating and beautiful environments for 4500 we will begins these methods and hope that they expand not only in Korea but within educational reform of the west and eastern nations as well. Such as Italian villas and ruins in the Yucatan and Ankor Watt. We feel that these methods...coupled with an online study course will lead to the creates stimulation and effectiveness which will not only build the teaching subjects abilities to train and mentor this new creative method...but will also increase their salary within their positions.
A discussion document: Prof. Phillip Baldwin ([email protected]). 917.385.2446
Monday, May 23, 2011
CENTERING THE ECO/EROS DILETTANTE
A discussion document: Prof. Phillip Baldwin ([email protected]). 917.385.2446
Monday, May 23, 2011
CENTERING THE ECO/EROS DILETTANTE
A discussion document: Prof. Phillip Baldwin ([email protected]). 917.385.2446
Monday, May 23, 2011
We use iphones and droid phones, rigged with custom controller apps. ‘Layer’ augmented reality inserts of ‘clues and latent desires’, gyro mouse gesture controllers, sentient cameras tuned with Max and Jitter code, the text of the American Decameron play within a play, projections from within the ‘smart device’ and on the walls of the theater itself. We run this venerated script of culpability and escape with the current tools of culpability and escape. We are running a custom multiplayer game mod that is projected on the inside of the theater.
Monday, May 23, 2011
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
Become one with it
The text continues:Perceive not the objectsbut the distancebetween themnot the soundsbut the pausesthey leave unfilled
EAST ASIAN MA AND TELEMATICS: SPACE/TIME AS COGNITION AND AESTHETICS.
Perceive not the object but the distance between them not the sounds but the pauses they leave unfilled
Are the rocks placed on the ground the islands of paradise is the white sand the vast ocean that distances them from this world
Breath Swallow this garden let it swallow you Become one with it-ONLINE SOURCE.
There are a lot of comparisons, but I can outline some glaring examples. I lecture. This focus has been like that of perceiving the European formal garden: everything starts from an acceptance…an acquiescence of the formal point. Western theater is this way. The film…. that great democratic flickering on the inside of an auditorium is the same way and even more deceptive: the audience member gets to thinking that the ‘other’ has been eliminated in there perception of the formal product…to be perceived and consumed formally…in the dark. The audience gets to think that the lineage from the massive cathedrals, …perhaps even the cruel blood sports of the roman…through the court theaters and into the great formal palaces of Europe into the dark movie hall with the expensive ticket. Some of my students say that in the hyper urban environment this dark movie theater is good only for watching a lousy film that they don’t have to pay attention to and they can make out. They can’t do this in their small rooms or on lonely country roads parking. They say NetflIx is better for getting as many films as they want. Or DVDs. The small formally arranged lecture/theater/court formalism has ended up as a dark petting place. It is fitting that it didn’t go out with a bang.
So telematics…that thing which is ‘out there’ but is ‘too much’ is chipped away at daily by the use of the young and the old alike. The social media are still self-defining though the recent rebellion in Egypt has showed the world what this frivolous medium can really do when opened up. I have hard time getting focus in the class that deals with machines. I have included all open source software and other ways of democratizing this medium but it has pretty much done that itself. The costs on this equipment are so low that almost every student coming in can use the free sources. And why did a paternalistic ‘formal’ society allow this? Because they wish to connect the neurons of the telematic…the sematic web…with as much information as possible so that it can be placed in a ranking system. The searches as well and the ‘neuronal’ influences of many individuals with many types of desires combine. A 12 megapixels camera that does high-density film making as well as still shots costs about one fifth of what it costs five years ago. The past weekend t mobile was giving out smart phones if members subscribed to the program. What we see happening in this emergence…the way of getting being in and off of the social mediums and such is a type of city or garden. The garden metaphor works better because the city implies a type of social utility. One just shows up in the garden…not wanting to take away anything but the aesthetic pleasure and the conceptual realignments that this might afford.
The garden is a medium for meditation Perceive the blankness Listen to the voice of the silence Imagine the void filled-ONLINE QUOTE OF MA.
SEQUENCE. HOW WE MAKE OUR WAY THROUGH THE SEQUENCE OF THE GARDEN.
Perceive the silences in a medium that doesn’t have silences. It doesn’t have the openings because we perceive it as a mass. We move through it and it appears to be filled. But is it? What are the silences in our approaches to this very special garden? These are the things that we make by going on and off in this medium. It is the way in which we place things synchronistically and asynchronistically. Do we find things because they wait for use or do we find them because we desire these things right away? In the contact of the moment?
After the first fixed shot the following text is read:MAThe garden is a medium
For meditationPerceive the blanknessListen to the voice of theSilenceImagine the void filled
After the zooms, we read the following words in the frame:Are the rocks placed?On the groundThe islands of paradiseIs the white sand theVast OceanThat distances themFrom this world
B r e a t h eSwallow this gardenLet it swallow youBecome one with it
THIS IS A PROPOSAL TO CREATE A ‘TELEMATIC CULTURAL CENTER’ FROM THE Villa Castello Vignanello.
This unique proposal is to create a wonderful center of culture, lectures, installations and exhibits that employ the latest in ‘telematic delivery’. With the new ‘immersive environments’ we now truly live in a ‘zero distance’ communion. Networked performances, music, web based installations, seminars and other ‘meet up’ can and should be conducted in some of the most beautiful places on earth…this villa is the magnificent subject in mind. Through an installation of the minimum of telematic delivery-high speed Internet connection, a series of high lumen projection systems, and other minimum technological combinations, the Villa Castello Vignanello Can is transformed into a first tier telematic exhibition space. TED conferences, university seminars on social transformation, architectural collaborations with existing agrarian economic development, collaborations on sustainable practices…all of these are possible. We would begin with a residency and then partner with a local and then global (US, Asian) university. With the telematic interest in a residency and the site-specific creation of residence halls the Villa Castello Vignanello will invite world leaders in commerce’s, art, and society. The participants, the patrons, the fans, the students, and the collaborators in this unique project will establish a residency on a number of scales. This is a ‘genus loci’ of an inspired place: Villa Castello Vignanello. …a place that…on many levels…could belong to many…
The telematic salon objectives and ‘site specific’ and distance collaborators:
1. PAIR OFF COLLABORATORS ACROSS FIELDS AND DISTANCES2. LOCAL/DISTANCE COLAB.3. POSSIBLE NETWORK PERFORMANCES...PROJECTED4. IT SHOULD BE SPECTACULAR.5. AVOID THE MIDDLE BROW: AIM FOR 'HIGH BROW' OR 'LOW BROW' OR 'NO BROW'.6. INVOLVE PROJECTED AND INTERACTIVE FORMS.7. WRAP THE 'COLAB' TOGTHER WITH SOME SORT OF TELEMATICS.8. FIFTEEN MINUTE COLAB PRESENTATIONS, 30 MIN AT MOST.9. TRY TO INVOLVE THE AUDIENCES.... ON SITE OR DISTANCE. 10. POSSIBLE COLLISION OF FIELDS: POETRY, ARCHITECTURE, DIGITAL MEDIA, FILM, INTERACTIVE MEDIA, GAME, URBAN PLANNING, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, PERFORMANCE, INSTRUMENTATION, MUSIC, COMPOSITION, TASTE, TOUCH, HYBRID FORMS, WRITING, ENGINEERING, INTERFACE DESIGN, PROFESSING, DRAMA, PLAYWRITING, POLITICS, MEDICINE, SHAMANISM, DANCE, ENSEMBLES, COLLECTIVES, SMART MOBS, STUDENTS.
MA AND THE FOUR DIMENSIONAL CONCEPT OF REALITY IN TODAY’S TOKYO!During the last few years, I have in my art been working with the understanding of time in different ways. When I spent a few months in NYC in 2002 it became apparent to me that I often understood time as a part of space. I saw time as a variable of space, and I found it difficult to separate that which has already happened from what is happening in the present. This made me question my linear perception of time. During this period I also started to think about how I perceived my everyday life. I saw it as extremely rational, with days structured in order to fit everything in. I did feel an increasing emptiness in this “ticking things off” throughout the days. In my efforts to try to understand where this linear perception of time and this rational way of thinking came from, as well as what it means to me and to the society that I live in, I came in touch with the Japanese concept of Ma. I understood that Ma meant a way of perceiving time that was different from the linear perception. I looked for all kinds of literature on the subject, which turned out to be a not so easy thing. I therefore decided to go to Tokyo. With me on this trip was Daniel Segerberg, who is also an artist. In Tokyo, we had a wide range of contacts that kept increasing when we asked for people to help us understand the concept of Ma. The text that follows is written in collaboration with Daniel Segerberg as a means for us to try to understand Ma and the Japanese space/time. Lacking literature and Internet sources, it is our own interpretation based on the conversations, the art and film we experienced and gathered before and during our stay in Tokyo in October of 2005. A brief explanation of the concept of Ma.
Ma; the empty space, the in between, the silence, the pause, the emptiness, the interval, the distance, the timing etc, is something that is present throughout the entire Japanese society, but it’s predominantly in the traditional arts that you usually refer to the concept of Ma. In old ink painting for example, you would say that the focus should lie within in the absence of the brush and the ink. The blank paper is a state of limitlessness where anything is possible. It symbolizes the source of all shapes, beyond time and space.
In the literature we were able to get a hold of before we went, written in English or Swedish, Ma was often explained as a four dimensional concept of time and space. This is something that we later found out to be incorrect, and therefore realized that we really did not know what this “Ma” actually stood for. We had to start from the beginning by randomly or actively asking Japanese people that we came in touch with, “What exactly is Ma?”
“In New York people are scared of the silent parts of a conversation. Ma means a unity within the silence”, said a musician who had lived in NYC for ten years. Or, “Good Ma is the timing in a joke,” a dancer explained. A Karate champion described Ma as “the distance between yourself and your opponent”. He explained that the right Ma is everything in Karate. The distance should put you of reach of your opponent. If you step into your opponents Ma you give him an opportunity to attack. One move should get him down. Kendo has the same principles; one strike with the sword should be enough, the rest is Ma. Ma is also the timing in sumo wrestling. The wrestlers stand in front of each other, look in to each other’s eyes and let their feeling decide when to open up the fight. There is no judge to let them know when to start. Should the timing fail, you start over. “Ma can be the distance to your lover, the right timing for a kiss etc. When you get to know each other you can decrease the distance to your lover”, the karate champion explains. Every bow in the Japanese everyday life should be magaii (good Ma); it should come at the right time, simultaneously. A Buddhist priest defines Ma as “silence between movements” and an artist explains Ma as “an interval without movements; silence” Or “why not the laundry room in Swedish apartment buildings” as Jun, a physicist from Tokyo who had lived in Sweden four years suggests, when he attempts to give an example of a Swedish Ma.
A four dimensional concept of reality
We slowly started to realize that, in order to understand Ma, as a space/time interval, we had to begin by trying to understand how time and space is traditionally viewed in Japan. But firstly, a short reminder of the western perception of time and space.
In the west, we have ever since the antiquity perceived space as three-dimensional (length, height, depth). It is a static perception of space; a homogenous space. It derives from a linear perspective where you place yourself, the subject, outside the space to observe the space as an object. The conception of a room becomes a visual abstraction. The time dimension is removed and accordingly the static room is isolated. One of the reasons for this is to facilitate for scientific calculation. In this sense “time” has always been detached from space. The west considers time as absolute and linear.
