Note

All bolded quotes on "The Spell of the Sensuous" posts are credited to the author: David Abram

Motel Show

Statement: 

I purposely don't want to say too much about my work. I believe this piece should speak for itself. The research that I included, especially the quote and specific definitions of "secret" are important to the piece. (I was incredibly inspired originally by some old razors that I had saved, including some rusted ones. Hence the included image of an awesome rusted razor.) I don't know if it's incredibly important to know, but the piece is a combination of new, manipulated (like burned or purposely rusted), and old saved razors.

Research:

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.” 

-Chris Cleave

se·cret

ˈsēkrit/

noun

plural noun: secrets

1. something that is kept or meant to be kept unknown or unseen by others.

   "a state secret"

   synonyms:

   confidential matter, confidence, private affair; More

   • something that is not properly understood; a mystery.

     "I'm not trying to explain the secrets of the universe in this book"

     synonyms:

     mystery, enigma, paradox, puzzle, conundrum, poser, riddle More

   • a valid but not commonly known or recognized method of achieving or maintaining something.

     "the secret of a happy marriage is compromise"

     synonyms:

     recipe, (magic) formula, blueprint, key, answer, solution "the secret of their success"

Site Specific (Land)

Statement:
This site specific performance was based around memory. The main place of the performance is Nelmar Terrace Park, but I do think that the walk from the old house that I used to live in to the park is also an important part of the piece. This place used to be an escape for me when I used to live in this area. When I was upset, sad, or manic, I would automatically go here. (The person who showed me this place is the guy in the video. An important note.) This song was almost always played while I was in this spot as well, which is why I chose to use it for the video. Each balloon has initials of people or events that I wanted to "let go". (This spot was specific for this performance because I needed to release this place as well.) The last balloon had my initials on it, and I was being let go (in a certain sense that needed to be) by someone close to me. Overall the site holds a lot of memories. This performance was about letting these memories go.

Research:

(song only) It's the song from the video

Song and Video

Some research about the actual spot...

http://www.staugustinegovernment.com/the-city/featured-stories-archive/4_09/NelmarTerracePark.cfm

"Tibbitts said that the "Optional irrigation supported seasonal conditions allowing neighborhood residents, students and faculty to meet together for community gardening. This spring’s further landscaping put the finishing touches on the excellent pocket park for our city’s current residents while restoring one small piece of our city’s identity."

(There is no community gardening...it's abandoned...) 

http://www.examiner.com/article/nelmar-park-the-power-of-compromise

"Looking like the extension of someone's manicured lawn, only a close inspection of nearby signage would ever tip the casual passerby that Nelmar Park is actually listed on the City of St. Augustine's roster of recreational options. It's only draw would appear to be a pleasant but unremarkable view of Hospital Creek."

Who knew my little site was a recreational option?

http://fun4auggiekids.com/Fun-Around-Town/Playgrounds-and-Parks/Nelmar-Terrace-Park/View-details.html

THESE ARE TERRIBLE REPRESENTATIONS OF MY LITTLE SPOT

I fell in love with the quiet, (seemingly) abandoned, remote feel that it has.

Senses: Touch

TOUCH

Statement: So in the book, "A Natural History of the Senses", I automatically turned to the section on touch first. "Touch" is such an important sense in my life, because personally many of my coping skills involve the sense of touch. When I originally heard about this project I really wanted to overwhelm the site with different textures, but then I read the section on pain in the chapter and became fascinated with the idea of pain being subjective and it changed my idea. So, essentially what I did was combine "soothing" soft textures (the feathers) with the "painful" tacs in a "safe" environment (bubble wrap). The bubble wrap to some could also prove as soothing, or overwhelming, or just fun, or perhaps even something completely unexpected, but overall it's a "safe" texture. I wanted the tacs facing point out from the wall so that the viewer could inflict pain upon themselves if they so chose. (Also just the very sight reminded some of pain.) I think overall it was a big play on pleasure and pain. Also, I tried to keep the set up all white/clear so to avoid adding as much visual stimulation as possible. 

Research:

http://andreinadavila.com/the-bubble-wrap-room/

http://www.bcbhr.org/Articles.aspx?7

(Some of my original ideas came from coping techniques, such as "grounding". But also a personal one for me to calm down to touch things. I have different textures around CONSTANTLY to keep myself calm, such as a fuzzy steering wheel, or a rubber duck on my key chain.)

http://www.mydr.com.au/pain/pain-and-how-you-sense-it

PERFECT! How you sense pain!

(it's interesting) 

"The end result is that you feel a sensation of pain in your finger, think ‘Ouch! What was that?’ or something similar, and react emotionally to the pain; e.g. you feel annoyed or irritated.

