Me, Myself and Us

(Brian R. Little)...begins by addressing “personal constructs” — what he calls “the cognitive goggles you use to understand yourself and others.” There are “core” constructs, he explains, closely tied to one’s sense of self, and “peripheral” constructs, more loosely attached to one’s identity. “To the extent that you have an overly dominant core construct along which much of your construing is organized, you have limited degrees of freedom in navigating your world,” Little notes. “If, however, you have many independent personal constructs or several pairs of goggles through which to anticipate events, when one pair doesn’t work so well or is invalidated, you can switch to a different construct.” Add single-goggle and multi-­goggle to his growing list of types.


For the entire article please click HERE.

Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal - The Birth of Patapsychology

...Patapsychology begins from Murphy's Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,"The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured." In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any "normalist" who can exhibit "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."...(cont.)

For the entire piece about the genesis of patapsychology, click HERE.

Is Consciousness A Product Of The Brain Or Is The Brain The Receiver Of Consciousness?

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918

It’s great to see that in today’s day and age, multiple prominent scientists from all over the world have started to study and examine several different areas that deal with non-physical phenomenon and human consciousness. Truth is they’ve been doing it for decades, but it’s just now starting to receive the recognition it deserves.

For the rest of the article please click HERE .

Twine, the Video-Game Technology for All

Perhaps the most surprising thing about “GamerGate,” the culture war that continues to rage within the world of video games, is the game that touched it off. Depression Quest, created by the developers Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey and Isaac Schankler, isn’t what most people think of as a video game at all...

To read the entire article please click HERE. 

play/search - A Quest

This Alternate Reality Game/Quest is offered as an amusing challenge to all (science/art) players of good will...a new game is afoot...let's see where it leads...

A Quest…(a treasure hunt)... Find the best source(s) of funding for an initial play/search project entitled...

(Please read the link material and watch the videos before embarking on the quest.)

Here are a few clues…

…in the form of questions, observations, quotes, links to websites, articles and videos. It is important to read the articles and watch the videos all the way through.

What could “play/search” refer to? Several things? Do we have a fork in the road here?

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Yogi Berra

An opinion: Most scientific research, even “basic” research, conducted inside of established universities and other types of conventional academic institutions and funded by either the government or various grant awarding foundations is severely limited by self imposed constraints on the types of questions allowed to be asked and the standardized methods used to acquire evidence.

As Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “Science should be a key unlocking phenomena, instead of a lock shutting out any phenomena not fitting its keys of preconception”.

On the opening page of Part II of Supernormal Dean Radin quotes William James…

“There is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.”

Also from Joseph Chilton Pearce…

“(William Blake said that) Ordinary seeing is mechanical and dead; vision is seeing that the universe is the material for creation, not the fixed deadness of matter. Blake lost his argument, to say the least. Indeed there was no contest. We are now living in the pandemonium he foresaw should Newton, Locke, and company win the day, as they surely did. The “Enlightenment” proved no boon to man – just one more frying pan to switch into – and it may prove the final fire.”

Check out… CHM Revolutionaries: Reality is Broken- Jane McGonigal with NPR's Laura Sydell at this link…http://youtu.be/ZjSVo8N31r4

“Science is truth with her wings clipped”.
Austin O’Malley, Keystones of Thought

Check out… Games for Change: Solving the World's Biggest Problems Through Alternate Realities: Jane McGonigal…here… http://youtu.be/yLUdxqYmDdc

Institute For The Future: http://www.iftf.org/focus-area/global-landscape/

“Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.”
Wilhelm Reich

Mind/Shift: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/what-makes-an-extreme-learner/

Extreme Learners Overview: http://youtu.be/FYoWKEZ0Xuw

What are TechShops (http://techshop.ws/ ), MakerSpaces (http://makezine.com/2013/05/22/the-difference-between-hackerspaces-makerspaces-techshops-and-fablabs/ ), and Learning Shelters (http://news.typeamachines.com/the-learning-shelter/ )?

An Infinite Game of Global Unity: http://youtu.be/1Jj7lT7ED_M

What would scientific play/search instead of scientific research look like?

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny!’” 
Isaac Asimov

Cinemorphics methodology, overall approach and “atmosphere”…a key clue in the play/search quest?

Is Science (with a capital "S"), one of humankind's stories, a mythological undertaking worthy of a noble quest...(and...a construct subject to a re-write)?

