up&down @ night & day

finally the exhibition is here, one week to go and things are coming together. have sound, videos, materials, a great venue, books, images, typographic elements. Have been working for 2 years on the project and for the last few months more on the production. there's an enormous amountof editing that has gone on. making a cohesive compact thing from two vast mountains and 2 enormous histories.

archaeology of festivity

Visual communication is a field that constantly expands and absorbs. This is the lure that brings in so many students and makers. We can self define as designers, and master areas that may seem left-field, only to find that those very 'esoteric' areas represent a core of what we call visual communication.

I came to graphic design from the past. the deep past, specializing in classical & near eastern archaeology. It was artifacts and pieces of extraordinary civilizations from before that grew this love of documentation. I mean, who are we if we leave nothing behind? What greater challenge than to preserve, package and save snippets of our cultures for an unknown future observer?

" 'No one,' Pascal once said, 'dies so poor that he does not leave something behind.'
Surely it is the same with memories too — although these do not
always find an heir."
— walter benjamin.

There is something of Mnemosyne in all this. Sure we may leave a footprint trail behind, but it will dry out with the time. it's only by being carved or made of stone, by being baked clay, by flukes of volcanic or natural fossil making quirks that things really get passed along down thousands and thousands of years. Our recent abilities to retell collective memories (oral traditions) have faded completely in most western communities. we rely on paper, electricity. Neither of which last long at all.

And yet there are festivals and they often DO connect back.

In Tokyo, I designed my way up from a production artist to an art director to a Media and Design Manager, and the big thing I worked around consistently, was events. promoting, staging, branding, and of course documenting. It was exciting. but my creativity wasn't pushed enough, nor my archaeology. I threw costume parties, followed matruris and in general tried to celebrate. But in the end grad school beckoned and I finally was able to fuse and focus.

I call it the archaeology of festivity. it's a field of research that explore feasts, festivals, processions, rituals — in general very ephemeral communication pieces — for the purpose of preservation, deconstruction, and translation.

This was my first attempt at defining the world I wanted to research. It's a book called Celebrate. It categorizes the universality of the celebration into 6 chapters. Fertility and Harvests, the Sacred, Mapping Power & the prince, the State, the Rebellious & the Personal Journey.


It was a first statement. An attempt to map out and present, to contextualize and declare that the immersive experience is ancient. It is part of our DNA. it is universal and it communicates. The festival/ritual/dance/procession/pilgrimage communicates. Each communicate culture, identity, history and self. As such they are living threads of the past. they are often 'alive' archaeology. They communicate through immersion through physically engaging the body. They are part of an area of the performance or communication world that I'm calling (at least here in this blog) 'physical communication'.

physical & visual communication

Not only did live art by artists represent the very spirit of its own times and reveal the ways in which artists from different disciplines interconnected, it also showed me how certain ideas in a painting or a sculpture, which as a traditional art historian I might have looked for in other paintings or sculptures, often originated in some sort of performed action. Indeed, the history of performance throughout the twentieth century showed performance to be an experimental laboratory for some of the most original and radical art forms; it was a freewheeling, permissive activity for intellectual and formalist excursions of all kinds that could, if studied carefully, reveal layers of meaning about art and artmaking that simply were not clear before.

—Roselee Goldberg, introduction
Performance, Live Art Since 1960

As designers we often create works that live through print or on screen. Part of the need to mass produce spurs this on, to communicate to large audiences. It is often part of our task. But living behind a screen can be isolating — and as communication people, a hunger grows to get out and meet the audience. It's often not possible with huge campaigns. It's often part of the PR and marketing team to handle those aspects. But creating a one way flow of information is almost like talking to yourself. Sometimes being in the moment with your audience, making your audience take part in the actual process of the design (or art) can lead to incredible insights while also allowing for a freedom of experimentation not allowed in a final polished thing.

