Barbara Kruger: Master of Design
Project: Branding the Species

Getting ready to finalize my project, which I know in some way will involve juxtapositioning text with images, and so I'm looking for ideas as to how to do it. I could go simple & classic like I demonstrated with "I FELT GUILTY AFTER" on top of the baby hugging the teddy bear, but I think I'd rather do something a little more creative. The reason for this is that I'm already appropriating both the text and images from somewhere else; they are not my own. Thus, I feel that I need to incorporate a style into how I show my text & images, so I can bring my own personal interpretation into the text & images, instead of just a mashup that showcases other people's work and doesn't bring anything new or original into the composition.

I only need to look as far as to the work of Barbara Kruger to look for inspiration for a creative way to present text & image simultaneously. For those not familiar with Barbara Kruger's work, she has a very specific style with a Futura bold oblique font, solid blocks, and black & white photography that has that "pixelated" dot kind of style (I temporarily forgot the name of that, but you should know what I mean). Her works are about feminist themes, and the juxtaposition between text & images is always spot-on. Here are some examples:







Her arresting designs have made her a renowned artist. Indeed, her name has become synonymous with her style, something that few artists or designers can achieve. Her work has been appropriated in a variety of ways over the years. Indeed, yours truly can be counted among those who have paid an homage to her. Last year while working for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, a non-profit organization that collects posters that are overtly political, my colleague T.H. and I were given the opportunity to design the invitation for the Center's annual event, where they were going to honor Barbara Kruger with the Art As A Hammer Award. Being inspired by the "Your body is a battleground" image, we came up with this image as a promotional image for the event:



Don't think that I want to appropriate the Barbara Kruger style for my project. That is not my intention in writing this post. What I simply want to say is that Barbara Kruger has her thing, and it makes her work unique. She takes existing phrases and existing pictures, which may have meant something else before, and made it her own. Totally reinvented the meaning and made it original.

That's what I'm after. Wish me luck. And give me feedback.

Wed, May 28, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Photo Lightbox Series
Project: Branding the Species

It was recommended to me that I go out and photograph the mundane, and one of the suggestions is to take a bus trip and photograph the passengers. Instead of going out and randomly photographing peopleand not only potentially getting in trouble but also producing substandard photography, instead I decided to look at already established photographers who has already examined this. LACMTA commissioned different artists/photographers to depict the life of daily Metro commuters. Two of these photographers caught my eye:


Sam Erenberg

"People read on trains to pass the time or, possibly, to avoid looking at others. Encountering images of people reading may trigger a reminder that reading might be a good idea. Seven Los Angeles artists represent a cross section of our city while highlighting a work by renowned author/theorist Roland Barthes."

Andrew Z Glickman

"Every weekday I spend about twenty minutes with the people who appear in this series of photographs. The photographs are exactly what they appear to be – unguarded, unposed moments in the lives of commuters on the Washington, D.C. Metro system.”

Of the two, I actually thought Glickman was more relevant to the direction that my project is going now. I went to his website and he has more shots of people in mundane situations, including this pretty fierce shot of a youth in Oaxaca:



It really captures what I want to emphasize, that kind of mundane and vulnerable existence of shmucks like him, you, and I, that can be perfectly exploited using an ecstatic quote superimposed on top of the image.

Tue, May 27, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

We are not alone.......... (in sending messages to space)
Project: Branding the Species

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled posts to bring you examples of other projects that either beam or otherwise send to space, messages from the human race.

Japanese Email to Space Hisashi Hirabayashi and Masaki Morimoto, two Japanese scientists from the Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory sent an email to space back in 1983 to the Altair Solar System. The first part of the email is below:
The translation is: "Dear People of Altair, We are organisms who reproduce sexually to form families. Life on Earth started in the water." The whole sum of the entire human race is reduced to these two sentences. This is how these two Japanesque scientists brand the human species: "reproduc[ing] sexually to form families". Wow.
Link: Earth Set to Receive Alien Reply, Invasion in 2015?