Reality tends to be perceived as that which can be proved scientifically, as seen from the outside. Days follow the absolute and linear timeline. It is often a struggle against time. The traditional Japanese perception is however built on an inside perspective that derives from the way we as humans experience our surroundings and ourselves. Japanese people see themselves as parts of a certain situation. To the Japanese, reality tends to be more of a movement in and out of space/time related situations. They perceive space as a physical experience rather than a visual abstraction.
To understand this perception you have to go back to the 7th century when Shintoism (Japanese nature religion) affected the Japanese way of thinking.
How timespace is created
The Shinto religion is still of importance in today’s Japan. Kami is God, but not a God that the religion attempts to personify. Kami is an abstract atmosphere. It can have its temporary dwelling in a tree or inside a mountain for ex, but it’s never permanent. It is temporarily animated. To create a dwelling for Kami you can circle a specific area with four poles and a rope. These areas are, when empty, Ma. If the spirits choose to descend into this empty space and take place within it, the place comes alive, it becomes a situation, a space/time.
Ma, a space for potential occurrences
The English word “spacing” i.e. the ongoing form of “space” might give a better reference to the space, or space/time, that the Japanese traditionally experience. It indicates that reality is a constant flow. In order for a movement to take place there has to be a vacuity, or it will remain static – everything stays in its place. This time wise and space wise vacuity or interval is Ma. The space is empty, but filled with an expectant stillness that holds the possibility of change. Ma can therefore be the silence in a conversation, the distance to your opponent or your lover, a pause in a piece of music, timing in a joke or in sumo wrestling. It can also be the classical architectural lower level space in a Japanese home where you are meant to take your shoes off before entering the living areas. This sunken space becomes sort of a pause where you kneel down to take your shoes off, put them in their place and put your slippers on. In this case, Ma is something that provides space, both physically and mentally, space wise and time wise and makes for a pause in the on going.
Ma and experiencing space in today’s Tokyo.
The feeling of moving around Tokyo is different to any of the Western cities in more ways than one. The hesitant attitude to each other, the cautious nods, the reverent approach to physical objects that you hold on to with both hands (including money and stamp sized receipts) the flower pots and plants outside every building, the fashion with its incredible sense of detailing and combination, the irregular shapes of the Japanese china, the small tapestry that hangs on the outside of the intimate restaurants and indicates that we are not supposed to stare at the people eating etc. Once we found some literature on the Japanese philosophy of aesthetics Wabi-Sabi, we felt that it gave us words to describe the feelings of Tokyo that we had tried to define. (Wabi is philosophy of spatiality, direction or path; Sabi is an aesthetic of objects and their possession of time. Both of them forms of space and time combination.) These are some key terms of the Wabi-Sabi principles and its Western counterparts (as Leonard Koren puts it):
Modernism Wabi-Sabi
public private
logical, rational intuitive
absolute relative
prptptypical idiosyncratic
modular variable
progressive cyclical
control of nature harmony with nature
technology nature
adaption to machine adaption to nature
symmetrical organic
rectangular curved
man-made natural
slick, polished, smooth crude, rough, tactile
maintenance degradability
reduction/subjugation of sences expansion of senses
clarity ambiguity
functionality, utility naturualness
materiality non-materiality
all-weather seasonal
light,bright dark, dim
cool warm
Generally, one can say that that the western modernistic ideals are based upon the Hellenistic conception that underlines the permanent, the grand, symmetry and perfection. These ideals are based on the western philosophical perceptions of power, authority, dominance and control, of others or of nature. Wabi-Sabi however, is based on principles such as circumstances, asymmetry, and the non-perfect and finds a certain melancholic beauty in the perishable, all that is fading away and heading towards death. According to Wabi-Sabi, the static (permanent, symmetrical, perfect) is already dead; and is therefore not subjects of change or continuation. (During the last ten years western philosophy has begun to adapt ideals that are similar to those of Wabi-Sabi. Still, I would like to argue that western philosophy and aesthetics are nevertheless based on modernistic ideals.)
The feelings that we experienced during our walks around Tokyo and that could be defined by the Wabi-Sabi principles were not only referring to the personal questions, but for the general aspect of the city. Most of the streets in Tokyo are too narrow and winding for a vehicle to pass through. If you turn round the corner of one of the main streets, it is easy to get lost in a confusing labyrinth of miniature streets, until you are back on a main street again. Trying to make sense of a map is bound to fail. If at all there are any correct maps of these labyrinth streets.
It is said that there is not one single building in Tokyo that is older than 20 years. Tokyo is constantly changing, gradually. The city develops along the guidelines of Japanese philosophy, based on principles of the perishable, humane, non-symmetrical and non-perfect without planning, hierarchy or form. Some say that the static and almost museum-like European capitals will have difficulty adapting to the needs and wants of the future society. During the 1850-60s vast areas of Paris, Rome and Vienna had to be torn down to make room for new ideals such as wide straight avenues. The western concept of control and need for surveillance does not allow this almost amoeba like change and adaptation of the city according to the needs of its inhabitants.
One of the most obvious indications of the difference in time/space standpoints between the western cities and Tokyo is that the streets in Tokyo don’t have any names. French philosopher Roland Barthes writes about this in his book “Empire of Signs”: “This domiciliary obliteration seems inconvenient to those (like us) who have been used to asserting that the most practical is always the most rational […] Tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others.”
There is however a mail delivery system in Tokyo. The first classification of Tokyo is 23 different “ku’s”, or districts e.g. Minato-ku, Shibuya-ku, Thereafter each district is divided into areas of approx. 20 blocks that are given a certain number. Within this area each block gets a number. Finally, each house on that block is assigned a number. The address could be: Shinjuku-ku 4-6-2. It may sound rational in its own way, but what makes it complicated is the fact that on every block the oldest building gets number 1, the second oldest gets number 2 etc. The blocks are, in our opinion, not organized in any practical logical sense.
Finding your way through Tokyo requires an inside perspective. The focal point is “how do I stand in relation to my surroundings?” Or rather, how am I part of this situation? You familiarize yourself bit by bit; “I know that when I reach the corner where I once saw that old woman trip I have to turn right to get to the station”. The principle of an inside perspective become even more clear when talking about Japanese gardens. To experience a Japanese garden the correct way, you have to move through it. You enter a world, an experience, a feeling, a situation; you pass through and move on to the next. The experience evolves through time. Moving around the city is a similar thing. The Japanese garden can be compared to the traditional French gardens that are based on the principle of symmetry and are to be experienced from a certain point, outside of the garden; the throne. You are to be able to have a general view of the garden, to have control. The French gardens are based on a linear perspective.
Barthes on Tokyo: ”This city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience…” You will not understand Tokyo through rational, printed information (maps, guidebooks, telephone books) instead you get to know this city through using gestures.
The two different ways of orientating oneself, from the outside or the inside, can also be viewed as two different ways of looking at your everyday life. Either place yourself outside of the situation, take control, make plans for the future and “tick off” things on the to-do list, or picture yourself as a small part of a much bigger situation, unknowing and without control of what is to happen, and look at what this specific situation has to offer.
Three opinions on Ma, from the contemporary art scene in Tokyo
“In Tokyo today, being increasingly influenced by the western market economy, there is not much room for Ma”, says Ega a Japanese DJ and art/music writer. The subway crowd at peak hour illustrates the difficulty in moving around, where any space form is completely made impossible by body’s pressed together. The time in between occurrences becomes shorter. It’s a constant rush to get to the next appointment. There is hardly any room for reflection.
The artist Saki Satom carried out a project where she brought a lump of clay in a bag with her on the subway every day. The clay formed into different shapes between her and the other closely packed passengers’ body’s and created a sense of meaning to the gaps in between.
Masato Nakamura (who represented Japan at the Venice biennale 2005) told us that he was influenced by Saki Satoms project when putting together his piece “the Sukima project”, 2001. Sukima is related to Ma but more specifically means “opening” or “crack”. Nakamura invited artists to work with the very narrow spaces that run in between the buildings of Tokyo. Nakamura draws parallels between the city planning of Tokyo and the game Tetris, a game where the purpose is to fit blocks as tightly together as possible, in the shortest amount of time. He wonders where there is room for artists in today’s Tokyo, and reasons that -the artists could take place and act in the spaces in between buildings, just like a hacker who floats around the margins of the computer systems.
These voices illustrate ways of thinking in Japan. Even though they feel that there is not much room for Ma in the light of western market economy, the space/gaps are still in their consciousness. You see them, not just as spaces, but also as the potential for something. The major difference might be that today there might not be enough time to leave the negative space/time (what would a negative time be?) empty: you fill it with stress, a lump of clay, or with art.
Ninia Sverdrup February 2006.
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Literature:
Barthes, Roland 1999: Lémpire des signes; Sacchi, Livio 2004:Tokyo, City and Architecture; Fridh, Kristina 2004: Japanska rum; Isozaki, Arata 1986: catalog to the exhibition Space-Time in Japan-Ma; Koren, Leonard 1994: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosofers; Murakami, Takashi 2000: Superflat, Izutsu, Toshihiko 1977: Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism; and fragments from the internet.
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real" subject of an image. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. The Japanese word "ma" is sometimes used for this concept, for example in garden design"[1][2][3][4]
In a two-tone, black-and-white image, a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank (white), thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. However, reversing the tones so that the space around the subject is printed black and the subject itself is left blank causes the negative space to be apparent as it forms shapes around the subject, called figure-ground reversal"Elements of an image that distract from the intended subject, or in the case of photography, objects in the same focal plane, are not considered negative space. Negative space can be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject but not the subject itself. Usage of negative space will produce a silhouette of the subject.The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic and often overlooked principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term is also used by musicians to indicate silence within a piece.It can be a difficult concept to grasp. One tool used by art teachers in teaching about positive and negative space was popularized in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In the exercise, students copy from an upside-down drawing or photograph. Because the picture is upside-down, students don't readily recognize the objects in the picture. They are able to give equal attention to the positive and negative shapes. The result is often a much more accurate drawing.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
Making them care is the first step. Making them responded to other human beings on the other end of the camera…multiple cameras. Within the limbic brain is the key: the emotions of belonging, meaningfulness, and an overcoming of alienation. Was it proximity and community that caused this same alienation that the participant now wishes to overcome. Employment: to distribute skills and services over a distance where…in the locality…there isn’t the need for that skill. This means that what needs to be taught is a types of new skills for the telematic geography. Performance: what do we like to see, hear, and experience stories? Will a sense of participation in games and gaming overcome the ancient forms of drama, film, and television or will the new medium and delivery merely adjust the ‘form’ of the older medium as indicated by McLuhan. The content of life, ambition, crime, sex, death, love, war, and all the lesser actions of humans remains, yet it is the form…usually but not always conditioned by a new communications technology, that forms the new outer shell and delivery.
