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Fleshing out Word & Image: The Embodiment of Literature & Visual art.
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Fleshing out Word & Image:The Embodiment of Literature & Visual art
Professor Ellen EsrockDepartment of Language, Literature & CommunicationRensselaer Polytechnic InstituteTroy, New York 12180esroce@rpi.eduPresentation at Barnard College NYC. July 2010 Barnard Interdisciplinary Workshop on Embodiment
Even after standing with such unrelenting attention in front of the great color scheme of the woman in the red armchair, it is becoming as retrievable in my memory as a figure with very many digits. And yet I memorized it, number by number. In my feeling, the consciousness of their presence has become a heightening which I can feel even in my sleep; my blood describes it within me, but the naming of it passes by somewhere outside and is not called in. Did I write about it?--A red, upholstered low armchair has been placed in front of an earthy-green wall Rilke Letter re. Portrait of Madame Cezanne (Mark Rothko)
Simulation “Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.” <gazes> Reader Visually images extending clouds
Simulation “Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.” <gazes> Reader Visually images wispy clouds Activates motor programs involved in eye scanning Reader and/or Activates
Transomatization “Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.” <gazes> Reader Breathing stands for character gazing or Breathing stands for long wispy clouds Breathes
Embodiment ProcessesSpectrum Transomatization Simulation ≈ ≉
Simulation Viewer toe stretch Representation <Toe stretch> Motor activation of toe
Balcony Window Adolph Menzel 1845 National Galerie, Berlin
Transomatization Motor activation used abstractly for curtain/body <Wind personified as human agent moving through curtain>
Transomatization Breathing
Breathing Breathing Breathing as light cast on floor; as circulation of energy around room; as substance of sofa
Interoception Inner bodily awareness can be used for transomatization
So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpour of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at key holes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here in a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias. (V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse ,189-190)
Transomatization So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpour of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at key holes and crevices, still row and window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here in a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias. interoception of internal milieu <the profusion of darkness>
Transomatization interoceptive awareness becomes brown sofa or spot on wall <Sofa> <Spot on wall>
Robin now headed up into Nora's part of the country. She circled closer and closer. Sometimes she slept in the woods; the silence that she had caused by her coming was broken again by insect and bird flowing back over her intrusion, which was forgotten in her fixed stillness, obliterating her as a drop of water is made anonymous by the pond into which it has fallen. Sometimes she slept on a bench in the decaying chapel (she brought some of her things here), but she never went further. One night she woke up to the barking, far off, of Nora's dog. As she had frightened the woods into silence by her breathing, the barking of the dog brought her up, rigid and still. Half an acre away, Nora, sitting by a kerosene lamp, raised her head. The dog was running about the house; she heard him first on one side, then the other; he whined as he ran; barking and whining she heard him farther and farther away. Nora bent forward, listening; she began to shiver. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, 168-9
She circledcloser and closer • The dog was running about first on one side, then the other Circling motion within body
Robin now headed up into Nora's part of the country. She circledcloser and closer. Sometimes she sleptin the woods; the silence that she had caused by her coming was broken again by insect and bird flowing back over her intrusion, which was forgotten in her fixed stillness, obliterating her as a drop of water is made anonymous by the pond into which it has fallen. Sometimes she slept on a bench in the decaying chapel (she brought some of her things here), but she never went further. One night she woke up to the barking, far off, of Nora's dog. As she had frightened the woods into silence by her breathing, the barking of the dog brought her up, rigid and still. Half an acre away, Nora, sitting by a kerosene lamp, raised her head. The dog was running about the house; she heard him first on one side, then the other; he whined as he ran; barking and whiningshe heard him farther and farther away. Nora bent forward, listening; she began to shiver. p.68-9
Step 1 TransomatizationExperience of body-connected-to-object <interoceptive awareness> as spot on wall <Spot on wall>
Schematic Step 1Experience of body-connected-to-object <interoceptive awareness> <sofa> <Spot on wall>
Transomatization Step 2Beginning of forgetting of specific connected object <interoceptive awareness> < . . . . . . .>
Transomatization Step 3 Resonant BodyBody is semiotized—excessive--resonant <interoceptive awareness> is more than bodily awareness
ReaderTextContextImage • Reader is somatically-disposed • Text/Imagecues motions, emotions, somatosensory sensations • Text/Image elicits motivations to engage • Context facilitates embodied response
Efficacy of Transomatization Discussion
requires less time • expands our limited attentional capacity
works effectively with language and images that do not depict a realistic object or activity
Capability of maintaining multi-leveled (multi-sensory) streams of sense and affect