Cosmic Call Messages sent to space in 1999 and 2003 from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar, guided by Team Encounter, Richard Braastad, and Alexander Zaitsev. These messages were just meant to be simple messages from everyday people, as well as more complicated stuff like a copy of the Arecibo radio transmission, the Bilingual Image Glossary, the Braastad message, and something called the "Rosetta Stone", which is meant to illustrate both simple and complex mathematical concepts. I actually like this one, because it includes stuff from everyday people and stuff that's actually like concrete and scientific, unlike our project which seems more like an art piece than anything else.
Link: Cosmic Call Messages

Your Name In Space NASA is launching an online campaign for people to submit their names so they can be embedded in a microchip of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is set to orbit the Moon and help pick landing sites for the upcoming manned missions to the Moon. This one is all right, but it's a little deceitful because the LRO will not actually be touching down on the Moon, and your name will only be in a microchip. It's not gonna be engraved or anything.
Link: Send Your Name to the Moon

The Phoenix DVD A collection of different multimedia assembled by the Planetary Society. It includes many fictional works and other art pieces about Mars, including The War of the Worlds, as well as messages for future Martian visitors/settlers from prominent scientists. Like the abovementioned NASA initiative, it also includes the names of people (a quarter of a million which is like such a tiny fraction of the entire earth population) that submitted their name on the Internet. It also claims to have the first library on Mars. This DVD is a good idea, but it's kind of dumb too because they didn't include a DVD player or TV screen to watch it in. I mean, those things are so cheap right now, why couldn't they just attach it along with the DVD? How are people supposed to watch this thing in the future? How are they supposed to know that they have to bring a DVD player to watch it in?
Link: The Phoenix DVD

Mon, May 26, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Project Idea Finalized
Project: Branding the Species

"As a very tangible real but also shocking example of this relation between fear, supplication and ecstasy Bataille used to carry photographs of a tortured Chinese in his wallet, which daily reminded him of the connection between fear, suffering and ecstasy. The Chinaman was captured in the Boxer-war. In torture the extremities of his body were cut off and his flesh was literally cut to pieces. But the surprising thing about these photo´s were the face and the eyes of the poor man. His face shone brightly with laughter and his eyes were aflame with ecstasy and happiness. Bataille did not treasure these photographs - in his poetical style he called the man ´beautiful as a wasp´- out of perversion or sadism, but because he felt them to be very consoling and comforting. These pictures showed the paradox of life:

The above quotation comes from an essay on Georges Bataille. While reading the essay to gain a better understanding of Bataille, this anectdote, and especially the quotation at the end, struck me so much. Indeed, one could say I even had a mini-ecstatic moment.

It is my pleasure (no pun intended) to present the tentative final idea for my class project. Nothing, to me, is as uniquely human as the marriage between ecstasy & fear. Sure, animals & other organisms may sometimes appear to be ecstatic, and there's no denying that fear is a basic animal instinct. But only with humans, and this has been true since the dawn of time, is such a paradox possible.

This conclusion should not be surprising given the rest of my research. Each of the manifestations of mysticism had its component of fear, which brought about its component of ecstasy. With the runner's high, it is necessary to run an incredible amount of long distance (fear) before the body starts producing endorphins (ecstasy). With eroticism, it is necessary to strip butt-naked (fear) before achieving orgasm (ecstasy). Indeed, the orgasm itself can be considred both the fear AND ecstasy components.

I must say that I am glad I am now going in this direction. See, in terms of deliverables, my strategy will not change much. The idea was to juxtapose text from quotations of people I've been interview- ing with portraits of people in ecstatic mo- ments I've been researching. What had been unclear to me, however, was what exactly that juxtaposition was going to be. Now I know what. That's why I say it hasn't changed much; I'm still juxtaposing text with images. This time, however, the ima- ges will portray people who are suf- fering or otherwise in "fear", and coupling this with the same ideas for text as before.

Tue, May 20, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Runner's High and the chemistry behind it
Project: Branding the Species

As previously discussed, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow was initially very narrow in its application. Soon, however, other scholars started to apply this wonderful idea to other areas. One of the most important areas where it was applied was in sports. The idea that there is a mental state where a person can perform at optimum while retaining their focus & concentration must have been just what athletes, coaches, & sports psychologists were looking for.

