David re. Jhave Johnston scenario ideas

From: David Morris [mailto:davimorr@alcor.concordia.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 12:09 PM
To: 'New post on Posterous'
Subject: RE: Posterous Post (memoryplace) | Jhave Johnston scenario ideas
Interesting ideas from Jhave.

A quick note: on a quick glance this emphasizes home recording as a way of drawing in the memorial dimension. Xin Wei’s critical remarks about the head-mounted gear was worried about an ocular emphasis and disembodiment.

Earlier, before we had experimented with the myvu goggles, we had been thinking of a setup that would probe the sort of displacement (of body and world together) that Stratton felt when he donned the ‘inverting goggles’. Namely, we had been thinking of a rig where the participant wears video goggles and a headmounted camera and gps, fed through a backpack computer, and manipulated in various ways (e.g.: invert image, delay, superimpose with images recorded last week at same place etc), and of having participants wear the rig in their own home.

I.e., this was sort of like Jhave’s, but instead of bringing the home into the lab, it would bring the lab into the home. Might be easier to do.

But I think a key thing might be: how to vary the participant’s memorial relation to place as mediated by body and bodily habits? We want place and body to be concrete terms, and place can’t really be varied either practically or logically. (I say logically, because if we follow Casey and Husserl, place is precisely: the invariant (although variable) ground through which alone experience is possible in the first place.)

Earlier, from something Tristana said, we developed a sort of relation between ground and jointedness: ground is what allows us to develop joints, articulations, habits ways of moving; fixed habits become relative grounds, because fixed habits lose articulateness, or the articulacy becomes implicit. But still, some ground is needed.

David
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3 responses
Yes I like the idea of bringing the estranging device into the thickness of an existing lived-in space like someone's home. I think we can get around the problem of one's own place being too privately familiar by some careful thought as to the nature and portability of the estranging technique. It could be as simple as sound heard through binaurals with controlled delay. I propose we (1) try gear out in TML, (2) plan scenarios, (3) build some test kits in tml, (4) run scenarios in TML / Hexagram space, (5) test in someone's home.
— xinwei
Taking "place" as defined, then by "varying" the environment, we will understand that we're varying the spatial content (eg. props and local geometry), not the place.

Yes Tristana's observations about relation between ground and joint are quite productive for our situation. As an exercise, perhaps we can keep the following questions in mind as we try out binaural or simulation of binaural that Navid proposed to mock up. What sorts of ground can appear in the case of binaural sound heard through our headphones? What are some joints ?

— xinwei

Quick comment: I’m finding the flow of ideas overwhelming. I think we’re going to need time to work though this rigorously. And I think we need to find a track/framework and then stick with it in working things out. We’ve sown seeds, we need gather and cultivate the crop now, I think….<o:p></o:p>

From:

— David