Yet it is with the interplay between the human appropriations of this communications technology that creates the new movements within society. The university will change under the vast pyramid scheme of expensive high education and the way human beings absorb synchronous and asynchronous. The synchronous is more engaging…or at least it should be in order to survive. The asynchronous just sits there. Lev Mendelev outlines the interplay or the inheritance that new interactive media takes from the Russian film montagists such as Eisenstein: frame, sequence, impression and the strong ‘linear time’ sequence over the expression of paradigms of ‘content’. He called this the interplay and tension between database and narrative. As coders and other specialist attended to the ways that databases exist ‘out there’ human storytellers proceed with their creation and absorption of their narratives. Face book and twitter are interesting cases of this tension: there are many satisfactions is returning to the face book page and seeing what your friends are doing yet you don’t want to be absorbed completely with a life on the machine…. you cannot…though some do…merely exist with a shallow senseless life on the machine responding to all of those who are replying to you. The impulse for voyeurism and exhibitionism is overtaken by a need to engage the other senses. What kicks in with most of these interactive forms…and this will include the university of the future…is the compelling and persuasive power of the synchronistic. Libraries have existed for a long time yet it is in the medium of their brick and mortar that the public has found their attraction. Libraries were structures to get lost in and absorbed with. The success of the asynchronistic…, which might include the demise of theater, the university, and other institutions, that seem to be cracking under the stress of the massive fanatical and communications paradigm shifts…will lie not in the synchronistic enhancement…but in the way the asynchronous attracts. Within this might be the concept of ‘Ma’ or the delicious interval, which allows for a moment of inspection…infinite inspection.
Usage in Eastern Philosophy
The Taoist philosopher Lao Tse wrote extensively on the concept of Ma including his poem The Uses of Not :
Thirty spokes meet in the hub, but the empty space between themis the essence of the wheel.Pots are formed from clay,but the empty space between itis the essence of the pot.Walls with windows and doors form the house,but the empty space within itis the essence of the house.[7]
Perceive not the objectbut the distancebetween themnot the soundsbut the pausesthey leave unfilled
Are the rocks placedon the groundthe islands of paradiseis the white sand thevast oceanthat distances themfrom this world
BreatheSwallow this gardenLet it swallow youBecome one with it
MA
The garden is a medium for meditationPerceive the blanknessListen to the voice of the silenceImagine the void filled
After the first fixed shot the following text is read:MAThe garden is a mediumfor meditationPerceive the blanknessListen to the voice of thesilenceImagine the void filled
After the zooms, we read the following words in the frame:Are the rocks placedon the groundthe islands of paradiseis the white sand thevast oceanthat distances themfrom this world
B r e a t h eSwallow this gardenLet it swallow youBecome one with it
The text continues:Perceive not the objectsbut the distancebetween themnot the soundsbut the pausesthey leave unfilled
EAST ASIAN MA AND TELEMATICS: SPACE/TIME AS COGNITION AND AESTHETICS.
Perceive not the object but the distance between them not the sounds but the pauses they leave unfilled
Are the rocks placed on the ground the islands of paradise is the white sand the vast ocean that distances them from this world
Breath Swallow this garden let it swallow you Become one with it-ONLINE SOURCE.
There are a lot of comparisons, but I can outline some glaring examples. I lecture. This focus has been like that of perceiving the European formal garden: everything starts from an acceptance…an acquiescence of the formal point. Western theater is this way. The film…. that great democratic flickering on the inside of an auditorium is the same way and even more deceptive: the audience member gets to thinking that the ‘other’ has been eliminated in there perception of the formal product…to be perceived and consumed formally…in the dark. The audience gets to think that the lineage from the massive cathedrals, …perhaps even the cruel blood sports of the roman…through the court theaters and into the great formal palaces of Europe into the dark movie hall with the expensive ticket. Some of my students say that in the hyper urban environment this dark movie theater is good only for watching a lousy film that they don’t have to pay attention to and they can make out. They can’t do this in their small rooms or on lonely country roads parking. They say NetflIx is better for getting as many films as they want. Or DVDs. The small formally arranged lecture/theater/court formalism has ended up as a dark petting place. It is fitting that it didn’t go out with a bang.
So telematics…that thing which is ‘out there’ but is ‘too much’ is chipped away at daily by the use of the young and the old alike. The social media are still self-defining though the recent rebellion in Egypt has showed the world what this frivolous medium can really do when opened up. I have hard time getting focus in the class that deals with machines. I have included all open source software and other ways of democratizing this medium but it has pretty much done that itself. The costs on this equipment are so low that almost every student coming in can use the free sources. And why did a paternalistic ‘formal’ society allow this? Because they wish to connect the neurons of the telematic…the sematic web…with as much information as possible so that it can be placed in a ranking system. The searches as well and the ‘neuronal’ influences of many individuals with many types of desires combine. A 12 megapixels camera that does high-density film making as well as still shots costs about one fifth of what it costs five years ago. The past weekend t mobile was giving out smart phones if members subscribed to the program. What we see happening in this emergence…the way of getting being in and off of the social mediums and such is a type of city or garden. The garden metaphor works better because the city implies a type of social utility. One just shows up in the garden…not wanting to take away anything but the aesthetic pleasure and the conceptual realignments that this might afford.
The garden is a medium for meditation Perceive the blankness Listen to the voice of the silence Imagine the void filled-ONLINE QUOTE OF MA.
SEQUENCE. HOW WE MAKE OUR WAY THROUGH THE SEQUENCE OF THE GARDEN.
Perceive the silences in a medium that doesn’t have silences. It doesn’t have the openings because we perceive it as a mass. We move through it and it appears to be filled. But is it? What are the silences in our approaches to this very special garden? These are the things that we make by going on and off in this medium. It is the way in which we place things synchronistically and asynchronistically. Do we find things because they wait for use or do we find them because we desire these things right away? In the contact of the moment?
After the first fixed shot the following text is read:MAThe garden is a medium
For meditationPerceive the blanknessListen to the voice of theSilenceImagine the void filled
After the zooms, we read the following words in the frame:Are the rocks placed?On the groundThe islands of paradiseIs the white sand theVast OceanThat distances themFrom this world
B r e a t h eSwallow this gardenLet it swallow youBecome one with it
THIS IS A PROPOSAL TO CREATE A ‘TELEMATIC CULTURAL CENTER’ FROM THE Villa Castello Vignanello.
This unique proposal is to create a wonderful center of culture, lectures, installations and exhibits that employ the latest in ‘telematic delivery’. With the new ‘immersive environments’ we now truly live in a ‘zero distance’ communion. Networked performances, music, web based installations, seminars and other ‘meet up’ can and should be conducted in some of the most beautiful places on earth…this villa is the magnificent subject in mind. Through an installation of the minimum of telematic delivery-high speed Internet connection, a series of high lumen projection systems, and other minimum technological combinations, the Villa Castello Vignanello Can is transformed into a first tier telematic exhibition space. TED conferences, university seminars on social transformation, architectural collaborations with existing agrarian economic development, collaborations on sustainable practices…all of these are possible. We would begin with a residency and then partner with a local and then global (US, Asian) university. With the telematic interest in a residency and the site-specific creation of residence halls the Villa Castello Vignanello will invite world leaders in commerce’s, art, and society. The participants, the patrons, the fans, the students, and the collaborators in this unique project will establish a residency on a number of scales. This is a ‘genus loci’ of an inspired place: Villa Castello Vignanello. …a place that…on many levels…could belong to many…
The telematic salon objectives and ‘site specific’ and distance collaborators:
1. PAIR OFF COLLABORATORS ACROSS FIELDS AND DISTANCES2. LOCAL/DISTANCE COLAB.3. POSSIBLE NETWORK PERFORMANCES...PROJECTED4. IT SHOULD BE SPECTACULAR.5. AVOID THE MIDDLE BROW: AIM FOR 'HIGH BROW' OR 'LOW BROW' OR 'NO BROW'.6. INVOLVE PROJECTED AND INTERACTIVE FORMS.7. WRAP THE 'COLAB' TOGTHER WITH SOME SORT OF TELEMATICS.8. FIFTEEN MINUTE COLAB PRESENTATIONS, 30 MIN AT MOST.9. TRY TO INVOLVE THE AUDIENCES.... ON SITE OR DISTANCE. 10. POSSIBLE COLLISION OF FIELDS: POETRY, ARCHITECTURE, DIGITAL MEDIA, FILM, INTERACTIVE MEDIA, GAME, URBAN PLANNING, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, PERFORMANCE, INSTRUMENTATION, MUSIC, COMPOSITION, TASTE, TOUCH, HYBRID FORMS, WRITING, ENGINEERING, INTERFACE DESIGN, PROFESSING, DRAMA, PLAYWRITING, POLITICS, MEDICINE, SHAMANISM, DANCE, ENSEMBLES, COLLECTIVES, SMART MOBS, STUDENTS.
MA AND THE FOUR DIMENSIONAL CONCEPT OF REALITY IN TODAY’S TOKYO!During the last few years, I have in my art been working with the understanding of time in different ways. When I spent a few months in NYC in 2002 it became apparent to me that I often understood time as a part of space. I saw time as a variable of space, and I found it difficult to separate that which has already happened from what is happening in the present. This made me question my linear perception of time. During this period I also started to think about how I perceived my everyday life. I saw it as extremely rational, with days structured in order to fit everything in. I did feel an increasing emptiness in this “ticking things off” throughout the days. In my efforts to try to understand where this linear perception of time and this rational way of thinking came from, as well as what it means to me and to the society that I live in, I came in touch with the Japanese concept of Ma. I understood that Ma meant a way of perceiving time that was different from the linear perception. I looked for all kinds of literature on the subject, which turned out to be a not so easy thing. I therefore decided to go to Tokyo. With me on this trip was Daniel Segerberg, who is also an artist. In Tokyo, we had a wide range of contacts that kept increasing when we asked for people to help us understand the concept of Ma. The text that follows is written in collaboration with Daniel Segerberg as a means for us to try to understand Ma and the Japanese space/time. Lacking literature and Internet sources, it is our own interpretation based on the conversations, the art and film we experienced and gathered before and during our stay in Tokyo in October of 2005. A brief explanation of the concept of Ma.
Ma; the empty space, the in between, the silence, the pause, the emptiness, the interval, the distance, the timing etc, is something that is present throughout the entire Japanese society, but it’s predominantly in the traditional arts that you usually refer to the concept of Ma. In old ink painting for example, you would say that the focus should lie within in the absence of the brush and the ink. The blank paper is a state of limitlessness where anything is possible. It symbolizes the source of all shapes, beyond time and space.
In the literature we were able to get a hold of before we went, written in English or Swedish, Ma was often explained as a four dimensional concept of time and space. This is something that we later found out to be incorrect, and therefore realized that we really did not know what this “Ma” actually stood for. We had to start from the beginning by randomly or actively asking Japanese people that we came in touch with, “What exactly is Ma?”
“In New York people are scared of the silent parts of a conversation. Ma means a unity within the silence”, said a musician who had lived in NYC for ten years. Or, “Good Ma is the timing in a joke,” a dancer explained. A Karate champion described Ma as “the distance between yourself and your opponent”. He explained that the right Ma is everything in Karate. The distance should put you of reach of your opponent. If you step into your opponents Ma you give him an opportunity to attack. One move should get him down. Kendo has the same principles; one strike with the sword should be enough, the rest is Ma. Ma is also the timing in sumo wrestling. The wrestlers stand in front of each other, look in to each other’s eyes and let their feeling decide when to open up the fight. There is no judge to let them know when to start. Should the timing fail, you start over. “Ma can be the distance to your lover, the right timing for a kiss etc. When you get to know each other you can decrease the distance to your lover”, the karate champion explains. Every bow in the Japanese everyday life should be magaii (good Ma); it should come at the right time, simultaneously. A Buddhist priest defines Ma as “silence between movements” and an artist explains Ma as “an interval without movements; silence” Or “why not the laundry room in Swedish apartment buildings” as Jun, a physicist from Tokyo who had lived in Sweden four years suggests, when he attempts to give an example of a Swedish Ma.
