Author: Nire

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Soft Sensing Workshop #4 – Beautiful Sensor – Moss Mask

I used moss and Eeonyx StaTex Conductive Fiber to create a sensor that can be worn on the face and stroked. I’m wearing fishnet material that is keeping the sensor in place. It’s running through Max MSP and you can hear the change in sound according to how the moss is stroked or pressed. A further iteration would be to use something that operates off of bluetooth, for freedom of movement.

When measured with a multimeter, the resting current was 13.k, and with petting and pressing it, it would range from 10.5k to 16k.

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Soft Sensing Workshop #2 – Sensor Sprints

I worked with Beverly & Caleb, we made a boxing glove using Eeonyx Pressure Sensing Fabric and found foam material and pom-poms using Eeonyx Pressure Sensing Fabric, yarn and a pom pom maker. We connected it to an LED to show the amounts of fading given the various resistances.

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Soft Sensing Workshop #3 – (Solo) Research Group – Bacterial Cellulose Synth

I’m very interested in working with organic material and technology. I chose to work with Kombucha Scoby which is created by Kombucha liquid. After testing it in class, I realized it was conductive, so I used 2 sewing needles connected to wires that ran into the power and ground on my breadboard. The sewing needles were connected on the bottom part of the Scoby and the top. I used a 10k resistor to connect between the ground because I was getting a reading of 7-17k ohms depending on manipulation.

I connected this to Max Msp and mapped the values of the Scoby as it was being manipulated to the frequency of a sine wave.

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Further Explorations:

  • Cutting or growing kombucha scoby into different shapes i.e. strips for a kind of string instrument
  • how to interact with it so it doesn’t become contaminated, if I’d use it for multiple performances
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Soft Sensing Workshop #1 – Material Tests

Jenna and I explored the 4 soft conductive materials provided: Velostat, Eeonyx Pressure Sensing Fabric, Eeonnyx Stretch Sensing Fabric & Eeonnyx StaTex Conductive Fiber. The first 2 needed to have conductive material on either side for ground and power. The last 2 only needed to be clipped or attached at either at either end. The results are below:

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In general I noticed all of the soft conductive material, varies a lot probably due to recovery of soft material to original form, not so much that it was completely out of a certain range, but enough to have to re-calibrate frequently.

The prospect of using soft conductive material (bought, found or organic),  as variable resistors really opened up PComp in general for me in an exciting way. It feels great to be a bit less reliant on store bought variable resistors.

 

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FIELD GUIDE ZINE – WEEK #2 TAXONOMY

INDEX

  • TONGLEN BREATHING AS AN ENTRY POINT TO SHADOW WORK / BODILY SENSES AS FILTERS FOR SHADOW WORK
  • DESCRIPTION OF TONGLEN BREATHING & SHADOW WORK, FURTHER EXAMPLES
  • HOW CAN SHADOW WORK BE AN ACT OF HEALING & THEREFORE RESISTANCE?
  • ACTS FOR READER THAT INCLUDE: BREATHING / VISUALIZING MEDITATION, BODY MOVEMENT, SOUNDING (VOCALIZING), DRAWING SIGIL / MANDALA, GRIEF, PUBLIC ACTION

 

SYMBOL FOR ZINE:

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  • 5 pieces to represent 5 senses
  • shapes alluding to a vertebra, but also a fluid quality to them
  • circular shape – holding space, creating a container to work within, middle is empty

ENTRIES

INSPIRATION & EXAMPLES:

Art that becomes more integrated in daily life – we are overly categorized as a byproduct of the dominance of Eurocentric thinking, whose foundation is individualism. Part of this idea is highlighted in “Art of Living on a Damaged Planet” that I read over the summer. Not only is science compartmentalized to a point of scientific inaccuracy, we are learning more and more, so have we divided many other aspects of life due to this particular lense.

Some ideas to also explore:  “Object / Subject” “Non-dual Perception”

LINDA MONTANO 

“The art/life institute handbook” – designed to make performance available to everyone

Each page contains a topic with preparation, possible events and room for personal comments.

