Dual Bodily Unit — Gregor Roth

Engagement

The process of engagement requires simple participation, and the dual bodily unit awakens naturally. Human nature is designed to explore, engage, process and sense. Two natures, the physical and cognitive, a corporeal bodily unit and a subjective emotional unit, dynamically interact within the art situation. This is when the change from viewer to participant occurs as their innate dual nature’s collaborate with the design aesthetics of the installation.

The dual bodily unit is composed of the I and the Me, two separate yet inseparably linked constituent characteristics forming human nature. I does not require the corporeal spatial unit and as such is directly linked to the continuous present. Me, associated with recollection, parallels object perception. While any part of the art situation might be recalled from memory, the Me of past experience slips into its I nature as it connects with the art situation of real time. Since these activities are instantaneous, one tends oneself in a teeter-totter motion between static recall and immediate temporal realization.

Motility allows for a change of position while not necessarily requiring a physical change of location as the functioning I and Me natures encounter the inside and outside of structure. The bodily Me is immediately aware, responding before the I nature’s eyes see and perceive. There develops a literal dance of body and structure as well as the I and Me - altering perception. Initial primordial and visceral interaction evolves into deeper level consciousness with continued investigation.

Referring to motility, this is an expression of the Dual Bodily Unit. It is comprised of two innate natures, the I and the Me. Each interacts with the installation in a subjective or projective manner, as units of the self, or as an “things” having spatial qualities similar to any other object. These two characteristics allow for freedom to interact and render unique interpretations. Roland Barthes in The Death of the Author, provides a pertinent example as well as an explanation: the artist becomes a scriptor by designing an art situation comprising the installation. Viewer is now liberated to shareholder, realizing and owning the many multi-layered and subtly nuanced interpretations of content. Rather than being told emphatically what the art situation represents, the viewer is free to proffer their own meaning through motility and perception. Dual Bodily Unit (DBU).

The I Nature Temporal Bubble

1. The I, using time, explores durationally, this begins with a kind of self-container that might be described as an enclosure. And this enclosure is our “inside” subjective, perceiving, corporeal unit. The I is always in the present. Imageless, it resides within the corporeal closure. Perception, a core sense, will link to the art object of the real-time environment that is within the art situation. I describe the corporeal container as a bubble; transparent, it is similar to the I perceptive sense by way of altering the (its) body’s shell. For instance, if one were to situate myself inside an actual bubble one would see the outside through the container wall, and our vision sense acting like the perceptive sense of our I nature. Then, the I perceptive sense becomes a type of visual acuity that acts together with our ocular visual sense. Perception reaches, stretches outward, and then functions like sonar. In this manner it will map the immediate environment.

2. Perception, then, it is a more complex, subtle, intimate and nuanced type of site sense because it carries an emotional and interpretive component within it and are those that heighten our cognitive discernment of this immediate Art-Situation. Through implicit understanding, one begins to further mature infant interpretations to first encounter perceptions.

3. This process can occur quietly or in concert with extraneous noise, in action or at rest, alone or in the company of others. It is temporal, in that it happens in the present time and, in this manner should not be measured linearly, as two points set on a line. Time is then confined to the immediate area, and might be described as the I, temporal bubble; durational and not static. Perceptual sense is never at rest and is always growing and expanding exponentially. Thus, this might be understood by thinking of the bubble as having mass and volume. Mass is it ill-defined structure. Volume is the amount and magnitude arising from perceptive reception and occurs within the immediate field of an art object, or within the larger context of the art situation’s installation. In this way, time cannot be measured solely on a linear basis because plotted points on a line do not have the same latitude of ‘movement’. If you will, the temporal bubble can be thought of as mass + volume + density = the cognitive and physical exploratory vehicle.

Me, Absorbent Membrane - Ma:being, SpaceTime

The Me Nature Absorbent Membrane

1. The Me nature can be thought of as the membrane to I temporal bubble, it’s outer skin, if you will. It comes into the contact with the exterior of an art object, those that comprise the art situation. If the I perceptual sense is akin to visual perception, then, the Me sense is similar to a type of absorbent memory awareness receptor; by way of recollection as well as object – to – object orientation. In this context the Me sense’s becomes actuated by means of a type of touch - memory - action. It is the outside, as an extroverted character would function, but all in the nature of the Dual Bodily Unit. Thus, it responds before the I perceptual sensing node. So it might be said, the exterior membrane acts as an extrovert; a “hand” extended in introduction, so to speak, a spatially centered somatic characteristic.

2. The Me interacts through mobility, itself a peripatetic action, through space. It is the physical, requiring the entire body, becoming a sensing node in corporeal action; a type of object – to - object bump. Occurring within ‘space’, in the SpaceTime equation of “being”. The spatial corporeal Me enters the physical domain of the art situation’s, art object field.

3. Naturally, intuitively, we explore and engage our environment (or world), around, inside, through; properties of ‘place and being’ and it’s character as well as it qualities of Ma:being, both present and are unique within any given Zone. As a result we begin to acquire, via perception and interpretation, as well as through the corporeal sense of ocular sight. In this state we establish complex interactive models.

An excerpt from my manuscript, “ Connection Points, Bridging the Expanse Between Self and Art Objects in SpaceTime”. (Working title.)