Welcome to the ninth In-Body invitation! It is Ben again.
This invitation is a collection of short scores – inviting exploration, observation, action and imagination in collaboration with your phone, but any technology that you have access to (tablets, laptops, video cameras and more) could all be used with a little creative interpretation.
These scores are not designed to be done one after the other, in any specific place or for any specific duration, rather each can be done at any time singly and in any order. They can be done in seconds or you might spend longer with them. You may wish to do some more than once.
Please do not feel limited by the scores! They might send you in a different direction or a more open-ended exploration.
You might print or copy them out into a small deck of cards (a print version is available), you might carry one or two with you in your phone case or taped to your phone.
If using the audio files you could play them on shuffle.
Afterscore
After doing one or more of these scores, please feel free to upload any of the images, video, text or audio you generated on the In-Body website.
Maybe you would like to create a short score for you and your phone to add to this collection.
SCORES
Tiny Spaces
The tiny spaces created as your hands envelop your phone
could be gently expanded or compressed.
Leaving
Leave your phone somewhere for a time, with the voice recorder on.
Listen back later.
Building
Build a complex, delicate, balanced structure on the surface of your phone.
Beneath and Above
Hourly, daily or weekly, take photos of what is directly beneath your feet, and what is directly above your head.
(After Richard Long)
Mapping
Use your body to measure and map your phone.
What dimensions of your phone correspond to which parts of your body? For example my phone fits exactly twice into the length of my inside forearm. Where do the colours of your body and phone match? Contrast? Where are there similar textures? Temperatures? Other qualities in common or in contrast?
Disappearing act
Using the camera timer and any mirrored or reflective surface, take a photo of your phone without you in it.
Shining
The torch of your phone will shine through the flesh of your fingers
(best in a dark space).
You could continue to trace the outline of your body, using the light or the contact of skin and phone to explore skin, hair, clothing – the boundaries that both define you from and connect you to the wider world.
Gesturing
How do you use your hands to gesture in daily life? How many gestures might you know and use?
Could you begin to create a sequence of gestures? You could put similar gestures one after the other, or other times look for more contrast.
As you repeat your gesture dance you might focus on different aspects of your anatomy: for example first the bones of your hand, then muscles, then your skin. You might bring your attention to the sense of weight, the negative spaces your hand and fingers create – each time feeling how the sensations of your dancing hand might change.
Listing
Create a spontaneous list of words that describe your experience while using your phone.
Pointing
Pointing organises bones in the fingers and arm to extend an imaginary line beyond yourself.
When using your phone, which of your bones extend towards it?
If you follow the line of other bones in your body, what are they extending towards?
(After Steve Paxton)
Exhaling
A swipe as long
as an exhale
Imagining
If you are holding your phone, place it down somewhere close.
Without needing to look, feel the space between you and your phone. Imagine in detail what micro-actions you would need to undertake to bring the palm of your hand onto the phone screen.
How does that imagined movement relate to the physical experience? Maybe repeat the whole process a couple of times. Does it change?
Slotting
Are there small places around your home that your phone can slot or slide into?
How do you organise your body around that action?
Are there places that you can slot or slide into, places that you might not normally inhabit?
Texturing
Hold your phone as you would normally hold it.
Affix a small patch of textured material wherever a finger touches.
Tape, wool, paper, fabric, sandpaper.
Reflecting
Carefully clean your phone screen.
Then, as both you and the phone move through space, how does the world appear reflected in the polished screen?
Sea
What do you hear if you press your phone firmly against your ear, as you might a seashell?
Meeting
What kind of hand was your phone designed for?
How does this design meet your unique hand?
What might help your hand and phone meet better?
Could you design or even make these modifications to your hand or phone?
Tracing
What is the territory of your phone? What spatial traces did it make throughout today? You might draw those lines on paper, however rough.
What is your territory? What traces did you make today? Can you draw those?
Where do they not overlap?
Sounding
What range sounds can you produce by softly tapping your phone in different places? You could expand this soundscore by using different parts of yourself to tap at different intensities, by dragging the phone softly across different textures, gently dropping it or by finding or making areas with different acoustics.
You might also use your own body and voice within this emerging soundscore.
Closing
Dark screen.
Closed eyes.