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SIGILS / HYPERSIGILS & PORTALS

“A common method of creating the sigils of certain spirits was to use kameas (magic squares) — the names of the spirits were converted to numbers, which were then located on the magic square. The locations were then connected by lines, forming an abstract figure.[3]

The use of symbols for magical or cultic purposes has been widespread since at least the Neolithic era. Some examples from other cultures include the yantra from Hindu tantra, historical runic magic among the Germanic peoples, or the use of veves in Voudon.”

“In modern chaos magic, when a complex of thoughts, desires and intentions gains such a level of sophistication that it appears to operate autonomously from the magician’s consciousness, as if it were an independent being, then such a complex is referred to as a servitor.[9][10] When such a being becomes large enough that it exists independently of any one individual, as a form of “group mind”, then it is referred to as an egregore.[11][12]

Later chaos magicians have expanded on the basic sigilisation technique. Grant Morrison coined the term hypersigil to refer to an extended work of art with magical meaning and willpower, created using adapted processes of sigilization. His comic bookseries The Invisibles was intended as such a hypersigil.[6] Morrison has also argued that modern corporate logos like “the McDonald’s Golden Arches, the Nike swoosh and the Virgin autograph” are a form of viral sigil:

Corporate sigils are super-breeders. They attack unbranded imaginative space. They invade Red Square, they infest the cranky streets of Tibet, they etch themselves into hairstyles. They breed across clothing, turning people into advertising hoardings… The logo or brand, like any sigil, is a condensation, a compressed, symbolic summoning up of the world of desire which the corporation intends to represent… Walt Disney died long ago but his sigil, that familiar, cartoonish signature, persists, carrying its own vast weight of meanings, associations, nostalgia and significance.[6]“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_(magic)

AustinSpareSigils

The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): Psychology of Ecstasy is a book written by Austin Osman Spare during 1909–1913 and self-published in 1913.

 

PAUL LAFFOLEY “Mr. Laffoley thought of his “architectonic thought forms” as portals allowing the viewer to enter, transcend time and space, and achieve an expanded state of consciousness.”

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link:https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/arts/design/paul-laffoley-painter-inspired-by-time-travel-and-aliens-dies-at-80.html

MOVEMENT / SOUNDING

MEREDITH MONK

From  artist Peter Sciscioli’s sound & movement practice and workshop “Sounding Body: Voice as Movement” 

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https://movementresearch.org/event/7863

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Tonglen Breathing Week #1

Tonglen Breathing is a Tibetan breathing technique, where one breathes in the suffering of oneself or others and breathes out comfort, safety, happiness.

Pema Chödrön gives tonglen instruction  as follows:

“On the in-breath, you breathe in whatever particular area, group of people, country, or even one particular person… maybe it’s not this more global situation, maybe it’s breathing in the physical discomfort and mental anguish of chemotherapy; of all the people who are undergoing chemotherapy. And if you’ve undergone chemotherapy and come out the other side, it’s very real to you. Or maybe it’s the pain of those who have lost loved ones; suddenly, or recently, unexpectedly or over a long period of time, some dying. But the in-breath is… you find some place on the planet in your personal life or something you know about, and you breathe in with the wish that those human beings or those mistreated animals or whoever it is, that they could be free of that suffering, and you breathe in with the longing to remove their suffering.

And then you send out – just relax out… send enough space so that peoples’ hearts and minds feel big enough to live with their discomfort, their fear, their anger or their despair, or their physical or mental anguish. But you can also breathe out for those who have no food and drink, you can breathe out food and drink. For those who are homeless, you can breathe out/send them shelter. For those who are suffering in any way, you can send out safety, comfort.

So in the in-breath you breathe in with the wish to take away the suffering, and breathe out with the wish to send comfort and happiness to the same people, animals, nations, or whatever it is you decide.

Do this for an individual, or do this for large areas, and if you do this with more than one subject in mind, that’s fine… breathing in as fully as you can, radiating out as widely as you can.” 