Many creatives have recognized the potential of experimenting in real time. There is the cost and the immediacy as lures, there is also a sense of play and inclusiveness. Our audience is with us, our critics are our players. it can be immensely satisfying to have closure in a sense. of course these moments are experiments or sketches that do get translated. and the translations do go further to reach larger less local or immediate audiences. but during the actual creation and 'painting', we are engaged with others and communicating in real time, in the same space. it's almost rebellious, in the sense that so little is made this way today.

When i worked as a more traditional designer, I met with others within my office to discuss strategy, to report progress, to delegate duties and to present pitches. rarely did i include others in my making process, rather i showed and moved on to the next stage of implementation. I was lucky in that i did see my audience at times, and could get a sense of the reception of my work. Also working within events, i went and saw the events and documented them. But in those days, other than the costume parties I threw, making things for the audience to create wasn't really something possible. We made things for the audience to observe.

Part of my fascination with experiences, is that of the immersive possibilities. There is something about creating a communication piece that must be engaged in and made manifest through that engagement that is so full of potential. Say I want to communicate 'collaboration' — what better way than to get my audience to collaborate— to understand not only conceptually, but also physically. this is compelling.

I've looked deeply into the Futurists and Dadaists, into performances from the Surrealists and Constructivists to Black Mountain College and the Fluxus period, and they tap into this thing I'm drawn to, but I've found that i need to look further afield. And so Masturis and rituals, ceremonies and pilgrimages have been pulling my attention and absorbing my research time.

The concept of pulling a person totally into an experience to communicate to them is ancient. It's part of the core of Borobudur, of Angkor Wat and of mountains like Taishan. We must engage in the space to read and glean the meaning. the meaning is there, but not accessible from a distance. it requires pedestrian focus, you must walk to know. I love that concept.

Taiwan Ghost Festival — OISTAT 2008

OISTAT post workshop poster | that's me in black

Since coming to Singapore, and being back in the diverse and rich festival worlds of south east Asia and greater Asia, I've been on site researching and recording as much as possible. From August 13th (arrival) to 24th (departure), 2008. I was invited to join From Ritual to Theatre – Asian Ritual Festival Workshop, organized by OISTAT Secretariat and supported by Taiwanese Governments. The workshop took place during the Ghost Festival in Taiwan.The opportunity to work with theater people was a first, and housed within this the focus on ritual was extraordinarily ideal.


As one of the international artists, I was asked to present my work in order to be invited, and again, on the second day of the workshop, to the participants. The response to my own work was positive (being a visual communication I was nervous that my work would be too left field). But the live art and the intersection of performance with graphic design history, and my body of work in staging and documenting live art experiences, somehow connected well with the participants who were enthusiastic to collaborate They compared my most recent grant work at Taishan to Christo.


The workshop consisted of a two-day trip to visit the Ghost Festival ceremony in Keelung to observe the Taoist Shaman’s ritual performance, lantern pole erection, folk art parades and the “ water lantern releasing to the sea”. We also were guided through rituals like the “Grand Putu” as well as the Hakka Holy Boar Competition. In the workshop we were expected to share our observations and inspiration with the Taiwanese performing art professionals (directors, designers), as well as theatre apprentices/assistants who toured and worked with us. The intention of the workshop was to encourage intercultural exchange and dialogues based on the grass-roots culture and to transform the ritual into theatrical ideas.

Hakka Holy Boar Winner 2008
a boar, fed like a king for a year, then stretched out and painted and displayed for competition

It was expected that after breaking into smaller groups during the workshop, that we work intensively together in the conceptualization, making and staging of our projects on the final day of the workshop in the form of installations, story boards for a potential production, video/photo documentary and its transformation, design as performance, etc. My group consisted of one of the leading choreographers of Taiwan, Hsiao-Mei Ho—leader of Taipei Crossover Dance Company and Associate Professor of Dance Department of TNUA—and her four dance students, as well as Francis Shen—one of the top costume designers and also one of his students. We worked intensively and were able to bring our areas of interest together into a performance on the last night.

