'When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook--a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases. Under B shall come "Butterfly powder". If, in my novel, I describe the sun on the window-sill, I shall look under B and find butterfly powder. That will be useful.'

 

The concept of information, as we conceive of it, is an active concept that emphasizes the in, in in-formation or forms in the process of taking form or a form that is being informed with and through the particular constraints or affordances of a given process, technique or material / medial milieu. Information is not a numeric quantity or organization of data, but an opening to the complex dynamics of processes in the making.

 


In-formation, as a process of formation in process relies on the specific activations that a situation affords, or the way that intensities and resonances become felt across heterogeneous elements. Such elements are the shaping, activating movements in research-creation, which move between conceptual, embodied, gestural and material domains.

'When I wake early--and the birds wake me--I lie and watch the brass handles on the cupboard grow clear; then the basin; then the towel-horse. As each thing in the bedroom grows clear, my heart beats quicker. I feel my body harden, and become pink, yellow, brown.'

'I would really try to experiment with the movement profile of the city in a way that involves a variety of sensory registers. Using visual media we could experiment with the stop-motion shots (Marey) of a city and as well the fast-motion (Bill Viola, Trier) mode.'

'But I cannot stand all day in the sun with my eyes on the ball; I cannot feel the flight of the ball through my body and think only of the ball. I shall be a clinger to the outsides of words all my life.' 

The term Milieu has a double sense in French. The one inspired from mathematics (centered) refers to the point at equidistance between its two extremities. The other is inspired from geography (which is off centered) and indicates the environment, the context (the interlacing of relations) that surrounds the human for example.

 

The Milieu traverses these two definitions that locates it at the center or the peripheries. The milieu is not localizable; it doesn’t have an origin.  It is a line, it is an axis. It is a canal, it is a flux.  It is a consistency, (or perhaps a texture?) that opens to movements and its dynamics.  The milieu is this “space” or hole where the things are brought to present, animated transformed.

 

 

How can we activate a milieu, how can we develop a practice that we can think through the milieu with? In the context of Adapt-r (and the in situ space of the 65 Palaizenstrasse), we explore how, through the immediacy (physical and temporal), we can coproduce the space of the milieu.

1. Locate an object in the space, it could be a pebble, a fleck of loose paint or even a fingernail or perhaps something larger. Don't tell me what it is but what it feels like when you touch it. Is it warm, cool, soft, sharp, smooth, dry or rough?

 

 

2. Now, try to look at the object from all sides. Where is it thin? Where is it thick? Where is it delicate or strong? Where would it easily break?

 

 

3. Now, examine the object for texture, ride the texture with your eyes for as long as you can. Now, make a trace that describes the texture on this page. How did the tracing move your vision? How did your vision move your tracing?

 

 

4. Now, treat the form or texture that you felt with your eyes as if it were a script for a different kind of movement and perform it. What did you move? How did you move?

 

 

5. Now, take the object and run it against a surface while holding it. Pay attention to the sound, the friction, resistance and vibration that this generates. Please describe what do you notice:

 

 

6. Now, verbally sound out your visual movement with the object, as closely and as carefully as possible. First, sound out the same visual path that you made over it in question three. Please briefly describe how you used vocal dynamics to sound the spatial patterns and textures of the object: i.e. pitch, limits of vocal register, spatial references (trajectory), volume, dynamic modulation, semantics of language or style.

 

 

7. Now, vocally sound out the object's density. How is the vocal profile that you used to sound visual path and density different?

 

 

 

8. Now, sound out the outline. How is the vocal profile that you used to sound visual path and density different from texture?