Important Decisions

In the lead up to the presentation the following key decisions were made

Dust Screen (VNS Interactive, body covering + digital dust) - Falls on unbleached flour on the floor - approximately 2 metre ring - with internal lit ring and bleed to black.

Birth Screen (DVD loop, 3 mins floating/gliding body) - Falls on white pool sand on a 2m disc approximately 0.5m off the floor. (Rear projection not feasible with quality of images/costs/issues of projection light in one's face).

The main body of the space divided up with infra red sensing beams - detect presence and approximate direction (4x Digital/Loadbangs).

Space around dust screen divided into 4 quadrants (1 metre radius around screen giving 4x Analog Presence Values) - possibly monitored with camera using infra red lighting panel (tbc) - if not 4 PIR's - 4x digital/loadbangs).

Sound Design tbc - 8 channel

On entry participants choose either a paper packet of dust (with texts printed on them) - they are asked to add that/cast that upon the dust on the floor. This encourages activity which is sensed - as is also moving edge of dust pile on the floor.

Project Outline Version 2

Contextualising Quote:

Your face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, you see one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage, hurling it in front of your feet.

You would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in your wings with such violence that you can no longer close them.

This storm irresistibly propels you into the future to which your back is turned, while the pile of debris before you grows skyward. This storm is what you call progress.

Adapted from a text by Walter Benjamin

Core Idea:
Shifting Intimacies is an interactive/media artwork that invites gentle meditation upon eternal, transitional cycles of birth life, death and decay, the mysterious environmental forces that shape our daily experience.

Introduction:
As living, ageing and dieing beings we exist within, and are dependent upon, numerous complex ecologies – ecologies of mind, body, interpersonal relationship and biosphere. Restless, pervasive and corrosive forces, forever in transition, forever crumbling and forever reforming, animate these ecologies. Despite rapid technological advances our attempts to comprehend these physical, metaphysical and epistemological complexities are still laced with uncertainty. There is much we don’t know. There is much we choose to ignore and, also much we can never know.

This artwork is a reflection upon these tentative negotiations - these ‘Shifting Intimacies’.

Our attempts at knowing are mediated by our body and mind - the only interface that we have to the world. Hence the body is central in a consideration of the dynamics of life - the eternal shifts from state to state: These we name:

Birth – through Decay to Dust through Regeneration to Birth..

There are therefore transition states between Dust and Birth

When moving away from birth towards dust the transition is called decay

When moving away from dust and towards birth the transition is called regeneration.

Dust: Is the place of the unknowable, the alchemical - the matter to which all life and everything returns, and from which everything is subsequently built - a base material of life that is eternally kinetic and transitory.

Birth is similarly a mysterious primal, profound phase-shift for all lifeforms.


Spatial Design
Shifting Intimacies in an interactive image and sound installation, designed to be experienced by many participants at once. The piece uses the full size of the ICA black box theatre, which lies mostly in total darkness. On entering the space two circles (Called 'Birth' and 'Dust') are clearly visible (a circular projection screen and a dust pile). All elements of the work are cyclical in structure therefore allowing people to enter and exit ant any time. At any particular time the work may invite states of meditation, quiet exploration, stillness and energetic movement.



Details of Interaction Design
The work’s contactless, camera based triggering system privileges exploratory actions and yet allows viewers to also inadvertently trigger the work through their general actions within spaces defined by light.

The work's motifs are represented in the space as follows:
1: Birth:¬–Consists of circular screen of 2m diameter hanging about 1 metre from the ground that one or more persons can lie under. They rest on a circular tempar (memory) foam mattress. A pressure detector detects whether someone is lying under the screen. This screen plays a continual loop of a performer who is eternally circling through liquid states. This material is themed upon the states of birth. Two small loudspeakers (under this screen play a mix of pre composed and live sound elements. (Akin to listening to headphones).

3: Dust: - Is a circular pile of dust on the floor that participants stand over, and upon which is projected an image that is effected by the density and movement of people around it. There is an ‘active’ circular zone in a narrow band around the dust pile. This circle is divided into THREE zones (li) life-dust/birth-dust/death-dust) and monitored by a small video camera hung above the pile that via the VNS detects presence and amount of human movement within each of the zones. There is also a device to shake small quantities of dust into the space.

2: Transition Space ('Decay' and 'Regeneration')- is an unmarked area between the two poles (Birth and Dust) - when anyone moves into this space three further angled spot-lights are faded in - these in turn create three interactive zones on the floor upon which any participant's shadows cause subsequent major effects on the entire work. (These are monitored by a small video camera hung above the pile that via the VNS detects presence and amount of human movement within each of the zones). Dust also coats the floor between elements so that the participant's footprints gradually change the space.

The gently interactive nature of the work ensures that much of this material becomes generated and choreographed by participants’ movements (specifically in the transitional zone, and to a lesser extent around the dust pile). This implicates each participant and their body in a co-creative, performative partnership with the work.

GUY TO ADD TEXT ON SOUND HERE

Sound: Shifting Intimacies is laced together by a sonic landscape: This not only includes the speakers under the screen, but also four large speakers and a Sub that fill the entire space with visceral, dynamic sound. The participants will direct/affect a part of this sound, whilst and other elements will derive from a dynamic, evolving composition.


Dusts are granular, tiny particles of the planet and the universe: the shedding of skin, the crumbling of rock. Almost everything, including our bodies, are reducible to dust; much in the cosmos starts out as dust. Words scatter like dust and bodies are unevenly imprinted into dust. Dust settles. It disperses. It is a trace or remnant. It flies and hovers. It's eternal, pervasive, restless, and dry. It connects past present and future materialities; ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The body’s components are chiefly water, bone and elements – ‘dusts’ of calcium phosphate, carbon, nitrogen, iron, sulphur, chlorine, arsenic and zinc.

(In this work we also reference Italo Calvino’s 1965 short story ‘Smog’ (La Nuvola di Smog) which uses Dust as a central metaphor. The myriad sounds of dusts will inform the soundscape, based on granular synthetic sounds. These ‘dusts’, always in transition between forms and states are presented visually, audibly, literally and conceptually throughout the work).


Ideas for the Dust Pile

The pile is comprised of flour (as unrefined as possible to resemble ash). Dust masks should be provided for the public to use at their choice – these could be printed as a take-away art souvenir. NB that ‘Bonfire’ – comes from the old English ‘bone fire’ of cremation

icafloorplan1.pdf
icafloorplan2.pdf

Project Description v1

Your face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, you see one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage, hurling it in front of your feet.

