| D O O R S O F P E R C E P T I O N 5 | |
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| Body Representations
and Tools of Play |
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| PDF link for printable transcription | Ranjit Makkunil |
Thank you for inviting me here. The title of my presentation is Body Representations and Tools of Play, and I’ll discuss this theme from the perspective of our work in developing modern multi-media technology to disseminate traditional and sacred arts. I like to start by thanking my teachers, my collaborators and supporters as we discuss the theme of play from here today in the cyberworld. I’ll begin by presenting a traditional society’s notion of play. The first example of play is taken from ancient Indian mythology of the 6th century which we use the cosmos as a form of play enacted in a dream. Vishnu, the preserver deity of the Indian pantheon, in this classic image is presented as declining on the coils of a serpent. The spiral form represents eternity and infinity, so Vishnu is reclining on the ocean of infinity. And in this ocean of infinity he is held in a trance. And he dreams the world. You, me, people, nature are actors and agents, part of Vishnu’s dream. From the individual point of view, the play theme is real, but from Vishnu’s point of view, the play is a dream, a passing cloud. So play is the relationship between the unreal and the real, the individual and the whole. The second image of play is from the 12th century, based on the popular pastoral god Krishna. Krishna is the hero of love-play and his mythology describes him as one who is constantly reveling with maidens, in love-play. In this image the cowherd maidens are bathing in the river. Krishna quietly steals their clothes and climbs up a tree with their garments. So Krishna teases the maidens and refuses to give back the clothes until they come to the shores naked. At a simple level Krishna is teasing the maidens by stealing their clothes. But this simple image of love-play conveys a complex, symbolic meaning on the relationship of a divine and a devotee. The cowherd maidens represent the devotee, stripped of the ego. And through play the devotees learn to break free from ignorance to see higher realities. So divine play is about seeing oneself in absolute nakedness. From these images of cosmic play, let’s turn to modernity. Modernity has very few parallels to the images of play I have shown, and it is the rich images of the cosmic drama that illustrates the relationship between the individual and the whole, the form and the beyond form. Switching down a couple of levels, down to modern forms of learning and play, today the form of modern play and working and learning tools consists of a learner seated in front of a computer workstation, interacting with the hardware forms of keyboard, mouse, display monitor, and software forms of button pushing and clicking and accessing facts. So seen from the real point of traditional culture, there seems to be something wrong with this image, because the body and mind are dissociated. Except for the head and the finger, the body is static, there is no movement. Accessing the content through clicking icons, the model of learning here is a model of accessing facts, and not about being situated in real experience. Better forms of play require ritual and holistic representations of the unity of the body and mind, representations of the player. And let me explore with you some of these rich models of the body which are found in some of the old civilisations. For example in many traditional cultures, mind-body consciousness and levels of awareness form an integral whole. The body is conceived as combining both the gross, intangible body as well as the super-sensible, subtle body. When we compare this notion of body with our mechanistic notions of body, we find that the subtle dimensions lie outside the materialistic interpretation of the body. One of the most celebrated models of the subtle body is elaborated in this tradition of tantra and yoga. The image shows the structure and map of a subtle body which is revealed through meditation and visualisation. The subtle body visualised consists of invisible channels of energy which flow upwards through the central spine. Energy knots shown as the different lotuses display the intersection between the subtle and the physical body. When the yogi attains the final chakra on the top, represented by the thousand-petal lotus, he attains the knowledge of the unity of self and cosmos. This representation may be speculative but built into this representation, whether speculative or not, is the relationship of the individual and the cosmos, and the potential to move from self-centric consciousness to attain the knowledge of cosmos. Second, this representation illustrated that the mind is not only located in the head but actually spread all across the body. A related model of the subtle body is also based on the descriptions presented earlier, of the self as consisting multiple sheaths, ranging from the outer gross body, to the part body, to the intellectual body, to the spirit body of the core. So at the gross levels one perceives differentiation and separateness of forms. And at the subtle levels, one perceives unity. These representations naturally lead to creating a model of ritual and play which relates inner and the outer, integrating the world within and without. The worlds without, the external landscapes, the mountains, the lights of the universe, the sun, the moon, the cosmic elements are middled in the body. The body contains the universe and the universe the body. And play is an enactment of the creative processes which provide a remembrance of the sacred connection between the individual and the whole. So with this larger vision, from man and play, let me quickly show