A four dimensional concept of reality
We slowly started to realize that, in order to understand Ma, as a space/time interval, we had to begin by trying to understand how time and space is traditionally viewed in Japan. But firstly, a short reminder of the western perception of time and space.
In the west, we have ever since the antiquity perceived space as three-dimensional (length, height, depth). It is a static perception of space; a homogenous space. It derives from a linear perspective where you place yourself, the subject, outside the space to observe the space as an object. The conception of a room becomes a visual abstraction. The time dimension is removed and accordingly the static room is isolated. One of the reasons for this is to facilitate for scientific calculation. In this sense “time” has always been detached from space. The west considers time as absolute and linear.
Reality tends to be perceived as that which can be proved scientifically, as seen from the outside. Days follow the absolute and linear timeline. It is often a struggle against time. The traditional Japanese perception is however built on an inside perspective that derives from the way we as humans experience our surroundings and ourselves. Japanese people see themselves as parts of a certain situation. To the Japanese, reality tends to be more of a movement in and out of space/time related situations. They perceive space as a physical experience rather than a visual abstraction.
To understand this perception you have to go back to the 7th century when Shintoism (Japanese nature religion) affected the Japanese way of thinking.
How timespace is created
The Shinto religion is still of importance in today’s Japan. Kami is God, but not a God that the religion attempts to personify. Kami is an abstract atmosphere. It can have its temporary dwelling in a tree or inside a mountain for ex, but it’s never permanent. It is temporarily animated. To create a dwelling for Kami you can circle a specific area with four poles and a rope. These areas are, when empty, Ma. If the spirits choose to descend into this empty space and take place within it, the place comes alive, it becomes a situation, a space/time.
Ma, a space for potential occurrences
The English word “spacing” i.e. the ongoing form of “space” might give a better reference to the space, or space/time, that the Japanese traditionally experience. It indicates that reality is a constant flow. In order for a movement to take place there has to be a vacuity, or it will remain static – everything stays in its place. This time wise and space wise vacuity or interval is Ma. The space is empty, but filled with an expectant stillness that holds the possibility of change. Ma can therefore be the silence in a conversation, the distance to your opponent or your lover, a pause in a piece of music, timing in a joke or in sumo wrestling. It can also be the classical architectural lower level space in a Japanese home where you are meant to take your shoes off before entering the living areas. This sunken space becomes sort of a pause where you kneel down to take your shoes off, put them in their place and put your slippers on. In this case, Ma is something that provides space, both physically and mentally, space wise and time wise and makes for a pause in the on going.
Ma and experiencing space in today’s Tokyo.
The feeling of moving around Tokyo is different to any of the Western cities in more ways than one. The hesitant attitude to each other, the cautious nods, the reverent approach to physical objects that you hold on to with both hands (including money and stamp sized receipts) the flower pots and plants outside every building, the fashion with its incredible sense of detailing and combination, the irregular shapes of the Japanese china, the small tapestry that hangs on the outside of the intimate restaurants and indicates that we are not supposed to stare at the people eating etc. Once we found some literature on the Japanese philosophy of aesthetics Wabi-Sabi, we felt that it gave us words to describe the feelings of Tokyo that we had tried to define. (Wabi is philosophy of spatiality, direction or path; Sabi is an aesthetic of objects and their possession of time. Both of them forms of space and time combination.) These are some key terms of the Wabi-Sabi principles and its Western counterparts (as Leonard Koren puts it):
Modernism Wabi-Sabi
public private
logical, rational intuitive
absolute relative
prptptypical idiosyncratic
modular variable
progressive cyclical
control of nature harmony with nature
technology nature
adaption to machine adaption to nature
symmetrical organic
rectangular curved
man-made natural
slick, polished, smooth crude, rough, tactile
maintenance degradability
reduction/subjugation of sences expansion of senses
clarity ambiguity
functionality, utility naturualness
materiality non-materiality
all-weather seasonal
light,bright dark, dim
cool warm
Generally, one can say that that the western modernistic ideals are based upon the Hellenistic conception that underlines the permanent, the grand, symmetry and perfection. These ideals are based on the western philosophical perceptions of power, authority, dominance and control, of others or of nature. Wabi-Sabi however, is based on principles such as circumstances, asymmetry, and the non-perfect and finds a certain melancholic beauty in the perishable, all that is fading away and heading towards death. According to Wabi-Sabi, the static (permanent, symmetrical, perfect) is already dead; and is therefore not subjects of change or continuation. (During the last ten years western philosophy has begun to adapt ideals that are similar to those of Wabi-Sabi. Still, I would like to argue that western philosophy and aesthetics are nevertheless based on modernistic ideals.)
The feelings that we experienced during our walks around Tokyo and that could be defined by the Wabi-Sabi principles were not only referring to the personal questions, but for the general aspect of the city. Most of the streets in Tokyo are too narrow and winding for a vehicle to pass through. If you turn round the corner of one of the main streets, it is easy to get lost in a confusing labyrinth of miniature streets, until you are back on a main street again. Trying to make sense of a map is bound to fail. If at all there are any correct maps of these labyrinth streets.
It is said that there is not one single building in Tokyo that is older than 20 years. Tokyo is constantly changing, gradually. The city develops along the guidelines of Japanese philosophy, based on principles of the perishable, humane, non-symmetrical and non-perfect without planning, hierarchy or form. Some say that the static and almost museum-like European capitals will have difficulty adapting to the needs and wants of the future society. During the 1850-60s vast areas of Paris, Rome and Vienna had to be torn down to make room for new ideals such as wide straight avenues. The western concept of control and need for surveillance does not allow this almost amoeba like change and adaptation of the city according to the needs of its inhabitants.
One of the most obvious indications of the difference in time/space standpoints between the western cities and Tokyo is that the streets in Tokyo don’t have any names. French philosopher Roland Barthes writes about this in his book “Empire of Signs”: “This domiciliary obliteration seems inconvenient to those (like us) who have been used to asserting that the most practical is always the most rational […] Tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others.”
There is however a mail delivery system in Tokyo. The first classification of Tokyo is 23 different “ku’s”, or districts e.g. Minato-ku, Shibuya-ku, Thereafter each district is divided into areas of approx. 20 blocks that are given a certain number. Within this area each block gets a number. Finally, each house on that block is assigned a number. The address could be: Shinjuku-ku 4-6-2. It may sound rational in its own way, but what makes it complicated is the fact that on every block the oldest building gets number 1, the second oldest gets number 2 etc. The blocks are, in our opinion, not organized in any practical logical sense.
Finding your way through Tokyo requires an inside perspective. The focal point is “how do I stand in relation to my surroundings?” Or rather, how am I part of this situation? You familiarize yourself bit by bit; “I know that when I reach the corner where I once saw that old woman trip I have to turn right to get to the station”. The principle of an inside perspective become even more clear when talking about Japanese gardens. To experience a Japanese garden the correct way, you have to move through it. You enter a world, an experience, a feeling, a situation; you pass through and move on to the next. The experience evolves through time. Moving around the city is a similar thing. The Japanese garden can be compared to the traditional French gardens that are based on the principle of symmetry and are to be experienced from a certain point, outside of the garden; the throne. You are to be able to have a general view of the garden, to have control. The French gardens are based on a linear perspective.
Barthes on Tokyo: ”This city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience…” You will not understand Tokyo through rational, printed information (maps, guidebooks, telephone books) instead you get to know this city through using gestures.
The two different ways of orientating oneself, from the outside or the inside, can also be viewed as two different ways of looking at your everyday life. Either place yourself outside of the situation, take control, make plans for the future and “tick off” things on the to-do list, or picture yourself as a small part of a much bigger situation, unknowing and without control of what is to happen, and look at what this specific situation has to offer.
Three opinions on Ma, from the contemporary art scene in Tokyo
“In Tokyo today, being increasingly influenced by the western market economy, there is not much room for Ma”, says Ega a Japanese DJ and art/music writer. The subway crowd at peak hour illustrates the difficulty in moving around, where any space form is completely made impossible by body’s pressed together. The time in between occurrences becomes shorter. It’s a constant rush to get to the next appointment. There is hardly any room for reflection.
The artist Saki Satom carried out a project where she brought a lump of clay in a bag with her on the subway every day. The clay formed into different shapes between her and the other closely packed passengers’ body’s and created a sense of meaning to the gaps in between.
Masato Nakamura (who represented Japan at the Venice biennale 2005) told us that he was influenced by Saki Satoms project when putting together his piece “the Sukima project”, 2001. Sukima is related to Ma but more specifically means “opening” or “crack”. Nakamura invited artists to work with the very narrow spaces that run in between the buildings of Tokyo. Nakamura draws parallels between the city planning of Tokyo and the game Tetris, a game where the purpose is to fit blocks as tightly together as possible, in the shortest amount of time. He wonders where there is room for artists in today’s Tokyo, and reasons that -the artists could take place and act in the spaces in between buildings, just like a hacker who floats around the margins of the computer systems.
These voices illustrate ways of thinking in Japan. Even though they feel that there is not much room for Ma in the light of western market economy, the space/gaps are still in their consciousness. You see them, not just as spaces, but also as the potential for something. The major difference might be that today there might not be enough time to leave the negative space/time (what would a negative time be?) empty: you fill it with stress, a lump of clay, or with art.
Ninia Sverdrup February 2006.
!
Literature:
Barthes, Roland 1999: Lémpire des signes; Sacchi, Livio 2004:Tokyo, City and Architecture; Fridh, Kristina 2004: Japanska rum; Isozaki, Arata 1986: catalog to the exhibition Space-Time in Japan-Ma; Koren, Leonard 1994: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosofers; Murakami, Takashi 2000: Superflat, Izutsu, Toshihiko 1977: Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism; and fragments from the internet.
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real" subject of an image. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. The Japanese word "ma" is sometimes used for this concept, for example in garden design"[1][2][3][4]
In a two-tone, black-and-white image, a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank (white), thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. However, reversing the tones so that the space around the subject is printed black and the subject itself is left blank causes the negative space to be apparent as it forms shapes around the subject, called figure-ground reversal"Elements of an image that distract from the intended subject, or in the case of photography, objects in the same focal plane, are not considered negative space. Negative space can be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject but not the subject itself. Usage of negative space will produce a silhouette of the subject.The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic and often overlooked principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term is also used by musicians to indicate silence within a piece.It can be a difficult concept to grasp. One tool used by art teachers in teaching about positive and negative space was popularized in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In the exercise, students copy from an upside-down drawing or photograph. Because the picture is upside-down, students don't readily recognize the objects in the picture. They are able to give equal attention to the positive and negative shapes. The result is often a much more accurate drawing.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
SEQUENCE. HOW WE MAKE OUR WAY THROUGH THE SEQUENCE OF THE GARDEN.
Perceive the silences in a medium that doesn’t have silences. It doesn’t have the openings because we perceive it as a mass. We move through it and it appears to be filled. But is it? What are the silences in our approaches to this very special garden? These are the things that we make by going on and off in this medium. It is the way in which we place things synchronistically and asynchronistically. Do we find things because they wait for use or do we find them because we desire these things right away? In the contact of the moment?
After the first fixed shot the following text is read:MAThe garden is a medium
For meditationPerceive the blanknessListen to the voice of theSilenceImagine the void filled
After the zooms, we read the following words in the frame:Are the rocks placed?On the groundThe islands of paradiseIs the white sand theVast OceanThat distances themFrom this world
B r e a t h eSwallow this gardenLet it swallow youBecome one with it
THIS IS A PROPOSAL TO CREATE A ‘TELEMATIC CULTURAL CENTER’ FROM THE Villa Castello Vignanello.