I initially thought to map this practice within a larger Buddhist Breathing tradition, and then a more global breathing tradition that cultivates compassion.  I then realized that this is also situated within a larger map some refer to as “Shadow Work”. Where we find the medicine in the poison, instead of avoiding the painful feelings or shadow side of things or ourselves, we give it space and thereby can transform it.  The “Shadow” as described by Carl Jung is:

“…the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality –-dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger, or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness. Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow, the counterpoint to what Jung called the persona or conscious ego personality. According to Jungian analyst Aniela Jaffe, the shadow is the ‘‘sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life’’

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201204/essential-secrets-psychotherapy-what-is-the-shadow

Under the Shadow Work system, I included:

  • Chöd Nun Practices – working with “evil” energies, visualizing their own bodies as food for these “demons” as transformational fuel
  • Brahmavahara Cultivation
  • Entheogen / Psychedelic Medicine Ceremonies where healers hold space as you do an underworld Journey
  • Kambo frog poison for mental, physical, spiritual energy disharmony
  • Underworld stories in Mythology
  • Reiki 
  • Sound Therapies
  • Grieving practices 
  • Death & Birth Doulas

In our culture in the U.S., everything is monetized so deeply that even our emotional processing and how we view emotions are effected.  Shadow work isn’t seen as productive, and the community rituals that can be found historically & virtually worldwide aren’t very present in our culture. I’ll also be mapping the social political context of shadow work as well. 

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https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WQWrCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA74&dq=chod+nuns&ots=NLs6rmaTsK&sig=P1YBzeMUzEsLwptyZZ3y80LHFlU#v=onepage&q=chod%20nunschod&f=false

Machik’s Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chod (Expanded Edition)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201204/essential-secrets-psychotherapy-what-is-the-shadow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen#cite_note-6

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SOMATAROT – Final Edition

Kimberly Lin and I decided to expand on an earlier project SOMATAROT for the final, making it an immersive installation.

Inside the SOMATAROT experience, you process your reading through the embodied oracle dance guided by mysterious holographic sybils.

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You will be handed a ball chime and instructed to enter the room. You will think of your question and once completed, you shake the ball and the Sybil’s begin their welcome. When they have finished, you place the ball on the bed that activates the cards. For the winter show we’ve created a pcomp element with a pressure sensor that triggers the read in p5 via the chime ball.

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https://create.arduino.cc/editor/Nire/b0afe97e-0158-49c1-b39c-7f722b42c373/preview?embed

SOMATAROT/p5sketch

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Final VR Proposal

I’m creating a fantastical world that is less a linear story but more a dream experience/poem, incorporating ritual. Drawing from Rhizome theory, somatic intelligence, cellular memory and how that relates to movement/dance, effects of the absence of ritual & communal metabolizing, effects of capitalistic hierarchies on our bodies and psyches and subsequent divorce from nature.

One scene is a space surrounded by an abstracted time-lapse of mushrooms growing, with a spirit of the mushroom speaking to the user.

I’m filming 360 video over the weekend that will be of 3 people dancing. I’ve been struggling with how I want to it to end and am still exploring that through trying out different scenes, it also depends on my skill level to accomplish it. I’m also composing sounds or using pre-existing songs of mine for the piece. I’d like to connect mycelium I grew to MIDI sprout to control certain environmental aspects of the scene if I’m able to figure that out in time, but that will be secondary to the content.

April 1-12th

  • Narrowing down ideas and building different scenes/learning specific Unity skills for my final needs, re-editing many times so that my idea was feasible in the given time
  • building 3d characters for use in piece
  • editing video for use in piece
  • writing exercises for words used
  • making music for piece
  • buying materials to be used in the filming section

April 12-19th

  • filming of dance scene in 360
  • final building of all scenes
  • finalizing music and words
  • exploring MIDI further

Challenges

  • in an abstract piece – leaving things open for interpretation but also having concept come through, where those lines are
  • might not have enough skills yet as needed for everything I’d like to do