Somaesthetics and Design

Richard Shusterman

Monday June 6th, 2016
5.30 - 7.00 pm
York University, Transmedia Lab (Accolade West, 103).

Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. His major authored books include Thinking through the Body; Body Consciousness; Surface and Depth; Performing Live; Practicing Philosophy; and Pragmatist Aesthetics (now published in fifteen languages). Shusterman received his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford and has held academic appointments in France, Germany, Denmark, Israel, Italy, China, and Japan. The French government honored him as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and he was awarded research grants from the NEH, Fulbright Commission, ACLS, Humboldt Foundation, and UNESCO. His research in the field of somaesthetics is nourished by his practice as a certified somatic therapist employing the Feldenkrais Method and his creative work in performance art.

The Embodied Physiology of Perception

Martha Eddy & Stephen Auger

Tuesday June 7th, 2016
5.30 - 7.00 pm
York University, Transmedia Lab (Accolade West, 103).

Beyond the 6th Sense - Eddy and Auger share through lecture and participatory activity the interactive nature of the 5 exteroceptors - hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and feeling and how they interface with other 'obscure' senses including the senses that are INTEROCEPTORS - proprioception, kinesthesia, graviception - that make up “the felt sense,” and underlie KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE. They will speak to how what is often considered intuitive or intuition is actually a combination of responding to the felt sense. The fact that this cluster of sensory inputs are rarely spoken of and even less frequently cultivated is offset by one exception - the somatic dance community. Somatic movement educators and therapists including those trained as choreographers and improvisers are working with interceptors among other senses to heighten perception, responsiveness and conscious living. As one example, Auger will present findings on research into mesopic vision and how visual perception has a kinesthetic, hormonal and integrative function that governs circadian health and behavior. Eddy will demonstrate how this information can be used in daily activity and the creative arts. Together they will guide the group to experience varying aspects of the multi-sensory impact of somatic learning.

Dr. Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT, EdD and creator of BodyMind Dancing™ is an exercise physiologist, dance educator and somatic movement therapist. She is the author of Mindful Movement lecturing worldwide on the field of Somatic Movement Education & Therapy. Her work specializes in neuro-motor and socio-emotional development with applications to eco-somatics & peace education (www.EmbodyPeace.org). Martha is on the faculties of Princeton as well as the Laban/Bartenieff Institute, the School for Body-Mind Centering® and her own Dynamic Embodiment™ Somatic Movement Therapy program. She has been working with vision enhancement for 4 decades and developed EyeOpenersDVD with a team to bring perceptual-motor development principles to classroom teachers.

Stephen Auger (www.stephenauger.com) has worked continuously as an artist for more than four decades. His paintings and multi-media work explore the boundaries between visual perception and sensory experience. Auger’s collaborations and independent experimentation challenge viewers’ visual expectations and experiences while encouraging them to consider “sensing” as a distinct and conscious mode of perception. Current projects involve interdisciplinary collaborations with Margaret Livingstone, PhD (Livingstone Lab, Harvard) and Benjamin Smarr PhD (Lance Kriegsfeld Lab at UC Berkeley). Auger's paintings and sculptures are widely collected and can be found in museum and private collections internationally. Stephen lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Bioinformatics and the Human-Computer Interface

Alan Macy

Wednesday June 8th, 2016
5.30 - 7.00 pm
York University, Transmedia Lab (Accolade West, 103).

New computer interfaces are becoming available that transform human biologically-generated activity into viable data input sources for computers. Human-sourced activity such as physiological signals generated by the heart, skeletal muscle, brain neuronal activity, eye movements, skin conductance or pulse are viable input data sources for computers and provide a wealth of information not readily available via alternate means. Methods for collection, analysis and interpretation of these types of data are presented. Consider the concept of computer interfaces that are capable of discerning one's emotional dimension and motivational state for the purposes of enhancing and improving the creative design process and associated results. The realization of "emotional - motivational state resonance" between the designer and computer application could result in rapidly obtained design results that match the designer's objectives. Such methodology could also be applied to design recipients to feed data back to the designer for inclusion into the design process.

Alan Macy (alanmacy.com) is Research and Development Director of BIOPAC and has a background in in electrical engineering and physiology and has designed data collection and analysis systems, used by researchers in the life sciences, that help identify meaningful interpretations from signals produced by life processes for over 30 years with a focus on psychophysiology, emotional and motivational state measurements, magnetic resonance imaging and augmented/virtual reality implementations. In addition to Macy's background in biomedical engineering, Macy is a science artist, he specializes in the creation of cybernated art, interactive sculpture and environments.

The Batdorf Technique: Kinesthetic Transference
and Interoceptive Awareness in Performance

Erika Batdorf

Thursday June 9th, 2016
5.30 - 7.00 pm
York University, Transmedia Lab (Accolade West, 103).

Prof. Erika Batdorf (www.batdorf.org) (Theatre, York University) has written, created, performed, directed and choreographed original performance art, theatre and movement theatre internationally in universities and theatres for over 30 years. Prof. Batdorf's technique in the process of interoceptive awareness has made her a world renowned expert in the field.

Transverging Cognition and Creativity

Marcos Novak

Friday June 10th, 2016
5.30 - 7.00 pm
York University, Transmedia Lab (Accolade West, 103).

Novak will speak on how can we, in the 21st century, understand creativity and cognition is a way that is at once consonant with both the "sciences of the artificial" and with the "ecology of mind"? Given our accelerating advances in the understanding of mind as mechanism, and given our evident aim to imbue autonomous machines with artificial life, artificial intelligence, and artificial consciousness, and, given that the built world is always and necessarily the mirror of our choices and values, by what ethics can we guide our technics, and by what means, and to what ends?

Marcos Novak (translab.mat.ucsb.edu) is an architect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to design actual, virtual and hybrid intelligent environments. The self-described transarchitect is seeking to expand the definition of architecture by including electronic space, and originated the concept of liquid architectures in cyberspace and the study of a dematerialized architecture for the new, virtual public domain, the immersive virtual worlds. He is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is affiliated with CNSI (the California NanoSystems Institute), MAT (Media Art and Technology), and Art. He named the UCSB AlloSphere (the three-story high sphere for the creation of immersive virtual environments, the largest such facility in the world originally proposed by Dr. Kuchera-Morin) and created its first project, the AlloBrain using fMRI scans of his own brain. He is the Director of the transLAB at UCSB. A fellow of the World Technology Network, his many writings combine architecture, music, art, computation, science, and technology including the seminal paper "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace", "transArchitecture: Against the Collapsing Radius of Fiction", and "Transmitting Architecture: The transPhysical City" - which became the theme of the XXIII World Congress of the UIA ((Union Internationale Des Architectes, 2008).