The mandala floor

My contribution was in the concept, the space, the stage design and the experience of the audience. I also staged a ritual using the paper money for the ghosts, which ended up becoming the floor for the audience. For an entire day i layout the papers one by one, into a perfect mandala like shape. It was exhausting. but somehow the absurdity of what i was doing (i had no idea what i was doing until i began and then i was too stubborn to quit) attracted the attention of nearly everyone, and the combination of these papers, the possible presence of ghosts, and my obstinacy in finishing it completely made the entire process elevate on it's own.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

Somehow within this collaboration i was able to stay true to my own research and interests while working with 2 strong directors. It was incredibly satisfying.

The response to our collaboration was very positive and we are in the process of exploring how to make this into an actual performance in both Taiwan and Singapore. Hsiao-Mei Ho is looking into funding in Taiwan. Further development of works from the workshop has been strongly encouraged and OISTAT is hoping the works may be presented in future OISTAT events such as Scenofest, World Stage Design, or even end up as production in Taiwan.

kaleidoscope

One of the highlights of teaching here at ADM is the designed experiences course I get to lead every spring semester. It's a highly collaborative, experimental course that looks into the history of gatherings and allows for the students to come up with solutions that are performance based communication pieces. It's been a laboratory of experiments. We've scored, staged, documented and translated original works as well as actual festivals, like Chinese New Years.


Last year, as a warm up exercise I got the class to engage in an experience of my own. It was called kaleidoscope. I'd been teaching Graphic Design 4 at the same time, and was heavily into systems and time, and kept going back to the circle and it's metaphysical poetic nature (as a group experience). This led to a short study. The book became a study of beauty and form heavily leaning on Plato.


The great thing, is the video we worked on was invited and accepted into the MilkBar Festival.

Angkor Wat

“Mountains are cosmological symbols of the divine—human meeting, as well as the point of creation—creation of community as well as cosmos. Depending upon the era, culture, and text, the cosmological emphasis on the mountain might be one or more of the following: the assembly place of the gods, the connection between heaven and earth, the center/navel of the earth (and thus the locus of creation), the locus of revelation.” — Donaldson, Terence L., Jesus on the Mountain. A Study in Matthean Theology.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Chinese proverb.

From Borobudur, my research lead me to consider other locations dedicated to conveying religion through architecture and the pedestrian experience. Spaces that are associated with mountains, that are mystical, that have the power to draw crowds, and which were made for spiritual purposes and for the benefit of the pilgrim and to help in enlightenment.

“The mountains ... are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Angkor Wat was next. Obviously the mountain is embedded deeply in the architectural iconography. Mount Meru is conjured up as is the procession of a mandala, from the profane into the sacred. The fusion in south east Asia of animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, into these shrines, temples, mandalas, and processions weaves history and culture and creativity together into living rites of passage that keep alive older pilgrimages and history and refer back in time to other spaces and countries. knowledge is stored in these paths, but reading is also untangling and sifting. the threads are so intertwined and complex.


Following on the footpath of research from Thailand’s Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) and the work into the Nalanda trail— the spread of Buddhism into south east Asia— while focusing on the walking experience as physical communication, and while continuing the mountain research from Sisyphus to Borobudur and the mythical Mount Meru, I spent a week in February 2008 GPS mapping and absorbing Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, located at 13Δ˚24’45”N, 103˚52’0”E is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire’s state temples, the later plan of concentric galleries, and influences from Orissa and the Chola of Tamil Nadu, India. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.

The spaces however do not end as metaphors that are simply physical duplicates of a physical or mythical mountains, they also become representations of centers of the universe:


omphalos:
in Greek and Roman religion, navel-shaped stone used in the rites of many cults. The most famous omphalos was at Delphi; it was supposed to mark the center of the earth.” — The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.

