In the brainstorm session of february 4, 2004 we came to the following concepts wich can be roughly divided in the use of 'sensors as a tool of expression' and the use of 'sensors as the source of perception'. This page contains the concepts. How to construct this into a play can be found on the performace pages. For now they consist of PerformanceSubjectivity and PerformanceGeneral .

Sensoren als bron van waarneming: “Subjectiviteit van de waarneming”

• Wat is de werkelijkheid / realiteit?
• Is er een werkelijkheid? Is die te bevatten?
• In hoeverre zijn werkelijkheid en de subjectieve ervaring, het gevoel, hetzelfde?
• Emotionele werkelijkheid vs. Gedragswerkelijkheid vs. Realiteit:
• Sensoren / zintuigen creëren (je perspectief op) de werkelijkheid
  • Emotionele blik op de wereld vs. third eye view
  • Werkelijkheid is niet absoluut, maar hoe is hij anders (van de realiteit)?
  • Beperkingen van sensoren
  • d.m.v. sensoren heb ik de controle over wat mijn zintuigen registreren / over mijn input. Je kan bepaalde sensoren al dan niet bewust (niet) beluisteren.
• Ieder heeft zijn eigen werkelijkheid
  • Verschillende mensen hebben verschillende ideeën van de werkelijkheid?
  • Hoe komt het dat mensen, met dezelfde sensoren, op een andere manier de werkelijkheid waarnemen?
  • In hoeverre zie ik wat jij ziet?
  • Hoe ga ik met andere mensen om?
  • Het perspectief op de werkelijkheid veranderd naar mate we ouder worden - en daarmee ook de werkelijkheid zelf (vb. dementie).
  • steeds minder grip op de realiteit -> midlifecrisis, dementie, …
  • hoe kijken mensen met of zonder religie naar de wereld?
  • In gedachten je motivatie houden / bijstellen.
  • Ergens naar toe leven, af en toe “ daarom doe ik het”
  • Op een gegeven moment maakt het allemaal niet meer uit
• Hoe komt het dat mensen boven de werkelijkheid schijnen uit stijgen? In hoeverre creëert onze geest / ons gevoel, los van onze zintuigen, de werkelijkheid.
• Matrix: what if your dream is so real that you can’t tell the difference between the dream and reality.

Sensoren als een gereedschap van expressie

• compositie van handelende mensen in interactie met sensoren
  • mensen hebben een paar zintuigen (sensoren) en bijbehorende acties (geluiden of beelden). Men kan met een combinatie van sensoren waarnemen (in het stuk reageren) en interacteren. Je kan van sensor / perceptie switchen. Zo een compositie maken met de acties die aan de (interacterende) sensoren verbonden zijn.
  • dans -> sensoren van plafond laten hangen (bv 16x16) . Dansers met sensoren die reageren met sensoren van plafond. Zo componeert de danser zijn eigen lied. Er is al is iets met dans en interactiviteit gedaan: DAMPF - Dance Media Performance Fusion

• Levensloop van de mens
  • leren registreren, input verwerken, de wereld leren begrijpen
  • de wereld onder controle hebben
  • het beeld van de werkelijkheid komt niet meer overeen met de input
• Toneelspel normaal – beeld en geluid vertellen een ander verhaal
• Handelend persoon die (geluid en beeld) beïnvloed

-- ErikBorra - 16 Feb 2004

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake

In this theater I want to play with peoples senses. As we can only manipulate visuals and sounds we will have to stick to that. I would like people to see how subjective life is, how everyting comes forth out of our perceptions. This enables and limits us to see the world.

The nice thing to do would be to associate certain stimuli and responses, to get people to build a concept of what is happening. All over sudden, everything changes. People don't know anymore which concepts are real and which aren't. People start wondering about their perceptions. It is kind of a trick or treat thing. We treat people with a nice play but trick them into believing things that are not real.

At this moment I stay vague purposfully as I want to hear what the other people have in mind.