This unique proposal is to create a wonderful center of culture, lectures, installations and exhibits that employ the latest in ‘telematic delivery’. With the new ‘immersive environments’ we now truly live in a ‘zero distance’ communion. Networked performances, music, web based installations, seminars and other ‘meet up’ can and should be conducted in some of the most beautiful places on earth…this villa is the magnificent subject in mind. Through an installation of the minimum of telematic delivery-high speed Internet connection, a series of high lumen projection systems, and other minimum technological combinations, the Villa Castello Vignanello Can is transformed into a first tier telematic exhibition space. TED conferences, university seminars on social transformation, architectural collaborations with existing agrarian economic development, collaborations on sustainable practices…all of these are possible. We would begin with a residency and then partner with a local and then global (US, Asian) university. With the telematic interest in a residency and the site-specific creation of residence halls the Villa Castello Vignanello will invite world leaders in commerce’s, art, and society. The participants, the patrons, the fans, the students, and the collaborators in this unique project will establish a residency on a number of scales. This is a ‘genus loci’ of an inspired place: Villa Castello Vignanello. …a place that…on many levels…could belong to many…
The telematic salon objectives and ‘site specific’ and distance collaborators:
1. PAIR OFF COLLABORATORS ACROSS FIELDS AND DISTANCES2. LOCAL/DISTANCE COLAB.3. POSSIBLE NETWORK PERFORMANCES...PROJECTED4. IT SHOULD BE SPECTACULAR.5. AVOID THE MIDDLE BROW: AIM FOR 'HIGH BROW' OR 'LOW BROW' OR 'NO BROW'.6. INVOLVE PROJECTED AND INTERACTIVE FORMS.7. WRAP THE 'COLAB' TOGTHER WITH SOME SORT OF TELEMATICS.8. FIFTEEN MINUTE COLAB PRESENTATIONS, 30 MIN AT MOST.9. TRY TO INVOLVE THE AUDIENCES.... ON SITE OR DISTANCE. 10. POSSIBLE COLLISION OF FIELDS: POETRY, ARCHITECTURE, DIGITAL MEDIA, FILM, INTERACTIVE MEDIA, GAME, URBAN PLANNING, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, PERFORMANCE, INSTRUMENTATION, MUSIC, COMPOSITION, TASTE, TOUCH, HYBRID FORMS, WRITING, ENGINEERING, INTERFACE DESIGN, PROFESSING, DRAMA, PLAYWRITING, POLITICS, MEDICINE, SHAMANISM, DANCE, ENSEMBLES, COLLECTIVES, SMART MOBS, STUDENTS.
MA AND THE FOUR DIMENSIONAL CONCEPT OF REALITY IN TODAY’S TOKYO!During the last few years, I have in my art been working with the understanding of time in different ways. When I spent a few months in NYC in 2002 it became apparent to me that I often understood time as a part of space. I saw time as a variable of space, and I found it difficult to separate that which has already happened from what is happening in the present. This made me question my linear perception of time. During this period I also started to think about how I perceived my everyday life. I saw it as extremely rational, with days structured in order to fit everything in. I did feel an increasing emptiness in this “ticking things off” throughout the days. In my efforts to try to understand where this linear perception of time and this rational way of thinking came from, as well as what it means to me and to the society that I live in, I came in touch with the Japanese concept of Ma. I understood that Ma meant a way of perceiving time that was different from the linear perception. I looked for all kinds of literature on the subject, which turned out to be a not so easy thing. I therefore decided to go to Tokyo. With me on this trip was Daniel Segerberg, who is also an artist. In Tokyo, we had a wide range of contacts that kept increasing when we asked for people to help us understand the concept of Ma. The text that follows is written in collaboration with Daniel Segerberg as a means for us to try to understand Ma and the Japanese space/time. Lacking literature and Internet sources, it is our own interpretation based on the conversations, the art and film we experienced and gathered before and during our stay in Tokyo in October of 2005. A brief explanation of the concept of Ma.
Ma; the empty space, the in between, the silence, the pause, the emptiness, the interval, the distance, the timing etc, is something that is present throughout the entire Japanese society, but it’s predominantly in the traditional arts that you usually refer to the concept of Ma. In old ink painting for example, you would say that the focus should lie within in the absence of the brush and the ink. The blank paper is a state of limitlessness where anything is possible. It symbolizes the source of all shapes, beyond time and space.
In the literature we were able to get a hold of before we went, written in English or Swedish, Ma was often explained as a four dimensional concept of time and space. This is something that we later found out to be incorrect, and therefore realized that we really did not know what this “Ma” actually stood for. We had to start from the beginning by randomly or actively asking Japanese people that we came in touch with, “What exactly is Ma?”
“In New York people are scared of the silent parts of a conversation. Ma means a unity within the silence”, said a musician who had lived in NYC for ten years. Or, “Good Ma is the timing in a joke,” a dancer explained. A Karate champion described Ma as “the distance between yourself and your opponent”. He explained that the right Ma is everything in Karate. The distance should put you of reach of your opponent. If you step into your opponents Ma you give him an opportunity to attack. One move should get him down. Kendo has the same principles; one strike with the sword should be enough, the rest is Ma. Ma is also the timing in sumo wrestling. The wrestlers stand in front of each other, look in to each other’s eyes and let their feeling decide when to open up the fight. There is no judge to let them know when to start. Should the timing fail, you start over. “Ma can be the distance to your lover, the right timing for a kiss etc. When you get to know each other you can decrease the distance to your lover”, the karate champion explains. Every bow in the Japanese everyday life should be magaii (good Ma); it should come at the right time, simultaneously. A Buddhist priest defines Ma as “silence between movements” and an artist explains Ma as “an interval without movements; silence” Or “why not the laundry room in Swedish apartment buildings” as Jun, a physicist from Tokyo who had lived in Sweden four years suggests, when he attempts to give an example of a Swedish Ma.
A four dimensional concept of reality
We slowly started to realize that, in order to understand Ma, as a space/time interval, we had to begin by trying to understand how time and space is traditionally viewed in Japan. But firstly, a short reminder of the western perception of time and space.
In the west, we have ever since the antiquity perceived space as three-dimensional (length, height, depth). It is a static perception of space; a homogenous space. It derives from a linear perspective where you place yourself, the subject, outside the space to observe the space as an object. The conception of a room becomes a visual abstraction. The time dimension is removed and accordingly the static room is isolated. One of the reasons for this is to facilitate for scientific calculation. In this sense “time” has always been detached from space. The west considers time as absolute and linear.
Reality tends to be perceived as that which can be proved scientifically, as seen from the outside. Days follow the absolute and linear timeline. It is often a struggle against time. The traditional Japanese perception is however built on an inside perspective that derives from the way we as humans experience our surroundings and ourselves. Japanese people see themselves as parts of a certain situation. To the Japanese, reality tends to be more of a movement in and out of space/time related situations. They perceive space as a physical experience rather than a visual abstraction.
To understand this perception you have to go back to the 7th century when Shintoism (Japanese nature religion) affected the Japanese way of thinking.
How timespace is created
The Shinto religion is still of importance in today’s Japan. Kami is God, but not a God that the religion attempts to personify. Kami is an abstract atmosphere. It can have its temporary dwelling in a tree or inside a mountain for ex, but it’s never permanent. It is temporarily animated. To create a dwelling for Kami you can circle a specific area with four poles and a rope. These areas are, when empty, Ma. If the spirits choose to descend into this empty space and take place within it, the place comes alive, it becomes a situation, a space/time.
Ma, a space for potential occurrences
The English word “spacing” i.e. the ongoing form of “space” might give a better reference to the space, or space/time, that the Japanese traditionally experience. It indicates that reality is a constant flow. In order for a movement to take place there has to be a vacuity, or it will remain static – everything stays in its place. This time wise and space wise vacuity or interval is Ma. The space is empty, but filled with an expectant stillness that holds the possibility of change. Ma can therefore be the silence in a conversation, the distance to your opponent or your lover, a pause in a piece of music, timing in a joke or in sumo wrestling. It can also be the classical architectural lower level space in a Japanese home where you are meant to take your shoes off before entering the living areas. This sunken space becomes sort of a pause where you kneel down to take your shoes off, put them in their place and put your slippers on. In this case, Ma is something that provides space, both physically and mentally, space wise and time wise and makes for a pause in the on going.
Ma and experiencing space in today’s Tokyo.
The feeling of moving around Tokyo is different to any of the Western cities in more ways than one. The hesitant attitude to each other, the cautious nods, the reverent approach to physical objects that you hold on to with both hands (including money and stamp sized receipts) the flower pots and plants outside every building, the fashion with its incredible sense of detailing and combination, the irregular shapes of the Japanese china, the small tapestry that hangs on the outside of the intimate restaurants and indicates that we are not supposed to stare at the people eating etc. Once we found some literature on the Japanese philosophy of aesthetics Wabi-Sabi, we felt that it gave us words to describe the feelings of Tokyo that we had tried to define. (Wabi is philosophy of spatiality, direction or path; Sabi is an aesthetic of objects and their possession of time. Both of them forms of space and time combination.) These are some key terms of the Wabi-Sabi principles and its Western counterparts (as Leonard Koren puts it):
Modernism Wabi-Sabi
public private
logical, rational intuitive
absolute relative
prptptypical idiosyncratic
modular variable
progressive cyclical
control of nature harmony with nature
technology nature
adaption to machine adaption to nature
symmetrical organic
rectangular curved
man-made natural
slick, polished, smooth crude, rough, tactile
maintenance degradability
reduction/subjugation of sences expansion of senses
clarity ambiguity
functionality, utility naturualness
materiality non-materiality
all-weather seasonal
light,bright dark, dim
cool warm
Generally, one can say that that the western modernistic ideals are based upon the Hellenistic conception that underlines the permanent, the grand, symmetry and perfection. These ideals are based on the western philosophical perceptions of power, authority, dominance and control, of others or of nature. Wabi-Sabi however, is based on principles such as circumstances, asymmetry, and the non-perfect and finds a certain melancholic beauty in the perishable, all that is fading away and heading towards death. According to Wabi-Sabi, the static (permanent, symmetrical, perfect) is already dead; and is therefore not subjects of change or continuation. (During the last ten years western philosophy has begun to adapt ideals that are similar to those of Wabi-Sabi. Still, I would like to argue that western philosophy and aesthetics are nevertheless based on modernistic ideals.)
The feelings that we experienced during our walks around Tokyo and that could be defined by the Wabi-Sabi principles were not only referring to the personal questions, but for the general aspect of the city. Most of the streets in Tokyo are too narrow and winding for a vehicle to pass through. If you turn round the corner of one of the main streets, it is easy to get lost in a confusing labyrinth of miniature streets, until you are back on a main street again. Trying to make sense of a map is bound to fail. If at all there are any correct maps of these labyrinth streets.
It is said that there is not one single building in Tokyo that is older than 20 years. Tokyo is constantly changing, gradually. The city develops along the guidelines of Japanese philosophy, based on principles of the perishable, humane, non-symmetrical and non-perfect without planning, hierarchy or form. Some say that the static and almost museum-like European capitals will have difficulty adapting to the needs and wants of the future society. During the 1850-60s vast areas of Paris, Rome and Vienna had to be torn down to make room for new ideals such as wide straight avenues. The western concept of control and need for surveillance does not allow this almost amoeba like change and adaptation of the city according to the needs of its inhabitants.
