UNITE
PROF - DANIEL ROEHR
A6 - 2 - SHAPE OF EXPERIENCE
14/10/23
49.27213214137122, -123.18387626507901
A1 - Time to Align
A2 - Adding Dimension
A3 - Mapping
A4 - Above, At & Below Ground
A5 - Using Our Hands
A6 - 1 - Tactile Body Space
A6 - 2 - Flow of Experience
A7 - 1 - Forest vs Engine
A8 - 1 - Tuning In & Windplay
A8 - 2 - Sonicollage
A9 - Smell Notes
A10 - 1 - Taste Rave
A10 - 2 - Drinking Object
A11 - 1 - Seeing > Visual Thinking
A11 - 2 - Pattern—Re—Pattern
A12 - Summary
As part 2 of assignment 6, we're each tasked with choosing a space where we can immerse ourselves for an hour. Could be our homes, a café, a church, anywhere that allows for quiet reflection. Once there, we close our eyes, attune our ears, and then survey the area. What are the walls made of? The furniture? How do these materials stir our emotions? Is the space imbued with warmth due to soft materials, or is there an austerity from metallic or glass components? What potential interplay is at work here between the physical and the emotional?
To crystallize these impressions, we're welcome to—diagram, map, or try any form of tactile recording. Perhaps, in addition to an exploration of a space, I could simultaneously reflect on how we emotionally resonate with the material world.
Process
I arose from dreamland two hours passed midnight, and i heard Cato downstairs, what sounded like his paw carefully landing on the first step of the slippery wooden step and returning to the floor in fear of stretching his body beyond limits, how wise... His hesitation gave me sorrow and energy to swoop downstairs and check on him. Andrea says he could be 11, 12, 13, or 14. He was rescued from Greece and renamed after the stoic philosopher. He is a good dog. For me. Even though I am not ready to live with another dog yet it is nourishing my heart to have him nearby, to care for him, to be needed, and to touch him, to be touched by him — an entity so powerful who channels it into gentleness.
Moving cognitively and physically at half-speed we stepped outside and followed his scent toward weeds, gravel, metal, fence, "and all that I will never know that he is connecting with", I thought. How foreign and enigmatic is — his connection with time and space using his olfactory sense and perception of that process. This mystery feels so distant yet so relatable like darkness, when eyes are closed, where the flux is so dense and expansive it seems empty. But I find it comforting, especially because I am not drawn to quantify it or label it through comparison or analysis, but obviously that happens anyway.
The days leading up, Cato had trouble with healthy bowel movement, so it was not surprising, that when he pooped, his pace picked up and he took me for my first jog in what felt like a lifetime. I began smiling, and my lungs felt grateful for the volumes of fresh air. With the new pace I left the fatigue and worries behind, perhaps next to his waste. And when we slowed down, we did only when he sensed a fragrance strong enough to conjure an image of invisible tentacles pulling on his snout from deep, deep down, and far, far away. The walking pace invited a different set of tentacles to pull my own imagination into the questions of what it may feel like for a dog to experience life where they may see with their nose. Seeing as x-ray, seeing as microscope and telescope, seeing as philosophy and mathematics, seeing as love and fear?
Today, we picked up his ashes. Perhaps we’ve been extermely occupied with life things, perhaps we were too afraid to accept that part of him is now inside of an urn.
Part of my desire to explore and document Cato’s experience could be because I didn’t have a material representation of his presense other than a few photos and videos. On the day of his euthanasia we printed his paws and I had conflicting and ineffable thoughts.
He helped me sense whats around me more corporeally, he helped me connect with nature in a new way...
are all those waves interacting with one another and separate, right?
We talk about the waves being separate, don't we?
That wave's separate from that wave.
And then that wave's crashing into that wave.
That's one way to see it.
And then you can look at it another way.
Wow, there's no waves at all.
There's no space.
Where's the space between the waves?
Where's the space between the wave of you and the wave of me?
It's all life.
It's all being.
It's all presence.
It's zero degrees of separation.
Feel that.”
I found it fitting that the length of the next video where I explore what it might feel like for the sense of smell to live — what shape or consciousness might it have on its own.
Here are some static maps of our process that night. During the scanning process what was clearly visible and tangible to me was how the essence or the literal and the phenomenological light was missing or could not be captured by camera or scanner. The camera does a bit better as you can see some of the spraying and dissolving that is happening, adding dimension to the paper as well as its surroundings. Im curious to hear what you feel/think?
Toward the end, I was inspired to ask Andrea to shrink the paper into her hand as tight as she desired and dip that into the bed of water upon dripping some ink. The results make me imagine what her tactile and spiritual relationship with Cato might look like if frozen in time, in that specific moment of submersion. A brain and its folds flattened from 4th and 3rd dimensions onto 2nd.