you some very small beginnings of our work in cultural learning. These illustrate initial research that engages the body in the act of communication and learning. I’ll present three examples from three projects. The first project is a collaboration among artists, scholars and designers to create a multimedia exhibit around a 12th-century multimedia art form, the Bhagavadgita love poem interpreted in music and dance. The poem is based on the theme of the love-play between Raja and Krishna, based on the theme of separation, union and reunion. The poem unfolds a cosmic drama conquering at different planes. The poem and its multiple meanings provided the inspiration for around eight centuries of artistic expression in paintings, music and dance. Mirroring the multiple meanings and multiple expression, the exhibit itself is laid out in terms of concentric circles, each showing a particular level of access into the poem. So the cycle of emotions move along the circle and the different levels move toward the centre and the user’s movement is both circular and radial moving from the outer to the inner meanings of the poem. This movement is similar to the experience of a traditional temple in which the devotee is exposed to a variety of special experiences, each unfolding stage after stage, starting from the outer to the inner, finally resolving in the sanctum sanctorum. In contrast to the specially unfolding learning in the temple, the modern computer-based documents let the learner access the sanctum sanctorum from the homepage with a click. My first point is about co-relating special situations and using the dynamic, moving body in the design of play and learning spaces. My next point is a point I want to make about the beauty and the expressivity of the human hands. In many cultures, the hands are considered as energy centres with entire cosmologies mapped onto the hands. The expression of hand-gesture whether in meditation, in medicine, in astronomy, in dance, is of course an important cultural value, for communication, learning and healing. In the world of painting, music and dance, hand skills and hand literacy was an important cultural value. But modern button pushing may have marginalised the role of the hands. The expressivity of the hands are not considered in designing modern forms of play. And moving beyond just clicking on buttons to using the hands to communicate gesture, as in the previous example of painting or musical gestures, is an example of a student trying to clap rhythms to retrieve and interact with drumming patterns. The third point I want to make is about the role of the body and the sense of touch as an instrument of communication, and a memory-aid in cultural learning. This I’m going to illustrate by the example of my current project, titled The Crossing. The title of the project is related to the sanscriptum of a pilgrimage site; that is, a crossing point between the world of learning, reflection and transformation. The city of Benares is one of the most celebrated pilgrimage sites and have been acknowledged as a centre of learning for over 2000 years. As a physical place Benares lies besides the river Ganges, the river of healing. The temples and shrines stretch along the river for many miles and give an impression of a continuous architectural horizon alongside, a continuous river line. The interface between the city and the river are long flights of steps which provide a multimedia theatre of ritual activity. From dawn to dusk, thousands of worshippers come down to the river to perform ablutions and through ritual, invoke the healing powers of the Ganges. Some of the most important rituals relate to the dying and the dead. The steps provide places of cremation and the burning embers of the cremation piles alongside the riverbank provide a continuous symbol of life and death. So once the body disintegrates, the ashes are immersed into the river and the final immersion into the womb of river symbolises a new creation, honoured to the waters of life. The city derives its sacredness from its association with lord Shiva. Shiva is both a creator and destroyer and an elaborate system of symbols have evolved around him. In his anthropomorphic form he is visualised as an ash-smeared yogi meditating on cremation grounds. At an abstract level, he’s represented as a vertical column, the transit into the reality beyond all duality. So the Crossing project is developing a physical-virtual exhibit to be visited in New York and Paris that will allow people to connect to the ritual spaces of the world of Benares, its symbols and meanings. Through the design of physical, virtual learning spaces, learners can explore various themes dealing with Shiva, his metaphysics and physics, ecology and healing, water symbolism and understanding the space of death. Like the Shiva devotee who tries to unite and identify with the Shiva-theme by adorning objects of the iconography, this project is also looking at various kinds of adornable and physical user interfaces that provide access into the Crossing contact Some of the physical objects also take iconic forms; they’re physical smart icons that can transform existing symbols and provide a touchable experience into cultural domains. The important point that I wanted to say is that the body, through its sense of touch, can allow people to access complex symbols and also provide a memory of those symbols and connect to events and rituals of a site. So with this I’d like to introduce the next part of the talk which is about live spontaneous play. I’d like to introduce my friend and drummer Vishnu Sahaj who will illustrate a body-based, high-touch interface into a traditional music domain. |
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url: DOORS OF PERCEPTION |
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