I consider it vital that the practices have a tangible connection with the spectra of felt experience. The resonances of breath and voice span a range from very subtle perceptual nuance to blatantly obvious emotionally affecting expression. Important in all of this is
aliveness and alertness of spontaneous revelation: something unexpected that is given space to come to the surface. Something revealed in the practice of giving breath to the vocal folds and voice to breath in a weave of imagination and the emotional fabric of embodied being and the continual renewal of presence, in combination with the sheer pleasure of creative ignition. Many of the workshops started with an inward focus and awareness on the oceanic tidal flux of breath and its subtle dance with body. With deliberate awareness of breath and its resonating passage through the throat and its multiple functional and creative layers in interaction with body and being, it can be considered a whisper of our individual existential presence. When the breath is invited to vibrate the vocal folds it immediately extends this existential presence into social and environmental dimensions, while audibly resonating within and from the definitive
fleshy cavities of each uniquely formed and spirited body. I acknowledge the value of each individual’s unique journey through this
practice through the universal ground of embodied being.
I test Beuys’ notional potential of everyone being an artist via the common ground of the emergent and becoming resonant being and
body. The notion of “embodiment” has its locating nuclei in the intellectual contributions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and his assertions
on the centrality of the body as the primary ground for perceptual experience, as opposed to Cartesian mind/body dichotomy.
The essential notion for such a philosophy is that of the flesh, which is not the objective body, nor the body thought by the soul as its own (Descartes), which is the sensible in the twofold sense of what one senses and what senses. What one senses = the sensible thing, the
sensible world = the correlate of my active body, what responds to it ----What senses = I can not posit one sole sensible without positing it as torn from my flesh, lifted off my flesh, and my flesh itself is one of the sensibles in which an inscription of all others is made, the sensible pivot in which all the others participate, the sensible-key, the dimensional sensible. My body is to the great extent what everything is: a
dimensional this. It is the universal thing (Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 259-60).
It is the non-dualistic ‘dimensional sensible’ aspects of perception integral to the universal and relational body that I am nominating as integral to the notion of the resonant body. It is made multi-dimensional through its meta and matter poly-rhythms from cellular
vibrations to pumping heart, cycles of breath, emotional tones, brain wave frequencies, thought, and affecting relational encounters with
other multiple resonant bodies and beings. The notion of “resonance” is intimately woven to the complex material qualities of breath
upon vocal folds transforming movement of air into frequencies of audible oscillation resounding through a living body of resonant cavities and beyond out to reflective space, to become sculptural material medium. It is also metaphorically a notion that provides active ground for a kind of multifaceted emergent extrication, arising from embodied perceptual and expressed nuances, impulses, feeling
tones, imaginings, and layered meanings. Resonance is a metaphor commonly expressed in everyday language as “that (idea, belief,
practice, form, place) resonates with me”, meaning a resounding felt sense of favourable attunement. I suggest a notion of felt
experience on a spectrum of discernible resonance that can extend beyond the liminal edge of materiality, to the realm of non-physical but affecting expansive experiences of illuminating consciousness. Instead of the Cartesian dictum of “I think therefore I am”, resonant
embodiment suggests a more relational dictum of “I resonate therefore I am in active concert with all that is becoming”. At the core of
this project ‘Voice’ is the referential evocative and productive substance that makes viscerally felt and material the available volatile
“Resonant thinking allows for vibrational coupling of seemingly unlike concepts or ideas” (Price 2011, p. 13).
The concept of “Embodied Resonance” enables recognition of common ground across multiple embodied practices, practitioners,
theories and theorists. The term 'resonating' is shared by Ilse Middendorf's "Perceptible Breath" practice and Eugene Gendlin's "Focusing" practice to describe the action of bringing attention to perception of bodily sensations, feeling tones and felt meanings. Middendorf uses a formula of "breathing, focusing, perceiving" (Middendorf 1990, p. 18), to reveal subtle perceptions of breath as a "guide-rope" that leads the body, and with it the spiritual and mental into new openings to achieve a wider clarity of consciousness (Middendorf 1990, p. 12). Gendlin's experiential psychology places emphasis on experiencing what is bodily felt, “rather than thought,
known, or verbalized. It is ... lived experience rather than constructs, abstractions, or generalizations about experience. It is pre- conceptual"(Friedman 2004, p. 2). Resonating becomes the perceptual platform between felt sense and concept. This notion of felt perceptible resonance can be extended to the full spectrum of felt vitality in association with breath awareness common to pranayama in yoga practice, vital energy in Qi-gong practice and conscious self-awareness in mindfulness meditation. In his PhD dissertation
“Phenomenology of the Experience of Qigong” Haruhiko Murakawa writes:
Qigongreclaims the significance of the “body as a flow of qi,” whose characteristics challenge the Cartesian view of the body and its modern offspring of the Western biomedical body based on the metaphor of “biochemical machine.” (Murakawa 2002, p. 7)
While seeking to locate a notion of embodied experience in the common ground of ineffable living breathing existence, I also seek to marry this to the diversity and authority of each individual's unique resonant evolving presence and emergent voice. I propose a concept of felt experience, of body and being as symphony of multitudinous songs in concert with other singing bodies, beings, objects,
environments, always in constant flux and flow of becoming. This has resonance with Gershon’s notion of sound as site for the investigation of embodied knowledge and implicit meaning.
Ontological and epistemological understandings of the interconnectedness of things are similarly present in a multitude of spiritualties and philosophies outside of the Western canon. In short, if everything sings and resonates, then sound serves as both a strong theoretical site for
conceptualizing what might “count” as “data” in qualitative research and how such methodologies might function in practice” (Gershon 2014, p. 2).
I ask questions about the capacity of this art practice to provide a shaman-like function, directed toward personal and social creative engagement, enlivenment, enrichment, communion, and well-being, while also speculating on the value of making available experiences that transcend everyday ordinary perception. I propose and question through the practice, through the interactions with participants, and through the overall presentation of the final performance, in what ways this art practice has potential to provide generative and practical social and personal benefit and insight.