“Along the southeast Asian peninsula, mountains were regarded as sacred territories as early as three thousand years ago. As sources of water, and therefore of agricultural fertility, mountains were the subject of reverence and ritual celebration. But as burial sites, these same mountains inspired ore profound questions of death, impermanence and the fragile balance between humankind and the forces which could destroy fields, crops, families, and on occasions, entire generations living in villages which were swept away by floods and landslides falling from neighboring slopes. Given this reverence in which mountains were perceived, ancient peninsula civilizations such as the Cambodian Funan people of the second century AD, enthroned their sovereigns and emperors on these mountain summits. Indeed, the word Funan can be translated as either Sacred Mountain, or King of the Mountains. Following the downfall of the Funan, the Khmer dynasty began to spread it’s civilization from Cambodia in the ninth century to govern most of southeast Asia over the next six hundred years.” — Adrian Cooper, Sacred Mountains, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Meaning.
The Khmer people continued to draw inspiration form local mountains, in fact building their cities and temples either with respect to the views, in alignment with, or in reference to local and mythological mountains. They too, called themselves kings of the mountain. By becoming the mountain, these rulers direct the gaze of their people. They are the center. Their capital and magnet. The man-made peaks beckon the faithful and center the pilgrims both to look inward — at their rulers and their monuments and their direct descent from mountains, and outward from a common home from where they go and return on longer pilgrimages. These metaphorical mountains, the palaces and temples of the mountain rulers of Angkor Wat, Burma, Java, and Bali give their visitors religion, history, culture, and guides towards spiritual attainment towards a larger pilgrimage of the life well lived as a Hindu or Buddhist. So the monuments are mountains of knowledge as well as physical metaphors for the mountains they represent. This is a universal metaphor:

“It was common in the ancient Near East to construct temples and altars with mountain symbolism.The religious center is thus accorded cosmic significance. That is, the mountain-temple or temple-mount—especially in the political capital—manifests a divine sanction, a sacral quality, and thus a relationship to the cosmos which other places do not possess. — Clements, R. E., God and Temple.

“Besides natural mountains, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the Canaanite temples were constructed as sacred meeting places between humans and the gods, as gateways to the heavens, as divine thrones, and likely also as altars: that is, locations for the enactment of ritual at or upon the axis mundi.Egyptian pyramids also bore this cosmological significance. In the inscriptions found in the pyramids of Mer-ne-Re and Nefer-ka-Re (both Sixth Dynasty, 24th century BCE), an analogy is made between the primeval hill that emerged from the watery chaos at creation and the building of the pyramid. — Wilson, John A., 1969 “Egyptian Myths, Tales, and Mortuary Texts.”

So in the manmade mountains we receive a sense of identity as far as group. we belong to a larger unit. and yet beyond the immediate connections to our community we also are guided through visual narratives along the designed pedestrian experience that allude to grander pilgrimages, meta journeys of life. Angkor Wat alludes to the Ramayana and Mount Meru and Mt Kailash. Borobodur to Mt Sumeru and the the way towards the life of a Buddha. These created axis mundi, mountain centers are centers and also guides. The pilgrim can then absorb the lessons and head north.

“And often, guarding and overlooking the man-made omphalos, generally to the north of it in the direction from which disruptive forces are traditionally supposed to emanate, is found a lone, conical mountain. It’s mythological prototype is the mountain at the centre of the world. The chief god of the pantheon resides there, presiding awesomely over the rituals in his sanctuary below. The traditional sacred landscape,
— John Mitchell, At the Center of the World, Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and other Ritualized Landscapes

So when we seek a mountain, or enlightenment, as the Chinese like equate the two, we seek our own center. The pilgrim goes physically on a quest to a location that represents the center of a universe, the universe as a whole, but also the center of the pilgrim. By moving outward we somehow move inward. By seeking we see ourselves from a new perspective, and in many of the instances that have been examined, that persepctive is one of centering the pilgrim at the heart of the mandala. The axis mundi within.