However, you will probably have reacted involuntarily even before you were consciously aware of the injury. In sudden strong pain like that generated by pricking your finger, a reflex response occurs within the spinal cord. Motor neurones are activated and the muscles of your arm contract, moving your hand away from the sharp object. This occurs in a fraction of a second — before the signal has been relayed on to the brain — so you will have pulled your arm away before even becoming conscious of the pain."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/27/bloom.pleasure/

A little off topic of touch, but goes into the whole pleasure and pain deal that I was interested in.

Also I'm not going to post all of the research on BDSM here, but here is the basic Wikipedia definition of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM

(again, the pleasure and pain aspect was really interesting to me)

Peephole Installation (Luli's Cupcakes)

Luli's Cupcakes 

82 San Marco Ave

In Progress Cupcakes

The Final Product

(featured flavors of the month on top: Luck of the Irish and Minorcan Mudd)

(when you "peep" through, Breakfast in Bed and Grandma's Coconut)

Statement: 

http://youtu.be/Zt9qb_yhIGo

So my concept revolved around the business itself, Luli's Cupcakes. The actual structure is made out of Luli's own cupcake boxes (which I placed into almost a doll house type structure so that you could look into the "rooms") and the cupcakes are modeled after actual cupcakes in the shop. It was important to have the two flavors of the month: Luck of the Irish and Minorcan Mudd. I did a lot of research in the shop (of course a lot of taste testing!) and chose two other flavors as well to play off of the names and create a scene with: Breakfast in Bed and Grandma's Coconut. I chose to put the two flavors of the month "on display"so that they were easy to see. The other two flavors I created scenes around to play off of the names of the cupcakes, as you can see above in the pictures. I created a tropical, but "classy" scene to place Grandma's coconut it. I created (obviously) a bedroom scene for Breakfast in Bed, and placed the cupcake on the bed as the breakfast. As I stated above, I tried as best I could to replicate the cupcakes as close as possible to the actual cupcakes, and I tried to keep everything in a close theme to Luli's Cupcakes (while having a little fun with the scenes.)

Research:

http://www.luliscupcakes.com/

Grandma's Coconut (left)

Breakfast in Bed

Minorcan Mudd

Luck of the Irish 

(There was more research done inside of the store, taste testing, color observing, space observing etc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datil_pepper

(The Datil Pepper is in the Minorcan Mudd)

One of my original ideas was to explore this

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Eight

"It doesn't matter if you get old-that place will keep stalking you like the one who shot you with the story. Maybe that person will die. Even so, that place will keep on stalking you. It's like that person is still alive."

When I read this passage I immediately thought of this area. It's a few different spots around where I used to live, places I would walk to on a daily basis. These places haunt me, they stalk me. The memories stalk me. Even though I have moved away and tried to move on from the memories associated with them, even just going back to take pictures I felt the weight of the place still there. All of the memories instantly come flooding back. (This also helped inspire my site specific project.)

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Nine

"Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle... The Wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round...Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were..."

I feel like I responded pretty directly to this quote. I did try a completely different style of painting then what I'm used to. I tried to make everything in the painting a circle. The four main circles are the "seasons" and in the center is the moon and the sun. The wind is also in the painting. I was also thinking about the image of a bird's nest, and how everything really in connected and a cycle, and I tried to just let it flow out onto the painting. Also fun fact this can be displayed in any way because it's a circle. 

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Six!

Did you "hear" the song? Or the clapping from the song? (We Will Rock You) This isn't my image but I immediately thought of it after this reading. I really responded to the parts talking about "reading out loud" (the silent reading), synthesia, and being able to feel pain when you see it happen to someone else. I was blown away that "silent reading" is so new and that "silent reading" is really us reading out loud in our heads. My doodles were responses/tests to see if I could create synthesia just from images, like the gif.

 "In different situations, other senses may initiate synthesia: our ears, when we are at an orchestral concert; or our nostrils, when a faint whiff of burning leaves suddenly brings images of childhood autumns; our skin, when we are touching or being touched by a lover."

"The diversity of my sensory systems, and their spontaneous convergence in the things that I encounter, ensures this interpenetration or interweaving between my body and other bodies-this magical participation that permits me, at times, to feel what others feel."  

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Five

Bee Leaf

"We could, that is, resort to a visual pun, to images of things that have nothing overtly to do with belief but which, when named in sequence, carry the same sound as the spoken term "belief" ("bee-leaf")." (pg 98 because no one bee-leafed that this was in the book!)

I was simply so inspired by this visual pun that I had to create it. How could you not?! This is my favorite piece.

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Four!