You would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in your wings with such violence that you can no longer close them.

This storm irresistibly propels you into the future to which your back is turned, while the pile of debris before you grows skyward. This storm is what you call progress.

Adapted from a text by Walter Benjamin

Core Idea:
Shifting Intimacies is an interactive/media artwork that invites gentle meditation upon eternal, transitional cycles of birth life, death and decay, the mysterious environmental forces that shape our daily experience.

As living, ageing and dieing beings we exist within, and are dependent upon, numerous complex ecologies – ecologies of mind, body, interpersonal relationship and biosphere. These restless, pervasive and corrosive forces are forever in transition, forever crumbling and forever reforming. Despite technological advances our attempts to comprehend these physical, metaphysical and epistemological complexities are still laced with difficulty and uncertainty. There is much we don’t know. There is much we choose to ignore and also much we can never know. we name our tentative negotiations with these life forces– ‘Shifting Intimacies’.

Our attempts at knowing are mediated by our body and mind - our only interface to the world. We signify the centrality of the body in this artwork by the unclothed form of a dancer, moving in never ending circles.

Shifts from state to state are symbolised by ‘dust’ (a base material of life that is kinetic, transitory and reformatory). The unknowability of our body/minds is further suggested by X-ray imagery that peels back layers of flesh to image our body’s mysterious inner organs.

The gently interactive nature of the work ensures that much of this material becomes generated and choreographed by participants’ movements (specifically around the dust pile and their presence lying under the screen). This implicates each participant and their body in a co-creative, performative partnership with the work.


Themes?
Shifting Intimacies in an interactive image and sound installation, designed to be experienced by many participants at once. The piece uses the full size of the ICA black box theatre, which lies mostly in total darkness. All elements of the work are cyclical in structure allowing people to enter and exit ant any time. At any particular time the work may invite states of meditation, quiet exploration, stillness and energetic movement. All media is loosely themed around four (dust and body-infused) key themes: -
Birth, Life, Death, Decay ..
and their sub themes –
Adolescence, Old Age, Burial and Reformation. (See image below).

Whilst the two core physical elements of the work are relatively compact the work uses the size of the ICA theatre both for visual impact and also for its acoustic properties.

Element 1: Is a low hanging circular screen about 1 metre from the ground that more than one person can lie under on a circular tempar (memory) foam mattress. This screen plays a continual loop of pre-edited video of a naked performer who is eternally circling. This material is themed upon the states of birth, life, death and decay. Two small loudspeakers under this screen play a mix of pre composed and live sound elements.

Element 2: Is a circular pile of dust on the floor that participants stand over, and upon which is projected an image that is effected by the density and movement of people around it. The active area for the interactive system is indicated by lights and painted lines on the black floor. This zone is monitored by a remote video camera.

Hidden under this dust pile is a single subsonic speaker, which activates a part of this material. Occasional sprinkles of dust also fall gently downwards through this beam of light.

Elements 1 and 2: are linked by a strong, interlocking visual element painted/lit on the floor.

Sound: Shifting Intimacies is laced together by a sonic landscape: This not only includes the speakers under the screen, and the dust, but also four large speakers and a Sub that fill the entire space with visceral, dynamic sound. The participants will direct/affect a part of this sound, whilst and other elements will derive from a dynamic, evolving composition.

Other Linking Elements: 4: Projected light and painted graphics on the black floor link all of these elements. These also mark camera tracked zones close in around the dust pile where the presence and dynamics of participants moving at choice within that zone have both direct and indirect on the work’s sound, vision, light and particle movement.

Interaction Design

This simple system consists of:

1: An ‘active’ circular zone in a narrow band around the dust pile, also marked physically on the floor. This circle is divided into 8 zones (see below). It is monitored by a small video camera hung above the pile that via the VNS detects presence and amount of human movement within each of four primary and foiur secondary zones. These zones are continued visually into the centre of the pile.

2: A pressure detector to indicate whether someone is lying under the screen
3: A device to shake small quantities of dust into the space

This contactless triggering system privileges exploratory actions and yet allows viewers to also inadvertently trigger the work through their general actions within defined/lit spaces.



Further Conceptual Background
Ideas of body/mind-environment connections are further implied through the work’s pervasive metaphor of Dust: Dusts are granular, tiny particles of the planet and the universe: the shedding of skin, the crumbling of rock. Almost everything, including our bodies, are reducible to dust; much in the cosmos starts out as dust. Words scatter like dust and bodies are unevenly imprinted into dust. Dust settles. It disperses. It is a trace or remnant. It flies and hovers. It's eternal, pervasive, restless, and dry. It connects past present and future materialities; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We therefore also reference Italo Calvino’s 1965 short story ‘Smog’ (La Nuvola di Smog) which uses Dust as a central metaphor. The myriad sounds of dusts will inform the soundscape, based on granular synthetic sounds. These ‘dusts’, always in transition between forms and states are presented visually, audibly, literally and conceptually throughout the work.

Ideas for the Video: The video’s main sections are

1. Birth: an alchemical struggle of elemental, incomprehensible forms
2. Life: The lived, connected body struggling to comprehend itself
3. Death: The body struggling in and at death
4. Decay: The body returning back to its elemental forms

Ideas for the Dust Pile

The pile is comprised of ash – like that produced by a fast burning fire – typical of cremation. Not sure yet about safety issues. Dust masks should be provided for the public to use at their choice – these could be printed as a take-away art souvenir.

The body’s components are chiefly water, bone and elements – ‘dusts’ of calcium phosphate, carbon, nitrogen, iron, sulphur, chlorine, arsenic and zinc

‘Bonfire’ – comes from the old English ‘bone fire’ of cremation

Use of vitruvian man image as basis for x-rays? Body within circle has moving material at the 'heart' position

Vibration Experiments

Spent a day working outside - thanks to beaut Brisbane winter. Working with the movement of dust materials (currently lime) with lo frequencies from loudspeakers - i.e. using speakers to move air and therefore move a membrane. We tried a membrane (plastic) with a speaker pushed against it, also the material directly on a speakers grille covered in plastic, and also air pushed from a speaker vent down a flexible plastic tube.
