One of the most obvious indications of the difference in time/space standpoints between the western cities and Tokyo is that the streets in Tokyo don’t have any names. French philosopher Roland Barthes writes about this in his book “Empire of Signs”: “This domiciliary obliteration seems inconvenient to those (like us) who have been used to asserting that the most practical is always the most rational […] Tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others.”
There is however a mail delivery system in Tokyo. The first classification of Tokyo is 23 different “ku’s”, or districts e.g. Minato-ku, Shibuya-ku, Thereafter each district is divided into areas of approx. 20 blocks that are given a certain number. Within this area each block gets a number. Finally, each house on that block is assigned a number. The address could be: Shinjuku-ku 4-6-2. It may sound rational in its own way, but what makes it complicated is the fact that on every block the oldest building gets number 1, the second oldest gets number 2 etc. The blocks are, in our opinion, not organized in any practical logical sense.
Finding your way through Tokyo requires an inside perspective. The focal point is “how do I stand in relation to my surroundings?” Or rather, how am I part of this situation? You familiarize yourself bit by bit; “I know that when I reach the corner where I once saw that old woman trip I have to turn right to get to the station”. The principle of an inside perspective become even more clear when talking about Japanese gardens. To experience a Japanese garden the correct way, you have to move through it. You enter a world, an experience, a feeling, a situation; you pass through and move on to the next. The experience evolves through time. Moving around the city is a similar thing. The Japanese garden can be compared to the traditional French gardens that are based on the principle of symmetry and are to be experienced from a certain point, outside of the garden; the throne. You are to be able to have a general view of the garden, to have control. The French gardens are based on a linear perspective.
Barthes on Tokyo: ”This city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience…” You will not understand Tokyo through rational, printed information (maps, guidebooks, telephone books) instead you get to know this city through using gestures.
The two different ways of orientating oneself, from the outside or the inside, can also be viewed as two different ways of looking at your everyday life. Either place yourself outside of the situation, take control, make plans for the future and “tick off” things on the to-do list, or picture yourself as a small part of a much bigger situation, unknowing and without control of what is to happen, and look at what this specific situation has to offer.
Three opinions on Ma, from the contemporary art scene in Tokyo
“In Tokyo today, being increasingly influenced by the western market economy, there is not much room for Ma”, says Ega a Japanese DJ and art/music writer. The subway crowd at peak hour illustrates the difficulty in moving around, where any space form is completely made impossible by body’s pressed together. The time in between occurrences becomes shorter. It’s a constant rush to get to the next appointment. There is hardly any room for reflection.
The artist Saki Satom carried out a project where she brought a lump of clay in a bag with her on the subway every day. The clay formed into different shapes between her and the other closely packed passengers’ body’s and created a sense of meaning to the gaps in between.
Masato Nakamura (who represented Japan at the Venice biennale 2005) told us that he was influenced by Saki Satoms project when putting together his piece “the Sukima project”, 2001. Sukima is related to Ma but more specifically means “opening” or “crack”. Nakamura invited artists to work with the very narrow spaces that run in between the buildings of Tokyo. Nakamura draws parallels between the city planning of Tokyo and the game Tetris, a game where the purpose is to fit blocks as tightly together as possible, in the shortest amount of time. He wonders where there is room for artists in today’s Tokyo, and reasons that -the artists could take place and act in the spaces in between buildings, just like a hacker who floats around the margins of the computer systems.
These voices illustrate ways of thinking in Japan. Even though they feel that there is not much room for Ma in the light of western market economy, the space/gaps are still in their consciousness. You see them, not just as spaces, but also as the potential for something. The major difference might be that today there might not be enough time to leave the negative space/time (what would a negative time be?) empty: you fill it with stress, a lump of clay, or with art.
Ninia Sverdrup February 2006.
!
Literature:
Barthes, Roland 1999: Lémpire des signes; Sacchi, Livio 2004:Tokyo, City and Architecture; Fridh, Kristina 2004: Japanska rum; Isozaki, Arata 1986: catalog to the exhibition Space-Time in Japan-Ma; Koren, Leonard 1994: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosofers; Murakami, Takashi 2000: Superflat, Izutsu, Toshihiko 1977: Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism; and fragments from the internet.
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real" subject of an image. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. The Japanese word "ma" is sometimes used for this concept, for example in garden design"[1][2][3][4]
In a two-tone, black-and-white image, a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank (white), thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. However, reversing the tones so that the space around the subject is printed black and the subject itself is left blank causes the negative space to be apparent as it forms shapes around the subject, called figure-ground reversal"Elements of an image that distract from the intended subject, or in the case of photography, objects in the same focal plane, are not considered negative space. Negative space can be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject but not the subject itself. Usage of negative space will produce a silhouette of the subject.The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic and often overlooked principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term is also used by musicians to indicate silence within a piece.It can be a difficult concept to grasp. One tool used by art teachers in teaching about positive and negative space was popularized in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In the exercise, students copy from an upside-down drawing or photograph. Because the picture is upside-down, students don't readily recognize the objects in the picture. They are able to give equal attention to the positive and negative shapes. The result is often a much more accurate drawing.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
1. PAIR OFF COLLABORATORS ACROSS FIELDS AND DISTANCES2. LOCAL/DISTANCE COLAB.3. POSSIBLE NETWORK PERFORMANCES...PROJECTED4. IT SHOULD BE SPECTACULAR.5. AVOID THE MIDDLE BROW: AIM FOR 'HIGH BROW' OR 'LOW BROW' OR 'NO BROW'.6. INVOLVE PROJECTED AND INTERACTIVE FORMS.7. WRAP THE 'COLAB' TOGTHER WITH SOME SORT OF TELEMATICS.8. FIFTEEN MINUTE COLAB PRESENTATIONS, 30 MIN AT MOST.9. TRY TO INVOLVE THE AUDIENCES.... ON SITE OR DISTANCE. 10. POSSIBLE COLLISION OF FIELDS: POETRY, ARCHITECTURE, DIGITAL MEDIA, FILM, INTERACTIVE MEDIA, GAME, URBAN PLANNING, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, PERFORMANCE, INSTRUMENTATION, MUSIC, COMPOSITION, TASTE, TOUCH, HYBRID FORMS, WRITING, ENGINEERING, INTERFACE DESIGN, PROFESSING, DRAMA, PLAYWRITING, POLITICS, MEDICINE, SHAMANISM, DANCE, ENSEMBLES, COLLECTIVES, SMART MOBS, STUDENTS.
MA AND THE FOUR DIMENSIONAL CONCEPT OF REALITY IN TODAY’S TOKYO!During the last few years, I have in my art been working with the understanding of time in different ways. When I spent a few months in NYC in 2002 it became apparent to me that I often understood time as a part of space. I saw time as a variable of space, and I found it difficult to separate that which has already happened from what is happening in the present. This made me question my linear perception of time. During this period I also started to think about how I perceived my everyday life. I saw it as extremely rational, with days structured in order to fit everything in. I did feel an increasing emptiness in this “ticking things off” throughout the days. In my efforts to try to understand where this linear perception of time and this rational way of thinking came from, as well as what it means to me and to the society that I live in, I came in touch with the Japanese concept of Ma. I understood that Ma meant a way of perceiving time that was different from the linear perception. I looked for all kinds of literature on the subject, which turned out to be a not so easy thing. I therefore decided to go to Tokyo. With me on this trip was Daniel Segerberg, who is also an artist. In Tokyo, we had a wide range of contacts that kept increasing when we asked for people to help us understand the concept of Ma. The text that follows is written in collaboration with Daniel Segerberg as a means for us to try to understand Ma and the Japanese space/time. Lacking literature and Internet sources, it is our own interpretation based on the conversations, the art and film we experienced and gathered before and during our stay in Tokyo in October of 2005. A brief explanation of the concept of Ma.
Ma; the empty space, the in between, the silence, the pause, the emptiness, the interval, the distance, the timing etc, is something that is present throughout the entire Japanese society, but it’s predominantly in the traditional arts that you usually refer to the concept of Ma. In old ink painting for example, you would say that the focus should lie within in the absence of the brush and the ink. The blank paper is a state of limitlessness where anything is possible. It symbolizes the source of all shapes, beyond time and space.
In the literature we were able to get a hold of before we went, written in English or Swedish, Ma was often explained as a four dimensional concept of time and space. This is something that we later found out to be incorrect, and therefore realized that we really did not know what this “Ma” actually stood for. We had to start from the beginning by randomly or actively asking Japanese people that we came in touch with, “What exactly is Ma?”
“In New York people are scared of the silent parts of a conversation. Ma means a unity within the silence”, said a musician who had lived in NYC for ten years. Or, “Good Ma is the timing in a joke,” a dancer explained. A Karate champion described Ma as “the distance between yourself and your opponent”. He explained that the right Ma is everything in Karate. The distance should put you of reach of your opponent. If you step into your opponents Ma you give him an opportunity to attack. One move should get him down. Kendo has the same principles; one strike with the sword should be enough, the rest is Ma. Ma is also the timing in sumo wrestling. The wrestlers stand in front of each other, look in to each other’s eyes and let their feeling decide when to open up the fight. There is no judge to let them know when to start. Should the timing fail, you start over. “Ma can be the distance to your lover, the right timing for a kiss etc. When you get to know each other you can decrease the distance to your lover”, the karate champion explains. Every bow in the Japanese everyday life should be magaii (good Ma); it should come at the right time, simultaneously. A Buddhist priest defines Ma as “silence between movements” and an artist explains Ma as “an interval without movements; silence” Or “why not the laundry room in Swedish apartment buildings” as Jun, a physicist from Tokyo who had lived in Sweden four years suggests, when he attempts to give an example of a Swedish Ma.
A four dimensional concept of reality
We slowly started to realize that, in order to understand Ma, as a space/time interval, we had to begin by trying to understand how time and space is traditionally viewed in Japan. But firstly, a short reminder of the western perception of time and space.
In the west, we have ever since the antiquity perceived space as three-dimensional (length, height, depth). It is a static perception of space; a homogenous space. It derives from a linear perspective where you place yourself, the subject, outside the space to observe the space as an object. The conception of a room becomes a visual abstraction. The time dimension is removed and accordingly the static room is isolated. One of the reasons for this is to facilitate for scientific calculation. In this sense “time” has always been detached from space. The west considers time as absolute and linear.
Reality tends to be perceived as that which can be proved scientifically, as seen from the outside. Days follow the absolute and linear timeline. It is often a struggle against time. The traditional Japanese perception is however built on an inside perspective that derives from the way we as humans experience our surroundings and ourselves. Japanese people see themselves as parts of a certain situation. To the Japanese, reality tends to be more of a movement in and out of space/time related situations. They perceive space as a physical experience rather than a visual abstraction.
To understand this perception you have to go back to the 7th century when Shintoism (Japanese nature religion) affected the Japanese way of thinking.
How timespace is created
The Shinto religion is still of importance in today’s Japan. Kami is God, but not a God that the religion attempts to personify. Kami is an abstract atmosphere. It can have its temporary dwelling in a tree or inside a mountain for ex, but it’s never permanent. It is temporarily animated. To create a dwelling for Kami you can circle a specific area with four poles and a rope. These areas are, when empty, Ma. If the spirits choose to descend into this empty space and take place within it, the place comes alive, it becomes a situation, a space/time.