Like I mentioned before, the way I arrived at knowing about flow is through a concept I was already familiar with, which is called being "in the zone". A closely related concept to being in the zone, especially in long-distance running, is something called the runner's high. Runners who have already ran a considerable distance assert that at some point they will start to become euphoric and their run will be more pleasant. I know that anybody who has kept up with my postings can list at least three equivalent concepts to the preceding description. The most obvious and important one for me comes from Bataille's description of how one attains ecstasy. As you may recall, he said that the mind must first enter into a state of fear by letting go of your deepest held beliefs. Once you are barren and have sacrificed your reason for existence, "something" lifts you up out of this abyss and brings you to an ecstasy.

In regards to Bataille, one can assume that when he talks about that "something", it is of supernatural in nature, whether it is God, Absolute Truth, or another deity/supernatural force. Bataille in no way, shape, or form talks about the physiological aspect of how the ecstasy is obtained. Indeed, even when he was talking about Eroticism, he never mentions the biological process happening that induces the libido & orgasm.

On the other hand and for obvious reasons, doctors of sports medicine are absolutely interested in knowing the biological/chemical workings behind the runner's high phenomenon, and indeed a lot of research has been done both to prove AND disprove this concept.

The science of explaining runner's high for those who claim it exists is actually quite simple. When running long distances, obviously the body is being put into a lot of stress, and pain also occurs. This is the cue for the brain's neurotransmitters to start producing endorphins, which are opiate proteins that help relieve that pain. These in turn not only make the body feel more at ease but also result in mood changes.

So far that is all we know. The body has done its work and the scientific evidence is there to back it up. Unfortunately, we cannot precisely & accurately document a person's emotions during this process, which is what this whole phenomenon is about. It is this which makes the concept of runner's high a controversial and muddy term. What for one runner might be this so-called "runner's high", to someone else it might not work as effectively, or they might not experience it at all given equal circumstances. Detractors claim that the runner's high is actually only the psychological notion of completing a challenge. They have been unable to produce these "endorphins" in the lab.

What is almost for certain is that something must be going on biologically/chemically, another has to with the person's psychological characteristics, and the third is the environment where the person is running, which also plays a role in this complicated process. We don't have a definitive answer on the science behind the runner's high just yet, but we do know that it is definitely related to our family of concepts including Mysticism, ecstasy, flow, and Eroticism.

Tue, May 20, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Bataille's Eroticism Explained
Project: Branding the Species

Eroticism, as explained by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille, is a very specific concept. Overall we can define eroticism as one of two (related) things: 1) a state where one is either sexually aroused or in anticipation of sexual arousal, and 2) the aestheticartistic spirit & depiction of sexual desire. Bataille, however, thought to interpret eroticism more in the terms of human nature. To him eroticism was the desire for us to go beyond the limits of subjectivity & humanity and enter into a transgression of the ephemeral.

…Does this sound familiar? Wham! It directly correlates with Mysticism, which is also about leaving the subjective world and being in communion with something other. Mysticism and eroticism are different concepts that talk about the same thing, basically. They arrive at their conclusions in a different manner, but in the end the conclusion is the same, which is the human desire to escape earthly things and enter into a transcendent state.

In order to understand Bataille's perspective on eroticism, we must start by talking about his concept of fear. To Bataille, when a person's deeply held beliefs about Truth (such as the existence of a God) are challenged, when they start to see that it is all a human construction, fear comes in and consumes the person, leaves them totally bare (notice a semblance here to one of the steps of Mysticism as discussed before). When this has happened all that a person can do is supplicate, reach out their hand and wait for help. But since they have already accepted the fact that there is no God, it is not to He whom they are supplicating; in fact they don't know. Being so vulnerable and empty, a sacrifice takes place that elicits the ecstasy. The fear sets one free as it "cleans up" our innermost thoughts & feelings, and if a person is able to endure this, they will come out of the other side with ecstasy. This part is very analogous to something I'll discuss in a future post regarding the chemistry behind what is called the Runner's High, which is essentially the body producing endorphins when a runner has already run a long distance in order to keep the body functioning. The key to surviving the fear and coming out in ecstasy in the other side is, according to Bataille, having an awareness of yourself. Again we have a connection between another part of my research, this time the different Elements of Flow, in which awareness, concentration, and focusing were very important in trying to achieve flow.