Results were encouraging - but health implications of creating dust (which is possible in quantity) are still an issue - however it is possible to control the dust and even eliminate it if the right frequencies and db levels are chosen - its a finely tuned instrument with differing responses depending on weight of dust, volume and frequency - the shape of the membrane can also be outlined when enough db is sent. However activity causes dust to leave membrane exposing it.

We also can create what looks like a heartbeat, pulsing under the dust - which is visually powerful - next move is to work with an irregular shaped membrane - maybe a body image trace - to see how that operates - and also consider ways for steering the materials from place to place so we don’t simply just uncover the membranes.

Guy and Keith: Sound Ideas .. Day 1 Brisbane

Focus on two spaces – one lying under, round projection, one circle of dust

The lying under space is about the cycle of life – birth life – death
The ashes space is about returning to the earth – matting body with landscape

We began to think of the sound in the work as both a hearing and material moving force:

We discussed actuators under the foam to activate a body gently as someone lies under the screen, massaging, feeding back gently – AND causing immediate changes in the other dust space – points of movement mirrored in both surfaces

So, some sense of the form of their body – a sonic activation of a body image in moving dust using a vibrating matrix of speakers, on a membrane – gently moving the dust- that person’s relatively still body is implicated in the entire piece.

The person would lie with their head between two close speakers

This design encourages cooperation – for pairs/couples and groups

We want people to touch the dust, or do something meaningful, .. to add to the pile ..

Maybe people take dust from a container (possible a tall tube? within which dust is swirling, falling/being blown – and scatter it onto the pile)

Or maybe simple proximity around the dust pile causes a range of different audio and video interactions –a place for meditation rather than action

We sourced a nice form of dust/ash .. at a garden centre - lime? A woman told us at Northrey City Farm that wood burnt in kiln for Raku pottery would be another good source?

Then we went to Guys studio and experimented with the lime moving over a speaker with different frequencies applied – heres a grainy quicktime mp4 video I took on my phone..

Back to Business: Ideas Update

Image of Loyalist Parade, Londonderry, Northern Ireland - bonfire dust and flames - KMA

First - Recapping on last meeting in Sheffield Keith and Charlotte had concluded that:

There would be two circular spaces
1: a projection on a hanging circular screen, approx 1.5m above, hanging parallel to the floor (or slight tilt maybe?), that one person at a time would lie under, on an inviting tempar memory foam layer (surface that can hold a body image): Images in short video loop, themed on lifecycles: Birth/Life/Dying/wetness/nakedness/simplicity/repetitiveness/dissolution/ with soft granular forms into the centre/vortex, and out of which new phases emerge: this was shot in the studio againts light, water, black, dust and dust/water.

"we each touch on the circle of life at different times, with different tempos, and yet we share the same impossible body.. the unknown, the unknowable, conjoined body.." - Keith

Innocence / birth / colour – gives way to wetness /dryness / forms of anguish / midlife – gives way to degeneration / dryness/dustiness/ greyness / death¬ – gives way to … repeat etc. : Under lit footage of TC, moving upwards to the camera, outwards and back downwards

2: A circle of dust with down projections: themes on death/returning to the ground/decomposition

Each could be read separately and together - meaning people could mill around in an unrestricted form.

Ideas that had fallen by the way at this stage were a chimney shaped structure with projections of water on the outside, a circular inside projection screen and a dust curtain to walk through. Wed also imagined the image of the lying persons body later seen on the dust - however this we decided couldn’t be a focus as it was not visually interesting to watch someone lying and watching a screen.



A remembrance for the wanted and unwanted children of that body, their unbeknowing, deep complicity in worlds they stutteringly enter, a remembrance for the complicity of skyscraper divers and tunnel travellers – and always, one body .. sanctioning. Do we feel angry, do we feel hollow..? - Keith

Entry into a darkened space, the holding state, with only soft glowing light from the work in the centre, spotlights hanging in the air – a quiet meditative, earthy space – the smell of ash/gentle burning:

“A non aggressive interactive – a gentle mapping of body space” - Vivienne
Remembrance (ash/death - very recent London Underground bombings / ashing of Iraq: and I stood in the oh so empyric Mall and quietly remembered a burial, a clockwork loss.. - Keith



"Denial and remembrance – a remembrance for the dust, ash and flesh that co-minges in death, a subterranean war, underneath and overneath where I am.. A denial in essence of our bodies and their conjointness – sold on to the sound of distant, capricious rumbles: your noise in their space, and vented so far far away" - Keith

Images from the Last Video Shoot

Ultrasonic mister - projection surface over water?

Creation of a safe water based mist - that sits on top of a pond - I wonder about this as a projection surface?

A Long Walk on the Beach - New Solidity

Insomnia, phone calls to be made in the middle of the night for out of time funding, 4.00am dawn in high summer, a walk to Port Stewart along empty roads at dawn to the 'Castle' beach, around the heads and up the river, back across the golfing links in the dunes.. plenty of time to think and draw in the sand. This is how it’s distilling:

AND .. Remembering The Original Proposal.. (Early ideas are so often the clearest..)

Our bodies form our physical, metaphysical and epistemological interfaces to the world. They are ultimately indivisible from each other and that world. Merleau Ponty suggests that we are all “Flesh of the world-flesh of the body-being”. These ideas ground the work and become our starting point. The user within this interactive installation is central to the work’s operation. They are in direct contact with its interface and are connected and implicated intimately within its evolving body-dance imagery. Ideas of body-environment-connectivity are further implied through the work’s pervasive metaphor of Dust: Dusts are granular, tiny particles of the planet and the universe: the shedding of skin, the crumbling of rock. Almost everything, including our bodies, are reducible to dust; much in the cosmos starts out as dust. Words scatter like dust and bodies are unevenly imprinted into dust. Dust settles. It disperses. It is a trace or remnant. It flies and hovers. It's eternal, pervasive, restless, dry. It connects past present and future materialities; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We therefore also reference Italo Calvino’s 1965 short story ‘Smog’ (La Nuvola di Smog) which uses Dust as a central metaphor. The myriad sounds of dusts will inform the soundscape, based on granular synthetic sounds.

