Welcome!
I am Bryn, and this is the sixth In-Body invitation.
In this invitation I invite you to follow this score as closely or loosely as takes your fancy, following whichever mood you are in; be that playful, thoughtful or rebellious! It will take the form of a series of short scores which can be followed in order or pick and mixed to suit you.
Each score lasts as long as you would like it to, it might be that one lasts five minutes and another fifteen. If you feel like you would need an end point, you could set a timer for between 5 and 15 minutes for each score.
At the end of each score there is a reminder that this could be a dance, These are intended as a reminder to leave space for play and the poetic. As Ania beautifully put in the previous invitation –
‘Sometimes dancing happens in the attempt of searching for something’.
Also feel free to do these scores in pairs or small groups if you like, I imagine the last one could be quite fun like that.
You will need:
A camera phone (a camera with a screen/tablet will also work)
A space you feel comfortable to move/play in, this can be indoors or outdoors.
For score No.5 you will need to have some distance between you and your phone so just make sure you would feel comfortable doing that i.e no one is going to steal it.
I have been enjoying doing it in my kitchen.
Documenting materials; notepad/sketchbook/clay/dictaphone (optional). These are for if you want to reflect after any of the scores, but only if you feel the desire.
Let’s begin…
Each score begins and ends by checking in with your body. I invite you to ask yourselves these questions and bring your attention to the sensations in your body.
How do my feet feel on the ground?
How does it feel to breathe in?
How does it feel to breathe out?
How does the palms of my hands feel?
Which muscles am I using to stand/sit?
How does my tongue sit in my mouth?
What is the space behind me like?
Score No.1 – What is this thing?
When you think of your phone, what comes to mind? A memory? an Image? A connection?
Does it have a voice?
I Invite you to pick up your phone, feeling its weight in one hand and then the other. Letting go of it’s functionality and meeting it as an object.
How does it feel?
Can you find or imagine an object of similar weight? If you can, how does it feel to hold one in each hand?
How does the weight of the phone feel on different parts of your body? Perhaps your shoulder or thigh.
What is the shape of your phone? How does the shape feel with your eyes closed?
Does it have a face or back, or shoulder?
How does it feel in our hands? Are there different textures…different temperatures? How does it feel against our cheek, or on our chest?
If we put the phone down, can we feel its absence?
This can be a dance between you and your phone, a dance of both familiarity and meeting for the first time.
Score No.2 – Where is it? Where am I?
I Invite you to place your phone somewhere in the space you are in. Then place yourself somewhere else in the space to form a constellation between yourself, the phone, and the other objects in the space.
Is there a connection between you and the phone?
Is there a connection between you, the phone and the room?
Is there a connection between the phone and the other objects in the space?
Are you a part of that connection?
When you have felt this first constellation, place your phone and yourself somewhere new. Repeat this as many times as your like (I did five). If you would like to, you could also play music from your phone so that you are connected through sound in the space.
This can be a dance, a trio perhaps, between you, your phone and the space.
Score No.3 – How do we see together?
I Invite you to open the camera function of your device, so that the screen shows what the camera is seeing. Or you could use an app such as seeing AI (or android equivalent) so that your phone describes to you what it thinks it is seeing. Once this is working we are going to take our cameras for a tour of the space we are in. This can be a tour with or without words. I like to imagine myself as an estate agent showing the phone a space or house.
What do you want to show the camera?
What might it want to see?
What can the camera help you to see?
This can be a dance of leading and being led.
Score No.4 – How does it see us?
In a similar manner to the tour of the space, I invite you to take the camera on a tour of your body.
How does my skin feel without the camera?
How does my skin feel with the camera ‘seeing’ it?
How does the camera affect my attention?
How does it feel with my eyes closed?
This can be a dance between your sensation and your attention.
Score No.5 – How does it change the space?
With the camera still on, I invite you to place your phone somewhere in the space, so that the camera can see all or part of the space. It should be free standing so you are able to move in and out of its field of vision. I enjoyed playing with it on the floor or propped up against the kettle. I also enjoyed playing with ‘selfie’ and non-selfie’ mode, so I could either see or not see what the camera could ‘see’.
Once the phone is in position, I invite you to move around in the space, into and out of the camera’s view.
How does it feel to be ‘seen’ by the camera?
How does the side of your body away from the camera feel?
Does it feel different with my eyes closed?
Repeat this with the phone in a different place if you like. As an optional extra to this score, I played with setting the camera to ‘record’. You could also capture an image of yourself with your accessibility app.
How does that change things?
How does it feel to have your phone describe you?
This can be a dance with the space, how it changes, and how we change within it.
Closing
I hope you enjoy these invitations. Feel free to reflect on them however you like. We would love to see anything you feel like sharing. Warm wishes from myself and the In-Body team.
Bryn Thomas, Berlin/Bristol, Germany/UK.