What if Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência turned "essential" experimental protocols upside down?

Consider radical quantum theater projects as play/search?

Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência - Cia Lápis de Seda - http://youtu.be/7-i9TYd_Bvo

Check out…

http://www.dsiam.org/ , 

http://www.theatrehorizon.org/education/autism.html , 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlzheimersCommunity/alzheimers-disease-improv-helps-patients-live-moment/story?id=14307386

Quantum Theater: http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3585&context=etd_theses

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” 
Albert Einstein

Quantum Aesthetics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorio_Morales

What part does this concept play in the quest?

"Trans-intelligence: New Approaches to Aptitude Formation"

Propose definitions for "play/search" and "trans-intelligence".

Draw a detailed treasure map showing how to get to the funding source(s) and complete the quest(s)...please indicate all emerging forks... 

The Crack in the Cosmic Egg

“We are limited by our agreements on possibility. Agreement is a common exclusion of alternate possibilities. Agreement is the cement of social structure. Two or three gathered together, agreeing on what they are after, may create a subset in which their goals can be achieved, even though folly in the eyes of the world. The world in this case means a set of expectancies agreed upon, a set excluding other possibilities.”
Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality

I read The Crack in the Cosmic Egg over forty years ago when it was first published. I have found since then, that the book seems to mysteriously re-enter my life every few years, seemingly to remind me where parts of my thinking came from. Either I will my tattered original “lost” copy behind some other book on a hopelessly disorganized shelf, or find someone else’s “lost” copy forgotten in a coffee house, or receive a new edition as a gift, or turn up a PDF…click HERE…of the entire book on the internet while searching for something else (which just happened and prompted this post). In any case…check it out if you have not read it. If you don’t, it will eventually “find” you.

A relatively new edition with a new Foreword and Preface may be found HERE.

8 New Ways of Looking at Intelligence

The science of learning is a relatively new discipline born of an agglomeration of fields: cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience. As with anything to do with our idiosyncratic and unpredictable species, there is still a lot of art, especially in teaching. But the science of learning can offer some surprising new perspectives:

For the rest of the article please click HERE.

Ellen Langer's Work

One day in the fall of 1981, eight men in their 70s stepped out of a van in front of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. They shuffled forward, a few of them arthritically stooped, a couple with canes. Then they passed through the door and entered a time warp. Perry Como crooned on a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan welcomed guests on a black-and-white TV. Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines lying around — were designed to conjure 1959. This was to be the men’s home for five days as they participated in a radical experiment, cooked up by a young psychologist named Ellen Langer.
For the rest of the article please visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html?ref=magazine&_r=1
This work bears a strong relationship to Cinemorphics. I discuss it in Method Aging and the Infinite game. 
http://cinemorphics.blogspot.com/2011/02/method-aging-and-infinite-game.html

Thomas Nagel: Thoughts Are Real

The philosopher Thomas Nagel’s new book, “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,” restores the primal force of a great old philosophical word, “metaphysics.” He starts with a boldly discerning look at that strange creature, mankind, and comes to some remarkable speculations about who we are and what our place is in the universe. Incidentally (and seemingly unintentionally) he illuminates, along the way, some significant aspects of the cinema, and of art overall.
To read the entire article, please click HERE.

Conscious Realism

Quantum Self-shifting

Covert Cinemorphics

The term Covert Cinemorphics can refer to a variety of applications of the Cinemorphic methodology, but two very useful and effective ones are…

1. Covert Rehearsal, which refers to the practice of performing a behavior “in your head” rather than actually…secretly rather than in the open. It has been demonstrated that this technique, which uses imagery, visualization, sensory imagination, etc. can be effective in improving sports performance, musical performance, getting rid of phobias, getting over shyness, etc…a valuable tool for re-writing and re-enacting your self.

2. Covert Third Party Conditioning (Shaping), which refers to re-writing and modifying somebody else’s behavior rather than your own. This type of conditioning, of course, was used on you as a child by your parents, and later by your peers and culture to shape who you became before you realized that you could consciously deconstruct, the reconstruct your self. Everyone does this all the time unconsciously…in marriages, working relationships, child rearing, etc., but it is possible to use the techniques of positive and negative reinforcement, successive approximation , aversion training, etc. consciously to fix some problem or just to play. Of course, manipulating someone else’s behavior just for the fun of it raises ethical questions, but is evident on various scales throughout our society…think ad campaigns, political propaganda, Facebook manipulating emotions by varying what’s in our news feeds, etc.