There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once relent,
His first avow’d intent,
To be a Pilgrim.
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Borobudur

The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
— Robert Frost.

“I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse.” — Henry David Thoreau.

The mountain as a spiritual pilgrim destination is not specific to any one region; it is an archetypal metaphor that transcends location and time. Think of Olympus, Ararat, Zion, Sinai, the Temple at Delphi, the Tower of Babylon, Ziggurats, Pyramids, Manchu Picchu, Temples on Mounts, Mounds, Tells and so many other upward looking locations where we are inspired to consider if not engage in intense communication . We have real mountains where real gods reside, and man-made mountains where we see the achievements of civilizations. This holds true for the Americas, Africa, Australia and of course Asia. But it is the mountain in Asia that inspires my imagination. It’s the small temples perched on hilltops, the monuments of Borobodur and Angkor Wat, and the gaze of the regions religions up to Mount Meru, Mount Sumeru, and Mount Kailas. The first step into climbing up in a pilgrimage and physically experiencing the bliss of the summit made me hungry to see mountains in a range of locations and range of manifestations.


The next location was Borobudur. A man made mountain metaphor in the shape of a mandala, where the circumnambulation and the visual richness of the striated friezes leads the pilgrim through a symbolic 10 cycle walk mirroring the 10 steps of enlightenment towards Buddhism.

pil·grim·age: 1. A journey to a sacred place or shrine.
2. A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.
— The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000,

The sophistication of the experience is made clearer by researching the nature of Buddhism. By walking Borobudur you live out by physically enacting spiritual concepts which are extraordinarily complex and conceptual. The experience of Borobudur is one of the most advanced spaces made for pilgrims to read as they walk. It’s impossible to put into words how much information is packaged into the mountain monument.


Being on site for three days, in the only hotel within the complex walls, meant we had full access to the monument whenever we became hungry for further reading. it is a tranquil and harmonious space. It takes time and transcends time. It is a bold statement and unlike anything in the region.

Mount Meru: a sacred mountain in Hindu, Buddhist cosmology, and Jain mythology considered to be the center of all physical and spiritual universes. It is believed to be the abode of Brahma and other deities. The mountain is said to be 80,000 yojanas or leagues (450,000 km) high and located in Jambudvipa, one of the continents on earth in Hindu mythology. Many Hindu temples, including Angkor Wat, the principal temple of Angkor in Cambodia, have been built as symbolic representations of the mountain.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Sumeru: the polar center of a mandala-like complex of seas and mountains. The square base of Sumeru is surrounded by a square moat-like ocean, which is in turn surrounded by a ring (or rather square) wall of mountains, which is in turn surrounded by a sea, each diminishing in width and height from the one closer to Sumeru. There are seven seas and seven surrounding mountain-walls, until one comes to the vast outer sea which forms most of the surface of the world, in which the known continents are merely small islands. The known world, which is located on the continent of Jambudvipa, is directly south of Sumeru.” —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumeru.

“Some beliefs, local to that area of the Himalayas, associate mythical Mount Meru with a mountain called Kailas near the Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, which can be traced to some later layers of Mahabharata.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Kailash:“The most sacred mountain in the world. Uncannily symmetrical, this remote and remarkable peak located in the forbidden land of Tibet might have built by superhuman hands. It stands out of a primordial landscape: a horizontally stratified plinth thousands of feet high, crowned with a perfect cone of pure snow. To Hindus it is the Throne of the great god Shiva. Buddhists associate it with Chakrasamvara, a powerful Tantric deity, and with the sage Milarepa, who fought a magic duel there with a shaman priest in ancient times. To the Bonpo, the followers of the indigenous religion of Tibet, it is the giant crystal on which their founder, Thonpa Shenrab, descended to earth from the skies.” — John Snelling, The Sacred Mountain (Travellers and Pilgrims at Mount Kailas in Western Tibet and The Great Universal Symbol of the Sacred Mountain).