Keys To This Project:

Bodies must mesh with the work and each other

Bodies mesh with the earth/dust/ash (ashes to ashes, dust to dust)

Body leaves an imprint that slowly disappears/melts into the earth

The work should be Body directed/led

Work refracts/translates the participant's body

The back/spine foregrounds/leads the experience (6 points) - simplicity

Back massage/comfort as a strategy

There is a transition in the work of dust/pixels from one place to another

An impossible body = an unsustainable body = unsustainable understanding of body.The work alludes to need for an understanding of our common body (ecological understanding of body) and an acceptance of the eternal cycles that will return each and everyone one of us to the dust from whence we came.

The Work has three stages:
1: Sinking in eternal dusts
2: Brushing up against dust
3: Dissolving into Dust
The Work has three stages: Experienced 1 - 2 - 3: choreographed to work automatically technologically:

Can be watched externally by others.
More than one stage to the work: a journey
Subtly interactive - don’t be afraid to show video sections(TCs circularity edited)

1: Sinking into dust: Lying on an memory foam mattress surrounded by a circular bed of dust - leaving body imprint, watching circularity TC sequence (video) close above on circular screen. (dust visible on back of screen)
Through this sequence the participant’s body image is being frame grabbed - creating a history in movement - the imprint left on the foam is also grabbed as the participant gets up and moves to next space

2: Passing through dust: Moving through slit in material/narrow passage infused with falling dust (dust left visibly on clothing).

3: Turning to Dust: Down Projection on floor onto a flat, circular screen of dust/"white ashes" - afterimage of the body through grabs - dissolving, slowly granule by granule into the dust - with bone/x-ray/internal images sitting inside that body imprint. Sound disturbs the powder creating gentle patterns

Today was a day of trying to get all of the ideas that are important together: This is a summary



Structure/Media "The cloud that surrounded me every hour, at the cloud I habited and that inhabited me"
Imagine cocoon-like, enveloping tall cylindrical structure in a large open space, made of latex/fabric with a low circular roof inside, big enough to lie one whole body under, with a slit in the material to crawl into (after taking off shoes) "Lungs/thorassic cacity/womb"
Inside the enclosure is a soft foam mat to lie on - prefereably thermoelastic/memory foam - with a postition marked for the body - supportive of the spine - looks like a shower of dust has marked the body position. (Possibly image of spine lying in dust projected as a still as you come in - or this may be sewn into the covering)
This sits upon a slightly raised floor that vibrates with sound
The covering is lightly coloured and the space is lit with infrared LEDs (for camera vision)




Projections fall from the outside of the structure onto the cyclindrical walls (also seen inside as rear projections) using 2 (or ideally 3) overlapping projectors
A Projection also falls onto the circular screen above the lieing person
At times images appear to flow between these screens
Each of these screens requires one computer to control it (3 (ideal model - 4))
Another low power computer coordinates these computers using a midi network




Other Features "immersed in a light like the end of the world"
There is a light 'lip' where the horizintal and vertical projections meet, with a hidden controllable light source. (Ref James Turrell's works)
Air of differing intensities is passed gently through the device from silent fansand through this gap (with some dust particles seen in the beams?)
Dust like particles potentially also move around on the back surface of the top screen agitated by air

Sound "What mattered was everything that was inside that smog, not what lay outside it"
Sound runs on a further separate computer attached to this MIDI network
It is stereo or multichannel, outside in the space and also close with headphones (ideally wireless)



Interaction "Thou art dust and dust thy will become" "My Body is the flesh of the world"
Camera in space measures presence (movement) of body in space (using Max/ VNS)
This presence causes agitation ("weather that whips up digital 'dust'"), which in turn causes degradation of image and sound
Degradation = breakup and dropping of media elements through 'gravity' down side walls
As it falls this material uncovers internal x-ray imagery of the body
Over time this forms layers up the side of the work (ie the dust piles up)
This degradation also infuses the image on the roof (excavation)
There is an inherejnt circularity in this design between all screens that are coordinated




What Happens on Each Screen/Sound space? "I had been looking for a new image of the world which would give meaning to our greyness, which would compensate for all the beauty that we were losing, or would save it"

Screen1: (Circle Above) - "Circles of life" - Cycling through images of circularity - the spinning body in motion - internal and x-ray external (impossible bodies) - adult to x-ray foetus - layering - and always agitated amnd broken up by teh presence signal so people can see their own image if they move

Light lip: "The end of the world" - Transition, pouring over, breaking down, crumbling

Screen 2: (Vertical 1a) - "Showers of dust" "body cavity" "layers of dirt" "histories of dirt" "uncovering of bones via this dirt" dust 'slits' creating a zoetrope animation effect of the bones
Screen 3: (Vertical 1b) - Continuation of 1a "little by little dark, vague shadows grew"

Sound Floor: Sonic vibrations - drawing attention to the spine/embodiment/inside - linked to the falling imagery on the Screen 2/3 - constant muffled rumbling - every sound that gets added/falls into this mix is a dull punctuation or in smooth sympathy. "the foggy air of these mornings"

Room Fill: Sounds of broad decay and rebirth lnked directly to state of screens, enveloping, comforting and fierce "the cloud of smog rubbing over the city"

Headphone Sounds: Close sounds of a disintegrating world, crackling, unsettling, gnawing "because it was heavy, not clearly dispelled from the earth"

circularity

Adinda van -t Klooster

The new artist-in residence Adinda van 't Klooster has worked with a wide range of media such as video and sound installation, animation, interactive technology and sculpture. A recurring theme in her work is a questioning of a dualistic way of thinking that separates culture from nature, masculinity from femininity and life from death.

Inspired by medical imaging techniques, her recent work is a poetical exploration of the very early stages of the creation of human life and subtly explores ethical and political issues raised by developments in medical science. The work makes us marvel at the ingenuity of the natural world without ignoring the contribution of modern technologies.

Body Space Art

here..

baltimore museum of art ernest netoNeto's Sculpture

A great, womb-like cloud of nylon, cleverly stitched into two rooms and a passageway, is undoubtedly the “pièce de résistance” of the show. This work, entitled “Sister Naves” (Portuguese for “boat”) by Brazilian sculptor Ernesto Neto, must be experienced by walking into it (shoeless, only three people at a time), to know the euphoria of collapsing onto its spongey base, and rolling uncontrollably and ecstatically about.

All the while, you will be inhaling the aroma of cloves from long nylon socks dangling from above, like various other bulbous shapes that suggest body parts or genitalia. Holes in the work's soft flooring are provided for plunging arms into. So engulfing is this uterus-like environment, you will find it almost impossible to get to your feet and wobble through clinging veils to the exit. Exhilarating, yes! Like being reborn, or having an otherworldly dream.

