PATTERN RECOGNITION, (teaching and artistic process), meditation, drawing, movement, writing, video.

A 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 impulse. 1 impulse to paint from memory. The 2nd impulse to paint from a photo.

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.