With the understanding of or at the very least the point of reference of these mountains in mind, every mandala, every stupa, every 5 peaked architectural wonder suddenly becomes a reference or a metaphor for at least one of these mountains, pivotal to the regions grand religions.

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.” — Aleister Crowley.

Wat Tham Suea or 1300 steps

When I think of mountains I think of quests, of looking and climbing, of pushing and expanding horizons. The mountain started of in the metaphorical zone, getting to Singapore was a feat. Finding what I wanted — a push, getting what I needed as far as a place where I could open my horizons and expand my daughter’s views — much of the goal.

It felt like a mountain. In many ways I dealt with the task by climbing as many hills as possible while I waited in San Francisco. The walks up, laptop over shoulder and emails in limbo, breath and lungs expanding and steepness to physically confront helped in the waiting.

When we finally arrived, the hilltop grass of ADM immediately called for a Sisyphus experience. In the research around Sysiphus, Camus and the solar theory led me out of the repetitive negativity that is so often associated with his myth, and my perspective broadened and narrowed. I needed to take a first step, climb something that could expand my views further. Map it. Experience it.

The opportunity came in a visit to Krabi where a 1300 step climb to a temple of a Buddhapada ­— a footprint of Buddha ­— made sense to me as an ideal first step. With my GPS and camera and openness to the space, I climbed. What could have been an hour trek and a simple task of documentation was instead what I had hoped for. Suddenly the views opened up
and my need to research and figure out the nature of the journey inspired me.

This space, a hilltop set aside for anyone to walk up, paved with steps, jeweled with stupas, through a jungle up a steep incline, created to be experienced is a mirror on a micro level of temples and monuments, mountains and hilltops throughout Asia. The mountain as religion. The place where earth and sky meet or where earth reaches up to sky, where the two realms seem to touch has been a place of tension and speculation, legend and myth, hermit and pilgrim all around the world.

To understand the space, the pilgrim must climb. In the act of climbing, you become one of many who have climbed before, of who built, of who will climb in the future. the path becomes a thread like a timeline that you enter into and become part of. You engage in unity. You share identity. You become part of a path. The path is a metaphor to enlightenment. The climb a rite of passage, the individual part of the larger flow of humanity.

GPS map of the climb

5 km from Krabi Town is a small temple, one of the south’s most famous meditation centres, built inside a long shallow limestone cave, surrounded by natural forest. The temple has two staircases winding up a limestone cliff — 1300 steps up to a footprint of Buddha. I figured this was a good place to start my research – a first step into mapping with the gps and a first step into the experience of climbing towards something – and finally a first step into experiencing a local procession space.


Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) named after a rock formation resembling a tiger paw, is a forest temple in southern Thailand. The main hall inside the cave, was built for practicing meditation, while a circular path leading up from the temple, is a 300-meter high staircase of 1300 steps leading to a footprint of Buddha, a Buddhapada. Statues of Buddhas accompanying the footprint are visible from the surrounding valley. This temple complex not is a religious site for the 260 monks and nuns who live and worship there, and also an archaeological area of interest with natural caves in an overgrown jungle valley where stone tools, pottery remains and the mold for making Buddha footprints have been excavated.

The first steps

The monks and nuns follow Phra Archan Jumnean Seelasettho, who teaches the meditation technique Vipassana (insight meditation). A synonym for Vipassana is paccakkha, meaning “before the eyes,” which refers to direct experiential perception. Exactly the kind of experience trekking up a mountain of stairs might be seen as being. This type of direct perception, is directly opposed to knowledge derived from reasoning or argument.


