Transcript Slide 1

Fleshing out Word & Image:
The Embodiment of Literature & Visual art
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Professor Ellen Esrock
Department of Language, Literature & Communication
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, New York 12180
[email protected]
Presentation at Barnard College NYC. July 2010
Barnard Interdisciplinary Workshop on
Embodiment
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Even after standing with such
unrelenting attention in front of the
great color scheme of the woman in
the red armchair, it is becoming as
retrievable in my memory as a figure
with very many digits. And yet I
memorized it, number by number. In
my feeling, the consciousness of their
presence has become a heightening
which I can feel even in my sleep; my
blood describes it within me, but the
naming of it passes by somewhere
outside and is not called in. Did I write
about it?--A red, upholstered low
armchair has been placed in front of an
earthy-green wall
Rilke Letter re. Portrait of Madame Cezanne
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Simulation
“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend
outward from the horizon.”
<gazes>
Reader
Visually images
extending clouds
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Simulation
“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend
outward from the horizon.”
<gazes>
Reader
Reader
Visually images
wispy clouds
and/or
Activates motor
programs involved
in eye scanning
Activates
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Transomatization
“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend
outward from the horizon.”
<gazes>
Reader
Breathes
Breathing stands for
character gazing or
Breathing stands for
long wispy clouds
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Embodiment Processes
Spectrum
Simulation
≈
Transomatization
≉
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Simulation
Viewer
toe stretch
Representation <Toe stretch>
Motor activation of toe
Balcony Window
Adolph Menzel 1845
National Galerie, Berlin9
Transomatization
Motor
activation used
abstractly for
curtain/body
<Wind personified as human agent
moving through curtain>
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Transomatization
Breathing
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Breathing
Breathing
Breathing as light
cast on floor; as
circulation of
energy around
room; as
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substance of sofa
Interoception
Inner bodily awareness can be used
for transomatization
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So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and
a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpour of
immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could
survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which,
creeping in at key holes and crevices, stole round
window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up
here in a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and
yellow dahlias.
(V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse ,189-190)
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Transomatization
So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and
a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpour of
immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could
survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which,
creeping in at key holes and crevices, still row and
window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up
here in a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and
yellow dahlias.
<the profusion of darkness>
interoception of
internal milieu
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Transomatization
<Sofa>
<Spot on wall>
interoceptive
awareness
becomes
brown sofa or
spot on wall
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Robin now headed up into Nora's part of the country. She
circled closer and closer. Sometimes she slept in the woods; the
silence that she had caused by her coming was broken again by
insect and bird flowing back over her intrusion, which was
forgotten in her fixed stillness, obliterating her as a drop of
water is made anonymous by the pond into which it has fallen.
Sometimes she slept on a bench in the decaying chapel (she
brought some of her things here), but she never went further.
One night she woke up to the barking, far off, of Nora's dog. As
she had frightened the woods into silence by her breathing, the
barking of the dog brought her up, rigid and still.
Half an acre away, Nora, sitting by a kerosene lamp, raised
her head. The dog was running about the house; she heard him
first on one side, then the other; he whined as he ran; barking
and whining she heard him farther and farther away. Nora bent
forward, listening; she began to shiver.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, 168-9
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• She circled closer and closer
• The dog was running about
first on one side, then the other
Circling motion
within body
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Robin now headed up into Nora's part of the country. She
circled closer and closer. Sometimes she slept in the woods; the
silence that she had caused by her coming was broken again by
insect and bird flowing back over her intrusion, which was
forgotten in her fixed stillness, obliterating her as a drop of water
is made anonymous by the pond into which it has fallen.
Sometimes she slept on a bench in the decaying chapel (she brought
some of her things here), but she never went further. One night she
woke up to the barking, far off, of Nora's dog. As she had
frightened the woods into silence by her breathing, the barking of
the dog brought her up, rigid and still.
Half an acre away, Nora, sitting by a kerosene lamp, raised her
head. The dog was running about the house; she heard him first
on one side, then the other; he whined as he ran; barking and
whining she heard him farther and farther away. Nora bent
forward, listening; she began to shiver.
p.68-9
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Fragmentation
Signifier without a Signified
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Transomatization
Step 1
Experience of body-connected-to-object
<interoceptive
awareness>
as spot on wall
<Spot on wall>
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Schematic
Step 1
Experience of body-connected-to-object
<interoceptive
awareness>
<sofa>
<Spot on wall>
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Transomatization
Step 2
Beginning of forgetting
of specific connected object
<interoceptive
awareness>
< . . . . . . .>
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Transomatization
Step 3
Resonant Body
<interoceptive
awareness>
is more than
bodily awareness
Body is semiotized—
excessive--resonant
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Reader Text Context
Image
• Reader is somatically-disposed
• Text/Image cues motions, emotions,
somatosensory sensations
• Text/Image elicits motivations to engage
• Context facilitates embodied response
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Efficacy of Transomatization
Discussion
• requires less time
• expands our limited attentional
capacity
• works effectively with language
and images that do not depict a
realistic object or activity
• Capability of maintaining multileveled (multi-sensory) streams
of sense and affect
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