I have attached here, a figure I want to talk about. for me (thanks for the prompt toward this C) the question of human's need for (use of) avatars is an interesting one. I like to think of avatars in the context of Hindu terminology whereby deities descend to 'earth' as incarnations and/ or manifestations. avatars generally are believed to descend for specific purposes (contacts? intimacies?)--this is of interest to me b/c it feels valuable to me to consider the difference between 'avatar' as human-created-surrogate (which is certainly a kind of real need) and 'avatar' as embodiment (form, splice) of deity. I guess it is the directionality of it that is most interesting to me. if Vishnu comes down in the body/ form of an avatar, for example, and body/ form appears to me in a vision, I can be close to it. close to a thing that can literally reach out and touch me. I have often experienced (in sitting meditation, with the clash of a gong as it is raining (etc.) the extension of say, a painted deva's hands, extending from the wall. so, to consider the above image in such a way. that its reaching is not in vain, simply b/c I am so open to being touched.
Is this a found image? A collage? Or did you create it from scratch? Who are the "we" in the text?
ReplyDeleteI don't have any religious beliefs, in fact, I suppose I'm an atheist, so the idea of an "'avatar' as embodiment (form, splice) of deity" is strange to me. Which doesn't mean that I don't value spirituality, I do, but my personal belief is that it emanates from humans... from humankind... from human kindness. I appreciate what you're saying about being open to being touched.
I created this image from scratch, but from motley scratch pieces toward.
ReplyDeleteI would say that I am more an inventive pagan who believes in volitionist chivalries (I created that terminology in order to explain how I orient) than I am an atheist, but I am certainly not religious in a dogmatic way. however, the idea of feral or divergent deities that might come to earth in various forms and by way of that form-oriented entry, induce encounter, is of extreme interest for me.
I would say that the "we" in the piece, is a collective, imagined statement from such fractions of deities that have come into form by way of inhabiting form (reincarnation?)...
thank you so much for engagement with the piece!
or, another way to explain what is of interest for me in this particular direction of consideration, is that if these splices of deities come into form, and relate to me, they in a sense (by relation) make me feel like an avatar--a site of useful projections and uses.
ReplyDeleteThat's really interesting, and relates not only to Tibetan Buddhism but some Japanese iconography as well, I'm thinking of the sculpture of the priest Kuya by Koshu during the Kamakura period, 13th century - http://japanesesymbolsofpresence.com/shinto.html and http://www.deepkyoto.com/?cat=268 (near the bottom of the page) - This also relates to sound, Vac, as creator in Hindu/Vedic texts and practice as we. If you're interested, I can give you more biblio info on this.
ReplyDeleteThe piece is beautiful and immediately reminded me of Kuya...
Question, for an atheist, Christine, what is an apparition? Is it all from the mind? (I'm an atheist myself, although I feel a loss or discomfort as such.)
Thanks, Alan
I can only hazard a guess, but I would think in most cases apparitions are from the mind. Some may be very unusual physical phenomena that we don't know how to interpret yet.
DeleteI tend to agree with you; I've had audible hallucinations, never visual ones, but I'm fascinated by j/j's -
DeleteAvatars certainly touch on hallucinations; there's something uncanny about them, as well as something abject, part of, and yet not part of, the human/flesh body.
Here are three useful books for all of the discussion, I think -
Drew Leder, The Absent Body, Chicago, 1990 - about the disappearance of the body in intention, the immaterial body, the body in meditation, and Zen. Just brilliant.
Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT, 1993. Really like this as well; Varela is key to a lot of work done on embodiment issues.
Jeffrey Ventrella, Virtual Body Language: The History and Future of Avatars: How Nonverbal Expression is Evolving on the Internet, Eyebrain Books, 2011. This is one of the most practical and useful books around, and shows the complexity of virtual world avatar development in detail.
There are others of course; any of the writings of Kate Hayles on second order cybernetics, especially How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, would be quite useful.
j/j you say " I can be close to it. close to a thing that can literally reach out and touch me. I have often experienced (in sitting meditation, with the clash of a gong as it is raining (etc.) the extension of say, a painted deva's hands, extending from the wall." - You have here several modalities, and I wonder how they seem to you during meditation - you mention rain (sight, sound, smell, all potentially continuous), and the clash of a gong (immediate, discontinuous) - how does the last play into the extension of the deva's hands? Is it a 'moment' that appears (the kind of moments that happen in Zen) or is the gong a punctuation within ongoing meditation? I'm asking because, whatever I'm doing, sounds with strong onset tend to awaken me and pull me out of practice (literally practice, if I'm playing sarangi for example). I think this might have to do with contemporary urban life; sudden sounds in Brooklyn usually aren't benign...
ReplyDeletej/j, your phrases - such as "volitionist chivalries", "feral or divergent deities", "splices of deities" - and the images or ideas they conjure up are enchanting. It's interesting how it makes you "feel like an avatar--a site of useful projections and uses." I like the play of these ideas in my imagination.
ReplyDeletethank you both of your for this rich conversation here! thanks A for recognition of the sort of bleeding into Japanese iconography. yes! I am elated that you saw Kuya here. that just feels like success all around to me--what the gesture of making the piece was for, actually--inclusivities of many kinds.
ReplyDeleteI am interested in these statements/ definitions of apparitions as strictly in/ of the mind. interested because that is not how I perceive or relate to them at all, but holding space for that type of intuition/ insight.
thanks A for the question re modalities--I think that you are asking me about the discontinuous (potentially interruptive) and its relation to the deva's hands protruding from the wall. two parts to this, really. the deva's hands could have been reaching for me prior to my awareness of them doing so, but it was the clash/ interrupt amidst the ongoing, that made my awareness of it astute. this is important for you to catch onto here, b/c it has to do with encounter--not in the context of relation (which comes later) but in the context of ignition/ instigation. I do think that it is the torque that often makes potential alignments, slip into alignment (I see alignment as I am talking about it here sort of like chord--a stacking that even if for a moment, makes a vibrational frequency 'with' or 'together')...
the idea of encounter I think is fundamental; with virtual avatars it can be trivial or profound, you're always reading the 'backgrounding' of the avatars - who's running them, what are they doing in the environment and so forth. the encounter you're talking about has an element, I think, of silence and meditation about it, or where there's sound, it would be thought of as primordial... which does bring up yet three more books: Alain Danielou, Music and The Power of Sound: The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness; Guy L. Beck, Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound; and Andre Padoux, Vac: The Conept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. All of these have been useful to me, especially the first two; the last is technical and detailed but goes through phonemes as well...
ReplyDeleteencounter as an idea and as a reality is one of my most fundamental interests/ realities re regarding the figures. all versions of them.
ReplyDeletewill you say more re "silence and meditation [] or where there's sound, it would be thought of as primordial"? meaning something bubbling or fizzling upward from a continuous, is primordial, b/c at cumulative onslaught, things pour through the collective that includes that primordial?