In the spirit of Vipassana, and as an experience designer, the challenge of trekking up 1300 steps to have Buddha’s footprint before my eyes, brought me to Krabi. In order to capture and document the experience, I brought a Garmin GPS Map 60CSX w/ sensors & maps,
a still camera, and a video camera. The 60CSX can record altitude shifts, as well as global positioning. How effective will the GPS be, when used in conjunction with photography and video, in capturing the walk up the mountain?

The marks of the trek (every 13 step was marked on the GPS)

Being immersed in an experience while mapping and documenting gave me multiple levels of experiental data to examine. From the data collected I had a large amount of raw material to work with to create a translation of the experience. This project was a first step towards a series of projects. With the possibilities determined of the technology, I have gone on to map Angkor Wat, Borobodur, and other monuments created to be walked, as well as local festivals and processions, pilgrimages and historical routes.

The summit and the Buddhapada

setting bodies in motion

Convey —London College of Communication | 2006
an experience in making meaning

So the world that I've been looking into is the immersive experience — moments of collective group joy — and from the research I've tried to glean what ingredients can be deconstructed out and used for my own live art pieces. These moments have been wide ranging, from festivals to processions, from happenings to pilgrimages. I like groups of people together doing the same thing in their own way. I like setting bodies in motion. I like to be a part of the group, and to watch the group.

I say that the stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled,
and to be given its own concrete language to speak. I say that this
language intended for the senses and independent of speech, has
first to satisfy the senses, that there is a poetry of the senses as there
is a poetry of language, and that this concrete physical language to
which I refer is truly theatrical only to the degree that the thoughts is
expresses are beyond the reach of the spoken language.

— Artaud (1958) The Theater and its Double. p37

Naturally as a graphic designer I've had to prove that this work is within the realm of communication design. I think I have. I'll get back to that in another chapter. But for now I'd like to dwell on the idea of people as paintbrushes. On the concept of using bodies to express concepts within a time based period.

Some people use paint, I use the human body in motion to express my ideas. This started in Tokyo. as a designer promoting and branding, documenting and archiving events. For fun I threw costume parties (I'd been hosting gatherings since childhood). As the designer of an event, I controlled all aspects of the planning. The time, the location, the duration, the sequencing. I choreographed without having the performers available for rehearsal. I had to imagine and sculpt in advance — the boundaries and limits, the structure so to speak, of a thing that didn't yet exist. And the whole thing would then come to life for a brief and magical period, and then be done. This is the nature of the event. it is so very different form a performance. There are no dress rehearsals. There is no 'out there' audience (i take that back totally, the out there audience views through mediated translations. TV, web, flikr, etc). but in the moment. it is LIVE. once off. not repeatable.

I like this alchemy. Of playing with time. Of giving a space. Of structuring from nothing a group shared something. The more structured the planning, the more playful the actual experience. The limitations of location, time (sometimes of noise and number of people etc) helped to focus the events and allow for spontaneity and improvisation. The less I planned, the more open the invisible structure...often the more chaotic and less intense the experience, some spillage of energy and thinness of immersion occurred.

A theatrical piece ought to be written, presented, costumed, furnished with musical accompaniment, played and danced, by a single individual. This universal athlete does not exist. It is therefore important to replace the individual by what resembles an individual most: a friendly group.

— Cocteau, Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel

These early experiments were mainly costume parties. A Chinese opera party, an Oscar Wilde Party. 50 people. set menu, three stages. we met for champagne, were paraded through the space, led to our long tables (arranged seating preplanned by me), ate, then went up to the rooftop for dancing and music.

The communion and communication and play and theatricality of the nights were etched in memories. For not only me, but for all the participants. I like this. Setting up shared moments that are tattooed in the memory. I like stopping time. I like the magic of being silly with wonderful people. It is this interest that fueled the MFA and my current research.

For the last 6 years I've been focused in this world (5 more if you count art directing for TAC and ACCJ's events). Much more conceptually than in the past. At this point I've staged over a dozen experiences and exhibited or been asked to present in the states, uk, taiwan, tokyo and sinagpore.

