Fleshing out Word & Image:

The Embodiment of Literature & Visual art

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Professor Ellen EsrockDepartment of Language, Literature & Communication

Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteTroy, New York 12180

esroce@rpi.edu

Presentation at Barnard College NYC. July 2010 Barnard Interdisciplinary Workshop on

Embodiment

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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)

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“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.”

ReaderVisually imagesextending clouds

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Simulation

<gazes>

Reader

“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.”

ReaderVisually images

wispy clouds

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and/or

Activates

Activates motor programs involved in eye scanning

Simulation

<gazes>

“Amy gazes at long wispy clouds that extend outward from the horizon.”

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Reader

Transomatization

Breathing stands for character gazing or

Breathing stands for long wispy clouds

<gazes>

Breathes

Embodiment ProcessesSpectrum

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Simulation Transomatization

≈ ≉

Motor activation of toe

Viewer toe stretch

Representation <Toe stretch>

Simulation

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Balcony Window Adolph Menzel 1845National Galerie, Berlin

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Motor activation used abstractly for curtain/body

<Wind personified as human agent moving through curtain>

Transomatization

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Breathing

Transomatization

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Breathing as light cast on floor; as circulation of energy around room; as substance of sofa

Breathing Breathing

Interoception

Inner bodily awareness can be used for transomatization

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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 roundwindow 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)

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.

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<the profusion of darkness> interoception of internal milieu

Transomatization

<Sofa>

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interoceptive awarenessbecomes brown sofa or spot on wall

<Spot on wall>

Transomatization

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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 circled closer and closer• The dog was running about first on one side, then the other

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Circling motion within body

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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. p.68-9

Fragmentation

Signifier without a Signified

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TransomatizationExperience of body-connected-to-object

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<interoceptive awareness>as spot on wall

<Spot on wall>

Step 1

Schematic Step 1

Experience of body-connected-to-object

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<interoceptive awareness>

<sofa><Spot on wall>

Transomatization Step 2

Beginning of forgetting of specific connected object

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<interoceptive awareness>

< . . . . . . .>

Resonant Body

Body is semiotized—excessive--resonant

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<interoceptive awareness>

is more than bodily awareness

Transomatization Step 3

Reader Text Context

Image

• Reader is somatically-disposed• Text/Image cues motions, emotions,

somatosensory sensations• Text/Image elicits motivations to engage • Context facilitates embodied response

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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

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