"The living being is above all a thoroughfare, and ... the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted." --Henri Bergson
Decades ago, Marshall McLuhan alerted us to the fact that media extend our senses. But something new is happening today. People are using new media in ways that question the most fundamental assumptions in Western cultures about what is "real." And they are challenging the mind/body split. They are troubling the notion that the mind is separate from the body and that rational thought is better suited for deciding "what is real" in the world than are the body's sensations.
When we "assemble our bodies with media," we generate capacities to read the world in new ways, through and across our bodies' sensations and perceptions. New media allow us to move through the world in new ways. And they allow the world to move through us in new ways. They allow us to live out what some philosophers are now calling the structural coupling" between brain, body, and world, or "extended mind." Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers ask "where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?" in their essay "The Extended Mind."
Each of the projects featured in this capsule explore extreme ways of sensing the world--through media. They use media to focus, intensify, confound, and compose embodied sensation. Not just for the sake of the sensational. But much more extremely--for the sake of changing what we think we know, and how we think we know it. Provoking change in what we count as knowing, as real, and as learning provokes change at the most extreme levels of who we think we are as humans, and therefore to how we relate to the world and to others.
One of the best ways to deepen your understanding of this experience capsule is to enter it through two readings. Both are by Brian Massumi. Massumi will help you to grasp what it means to "assemble with media" and to "perceive" the world as a structural coupling between brain, body and world--and, as a result, to move differently through the world as social actors and designers of media.
Start with Massumi's provocative insights:
"Navigating Movements: An Interview with Brian Massumi" by Mary Zournazi (21cmagazine.com, Issue #2).
"Urban Appointment: A Possible Rendez-vous With the City," by Brian Massumi (from Making Art of Databases, ed. Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (Rotterdam: V2 Organisatie/Dutch Architecture Institute, 2003, pp. 28-55).
Now, experience media-based capacities to sense the world differently with Janet Cardiff, Kevin T. Allen, Art Mobs, and psychogeograhers.
"Her Long Black Hair takes each listener on a winding, mysterious journey through Central Park’s 19th-century pathways, retracing the footsteps of an enigmatic dark-haired woman. Relayed in Janet Cardiff’s quasi-narrative style, Her Long Black Hair is a complex sensory investigation of location, time, sound, and physicality, interweaving stream-of consciousness observations with fact and fiction, local history, opera and gospel music, and other atmospheric and cultural elements."
credit: Janet Cardiff
"Transit is an acoustic medium. It weaves sonic narratives through our cities. It is the tune by which we turn the everyday. The sounds of transit are perhaps the most heard and yet perhaps the least listened to of urban sounds..The intentions of American Transit are humble, local, and experiential: to allow a visual platform from which one may audition the everyday with difference..."
credit: Kevin T. Allen
"Conflux is the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. At Conflux, visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore their urban environment...From architects to skateboarders, Conflux participants have an enthusiasm for the city that’s contagious. Over the course of the long weekend the sidewalks are literally transformed into a mobile laboratory for creative action. With tools ranging from traditional paper maps to high-tech mobile devices, artists present walking tours, public installations and interactive performance, as well as bike and subway expeditions, workshops, a lecture series, a film program and live music performances at night."
credit: Eric Lee-Quai + Jesse Harris
"Why should museums and galleries have exclusive control over making audio tours of their exhibits? Make your own audio tour (with music if you like). Why not remix the MoMA for your friends?!
Art Mobs is a project that will allow you to share your experience of art with others who have a mobile phone or iPod.
- With a mobile phone (via text messaging) you could leave a comment about a work of art for others to see, and you could read the most recent comments left by others.
- With an iPod (or other mp3 player) you could listen to a guided tour made by an artist, a professor, a friend, or just someone who has an interesting point of view. You could make your own audio tour of a gallery or exhibit and allow others to download it to their iPods."