The Sound of the Womb

Foetal Sound



In utero, four and a half months after conception, the foetus begins to hear. Well before sight, smell, taste and touch are anything more than a vague hint of the surrounding world, sound is bombarding the unborn child. And a barrage of sound it is. A recording made through the belly of a pregnant woman designed to serve as a soundtrack to a video of an ultrasound examination, sounds not unlike submersion in water – constant muffled rumbling broken intermittently by louder muffled rumbling sounds. The images recorded via an ultrasound are made possible by the use of extremely low frequency soundwaves, penetrating the woman's body and bouncing back, not unlike radar.



This provides a fascinating insight into the womb but what of the accompanying 'insound'? Recorded by a contact microphone through the wall of the pregnant woman's abdomen, it's surely a very inaccurate representation of the acoustic environment of the womb. We have to imagine what it would really sound like: the thundering of mother's heart, her enormous bellow lungs drawing and expelling air, her digestive system tangle pushing around fluids and solids in every gushing direction. But perhaps more important than what a foetus hears, after all it is well short of the cognitive ability to even note "Oh, that was a sound!", is the issue of how these sounds sound. Through fluid, at close proximity, muffled, bassy, lacking high frequency definition - all descriptions, it should be noted, that make a comparison with post-natal, external-world hearing.



But here's my point. Just as Ludwig in his later years had to compose with his head resting on top of the piano, giving the soundwaves a more direct route through wood into flesh and bone, so too do we all experience sound as physical vibration, and at the very commencement of our lives. This is the sensory experience that rocks our world, that shapes and defines our environment, that is our environment for the first months of existence. We hear it and we feel it. And when we are suddenly pushed and bullied by forces we can't even comprehend, let alone resist, through that ridiculously narrow passage and into the 'light', and it's violently cold and bright, it all sounds different, wrong, unfamiliar, alien. All of a sudden there is something to compare the old world to, to contrast with 'home' and we all react in the only way we can. We scream. Loudly. Drown out the alien noises. Make our own sound, under our own control.

The womb then gets recreated in the outside world, in a myriad of ways, each of us subconsciously yearning for the security and comfort of the past. But the key to a successful 'hotel womb' is in the sonic. The constant muffled rumbling we all secretly love. And every sound that gets added to the mix must be dull punctuation or in smooth sympathy.
The car is a travelling womb: purring engine, rubber humming over asphalt, wind rushing past sealed windows. (Why, at peak hour, can one see row after row of cars designed to accommodate four all carrying just one?) The Walkman also allows you to totally disconnect yourself from the sound of the world, the world of sounds, whatever your taste in music. (This is quite different from the 'ghetto blaster' perched upon the shoulder, as this is clearly an outward act of sonic violence, forcibly claiming a larger space around oneself than social conventions usually allow.) An effective Walkman womb is not just a question of volume (i.e., turning down or drowning out the external sounds) but also a matter of equalization (i.e., the cutting of high frequencies, the muffling effect.)

One doesn't even need music if the headphones can cover the ears and create an acoustic seal, attenuating the idiot rantings of the public transport losers beside one, turning them into a distant radio soap opera. And so it becomes easy to understand the allure of a sonically effective 'hotel womb'; the soothing drone of the dryer/dishwasher/electric fan inducing domestic narcosis; the calming intermittent swooshing of traffic outside the bedroom window at 3am; the lulling drumming of rain on the iron roof overhead; the hypnotic rattle of a late afternoon suburban train; the mesmerizing babble of rushing water in the huge pipes of a causeway overflow; the hubbub of a dozen candlelit conversations in a crowded restaurant; and so on.
To be honest, a lot of the music I listen to plays the part of acoustic uterine wall. I'm employing music in that role right now, as I write this. It creates the barrier to the wider environment that I need to get into my own headspace, to concentrate on my own internal world, to block out the distracting trivialities of other people. (It's ironic that the work that I do is always for other people – without an audience to receive my work I wouldn't see the need – but I can only actually do it by ignoring them/you.)

An effective sonic womb is only possible when it does not require one's full aural attention. Engaging sonic detail or repetition that becomes irritating are the pitfalls to avoid. It's ironic, or perhaps the whole point, that the musical genres of Minimalism and Drone are the practice of focussing attention upon the details of seemingly unchanging, static sounds or melodic phrases. When one gets into this state of listening, acutely aware of minute changes and subtleties, whether or not one takes it to transcendental extremes, it is in some ways the opposite of the anesthetizing womb, but paradoxically can have a similar effect; insulating, engulfing, immersing.

Piped music, as in the recorded music played in public spaces, depending upon it's intended function, can be either perfect sonic insulation or the very opposite. In department stores the subtle, difficult to hear music is designed to encourage you to move through the store, from potential purchase to potential purchase. So while it encases you, encouraging you to focus upon the retail product at hand, it also breaks the embryonic shell by creating a narrative flow to prevent stasis and excessive lingering. The ultimate mall music, being instrumental music produced by the company called Muzak , has long since disappeared from common usage, but it had excellent womb-like qualities; vaguely familiar melodies in smooth instrumental arrangements. Alternatively, the music you hear in food courts nowadays is usually Top 40 radio and it tries to grab your attention and hold you there, seducing you into a few more minutes away from the hustle and bustle, another bucket of chips, maybe a cola. However, both these examples of piped music face the problem of becoming irritating if you listen too closely.

From all this one can clearly see that sound is intrinsically linked to environment, and environment is something one experiences, as opposed to observes. Surround sound, or the presentation of sound art on a number of loudspeakers greater than two, is currently heralded as a step forward in the creation of immersive sonic environments. This is all well and good but sound is always immersive, it always pervades the environment, even from a very quiet singular source.

If one accepts that art is communication then sound art is communication via environment. It becomes logical that sound artists should be interested in installation, where a total environment can be constructed in order to communicate. But artists should not feel that installation is the only suitable format for sound work. If one considers the environments in which a work might be experienced, and think of the work as a letter bomb or a missile that can penetrate outer skins to explode at the core, then opportunities for communication may present themselves in surprising ways.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
In the Book of Genesis, words that God spoke to Adam in casting him and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. In saying this, God reminded Adam that he had been made from “the dust of the ground” and confirmed that Adam and Eve had brought death upon themselves by disobeying him and eating the forbidden fruit. (See Fall of Man.)