-- ErikBorra - 04 Feb 2004

more nice quotes relevant to the play, extracted from whisper wearble archi(ves)tectures

"Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of itself; they are encrusted into its flesh; they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same stuff as the body". (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961:163)

"movement that touches and movement that is touched". (Merleau-Ponty, 1964:148)

Flesh contains within its very fabric the connection we feel with the environment, the perceptual play of light and shadow, our embodied selves and the bodies of others. It is impossible to understand our flesh as it enters into an exchange with the whisper devices without the related phenomena of the invisible and the hidden. The goal, when accessing the invisible (or "subtle") is not simply to bring it to the surface so that it becomes visible, just as the point of whisper is not to de-frock the subtle but rather to work in an ambiguous territory, within the realm of the physically and semantically tentative. This approaches the state between waking and sleeping, allowing oneself to remain in that state to witness one"s own participation in an alternate flow of activity. A rendering "literal" of deeper body knowledge would be a simple translation into language and would strip it of its essence. The whispering between devices based around the pluggable/unpluggable and reconfigurable inputs and outputs, give us the choice of acknowledging the invisible while retaining its hidden, or subtle, qualities. Merleau-Ponty again gives shape to the subtle through his consideration of the invisible.

"the invisible is

1. what is not actually visible, but could be (hidden or inactual aspects of the thing - hidden things, situated "elsewhere" - "Here" and "elsewhere")
2. what, relative to the visible, could nevertheless not be seen as a thing (the existentials of the visible, its dimensions, its non-figurative framework)
3. what exists only as tactile or kinaesthetically, etc ...".

(Merleau-Ponty, 1964:148)

Participatory installation

The space of the installation can best be described as a networked ecosystem containing input and output devices. Up to 12 participants may move and browse in and out of the space with access to a set of devices which may sewn into a jacket, cape, hang from the grid above, or may be lying on the floor waiting to be picked up. Sound is generated on the body and is affected by the networked data as it begins to be transmitted. The devices will resemble a cross between cyber-jewellery, exquisite art objects, creepy prosthetics, peculiarly ornate theatrical costumes and body sculpture; they will be a weave of analog and digital components and circuitry. Participants visiting the space enter a community of bodies and objects, which have a functionality that is not yet manifest. They will be invited to take their place within this ecosystem.

Instead of situating the participants within the flow of a pre-scripted event, they will be involved in a conceptual, physical, aural and visual journey that unfolds according to their participation as a body, as a system. Their responses will drive the experience, and encourage the development of other senses within our synaesthetic matrix of sensory perception and proprioception. It is for this reason that we have coined the term "participatory installation" to describe form of whisper. Merleau-Ponty has described "a being by porosity" wherein our bodies and the distances between ourselves and others "participate in one and the same corporeity or visibility in general" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964:148).

Our body as system creates a metaphor for the operating model of whisper. Our bodies are composed of multiple networked systems, which communicate autonomically to and with each other. So do the devices in whisper. Our bodies are shaped with multiple thresholds that operate in stealth at one moment, overtly at the next moment. These thresholds lie at the liminal boundary of our perception. Our bodies are fluid, networked, and dynamic. Our bodies have secrets, contain multiple intelligences, conceal information in unlikely places, and develop strategies for the expression of current and archived states. So do the devices of whisper. Our bodies surrender things to one another. Our bodies learn, habituate and unlearn by applying directed attention. So does whisper. Any one of our bodies is a "we". When our bodies are together they can operate as an "I". So can the devices in whisper.

The whisper system consists of a group of interconnected, autonomous wearable sensor | actuator collections combined with a local processing module which gathers the data from multiple sensors and whispers to it"s neighbors, and a central whisper server, via low-power radio frequency (RF) transceivers. The server, database and micro-controller systems together determine the response to the actuators. They provide feedback in the form of sound, graphics and tactile feedback devices that are worn on the body, along with the sensors. The whisper central server also visualizes and displays a dynamic representation of the system-state both on the web, and projected onto a series of heterogeneous projections displayed within the installation space.

-- ErikBorra - 01 Mar 2004