To link the theater to the expressive possibilities of forms, to everything in the domain of gestures, noises, colors, movements, etc., is to restore it to its original direction, to reinstate it in its religious and metaphysical aspect, is to reconcile it with the universe.

— Artaud

What I've gleaned from the research and studies is that there are ingredients that can be used to foster the potential for synergy. Often color, movement, masks, time and place have been used. I've focused on color. By this I mean the uniforms of the participants. We share the same color. If the event is red, we all wear red. If the event is based on an object and the group is enormous, we wear black. Sameness immediately sets the groupness.

white event | risd | 2004

From there I use action. More specifically, an activity. The group is tasked with either doing something, with acting out something, or with being something. This action is expressed by the group. The individuals come up with the solution. It is spontaneous and it ends. There is a limit. In time, in stage area, in a sense of completion.

group synergy

There is a sense of synergy that is hard to not experience in group moments. It is an aspect of our humanness to meld together at times into collective units. This can be positive or negative or neutral. It has been harnessed by every tier or ripple of our existence. From the family to the neighborhood, from the school to the company on up to city, state and race or nation. It is used with very designed intent within religion and the military and can be reached through parades, rallies, rites of passage, holidays, festivals, sports and more.

It is always possible
to bind together
a considerable number
of people in love,
so long as
there are other people
left over to receive
the manifestations
of their aggression.

— Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents, (1930)

There is a sense of belonging that occurs. The ego somehow losses it's sense of other and we are immersed into a bigger sense of belonging. politically this can be tricky territory to navigate. It does not equate to socialism or communism, though certainly all politics have recognized the importance of mobilizing the masses. How do we mobilize — media & word of mouth — it's a form of uniting the many individuals. We see it every election, the fervor of the followers, the volume of many into one.

A person
of definite character and purpose
who comprehends our way of thought
is sure to exert power over us.
She cannot altogether be resisted; because, if she understands us,
she can make us understand her,
through the word,
the look,
or other symbol,
which both of us connect
with the common sentiment or idea;
and thus by communicating
an impulse
she can move the will.

— Charles Horton Cooley
Human Nature and the Social Order, (1902)

This is seen in cults, in religions, in lifestyle advocates. It can be seen in the commercial world through branding and brand followers. One one hand we desire to belong. we look for tribes. It's how facebook and flickr are able to connect. we want and need to find our group/s. Where once upon a time it was our village or agora where we could see our place and through the town or city we'd unite for our shared gods and calendar celebrations, now in our fragmented and diversified lives we become hunters for the tribe. seeking over the entire world, people of kindred spirits. This is the beauty of the internet, for me. but also a sign of how far we have moved from tradition. I have no traditons from my great grandparents other than baking. no rituals or festivals or celebrations that have been passed down intact.

And that brings me to here, now. South East Asia. Sinagpore. On one hand we are surrounded by immersive experiences that carry culture and history and identity, and on the other this city state is on an identity seeking mission. Singapore is a country of transplants. it is a place of opportunity and trade. Peoples from all over have come and set up and built from kampongs this massive power. It — like the states — looks forward. All around us we have much older societies and cultures where continuity and identity are strong and rather extraordinary. Here, however, we are in a defining mode. What and who are we? I'm including myself. I'd like to stay here.

It's become the way of the world for many now. transplanted peoples, recreating and seeking villages. It's this lifestyle. So many of us are nomadic. We move with our homes on our backs. turtles looking for opportunities, bringing wealth of ideas and personalities, seeking shelter. This global nomad. And there is something that lives in that — the sense of belonging, the village is movable, like the movable feast. transplanting here and there...connected however, to all irregardless of location. I have here, now — and yet still seem and feel connected to all those from there / elsewhere. thanks to facebook the internet etc. Yet it's the physical here - the shoulder to shoulder that somehow can stop time. momentarily.

There is only one city on the planet, the planet itself
— Marshall McLuhan