Persona Play - The Baobah Sessions

Cinemorphics Exercises, Games & Experiments...The Baobah Sessions, September 2014, Florianopolis, Brazil. Here are some videos from the seminar and workshop featuring the Baobah team. All 12 videos may be found at: https://www.youtube.com/user/cinemorphics

This one was inspired by and is dedicated to Federico Fellini who said, "A different language is a different vision of life". The music is from 8½. The new characters devise scenarios in which they can interact with each other in character. One for Janis...

The Baobah Sessions

Edwina and I just got back to San Francisco from a very successful two week Cinemorphics seminar and workshop at what I am now thinking of as the Baobah Art & Physics Labs (my take on Baobah Novas Formas de Inteligência) in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Watch for exciting game changing developments and projects coming from Baobah Director Jussara Figueira and her team, Ana Ciscato, Claudia Passos, Emmanuel Bohrer Junior, Glaucia Grigolo, Marisa Naspolini and Ramon Noro (all pictured). Quite a group!

Train Your Brain To Let Go Of Habits - 10 Methods For Creating New Neural Pathways

When you understand how neural pathways are created in the brain, you get a front row seat for truly comprehending how to let go of habits. Neural pathways are like superhighways of nerve cells that transmit messages. You travel over the superhighway many times, and the pathway becomes more and more solid. You may go to a specific food or cigarettes for comfort over and over, and that forms a brain pathway. The hopeful fact, however, is that the brain is always changing and you can forge new pathways and create new habits. That’s called the neuroplasticity of the brain.
I used to drive with one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator, and I wanted to train myself to drive with one foot only. It took some time, as I had a strong neural pathway for two-footed driving. But because I had the will to do it, I built a new pathway, and I rewired or reprogrammed my brain. You can remove a behavior or thought or addictions directly from the brain.
Because of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ever-changing potentials, anything is possible. People who’ve had strokes can retrain their brains to function again by building new pathways. Smokers and overeaters and many others can learn new behaviors and attitudes and can transform their lives.
Whether you work with others on their habits or you work with your own (or both), you can apply these understandings to boost your success.
Some Powerful Ways to Retrain the Brain

1. Identity the habit you’d like to transform and set the intention.

You may remember the punch line “The light bulb has to want to change.”  You have to have a high intention to change as well. If there is this high intention, then creating new pathways in your brain is bound to happen.

2. Observe what the old habit or pathway is doing in your life.

Look at feelings, thoughts, and how the body is responding to the habit, and see what results you’re creating in your life. Be the witness, and  be aware.

3. Shift your focus.

This is very important. To create a new neural pathway, you take the focus off the old habit, and then that old habit eventually falls away. Don’t pay attention to the donuts and cakes. Take your awareness and focus it on good, wholesome, healthy delicious foods.

4. Use your imagination.

You can build new neural pathways not only with new behaviors, but through the imagination. Just imagine the new behaviors over and over and over. Keep repeating that in your mind so you build new pathways. Focus your mind and retrain your brain.

5. Interrupt your thoughts and patterns when they arise.

Say “no” or “cancel” when an old thought or impulse comes in, and say, “I don’t have to do that anymore.” Then turn toward the new neural pathway you’re building and keep on going in the right direction.

6. Use aversion therapy.

This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s an optional path. I like to call it “the maggots on the chocolate cake technique.” I used to love candies and sweets, and when I stopped eating them, I still had to pass by them when I walked by the candy store in town. I used aversion to train my brain to walk on by: “That’s junk,” I said to myself. “It’s made in factories, sickeningly sweet, makes me feel bad. The company makes it so sweet just to addict buyers. I don’t want any of that.” So I talk myself out of it. I’ve use it with many clients (only those who say they want it) on smoking, junk food, cocaine and many other behaviors.

7.  Create a specific plan and choose what to do instead.

When you get specific, it’s easier to build new neural pathways. You “make it official.”  Decide if you want to exercise instead of overeating or if you want to eat fruit instead of candy. Just keep focused on the new choice.  You may want to create affirmations and anchors to reinforce your choices. This can be “I’m free or “I’m in control.” Reinforce this with energy therapies like EFT or other techniques.