Ma, a space for potential occurrences
The English word “spacing” i.e. the ongoing form of “space” might give a better reference to the space, or space/time, that the Japanese traditionally experience. It indicates that reality is a constant flow. In order for a movement to take place there has to be a vacuity, or it will remain static – everything stays in its place. This time wise and space wise vacuity or interval is Ma. The space is empty, but filled with an expectant stillness that holds the possibility of change. Ma can therefore be the silence in a conversation, the distance to your opponent or your lover, a pause in a piece of music, timing in a joke or in sumo wrestling. It can also be the classical architectural lower level space in a Japanese home where you are meant to take your shoes off before entering the living areas. This sunken space becomes sort of a pause where you kneel down to take your shoes off, put them in their place and put your slippers on. In this case, Ma is something that provides space, both physically and mentally, space wise and time wise and makes for a pause in the on going.
Ma and experiencing space in today’s Tokyo.
The feeling of moving around Tokyo is different to any of the Western cities in more ways than one. The hesitant attitude to each other, the cautious nods, the reverent approach to physical objects that you hold on to with both hands (including money and stamp sized receipts) the flower pots and plants outside every building, the fashion with its incredible sense of detailing and combination, the irregular shapes of the Japanese china, the small tapestry that hangs on the outside of the intimate restaurants and indicates that we are not supposed to stare at the people eating etc. Once we found some literature on the Japanese philosophy of aesthetics Wabi-Sabi, we felt that it gave us words to describe the feelings of Tokyo that we had tried to define. (Wabi is philosophy of spatiality, direction or path; Sabi is an aesthetic of objects and their possession of time. Both of them forms of space and time combination.) These are some key terms of the Wabi-Sabi principles and its Western counterparts (as Leonard Koren puts it):
Modernism Wabi-Sabi
public private
logical, rational intuitive
absolute relative
prptptypical idiosyncratic
modular variable
progressive cyclical
control of nature harmony with nature
technology nature
adaption to machine adaption to nature
symmetrical organic
rectangular curved
man-made natural
slick, polished, smooth crude, rough, tactile
maintenance degradability
reduction/subjugation of sences expansion of senses
clarity ambiguity
functionality, utility naturualness
materiality non-materiality
all-weather seasonal
light,bright dark, dim
cool warm
Generally, one can say that that the western modernistic ideals are based upon the Hellenistic conception that underlines the permanent, the grand, symmetry and perfection. These ideals are based on the western philosophical perceptions of power, authority, dominance and control, of others or of nature. Wabi-Sabi however, is based on principles such as circumstances, asymmetry, and the non-perfect and finds a certain melancholic beauty in the perishable, all that is fading away and heading towards death. According to Wabi-Sabi, the static (permanent, symmetrical, perfect) is already dead; and is therefore not subjects of change or continuation. (During the last ten years western philosophy has begun to adapt ideals that are similar to those of Wabi-Sabi. Still, I would like to argue that western philosophy and aesthetics are nevertheless based on modernistic ideals.)
The feelings that we experienced during our walks around Tokyo and that could be defined by the Wabi-Sabi principles were not only referring to the personal questions, but for the general aspect of the city. Most of the streets in Tokyo are too narrow and winding for a vehicle to pass through. If you turn round the corner of one of the main streets, it is easy to get lost in a confusing labyrinth of miniature streets, until you are back on a main street again. Trying to make sense of a map is bound to fail. If at all there are any correct maps of these labyrinth streets.
It is said that there is not one single building in Tokyo that is older than 20 years. Tokyo is constantly changing, gradually. The city develops along the guidelines of Japanese philosophy, based on principles of the perishable, humane, non-symmetrical and non-perfect without planning, hierarchy or form. Some say that the static and almost museum-like European capitals will have difficulty adapting to the needs and wants of the future society. During the 1850-60s vast areas of Paris, Rome and Vienna had to be torn down to make room for new ideals such as wide straight avenues. The western concept of control and need for surveillance does not allow this almost amoeba like change and adaptation of the city according to the needs of its inhabitants.
One of the most obvious indications of the difference in time/space standpoints between the western cities and Tokyo is that the streets in Tokyo don’t have any names. French philosopher Roland Barthes writes about this in his book “Empire of Signs”: “This domiciliary obliteration seems inconvenient to those (like us) who have been used to asserting that the most practical is always the most rational […] Tokyo meanwhile reminds us that the rational is merely one system among others.”
There is however a mail delivery system in Tokyo. The first classification of Tokyo is 23 different “ku’s”, or districts e.g. Minato-ku, Shibuya-ku, Thereafter each district is divided into areas of approx. 20 blocks that are given a certain number. Within this area each block gets a number. Finally, each house on that block is assigned a number. The address could be: Shinjuku-ku 4-6-2. It may sound rational in its own way, but what makes it complicated is the fact that on every block the oldest building gets number 1, the second oldest gets number 2 etc. The blocks are, in our opinion, not organized in any practical logical sense.
Finding your way through Tokyo requires an inside perspective. The focal point is “how do I stand in relation to my surroundings?” Or rather, how am I part of this situation? You familiarize yourself bit by bit; “I know that when I reach the corner where I once saw that old woman trip I have to turn right to get to the station”. The principle of an inside perspective become even more clear when talking about Japanese gardens. To experience a Japanese garden the correct way, you have to move through it. You enter a world, an experience, a feeling, a situation; you pass through and move on to the next. The experience evolves through time. Moving around the city is a similar thing. The Japanese garden can be compared to the traditional French gardens that are based on the principle of symmetry and are to be experienced from a certain point, outside of the garden; the throne. You are to be able to have a general view of the garden, to have control. The French gardens are based on a linear perspective.
Barthes on Tokyo: ”This city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orient yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience…” You will not understand Tokyo through rational, printed information (maps, guidebooks, telephone books) instead you get to know this city through using gestures.
The two different ways of orientating oneself, from the outside or the inside, can also be viewed as two different ways of looking at your everyday life. Either place yourself outside of the situation, take control, make plans for the future and “tick off” things on the to-do list, or picture yourself as a small part of a much bigger situation, unknowing and without control of what is to happen, and look at what this specific situation has to offer.
Three opinions on Ma, from the contemporary art scene in Tokyo
“In Tokyo today, being increasingly influenced by the western market economy, there is not much room for Ma”, says Ega a Japanese DJ and art/music writer. The subway crowd at peak hour illustrates the difficulty in moving around, where any space form is completely made impossible by body’s pressed together. The time in between occurrences becomes shorter. It’s a constant rush to get to the next appointment. There is hardly any room for reflection.
The artist Saki Satom carried out a project where she brought a lump of clay in a bag with her on the subway every day. The clay formed into different shapes between her and the other closely packed passengers’ body’s and created a sense of meaning to the gaps in between.
Masato Nakamura (who represented Japan at the Venice biennale 2005) told us that he was influenced by Saki Satoms project when putting together his piece “the Sukima project”, 2001. Sukima is related to Ma but more specifically means “opening” or “crack”. Nakamura invited artists to work with the very narrow spaces that run in between the buildings of Tokyo. Nakamura draws parallels between the city planning of Tokyo and the game Tetris, a game where the purpose is to fit blocks as tightly together as possible, in the shortest amount of time. He wonders where there is room for artists in today’s Tokyo, and reasons that -the artists could take place and act in the spaces in between buildings, just like a hacker who floats around the margins of the computer systems.
These voices illustrate ways of thinking in Japan. Even though they feel that there is not much room for Ma in the light of western market economy, the space/gaps are still in their consciousness. You see them, not just as spaces, but also as the potential for something. The major difference might be that today there might not be enough time to leave the negative space/time (what would a negative time be?) empty: you fill it with stress, a lump of clay, or with art.
Ninia Sverdrup February 2006.
!
Literature:
Barthes, Roland 1999: Lémpire des signes; Sacchi, Livio 2004:Tokyo, City and Architecture; Fridh, Kristina 2004: Japanska rum; Isozaki, Arata 1986: catalog to the exhibition Space-Time in Japan-Ma; Koren, Leonard 1994: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosofers; Murakami, Takashi 2000: Superflat, Izutsu, Toshihiko 1977: Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism; and fragments from the internet.
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real" subject of an image. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. The Japanese word "ma" is sometimes used for this concept, for example in garden design"[1][2][3][4]
In a two-tone, black-and-white image, a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank (white), thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. However, reversing the tones so that the space around the subject is printed black and the subject itself is left blank causes the negative space to be apparent as it forms shapes around the subject, called figure-ground reversal"Elements of an image that distract from the intended subject, or in the case of photography, objects in the same focal plane, are not considered negative space. Negative space can be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject but not the subject itself. Usage of negative space will produce a silhouette of the subject.The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic and often overlooked principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term is also used by musicians to indicate silence within a piece.It can be a difficult concept to grasp. One tool used by art teachers in teaching about positive and negative space was popularized in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In the exercise, students copy from an upside-down drawing or photograph. Because the picture is upside-down, students don't readily recognize the objects in the picture. They are able to give equal attention to the positive and negative shapes. The result is often a much more accurate drawing.
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
What is a city of the future? The opening discussion for the conference in Korea and Italy involving the branded ‘mobile immersive community’.
THIS IS A PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS AND FILMED DISCUSSIONS ON THE CITY OF THE FUTURE.
THE PROPOSAL:
With the larger pedagogical concerns around the city of the future we have resorted to a three techniques that will be used to increase the presence of the ‘metaweb’ as we continue these discussions. The infrastructure of the above proposal shall be made to travel with the organizers and participants.
-We will conduct interviews from webcams on all present laptops and place these on social video sites such as you tube and vimeo.
-We will employ the construction of an immersive media club that will be linked to other such clubs worldwide. The ‘four-square’ format of image, interactive surface and controllers, and the surround sound will be complimented with facilities for eating and drinking. Inspired by the now defunct ‘Monkey town’ the ‘roman banquet’ format has proven very successful for the eating and viewing environment. Much like an Italian piazza or a Korean Madang the set up will compliment all communal gatherings with local or distance participants.
-The said ‘immersive distance telematic environment’ will also be use for ‘networked performance’. The traveling infrastructure of no more than 40k in four projectors, sound equipment and connections will be designed to travel by air. All participants in these conferences will be required to bring at least on wifi laptop and a digital camera.
-The surrounding of the site…Korea, Italy, NYC, and any other locals will also be projected on to integrate interactive public arts with the topics of the lecture. The intrinsically beautiful sites will be ‘augmented’ in this manner.
-There will be continued efforts to integrate immersive, social, and mobile media into a modular ‘tech package’. We will look forward to working with technicians and scientists on the streamlining and packaging of the ‘portable immersive space’.
-With a partnership with Korean telecommunications and electronics companies the apparatuses and mobile infrastructure will be branded and all innovations patented to the degree that can be.
We feel this format is dynamic and stimulating. It is responsive to the preservation of venerated documents of ‘architectural and site specific significance’, as well as eroding the non-necessary ‘brick and mortar’ that adds costs to communion, education, and culture. We feel that this is not only the future but also the salient present.