Dust Performance - Flour Imprints

Blackworks by station house opera
Out of the blackness a downpour of flour fell from the ceiling like fine snow, covering the floor. Using brooms or their bodies, the ensemble of performers left marks in the white dust which varied from impromptu body traces to abstract designs, figurative drawings and cartoons - from high art to popular culture, from individual expression to programmed action.

Dust Artist Xu Bing

Dust artist wins first Artes Mundi
A man whose artwork is made from dust collected near Ground Zero in New York has become the first winner of a £40,000 award for visual artists. Xu Bing clinched the Artes Mundi (Arts of the World) Prize for the specially-commissi oned piece.
His installation, "Where does the dust collect itself?" was especially made for the Artes Mundi Prize contest. He covered the museum's floor with the dust he had collected from the 11 September 2001 terror attacks in New York. The surface of the settled dust was then punctuated by the Chinese verse.



Xu Bing's Corpse Powder "This guy's a ghoul, and he just won the world's most lucrative art prize. Can anyone know what's in Xu Bing's dust? Could there be the pulverized remains of human beings nicely distributed over this gallery floor, carefully outlining the stencilled letters?"

Review.Last February, in a profoundly evocative simulation, Xu let the gathered dust fall to the floor of a museum court, similar to the Elvehjem's, at the National Museum and Gallery in Wales. The dust landed on a stencil the artist had placed on the court floor far below. So there lay crematory particles embedding the words of an ancient Chinese poet: "As there is nothing from the first, where does the dust collect itself?"

digital sound dust

There is a composition by Frank Zappa entitled 'The Girl in the Magnesium Dress' which he describes as being made of 'digital dust'.(3) It was created on the Synclavier (a combined synthesizer / sampler / sequencer) by taking the digital file of an existing composition and stripping away the numbers representing pitch and duration (ie melody and rhythm), leaving only peripheral data indicating the specific dynamics for each note. This became the rhythm file for the new piece; by assigning pitches to the 'dust', the composer shifted inaudible, abstract data into the realm of audibility.

Source archis

In the Guitar Player special issue Zappa! of 1992, Zappa explained the origins of "The girl in the magnesium dress": "The piece was made from Synclavier digital dust ... [explains the existance of this dust as G numbers, inaudible musical parameter data]. So we converted this dust into something I could then edit for pitch, and the dust indicated a rhythm. So what I did was take the rhythm of the dust and impose pitch data on the dust and thereby move the inaudible G number into the world of audibility with a pitch name on it".

Source Zappa Analysis

Analogous to Zappa's musical construction, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's 'Amodal Suspension' project used digital data streams as 'found objects' to provide rhythms for the modulation of light, thereby shifting invisible electronic information into the realm of visibility. E-mail messages sent via the Amodal Suspension website were encoded into sequences of light pulses at a rate of four letters per second (two per second in the case of Japanese characters). Variations in brightness were determined by the statistical frequency of the given letter in its original language, and the spaces between words became moments of darkness. The messages were not forwarded; instead, their addressees were notified by e-mail that messages were 'waiting for them in the sky of Yamaguchi'.

Source archis

Final Days in Sheffield

Experiments With Placing Image on Scrim Close to Viewer:



Charlotte's Proposal For a (Female) Cocoon-like Structure, with the participant lying under a low, internal circular roof:



TC Performing/embryonic/feeling of being inside a lightbox/on own/tank like structure/circularity/the womb/soft memory foam (Tempur/viscoelastic) floor (see below) /mini TCs running around outside/Interactive elements undefined/place to seat back/vibration in back/some form of control mechanism/raised platform/drumskin(trampoline?) - for sound - like Bodyshelf stomach vibration




http://www.backinaction.co.uk/tempurinfo

Charlotte's Proposal For a second Cocoon-like Structure, (male) and a partering image outside, Male/female pods/biorhythmic sensoring



Prior ideas - introduced the idea of the zoetrope - TC character running around the rim of the circle of breeze blocks/triggered by people around it/dust falling in a contained space/requires 3 projectors aligned with image running from projector to projector (all controlled under Max), Station House Opera did a show with breeze blocks

Day 7 & 8

"I had been looking for a new image of the world which would give meaning to our greyness, which would compensate for all the beauty that we were losing, or would save it".



"For a moment I hoped still to retain my own ghostly invisibility in their midst, then I realized that I, too, had become like them, a form so precise that even the mirrors reflected it, and their was no possible refuge; even the smoke which drifted in a thick cloud to the ceiling from all the lighted cigarettes in the place was a thing apart with its outline and its thickness and didn’t modify the substance of the other things".

Putting the house to one side for a while - its dominated the space now for quite some time, but its not gelling. The Perspex platform and what appears under it still resonates (we experimented with under projections), (and also projections appearing like holograms/ghosts in the walls), but somehow the walls, the house are something else, not connected enough with the dust/bones/or the cyclical ideas, inside/outside that we have been working through. (We also tried projection of bones onto bodies but it was much better to watch on the other than do).

"As I lay in bed, the sounds of others, wakefulness reached me, muffled, without gusto or colour, as if through a fog".

A good process and lots of movement and experimentation but now we need, as Charlotte says to ask - if we had a show on tomorrow, what would you use, and what would you reject. Down images work - bodies spinning in salt/water shot from above something about things moving around you, something about enveloping.

"I had no desire to be settled in any sense; I wanted everything around me to remain flowing, temporary, because I felt it was the only way to save my inner stability".

Charlotte re-raised the idea of being under a sandwich - with a screen close to you - as space you crawl under, a space with salt in for example, maybe with sonic activation (crunching). She mused about images hat could hang in that space, disorientation, sharp lights, material falling above you



- we watched a storm roll in from her back garden - the rays from behind a cloud, the mystery and the proportion, the flashing around the peripheries, then the whole sky sheeting.

"The weather was oppressive, the days were smothered in a gloomy haze, during the afternoon hours the city was immersed in a light like the end of the world, and the passers-by seemed shadows photographed on the ground after the body had flown away."



"It was, in short, a shadow of dirt, soiling everything and changing"



"I stayed there, looking for the first time, from outside, at the cloud that surrounded me every hour, at the cloud I habited and that inhabited me, this was the only thing that mattered to me".



