Monday, August 07, 2006

Wishes



My wish is that everyone should have a day in the sun without bombs or attacks or violence.Here is a link for a ceasefire in the Middle East- if you feel inclined add your voice to the growing discontent with our political inadequateness to save human lives.

I have caught the flue that my children had- so all is inert apart from the dripping nose. I do have to wait for the glue for foiling to dry on the lutradur I am working on- which is taking longer than expected. I did do a little more poking around about the art and memory thing ( I am still compiling a document of internet sources for those interested - but there is some way to go) but for some unknown reason ( well to me anway) keyed in the word haptic visuality ( now I wish I had done this when I did my masters- I never thought to associate the cinema with touch or haptic though I was aware of exploration in the area of computers, having a friend in Paris who has just done a Phd in this area)- and can now see I might have done better to take digital images or digital video of the work I was doing and somehow playing with that. I am still thinking of this as an option for some of the work I intend to do- it seems that the just if, ie not quite textile but the impression of textile on digital may be more than what the real textile can offer,which I can drape around me, lie in, clothe in, actually totally submerge in , if I realy wanted to. The reviewer Donato Totaro, of the book Deleuzian Film Analysis; The Skin of the Film by Laura U Marks says at the end of one paragraph of the review "but(she , the author) makes the more sensible claim that haptic visuality is a strategy more common to alternative visual traditions (tapestry, weaving, decorative arts, textile arts, embroidery, decoration, metalwork, etc.)." So ok- we practice in alternative visual traditions but actually doing it in that tradition is somehow not acceptable? I must admit to feeling a similar sort of response when looking at the work of Nancy Friedemann who is drawing lace on mylar as metaphor for her cultural heritage( stated simply I realise)- that somehow that is better than making the actual lace- and I really do like her work. Do I sense a touch of the emperor's clothes in these examples? Can the virtual world really replicate the phenomonology that Merleau-Ponty had in mind - the responsiveness of touch as perhaps memory? I don't know- what do you think?

1 comment:

aykayem said...

hmmm "haptic visuality" ... what an interesting term! ... the first thing that came to mind when I read that was that I liked the sound of it ... and the next thing that came to mind was a definition along the lines of this - "haptic art: something made in such a way that when someone looks at it they experience an overwhelming desire to touch it" ... which is usually the effect that textile art has on a lot of people, including me ... LOL
Then I realised - that is where textile art can be so much MORE than "normal" art (paintings and things) - because they have that added dimension of touchability/texture that a traditional painting or a print doesn't really have (or at least not in the same way/to the same extent) ...
gee I am being profound at the moment ... or maybe I am just raving on and not making sense, as usual ... LOL
Andrea,
who should be out in my sewing room creating my own "haptic art" rather than sitting here in front of the computer reading about everyone else's ...