dance #152, sensitive chaos I

Friday May 22, 2009

Sensitive Chaos I

“Even in water the surfaces of the forms that are created by flowing movements are unbelievably sensitive. It is a sensitivity that is not based on any nervous system but arises purely out of the interplay of forces and is not to be understood from the aspect of the material. How delicate then must a skin be that constitutes a boundary surface which is also differentiated in material! Surely here nature reveals one of its secrets by anticipating sensitivity in flowing movement without needing a nervous system! Does it not actually incorporate in the material of the nerve-sense organs in living creatures the sensitivity already present as a function in fluids?” (Theodor Schwenk, Sensitive Chaos, 1962: p. 63)

9:45 p.m. A 10 minute dance in the study. Moving with the text of Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air. Water as a transducer of affect. Fluids as the condition of possibility of nervous transductions through bodies. Bodies as viscous, fluid, excitable media. Watery transductions. Propagating waves of excitation. Water as the possibility of movement, propagation, memory. Body-water-media has elasticity. Force-body energy flows as fluids, speeds and slownesses, amassing machinic assemblages that reoritent, divert, transform, transduce. Waves propagate. The dance feels through these sensations and more. I’m looking forward to dancing with this book more. While I draw and write, Alice is perched on the armchair indignantly facing the other way. Her cries went unacknowledged while I danced. It was a grey then blue-sky day. The night is warm. Earlier I watched as the sun set behind the houses and the horsechestnut tree.

~ by nmyers on May 22, 2009.