"Saussure described the structure of any language as a thoroughly interdependent matrix, a webwork wherein each term has meaning only by virtue of its relation to other terms within the system. In English for example, for instance, the sounded word "red" draws its precise meaning from its situation in a network of like-sounding terms, such as "orange", "yellow", "purple",
"brown", as well as from its participation in a still wider nexus of related terms...each of which holds significance only in relation to a constellation of still other words, expanding thus outward to every term within the language."

So overall most of my response was directly related to this quote. I chose to create a physical web to represent the web of languages. Instead of using a clear fixture I purposely chose to use the black tape to represent the relationship between terms in a system. I suppose in a way this piece is an illustration of this quote. 

In another way though I think it also represents how all of the different languages are connected together as well. Or on an even bigger squale, how all human are connected by language. It failed to mention sign language, but it did briefly get into body language and gestures Humans all know how to communicate with a formal language, they will create one if one doesn't exist, or learn a new one fairly quickly through adaption, and I find that super fascinating. It connects us all in this giant web of sorts.

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Three!

For this reading I actually responded to several sections in one piece. 

"The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved- the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens- all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities-crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfalls- all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into unique dance."

"In contrast, the mass-produced artifacts of civilization, from milk cartons to washing machines to computers, draw our senses into a dance that endlessly reiterates itself without variation."

Basically, with those two quotes in mind and that whole section in mind, I created this piece. Basically I wanted to combine the human artifacts and organic materials together to show a sense of coexistence. I also really wanted to use the human artifacts in a way that they weren't intended, and create a variation. I wanted the piece to have a sense of movement like a "dance". I used the lightbulb, milk cartoon, and newspaper specifically based off of the quote. I added a weed from around the house and dead flowers from in the house (they used to be from outside somewhere). I included the paintbrush to really push on the idea of the coexistence because it is made out of the organic materials now made into a human artifact. I placed everything into the bowl simply because I just love the quote below so much and I really needed to involved a bowl in the piece. I think it really pulled it all together. (And it took everything in me to not break the bowl. But there is a importance in not breaking it.)

"If I break it into pieces, in hopes of discovering these interior patterns or the delicate structure of its molecular dimensions,  I will have destroyed its integrity as a bowl; far from coming to know it completely, I will simply have wrecked any possibility of coming to know it further, having traded the relation between myself and the bowl for a relation to a collection of fragments."  (my favorite)

"The Spell of the Sensuous" Two!

There was a lot of this chapter that jumped out to me, surprise, the chapter about science and experience jumps out to me. However, the one part in particular that just wouldn't leave my mind was the part about "life-world" The specific line that inspired me was:

"The life-world is the world that we count on without necessarily paying much attention, the world of the clouds overhead and the ground underfoot, of getting out of bed and preparing food and turning on the water for tap."

Immediately from this line a million ideas sparked, however, I decided to go with doodling. I thought doodling a reaction was appropriate because doodling is simple, it's not over thought, it's usually what comes before all of the thoughts and reflections and theories, much like the "life-world". I simply wrote out the quote and doodled without thinking.

"The life-world is thus peripherally present in any thought or activity we undertake. Yet whenever we attempt to explain this world conceptually, we seem to forget our active participation within it."

Therefore, I'll just let my active participation through the doodle do the "explaining".

"The Spell of the Sensuous" One!

Perhaps it's because of my recent dance with death that made this portion of chapter stand out so much, but whatever the reason, I chose to react to pages 15 and 16, more specifically where the Abram begins with:

"Each indigenous culture elaborates this recognition of metamorphosis in its own fashion..." (Referring to the change of living to dead.)
My piece originally sparked from the description from cremation: "Some cultures may burn, or "cremate," the body in order to more completely return the person, as smoke, to the swirling air, while that which departs as flame is offered to the sun and stars, and that which lingers as ash is fed to the dense earth."

(This was all done in a glass jar.) I wanted to represent that cremation, I wanted to have that physical smoke, so at first I burned some paper to create ashes. But I really wanted to add more to it, so I added pieces of the land around me to represent being reunited with the land (and the tradition being shaped by the terrain around us) and burned some of those as well. I was also thinking about other traditions of celebrating death or making that transition, such as dismembering body parts, so I left the matches in the jar to represent those parts. I added a flower on top as well to represent the common way that we in our culture put our dead in caskets and put flowers on top. (Although I realized when I was done, in a way the jar was like a casket, holding everything inside.) I also used tape on the lid to represent mummification. Basically the entire description just got me thinking of all of the ways that we try and celebrate death, or try and get out dead to "next place", and I represented a few of those ways. My favorite though, is that if you unscrew the lid right now, a little bit of smoke will still come swirling out, reminding me of the sentence that inspired this whole creation in the first place.