Fiery, Luminous, Scary – Erin Manning

The above is a snapshot from a participatory art project entitled “Folds to Infinity” – you can further investigate here.  The verbal link is to an article by Erin Manning that reflects on some possible interactions and responses participatory art and movement enable or frustrate.  As I read this article, with its focus on space-time relations such as event-spaces, materials, sound, rooms, fields etc., I could not help but be curious about the shared space-time relational field of texts, pages, pixels, blogsites and wonder about the more-than that authors/designers/readers/viewers compose – co-create – in these pages we invent each day.  The will toward participation that affects any work’s unfolding.  The design of our syntax and placement of images, types of terms and content of pictures all go toward constraining our viewer/reader participations towards meanings prefigured in our compositions.  And yet, I would wager that the majority of us hope for our creations to be participated-with, engaged, even co-created with the sensing minds of those these spaces open up.  “Spacetimes of relation are never neutral.  They are fiery, luminous, scary.”  I am hoping for ways and words and ways with words that allow, perhaps even create, spacetimes of relation that facilitate the more-than possibilities each engagement with them have potential of.

erin and others certainly activate the seeming “folds to infinity” of the matter in my cranium.