What are the dominant features of site specific and situation-less transnational culture? How important and how with East Asian and especially Korean influences remain? We look at ancient east Asian aesthetics and culture within two polar phenomena: the degree of information connectivity-the presence of telematic computing and smart phones within global culture-and the degree of social connectivity. As social connectivity…especially with the use of social media online and with smart phone grows there is a type of ‘telemodernity’ facing many global cultures? As the ‘web’ began this momentum toward a global culture with its local influences, the connects of information was not enough. Old-fashion ‘push’ media can spread pop culture (as adopted largely from the style of post-war America), we find that the global citizen makes man choices within his or her day to use the web to spread information of their lives and desires. Enterprise portals and search engines remain inert unless there are desires to use the new mediums. The semantic web connects knowledge with intelligent agents, artificial intelligences, ontologies, and knowledge managements systems, but here again the human element with desire is lacking. We start to see a similarity with ancient East Asian thought of connecting ‘Gi’ and senses of collective knowledge’s. We see Taoist influences with a greater appreciation of the agent within and embodying nature instead of the dominant, western/Cartesian methods of ‘standing outside of nature’ to quantifying and dissect it. On the plan of social connectivity we see the social software connecting people with e-mail, social networks and community portals. This new institute unites the ancient concept of larger ‘flows’ with the emerging ‘Metaweb’. This is the entity that exists to connect intelligences. Between the poles of social connectivity and information connectivity the Metaweb emerges as a synthesis of human, machine, and forms of will and agency that resemble ancient east Asian practices and philosophies. Decentralized communities of like-minded people abound. Knowledge networks, smart marketplaces, and enterprise minds emerge to think about and ‘solve’ global problems such as the creation of lower carbon lifestyles, and examine the obsolescence’s of commodity fetish financial markets. The ‘global brain’ as this sounds ominous, must be approached and appreciated. It is in this spirit that we feel this institute is timely and in great need…with a dynamic response to the manifestation of programming.
Sincerely,
Prof. Phillip Baldwin
FIRST TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION:
A City of the Future will emerge from Today’s Global Village and the complex life conditions that include (but aren’t limited to):
accelerated rates of knowledge generation population explosion migration demographic shifts globalization accelerating rates of change related to scientific, technological, communications and transportation increasing concentrated use of energy increasing diffusion of wastes and toxins declining access to the supporting resources of life (eg. water, food, energy, raw materials for production)The City of the Future may respond ineffectively to these conditions and thus magnify the dysfunctions of Today’s Global Village. Alternatively, the City of the Future may discover a healthier life by responding to change with awareness of its change state and developing Vital Signs Monitors that track:
effective processes that allow it to implement and operate systems that responsibly “metabolize” energy as an Ecocity (eg. water, air, waste, information management)
resilient structures of a living system that are attuned to its habitat and responsive to local and global economies (eg. technology, transportation, utilitities)
continuous learning from experience because of collaborative relationships internally and externally.
The City of the Future, therefore, requires different values than cities of the past including:
a. Balancing action, thinking, productivity and relationship valuesb. Being open to new ideasc. Integrating multiple ideas with non-linear thinkingd. Embracing connected individualitye. Emphasizing dynamic sustainability
Links: City of the Futurehttp://www.communitiesofthefuture.org/
What is the Global Village?
Today’s cities are global villages, where people from multiple countries of origin, languages, cultures, ethnicities, races and human systems co-exist in the same geographical location. The plurality of human factors creates highly complex life conditions that continuously challenge existing governance systems and people’s expectations.
What is a systems thinking level of consciousness?
With systems thinking a City is seen as an aggregate of people who act as a complex, adaptive, emergent living system that has these qualities:
develops structures, processes and patterns that ensure short term survival, connection with its environment and long term continuity
creates 19 infrastructural sub-systems (reflective of all living systems) that control matter, energy and information
is a meso-scale system (on a planetary basis): located between the micro scale of individual/group and the macro scale of country/globe
exists as a set of internal and external contexts and/or environments that are nested: holons exist within it (eg. neighbourhoods) and it, in turn, is a holon nested in other wholes (eg. region)
is quasi-fractal : reflecting patterns at the micro level and seeding patterns at the macro level responds dynamically: is ever-changing as it responds to life conditions
! develops unpredictably: the self-organizing nature of the micro systems (individuals and groups) embedded in it, and the feedback loops amongst them, set-up periodic discontinuities and unpredictable shifts
is interconnected: at the micro, meso-peer and macro levels! uses simple rules: citizens support conformity, generate diversity, judge life conditions and shift (concentrate and/or diffuse) resources (eg. energy and waste)
is potentially affected by weak signals: butterfly effects (or weak signals) can affect the stable functioning of the city (eg. SARS, blackouts, forest fires)
is field sensitive: the city is an energetic collision of multiple sources of energy from: cosmos, geology, biology, subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective fields.
Links: Complexity, Self-Organizing & Systems Thinkinghttp://www.hsdinstitute.org/http://www.centerforselforganizingleadership.com/http://www.bwsasso.com/index.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/csh_home/cst_brief.htmlhttp://www.margaretwheatley.com/index.htmlhttp://www.berkana.org/ Links: Emergencehttp://www.emergence.org/ECO_site/web-content/Emergence_3_2.htmlhttp://www.humanemergence.org/home.htmlhttp://www.emrgnc.com.au/http://www.patternlanguage.com/
discussion document: prof. phillip baldwin. [email protected]. 917.385.2446
THE AESTHETICS OF ESCAPE: BREAKS IN THE MODERNIST KARMIC CHAIN
intelligences, ontologies, and knowledge managements systems, but here again the human element with desire is lacking. We start to see a similarity with ancient East Asian thought of connecting ‘Gi’ and senses of collective knowledge’s. We see Taoist influences with a greater appreciation of the agent within and embodying nature instead of the dominant, western/Cartesian methods of ‘standing outside of nature’ to quantifying and dissect it. On the plan of social connectivity we see the social software connecting people with e-mail, social networks and community portals. This new institute unites the ancient concept of larger ‘flows’ with the emerging ‘Metaweb’. This is the entity that exists to connect intelligences. Between the poles of social connectivity and information connectivity the Metaweb emerges as a synthesis of human, machine, and forms of will and agency that resemble ancient east Asian practices and philosophies. Decentralized communities of like-minded people abound. Knowledge networks, smart marketplaces, and enterprise minds emerge to think about and ‘solve’ global problems such as the creation of lower carbon lifestyles, and examine the obsolescence’s of commodity fetish financial markets. The ‘global brain’ as this sounds ominous, must be approached and appreciated. It is in this spirit that we feel this institute is timely and in great need…with a dynamic response to the manifestation of programming.
Sincerely,
Prof. Phillip Baldwin
FIRST TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION:
A City of the Future will emerge from Today’s Global Village and the complex life conditions that include (but aren’t limited to):
accelerated rates of knowledge generation population explosion migration demographic shifts globalization accelerating rates of change related to scientific, technological, communications and transportation increasing concentrated use of energy increasing diffusion of wastes and toxins declining access to the supporting resources of life (eg. water, food, energy, raw materials for production)The City of the Future may respond ineffectively to these conditions and thus magnify the dysfunctions of Today’s Global Village. Alternatively, the City of the Future may discover a healthier life by responding to change with awareness of its change state and developing Vital Signs Monitors that track:
effective processes that allow it to implement and operate systems that responsibly “metabolize” energy as an Ecocity (eg. water, air, waste, information management)
resilient structures of a living system that are attuned to its habitat and responsive to local and global economies (eg. technology, transportation, utilitities)
continuous learning from experience because of collaborative relationships internally and externally.
The City of the Future, therefore, requires different values than cities of the past including:
a. Balancing action, thinking, productivity and relationship valuesb. Being open to new ideasc. Integrating multiple ideas with non-linear thinkingd. Embracing connected individualitye. Emphasizing dynamic sustainability
Links: City of the Futurehttp://www.communitiesofthefuture.org/
What is the Global Village?
Today’s cities are global villages, where people from multiple countries of origin, languages, cultures, ethnicities, races and human systems co-exist in the same geographical location. The plurality of human factors creates highly complex life conditions that continuously challenge existing governance systems and people’s expectations.
What is a systems thinking level of consciousness?
With systems thinking a City is seen as an aggregate of people who act as a complex, adaptive, emergent living system that has these qualities:
develops structures, processes and patterns that ensure short term survival, connection with its environment and long term continuity
creates 19 infrastructural sub-systems (reflective of all living systems) that control matter, energy and information
is a meso-scale system (on a planetary basis): located between the micro scale of individual/group and the macro scale of country/globe
exists as a set of internal and external contexts and/or environments that are nested: holons exist within it (eg. neighbourhoods) and it, in turn, is a holon nested in other wholes (eg. region)
is quasi-fractal : reflecting patterns at the micro level and seeding patterns at the macro level responds dynamically: is ever-changing as it responds to life conditions
! develops unpredictably: the self-organizing nature of the micro systems (individuals and groups) embedded in it, and the feedback loops amongst them, set-up periodic discontinuities and unpredictable shifts
is interconnected: at the micro, meso-peer and macro levels! uses simple rules: citizens support conformity, generate diversity, judge life conditions and shift (concentrate and/or diffuse) resources (eg. energy and waste)
is potentially affected by weak signals: butterfly effects (or weak signals) can affect the stable functioning of the city (eg. SARS, blackouts, forest fires)
is field sensitive: the city is an energetic collision of multiple sources of energy from: cosmos, geology, biology, subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective fields.
Links: Complexity, Self-Organizing & Systems Thinkinghttp://www.hsdinstitute.org/http://www.centerforselforganizingleadership.com/http://www.bwsasso.com/index.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/csh_home/cst_brief.htmlhttp://www.margaretwheatley.com/index.htmlhttp://www.berkana.org/ Links: Emergencehttp://www.emergence.org/ECO_site/web-content/Emergence_3_2.htmlhttp://www.humanemergence.org/home.htmlhttp://www.emrgnc.com.au/http://www.patternlanguage.com/
reduction/subjugation of sences expansion of senses
clarity ambiguity
functionality, utility naturualness
materiality non-materiality
all-weather seasonal
light,bright dark, dim
cool warm
According to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, collective intelligence is mass collaboration. In order for this concept to happen, four principles need to exist. These are openness, peering, sharing and acting globally.OpennessIn the early stage of communications technology, people and companies are reluctant to share ideas, intellectual property and encourage self-motivation because these resources provide the edge over competitors. However, in time people and companies began to loosen hold over these resources as they reap more benefits in doing so. Allowing others to share ideas and bid for franchising will enable products to gain significant improvement and scrutiny through collaboration.PeeringThis is a form of horizontal organization with the capacity to create information technology and physical products. One example is the ‘opening up’ of the Linux program where users are free to modify and develop it provided that they made it available for others. Participants in this form of collective intelligence have different motivations for contributing, but the results achieved are for the improvement of a product or service. As quoted, “Peering succeeds because it leverages self-organization – a style of production that works more effectively than hierarchical management for certain tasks.”SharingThis principle has been controversial with the question being “Should there be a law against the distribution of intellectual property?” Research has shown that more and more companies have started to share some, while maintaining some degree of control over others, like potential and critical patent rights. This is because companies have realized that by limiting all their intellectual property, they are shutting out all possible opportunities. Sharing some has allowed them to expand their market and bring out products faster.Acting GloballyThe advancements in communication technology has prompted the rise of global companies, or e-Commerce that has allowed individuals to set up businesses at low to almost no overhead costs. The influence of the Internet is widespread, therefore a globally integrated company would have no geographical boundaries but have global connections, allowing them to gain access to new markets, ideas and technology. Therefore it is important for firms to get updated and remain globally competitive or they will face a declining rate of clientèle.[5]Locative mediaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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