"And I wrote that, true, there were still people who lived outside the cloud of smog, and perhaps there always would be, people who could pass through the cloud and stop right in it’s midst and then come out, without the tiniest puff of smoke or bit of soot touching their bodies, disturbing their different pace, their other worldly beauty, but what mattered was everything that was inside that smog, not what lay outside it: only the foggy air of these mornings could one reach the bottom of the truth and perhaps be free of it".

Guy's Responses

I am very interested in choreographic response to a piece like the Nauman work at Tate Modern. I really enjoyed the use of the space in his work. There is a lot of potential for extending an experience like that into a carefully choreographed use of the space. My initial idea after being there was to use lines on the floor of the space to guide listeners through the various possible auditory landscapes. While this would allow people to experience a particular series and certain combinations of sounds, it would also create a visual experience from a distance showing a living map and evolving image within the space.

This is something that I thought about after noting Charlotte's response to the Nauman work in "Thoughts of the past two days" was one of choreographic possibilites for a work of this nature. It may or may not be usable on this context but it reflects the idea of guiding (containing) the participants.

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Ideas relating to the idea of dust and physical interface design

I have been thinking about dust not as a literal powder-like form and rather as a particle. These particles could then be anything including light/s. Small light particles could be used to illuminate various sections of the structure. The movement of this light could also act as an interface.

eg. Small lights (led) could be attached to string/wire/chain/spring and positioned hanging or protruding from a surface. A body or parts of a body in a space could disturb these protrusions, the movement of which could be read using various types of sensors including Accelerometer, Flex, Gforce, Tilt (magnetic or binary) Laser diode and Gyroscopic. The light itself and its movement could also be read using high contrast imaging.

These are purely ideas about an interface that will create data for interaction. How these objects are arranged in the space would determine the ways in which they might encourage action and interaction.

(Not sure what you have discussed in terms of interactive elements apart from the use of cameras and high contrast images so I thought I would throw this one in there while it is discussion)

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Spacial mapping for audio

I am already starting to visualise the spacial audio in three layers. These relate directly to the room, the glasshouse and the headphones. A relative"score" to the piece might have each audio layer responding separately to the interactive elements of the piece. Therefore creating a variety of ways to experience particular geographical points or landmarks within the space. It also allows for varying degrees of closeness to the listener. While different people may experience similar sounds in headphones their individual relationship to the space will determine thier experience. (inside, outside, head)

Not sure if the piece is being considered as a multi or single user experience yet. Given the current intention of the containing the participant in the glasshouse as the primary point for the interactive experience people within the glasshouse have the possibility of responses on all three layers of the audio sapce (room, house, phones). If there are viewers in the room they may only be able to experience one or two layers (room and/or phones). This may be a motivation/reward for exploring fully the dimensions of the piece/space.

This of course depends on the layout and intentions of the choreographic and interactive experience.

=========================

Question about drawing on the walls of the house.

IF the intention is to trace in the dust/condensation the walls of the house, will the tracings of several people eventually lead to a clear space unable to be further traced upon? If so, will the walls be "reset" to a blank canvas of dust/condensation?

This is me thinking of the possible issues with this type of interface. I really like the idea a lot but also wonder if it will create problems later. This should be tested before interface is finalised. You guys have probably already thought of this but it hasn't come up in conversation yet so here it is.

Day 5 TC, Gerard, Charlotte, Keith, House

TC in the space makes me feel like I'm back in a land I understand. Shoot TC crossing two camera - a series of simple movement phrases in a linear fashion. Cant stop imagining her projected very large in widescreen travelling the length of the ICA long wall.

Try some stuff in water - familiar from Glasshouse but beautiful none the less - try stuff in a circle of salt - exfoliation for TC's bum - try topshots in house spinning - always lovely and evocative. K suggests to TC imagining layers or particles of dust landing on the body - erratic, jumpy gestural phrase follows. All improvised. Try working from the outside in and the inside out - emotive rather than gestural. We work like this often but there is not enough time to develop feelings really. All too rushed but TC taps in and the movement here is the most interesting. The purist in me wants just that and not to fuck with it - she is full of power and comittment and her nakedness is striking against black. Try to imagine imposing the dust imahgery on her as we did with the bone images yesterday.

Imagine a slow motion version of her twitching and falling and moving with a bit of her anatomy picked out - the spine seen bending and twisting like this



or perhaps her ribcage highlighted or lungs breathing and floating in the body somehow.




Think about the structure of the journey in the space. How it relates to the structure of the house.
Outside / In.
Internal / External.
Felt / Seen
Feeeling / Sensing /Action/ Reaction





Think about containing the participants in the house. We have talked a lot about how they will INTERACT. I think we nedd to contain them. Make them feel something. What if there was a tunnel leading into the house and the only way to view the environment is to see it through the walls of house being ony inside looking out. This gives us the opportunity to animate several spaces.





1 The floor of the ICA in the space surrounding the house - could be covered with water and the is beautiful film of dust settled on it.





2 Under the floor of the house - lightboxes with x ray images / projection underneath people's feet




3 The walls of the house - water running down the outside of the walls and condensation/ heat /steam inside - people could draw on the walls and this uld impact on the video work seen outside



4 The walls of the ICA - long widesceen 16 metre by 8 metre video projections travelling around the 4 walls - a carousel of images like the old zoetrope machines - participant at the epicentre of the carousel




5 the end point of each movement phrase projected clockwise around these four walls ends at a point where the screen becomes a waterfall of dust - flowing downwards to the floor - disintegrating to nothing - starting again. A cycle around the space.


We talked in the intial stages of the project about participants tracing in the dust or on the walls of the house and this being the interface. Like that.

In the House

Process Pictures - TC Howard Performs

Photos by French paper sculptor Gerard RENVEZ (current NESTA Fellow - who visited us Day 5 - 25th June) and Keith. Performer TC Howard, Direction Charlotte with occasional sugggestions from K,

Exeprimental day working with body - imagery shot across two cameras, indide and outside the house using salt, water and talc floating on water..

Tc's work/way/power/image is stunning - also great images on video - must include in the work - Charlotte to blog her thoughts on a view of the work seen from inside the house looking out to the space - see Gerard's beautiful photos including the architecture, and the sublime down top shots, especially where powder and liquid meet!

