Drawing a fence around my area of research

I have been reading up on a few books over christmas. The one i find most interesting is Peter Chadwicks Schizophrenia: the search for dignity. The book looks for “credits” to being a sufferer of schizophrenia. His scientific research indicates that such credits include enhanced empathetic abilitys and a connection with synchronicity. He also arges that there are signs of an increased level of creativity. What does this mean? Why would a pathology lead to an enhanced ability to read other peoples emotions?

Anyway I have realised the “zone” of my research question: Schizophrenia as seen through the eyes of phenemenology, neuro-psychology, and philosophy of mind.

I think descartes theories of dualism may be very relevant here as some of the scientific books calim that schizophrenia occurs at the place where the brain meets the mind.

Is schizophrenia just in the mind?

Is anything not just in the mind?

Is the mind puerly physical?

Is the body and the whole world just in the mind?

How do i value my work?

I just had a tutorial with Mike Punt “the reader” at i-dat. He asked me how do i value my work? I stumbled. “Just on aesthetics” i said. “Yes”, he said “but that doesn’t mean anything”. Well bloody hell I don’t know. Up untill now i have just judged my work on how pretty it is and how striking and unique it is. Flashy images: tick, Swirling colours: tick, morphing intracate patterns that move: tick, live musicians: tick, live dancer: tick, audience clap at the end: tick, operated the technology in performance as well as hoped (how do you denfine that?!): tick. Basically the way i have judged my work’s value so far has just been on how beautiful i thought it was and how much love the audience or user give me once they’ve seen it. But Mike says I need “an external set of criteria that assess the value of the work.” I respect what he is saying but how the hell do i do that? Like what? A list of tick boxes and if i tick mostly A’s then the work has succeded? Well… whats the tick box for it being very visually and auditorially pleasing? Would you rate you level of pleasure at 1, 2, or 3? Thats silly, what am i going to do; go round handing out questionaires that break the audiences phenomenological experince of beauty and pleasure down into quantifiyed set units????

I admit that I am being silly and truth be told i realise fully that what Mike is hinting at is the way forward for my work, but as a new masters student busy acclimatizing to MA level study in Art its a bit of a weird idea that there would be a defined system for analysing wether an art work was of high value, to me or anyone else. I mean my work doesn’t really make money at the moment, so i can’t pin its value down to hard currency, like the brownie selling freshly squeezed lemonade can.Even if I wasmaking money from my work i still don’t think i would want to judge its total value by the money it made. Microsoft make lots of money, but they are basterds and their fine art is poo (design work is pretty good though – if you like it with a thin facade of easy, fun clenliness for all, and underneath a dirty barbaric mega system for f*cking over the worlds poor and just every body.)

What am i trying to say?

Well just that i realise i need some kind of criteria to judge the value of my work but just that where i am right now i don’t know where to start.

Money doesn’t work for me on this one.

Audience heads might be something but thats not the actuall work itself and besides Van Goff died inobscurity, did his paintings get proportionately better depending on how many peole liked them. NO. A good piece of art should be a good piece of art even if it falls in a wood and no-one see’s it.

What about performance technique. Well that sounds closer to me, but the audience doesn’t really have to be aware of how well i execute my performance technique in order to judge wether the image on the screen is pretty enough to give them the level of pleasure that will bring them back to pay for another event.

But now i’m talking about the audience, money and prettyness again.

Oh God!

I need help.

I’m confused again…

I’m sure i will find the answers to these questions and thanks to Mike for pointing me in the right direction where i’m sure Geoff, M.Phillips and Chris will illuminate further.

I’m confused…

I have too many ideas. I want to make an led light suit that reacts to bio feedback, but then i also want to make an elaborate grande theatre production that features real-time generative video and audio, but then i just want to make flash animations for the web, but then i want to make a flashy interactive VJ box, and i’m starting to do performance writing what ever the hell that is and much more… AAAAgh.

I’m joking, really i love being swamped by ideas.

Also my practice and my theoretical approach don’t seem to match up, and their both full of holes, but increadibly powerful none the less.

For the invisible architechture moduale i want to make a piece about schizophrenia, witchcraft and technology, but the problem is that, in practical terms, i’m just going to make a clever VJ box that has a video projection on its own interface that reacts to movement and presence. The box will have buttons to press that will trigger short video clips with sound on to the surface of the interface and over the arms of the users. The problem is between making something that looks good and flashy and fun / and something that actually carries any of the meanings that i want across to the user????

I’m confused…. (in a good way:)

Reading

I am actually reading a hell of alot of material at the moment. Lagely about schizophrenia, halluciongens, neurology and cartesial dualism. Of particular interest is “Anti-Oedipus : Capatalism and schizophrenia” by Gutari and Deluze. I think for my syntesis module I want to talk about the similarities between the veiw of schizophrenia in popular culture VS in scientific litrature.

Interactivism.net

I am launching the  society for interactive art and socio-political activism this friday at plymouth university. I will run a blog on the society, which i will link to from here. The idea is that if you make activism fun by making it interactive it can have a far greater impact and reach. We believe that all the resources already exist to affect a revolution in global human rights, they just need to be connected up, we simply seek to encourage those connections to form. More soon…

Internet failure

Aaarg, I don’t have the internet at home, so I must apologise for the low number of posted so far. However my fight with the internet provider is nearly won and soon they will ackgnowledge that my flat is in existance. Being without the net for these few months has been quite fun in a way – like losing your clothes or phone and running around naked and free in the mean time. But now its just getting fustrating and i need my global network back. Tiscali are you listening to me!!!!