Another important term to understand is the concept of the ipse-being, and the desire to be in communion. Ipse-being is the part of us characterized as being autonomous & separate to the world around us. At the same time, this part of us paradoxically is aware that it is unnatural to be such a hermit and so struggles with both being so independent and desiring not to be. This desire to not be independent is related to the desire of people, in their hearts, to be in communion with the sacred.

It is with this that we arrive at eroticism, finally. Whew! In my opinion, I think Bataille thought that eroticism was the ultimate way of being in communion and achieving spiritual ecstasy. I say this because of the way he talks about it. Eroticism has all the properties of ecstasy. The orgasm is the equivalent of fear, as when we are in orgasm we enter Emptiness and the whole world is suspended, we are transcended to another place. Intense focusing and concentration take place in eroticism. In all four dimensions there is a central point where all is concentrated and all consciousness of the outside world is erased. In the spatial dimensions, this is the genital area and/or the lover's kiss. In the temporal dimension, it is the moment of orgasm. This is the so-called famous Ecstatic Moment, where the ipse-being completely disintegrates.

Another important aspect for Bataille is that eroticism is basically an act of violence. It is not an act of violence in our normal sense of the word. He is not talking about rape or S&M (necessarily...) or anything like that. Instead, it is the violence inflicted on us by the Other, that jerks us out of our normal consciousness and violates our innermost core. As Bataille says himself, it is "a violation bordering on death, bordering on murder."

For Bataille, in eroticism the crucial act is stripping naked. This act, though seemingly basic & simple, is on the subconscious level more than just taking off clothes. Clothing is not the only thing that is removed when stripping naked, a person's usual self is also disposed. The way this works is that when we are naked we feel obscene; this triggers an uneasiness within us that disrupts the self's usual self-identity and standing. See how, again, for the umpteenth time, one concept of my research correlates with another. Here the act of stripping naked and the loss of self that comes along with it is related to the fear of the person who has let go of their spiritual dispositions (as talked about earlier in this post). The act of losing everything is here symbolically represented by the stripping of the clothes.

The final piece of Bataille's interpretation of eroticism is one of the most fundamental; indeed, it connects several other aspects of my research together. Bataille says that when the erotic activity is consummated, both participants will have been stripped of their selves, and what is revealed is what he calls their "fundamental continuity, like the waves of a stormy sea". This "fundamental continuity" refers to a place where all existence can go, this kind of sacred place. I'll list the equivalents of my other research directions to this concept:

• This is Step 5 in Underhill's mysticism process, a union with the Other in Eternity that results after one has gone through the other mystical steps
• Related to Csikszentmihalyi calling "flow" because people who he interviewed felt like they were being "carried by a current"
• Related to my personal experience when in flow of feeling as if I am being carried by something Other, such as when running my 5K races, riding rollercoasters, and when swimming at the beach

Understanding eroticism, especially Bataille's interpretation, can be confusing & sometimes paradoxical. The fundamental thing to remember is that it is only a different manifestation of mysticism, just as flow is. Mysticism, eroticism, and flow. It has been my daily bread this entire quarter; I hope you can also eat, drink, & live these amazing concepts and realize how important they are in branding the human species.

Tue, May 20, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Recurring List of People's Responses
Project: Branding the Species

I've been asking people what has been their most ecstatic moment in their life, why, and how they felt both physically & otherwise. This post is meant to be a repository of their responses, and nothing else, i.e. you will not find typographic experimentation in this post. That will come later on in other posts. There are also "responses" of quotes from people who I thought had an ecstatic experience, even though I didn't ask them personally.

• Anshul: when I had psychedelic mushrooms, I felt like everything I touched felt new, I felt renewed

• Alex Sy: when I was playing basketball and I shot some hoops, felt triumphant

• Vincent: when I received my acceptance letter from UCLA, my heart beat faster and my face was colored red, I ran as fast as I could to my dad as fast as I could to give him the good news

• Yiannis Kouros (Ultrarunner): Some may ask why I am running such long distances. There are reasons. During the ultras I come to a point where my body is almost dead. My mind has to take leadership. When it is very hard there is a war going on between the body and the mind. If my body wins, I will have to give up; if my mind wins, I will continue. At that time I feel that I stay outside of my body. It is as if I see my body in front of me; my mind commands and my body follows. This is a very special feeling, which I like very much. . . It is a very beautiful feeling and the only time I experience my personality separate from my body, as two different things

• English teacher on Ice Trail: I found myself running far faster than I had all day; I wasn't even conscious of my feet touching the ground as I crested the knoll ahead of the finish line. I wasn't running; it was as if something much larger than I was running me.

• Duncan: 67/20 in assignment. shocked. Proud.

• Jeff: Got into UCLA. Proved everyone wrong. Tower of terror, freaked me out.

• Katie: when moved to USA. from Korea when she was very little. Not nervous, really looking forward. 1st day of Kindergarten.

• Alfonso: when I find out got into UCLA/ Grad School. surprised, shocked.

• Sal: When his wife walked down the aisle at their wedding. Felt a wave of relief, felt that the wedding is now real.

• Sarah J: cymbal line got high cymbals, got into UCLA, so proud, screamed, jumped

• St. Teresa of Avila: I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

• Grace: pole vaulting in high school, jumped over 10'6", amazing, she felt she wasn't that much of a failure no more, felt important to her, felt proud, "oh shit I did it", cry tears of joy

• Chris S: getting his 1st job, felt that someone wanted him that didn’t need him, felt that he could be a little bit more independent

• Celica: when she went to China, "when i finally stepped foot outside the airport is when i had that rush... very different from any other excitement I have had before"
• Wilson: old work place, lost and found, getting ready to ship it out, paper, ipod, “oh my god jackpot” raised his arms like that

• Iman: having intimate relations with a beautiful nice girl, felt good but then felt ashamed

• Sarah B: old lead singer, Steve Perry, met in person. Shaking pretty bad, almost fainted, called her parents, talking about it for weeks after

• Randi: Asked professor letter of recommendation, was happy to give it to her, relieved, was smiling and sitting there

• Eric: getting his drivers license, he thought he failed it, the guys said he passed, and he was excited, felt kind of numb

FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT DESCRIBING YOUR MOST ECSTATIC MOMENT. I NEED AS MANY AS I CAN GET...

Tue, May 20, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

The Five Steps to Mysticism
Project: Branding the Species

Evelyn Underhill, a renowned & recognized author on Christian mysticism, as well as a mystic herself, identified five steps in the mystical process. They are listed below:

1. 1. Awakening - Subject starts to become aware of the presence of something supernatural. Their heart is filled with joy and they have never felt this kind of joy before, yet they cannot see this supernatural being, and they hunger for more.



2. 2. Purgation - Where subject strips away their ego, their self, their whole existence. They give up everything in this life and in the next. They start to become aware of their faults & imperfections, and try to compensate for those with self-discipline.



3. 3. Illumination - This is often the final stage for some mystics. The subject sees the visual representation of eternity as heaven & earth, reality & mysticism meet. For our purposes this is most likely the ecstatic moment, so therefore one that should be given more emphasis by me in my research & final deliverable.



4. 4. The Dark Night of the Soul - Extraordinary mystics go beyond the third step onto this one. These mystics have experienced mysticism so fervently, that when they "come back down to earth" they start to have what we can refer to as "withdrawal symptoms" of God's presence. They feel deprived, vulnerable, helpless & confused. It is the ultimate un-selfing, and the ultimate submission to God's Will.



5. 5. Union with The Other - Having gone through the other steps, the subject now finds themself in the Eternal, they are at union with God forever, and act as a liason between the things on Earth and the things in Eternity.

Tue, May 20, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Ecstatic Moments of Mine
Project: Branding the Species

The following is a list of moments when I have felt ecstatic, along with the reasons why I felt that way:

• When I ran very good 5Ks that I felt I was in the zone. I felt no pain and felt like I could just keep going and going. I felt like I was going with the crowd, being carried by it, and that I just needed to keep doing what I was doing to finish the race.

• Riding a rollercoaster, felt dizzy but good. Everything was going so fast around me, again felt like being carried by something other.

• When I receive news about products from my favorite company Microsoft, especially Windows and Zune. I get giddy, my face automatically lights up and I holler out loud out of joy.

• After an all-nighter, in the early hours of sunrise, I get an enormous feeling of power, I start thinking about the plans I want to do for the day and for the future. I get very optimistic and feel like I can accomplish all my goals and plans.

• When swimming in the ocean, when a wave hits me I also have an ecstatic moment. Here I literally am being carried by the water. Very similar to when riding a rollercoaster. The manifestation of my other ecstatic moments here is literally done by the water waves colliding with my body and carrying me, lifting me up.

• Also get the same feeling from going down a toboggan.

As you can see, a common theme in my ecstatic moments is a feeling of "being carried by something outside my body". This is directly analogous to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow". Indeed, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi came up with the term "flow" because the people he interviewed said it was as if a current was carrying them along.

Mon, May 19, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species

Notes while Presenting
Project: Branding the Species

A classmate of mine was kind enough to take notes for me while I presented my research findings to the class on 17 April. Below are the notes:

Deities and personal relationship with humans >>

went to mysticism, and eroticism

mysticism - relationship with super natural
led to - 'in the zone'
so concentrated on the task, rest is blocked out
hungarian psychologist has researched this before
flow
state of mind in subconscious where you enter during activities
flow, mysticism, eroticism = same, or similar

mysticism, in the relationship one has to god, there is a surrender of one's self or identity or individuality, for guidance, for a greater being

mystics had a very powerful understanding of this
batow - loss of self - til point of death (in relation to eroticism)
loss of self for god - a sort of transcendence

if that moment is what you are talking about
describe it in detail
one could call it the alpha state
highest creativity
most attentive

on to something of interest. are all religions transcendent?
looking for something happening outside
eastern thinking may be more immanent (inward)
for some nature is their god
the other

what else fascinates you about this, what is magnetic?
the fact that there is a part of us that allows us to transcend
it is not limited to spirituality, but also in eroticism, sports, many ways

mendez gives example of her gymnastic days
did not remember anything but the balance beam
attention directs to one point
if an eye lash even fell off her face, the concentration is broken

run as far as you can until you throw up
record the state of the body
the heart beat, the breathing

the runners high, the body is releasing a large amount of endorphins

what are the cultural explanations of transcendence?
how does it connect back to humanity
psychoanalysis
the biological gives physical grounding
the body produces, not a transcending experience

sets up a political framework about how you talk about the human species
put the far ends on a map
what happens to someone that does not believe in god, or transcendence
how do you account for the other end?

there is a powerful feeling of what is at stake
parallel both, equal results, questions both
some get it one way, some get it the other, but same result
how one defines themselves in their world
one believes something is out there
transcend through god
one who does not, more grounding in body
how do they transcend though?

the experience may be identical between a religious or non religious
they just experience and talk about it in different ways

explore the parallel
biology vs symbolism
very cultural

tying spirituality back into humanity
richard dawkins, biologist
the god illusion
analyzes the human needs
social aspect of religion
may be offensive
debunks religion as a human construct

whether its debunked or not the experiences are still powerful
constructs, how did they become so powerful?
runner vs mystics

the passion of joan of arc, older film
sublime transcendence, the story of joan
the only way to experience it is through physicality in the film
all close ups of face

types of religious communities use religion to explain, deal with stress/situations
a physical act can be meditative acts
physical bodies and actions can lead to own transcending

everyone has their own ways to get in touch with themselves

very few people in religion are so devoted
intention, intention
how bad one wants it
that leads to the transformation

the telos of the transformation
ask zach, he talked to fast haha
teliology
the way we move towards certain goals in life
aritstotle said:
move towards life for a set reason, a goal
existentialism says life as no inherent meaning

focus the specific experience of being a runner, that it changes your composition, vs the very religious experience
maybe it is the focus on the change of specific state of being
the subjectivity

mysticism, flow, eroticism, let them go now
they brought you to a point
narrowed, now open up again
do not let it weigh you down
discover the new way

is it the change in your sense of self that leads to your understanding of the world for that second?
focus as a runner, and focus as a mystic
describe the moment
how else has that transformation been achieved
your research may be the documentation of those powerful modes
that could be your project
the shift of the human is fascinating

Sat, May 17, 2008  Permanent link

Sent to project: Branding the Species