FOREST BATHING, BODY ARCHITECTURE, PATTERN RECOGNITION, VISUEL LITERACY
FOREST BATHING (SKOGSBÅD)
Students choose and place pigments on paper, paper is rolled, and collected by group leader.
An outdoor, mindful hike brings the group to form a circle prior to other exercises. In the circle, students practice breathing and body exercises. Students are then guided to choose trees, by hugging and pressing each tree with their paper, the students are verbally guided to tune-in to feel the tree and their experience. The group returns together to discuss their experiences in an open format. There are no wrong answers and the space is safe for open sharing. The students are then guided back to the school to allow their papers the dry. The paper is later glued onto the group scroll for created a history of the course.
The course is conducted in English and/or Norwegian. The format allows for adaptation to students and situations. The course engages in sensing, feeling, mindfulness, cooperation, and engages confidence.
Rachel has 22 years of experience in mindful practices of meditation and yoga, and in art, performance, installation, and communications.
BODY ARCHITECTURE explores the body as architecture of personal and public space. The body serves as the first point of contact in Locus of Control. Locus of Control is about responsibility for influencing what surrounds our bodies and being influenced by what surrounds our bodies. The goals of the workshop are to create a healthy balance within the individual and group through play, interactivity, and practice.
Workshop Format
3 exercises within 1-1.5 hour format including warm-up and cool-down:
Make the body to mirror the architecture.
Make the body form by individual choice.
Make the body of group members into forms organically chosen by the group.
Previous Event http://bit.ly/2xktTDE
Public event for Open House Oslo for BOHO held at:
Sentralen, Øvre Slottsgate 3, 0157 Oslo, Norway
PATTERN RECOGNITION, (teaching and artistic process), meditation, drawing, movement, writing, video.
Patter Recognition involves layers of hand drawing, critical thinking skills, and personal improvised body performance. Students learn the value of discernment and acceptance versus rejection through judgement. Each person’s invidiuality is appreciated within the context of the group. The visual nuances are found though shared actvivity of drawing and performance.
The segmented process for multiple applications such as art making, teaching and workshops, psychology and counsel. Pattern Recognition was built alongside the Afjordance artistic research project. Pattern Recognition Projects apply principles and ideas in John Haugeland’s book on Artificial Intelligence to develop a method of learning through doing.
These methods of learning are designed to develop critical thinking skills, while forming healthy relationships and understandings with terrains and temporality. Pattern Recognition involves understandings and practices in the field of Embodied Cognition. The Pattern Recognition projects work dynamically with individuals in the Vision and Body Relationship, coordination and motor skill development. The Pattern Recognition projects work together and with memory, behavior, lineage, choices, and agency. There are presently 5 Segments in this ongoing process development.
SEGMENT ONE
The first step is to experience a sensitised exploration of the environment. Through meditation and movement to go into contact with intuition. The intuition guides the gathering of materials from the environment.
SEGMENT TWO
The second step is to draw materials from the environment. Following an axial rotation similar to the scientifically reported rotation of the earth, the faces (planes) of the dimensional materials are drawn. In this example, drawings were made, the tracings make the under-layers visible on the new top layers of tracings. The concept is to make the impressions of the dynamic modes of axial rotation visible. The practice brings awareness to the memory and sensory ways a visible detail can fade in visibility but remain within the under-layers.
SEGMENT THREE
The third step is involves Visual and Somatic Memory. The lines drawn in the previous exercise are performed as body movements. Exercises are practiced independently, leaving room for personal interpretation. A group environment affords the opportunity to coordinate independent movements into a group arrangement of movements. Records of these practices are used for reflection and to witness development of reflexive awareness over time.
SEGMENT FOUR
To experience nature and nurture concept of impression and transference, two transferrable materials are used with water and pigment. Other materials can be useful. For the sake of providing an example, gouache paintings with two pieces of paper follow 2 different impulses. 1 to paint from memory. The 2nd to paint from a photo. Carrying out these exercises the difference in motive becomes visual.
To look at the difference between making something look like something else or using memory (embodied sense of experience) – the gouache painting exercise was carried out by making compositions based on memories of witnessing detailed areas of water flow, and composing paintings based on looking at a photograph. Viewers could immediately see the difference.
The gouache paintings were done on the “wrong side” of Japanese Washi paper, to transfer the pigments onto acid-free, black papers. The pigments left traces similar to the way a memory becomes a trace of lived experience or ways communication of forms become transferred onto what is underneath or nearby.
In addition to discerning difference in how forms are made by hand from referencing external or internal referents, is also considering the process of transfer. As the original can become a symbol for reading-as reading a book or remembering a book, the paint transferred to the surface under becomes the information absorbed.
SEGMENT FIVE
A mirroring exercise, completed with language and/or illustration. By writing a letter in reverse, to see how it appears through a material and in a mirror. The practice is based on the mechanics of a single-reflex camera and the way the eye perceives reality directly which is then flipped in the brain. This practice develops understanding of communication and the two-way nature of the way read symbols are transmitted and interpreted.
VISUEL LITERACY courses focus on development of critically thinking and understanding visual cues. Reading images by signs, symbols, contexts of history and art history. The course utilises photography with students and refers to history in art and photography for learning. Students make their own photos and learn how to write and speak about the meaning of their signs, symbols, and historic context.