Early sound ideas

At this early stage I am very interested in the idea of dust and particles.

In terms of sounds and production this could be explored using the concepts of audio as particles and the recycling and breaking down of existing and generated audio.

These are very general initial ideas and with such a large number of possible variables that would effect the outcome it is very difficult to predict what that might be. I will continue to develop them as we go but it will be very important for my development to have some idea of the input data that will eventually drive the software in this piece. I know it is too early to say what that will be. In any case I have started to formulate some ideas (I have already started to dream about them) and will begin to document them as they become more concrete.

It is very important for me to be able to have verbal dicussions when possible to throw ideas around and be part of the brainstorm process that I am certain you have already well and truly began.

Looking forward to hearing more about your development.

Talk soon

Guy

I am blogged on

Hi Keith and Charlotte,

Herre we are in blogworld. Isn't it fun?

You love this don't you Keith? The ideal form of consistent documentation for the man who documents everything. Just for you I will do my very best to keep blogging on.

But seriously, I think it is a great way of putting all discussions in one place. Nice one.

Sorry I had to change the time for our chat yesterday. I forgot about a long standing engagement that I couldn't avoid. Looking forward to talking soon.

Talk more soon.

Guy

Thoughts of the past two days

Capture Day 3

Discussion around Analogue and Digital systems

Keith introduced the types of sensors we may use in Shifting Intimacies to track people, movement, dynamic etc. Talked about need for simplicity and the need to play a game that has some kind of result - some kind of function.

Pressure
Twist
Flex
Sonar Long distance
Proximity
On/off (burglar alarm)
Tilt
G-Force
Light
Sound
Temperature

We discussed the uncovering and moving of physical landscapes in conjunction with the archaeological revealing of virtual images of bones of the body. Talked a lot about shifting materials – dust, salt, water, sand, flour, chalk – that could uncover images on the floor. These images mapping out a body – like jigsaw pieces that correlate somehow to the making up of an Impossible Body. Talked about how to move materials. Fingers, feet, brushes etc. Could we project into the roof of the house, or onto its walls? Could we fill the ICA with dust? Would people complain about the inhalation? How to move away from screen based set up. How to use the house if at all.

Shot some basic dust video – talc falling through frames within the house, water on top, coagulation, substances forming and reforming on the Perspex floor of the house. Particles circling towards the heat of the light. Swirls really beautiful. Shot some feet moving from under the house – pressing and forming the talc, leaving imprints.

Talked later about burial grounds, bones turning to dust, The beautiful delicacy of x-rays. Animating x-rays. What is inside the body – most people don’t think about it. How can we increase awareness of what we are made up of? Solid Matter that turns to dust. Marking graves in a white landscape with tiny LED light headstones. Searching the floor for the hot- spots of interactivity. What is the function of the technology? What is the game we are asking participants to play?

Fragments of Anatomy
Excavation of bodies
Death
Inside Outside – the body / the house
Cabinets of curiosity
Translucence

A house of bones – real bones and meat – the stench, the ligaments hanging off, blood seeping out the house onto a white floor – hitting salt and bleeding to white, No man’s land substances caught between sold and liquid. Suspension of saline. Water to saline to salt. Dehydration.

How do Real and Virtual forms sit in this space together?

Read Calvinos story SMOG. Delicacy of writing. Dirt everywhere. Depression. Obsessive disorder. Lost and lonely. Invasive substance hanging over a place. Becoming engulfed by it. Books as a form of place – where you find yourself. Washing away the dirt. Lungs filled with dirt. Fields of clean washing. Layers and layers of dirt clogging up life and love.


Capture Day 4
Not sure about 'dance' in all this. Not sure at all. Choreography functions like a visual art. Internal body maps and structures can stand alone as beautiful images / talk of 'body weathers'. What about emotional states? Am drawn towards x-rays and delicate translucence of the images. How to animate them? Everything feels like a cliché. Disintegration strong image – goes back to original idea of projecting onto dust falling – moving surface. Bodies turning to dust. Coating everything. Bonemeal.

Need to think of the ICA space as a theatre space for a moment
Where are we?
What is expected of us?
What is the game?
How many of us can play at the same time?

Linear or circular structure?
Both?

• Enter space
• Excavate floor space, via substance covering the floor (interative element?) Searching action – a physical act
• Uncover delicate x-ray based images / Discovery
• Create a body / 'lineatar' (human avatar form / animated x-ray form?)
• Movement act along 20 metre wall (pre-recorded, time sliced video element?)
• Disintegration, image of created moving body ends up on a flowing screen of falling dust, creates pile which is then pushed back into the space to cover the floor or marks the passing of time

The 20 metre length is as a time line - the video element tracks linearly along this
As you excavate the substance on the floor can you mix you own cut of the video element – like DJ scratching? Does this engage people’s bodies? Will they crawl in the dirt? How to instruct the game?

Using the architecture of the space – long and thin – reminds me spacially of Bruce Nauman sound installation at the Tate! – choreography of listeners walking – grid patterns on the floor – can we simplify ideas?

End of day thoughts– projections into the house – we want to fill the house with dust and project onto it. All too messy? Smoke / dry ice / talc? Project bits of body onto cyclorama – back to basics – vertebrae, rib cage, spine, sacrum – body parts infected with dust. Really beautiful images. Want to 3D animate them. Very simple. Bones turning to dust. Osteoporosis – a dancers disease. No movement yet.

Images..

Strongest Images I've Kept So Far

Charlotte Spinning in the Water (House Film)

The ephemerality of X-Ray'd Bones

The falling of powder in rays of light (like sunlight)

Fresh Powder coating the House

The underneath of Feet (unusual perspectives)

Mirror/powder/reflection as a key

To throw oneself on a body to protect it from the falling of dust - a fight against a never ending army of dirt

The history of the world written upon your desk in dust

Time sliced/blurred imagery of body moving - along a wall - of substantial width

Lineatar drawings

The development of an impossible anatomy of x-rays (powdered material?) (remember Tulp and anatomy) - translucence

Archaeologists getting powder off bones.

corrosion

jouney

dust keyed inside bones inside dust - (looks interesting on the floor of the house)

Ideas of Resonance

The manipulation of bones - to free energies in the body

excavation - bodies rising out of sand - the uncovering of atrocities

To climb outside of the cloud that surrounds one - a perspective

Day 2 + 3

Some potted notes and images from these two days: