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

On interviewing and gathering

Taishanred | Taishan Mountain, China 7.2008

in this flux
are assembledges, or shapes,
or patterns of relative intensity
and fixity, and certainty. paradoxically solid
and fluid,the images are moments in the
flow of human experience.
— charles madge p48

Part of the process — of researching around a topic — requires interviews and contact. To understand points of view, to map subjectivity, to make physical contact with people on the same path or to gain information from people encountered. The group expands my understanding and takes my research from the self to the group experience.

The more people gathering firewood, the higher the flames will grow.
— Chinese proverb.

It's not with ease that these interviews are done. There is discomfort at times, but pushing beyond stage fright and shyness is imperative to gather facts and stories. The group wisdom and the individual stories are essential. It is also a method to humanize what could be distant or dry. By reaching out and engaging with strangers i force myself out of my shell, my self — and relate. When it's in the name of work, i manage. Sometimes it's excruciating. to go up and smile and ask for help. It's help really that I'm seeking. Help in the sense of adding to my research. making my project have content, or in the case of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, of coming up with the 'independent' typeface

But pushing out is the point. This work in general is about getting off the computer away from routine and engaging in contact. Immersing myself is as important as creating immersive spaces for others,

from the risd student gallery

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.

On documenting

My eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that I live and move, the line of this horizon constitutes my immediate fate, in great things and in small, from which I can not escape...Now it is by these horizons, within which each of us encloses his senses a if behind prison walls, that we measure the world, we say that this is near and that is far, this is big and that is small, this is hard and that is soft: this measuring we call sensation— and it is all of it an error!

— Gary Shapiro
Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying, 2003

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

By looking down I have a god’s eye view. capturing all that is within the frame. limited only by the rigidity of my self imposed rules. the camera locks my wandering eye. and so I see details I would have missed. a shadow cuts across the frame and has a narrative unintended, yet so much more real than what I planned. I have my lens that captures what my experience misses. is this the role of technology? of the documentarian? to capture the otherwise unnoticed? to trap the invisible? to remind us of what we miss? to rewrite our past? to alter our memories? Inspect my events through my lens please. see though my edits. I cut and trim and subjectify with a desire to share. is this any different from truth?

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

There are so many issues to capturing. Immediately subjectivity enters the process. It's impossible to be objective with a camera. But then it's impossible to cast an objective gaze. I see where my eye travels. there is much that is leftout, unnoticed. The role of the camera then, in this work is to act as an Argus, to have eyes watching from as many angles as possible. To be multifaceted and wide ranging. to see what I can not see. This manifests itself in my process. My collaborators use cameras, i use a camera, there are more static cameras set up from other angles, and always the overhead is used.

What is presented as evidence remains evidence, whether the observing eye qualifies itself as being subjective or objective. At the core of such a rationale dwells, untouched, the Cartesian division between subject and object which perpetuates a dualistic inside-versus outside, mind-against-matter view of the world. The emphasis is again laid on the power of film to capture reality “out there” for us “in here.” The moment of appropriation and of consumption is either simply ignored or carefully rendered invisible according to the rules of good and bad documentary.

— Trinh T. Minh-ha & Renov

Theorizing Documentary p.95

Stretch — University of Brighton | 2006
an experience in translating

astrid almkhlaafyi

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long.
It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

— Salman Rushdie
Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture (February 6, 1990)
“Is Nothing Sacred?”

On a practical level — a preservation note — the saving from oblivion of these moments is also what motivates much of this research. The ephemeral nature of performance is not an excuse to avoid attempting some kind of documentation. There is far too much of value in these moments — culture, history, creativity, play — to be lost. It is imperative that creatives task themselves with preserving not only tradition but also contemporary live experiments.

Lost Histories
Tate Collection 14 November 2003 - 25 January 2004

It was only with the invention of photography that performance began to make its mark in the history of art. Prior to this there was no instant means of making a visual record of live events. As film and video equipment became more readily available, artists with access to this technology experimented not only with recording live action but also with the moving images they created.

Many well-known figures in the history of art have been involved in performance during the course of their careers, from scandalous dance performances of the late 1800s to the happenings and actions of the New York loft scene in the 1960s. However the focus on the art object has meant that the ephemeral elements of these artistic practices are often lost or overlooked.

And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness.
The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.

D.H. Lawrence
Study of Thomas Hardy
Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, p. 430, (1936)