8. Transform the obstacles.

Look at what’s in the way. Look at secondary gain – what you’ve been getting out of the old habits or pathways. Look at the stress in your life and how you can handle it differently. Get your mind in the place of possibility. Handle the emotions and thoughts and get on a new superhighway in your mind.

9. Connect with your Higher Source for inspiration and support.

Listen to our guidance. Know you have the Force within you, and therefore you have great power. Meditation creates new pathways and brain changes. Actual studies have been done on the brains of monks to show meditation’s effect on neural circuits of the brain.

10. Transform and make the shift.

Know that transformation is always possible and that you can create new brain pathways whenever you’re ready to make the shift. When you keep your mind in the “I can do it!” space, you get a clear sense that you’re done with the old and on a new beam now.
Some people feel we’re being rewired spiritually for anew era. There’s great upheaval now in our world. And there’s a process of transformation happening on earth in which huge changes are taking place for all of humanity. You have to be present in the moment, overcome your fears, and get to know the Infinite source so you can be a vehicle for the light to predominate on the earth.

From: http://themindunleashed.org/2014/03/train-brain-let-go-habits-10-methods-creating-new-neural-pathways.html

Play Intelligence Theory

Play Intelligence
James Findlay

Play intelligence is best understood from a position of unlearning what we already know about play and intelligence. Our knowledge about these two concepts may be advanced, normal, or mere opinion. But in all cases, as adults, in learning something new, we need to free up previously “learned” knowledge, opinions, habits, emotions, cultural distortions etc, so that we have the “open” space to understand something new.
The theory defines intelligence in a manner which will radically challenge our world view. Furthermore, it informs educational researchers and the general public of the importance of play.This is the only concrete model in the world which demonstrates the relationship between play and intelligence called “The Meta model”. Pioneering and innovative new research into Play Intelligence may turn out to be the most important theory on intelligence yet.
The Theory of Play Intelligence explains and demonstrates:

• The building blocks behind play, intelligence, and human abilities.
• The science of play and intelligence.
• The importance of play for improving many of the brains functions.
• The importance of playing with our newborn child.
• How to improve human abilities.
• Why it is important to introduce or reintroduce play in schools.
• Learn to create play in different environments.
• Effective ways in solving problems.
• How to play with stress in stressful environments.
• The higher values of play.
• How to learn, and increase memory.
• how to tap inner human resources to improve our lives.
• How to improve intelligence.

Play Intelligence:

• Shows the general scientific relationship of play and intelligence
• Confirms the recent play research on neuroscience and the brain.
• Explains the importance of the “code of play” between mother and infant.
• Demonstrates the relationship of play to human abilities.
• Gives meaning to the influence of play in education, society and culture.
• Provides a series of examples of how to play under stressful situations.
• Explains how to meta communicate with their environment.
• Outlines how to contact the essential element of play within oneself and others.
• Explains the interconnectedness of play in thoughts, emotion, and environment.
• Creates a new world view of intelligence and play.

For more info go to: http://www.playfoundation.com/

Non-Dual Intelligence

Schrödinger’s Cat

How was Marlon Brando like Schrödinger’s Cat?

For one thing, they both needed an audience...

SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

A "Not-Doing" Worth Doing

UN-OCCUPIED, UN-EMPLOYED: Don't Just Do Something! Stand There!

In 1994 Bernard McGrane published a book entitled “The Un-TV and the 10MPH Car, Experiments in Personal Freedom and Everyday Life”. In it he describes some strange and very cool experiments that he has his students fool around with that have some entertaining things to say about this whole carnival side show we find ourselves mixed up in.

In the first experiment…Un-Occupied, Un-Employed: Don’t Just Do Something! Stand There!…he has them “do nothing, be un-occupied and un-employed for ten minutes and see what you can see”. This was to be done in a relatively busy public place and was to be taken quite literally…they were to stand there at semi-attention, eyes not wandering about, for a full ten minutes. They were not allowed to pretend they were waiting for someone, if asked…that would be “doing waiting”…they were not allowed to pretend they were sightseeing or just relaxing…that would be “doing sightseeing” or “doing relaxing”, etc. They were to do this for the full ten minutes….the time requirement was strict. As McGrane says…”I looked at them a little like a cross between a meditator and a zombie”.

Try this…have some friends try it…but not in a group…and see what happens. Get McGrane’s book if you can…out of print but available all over the net…and check out other people’s experiences.

Doing a “Not doing” in this way is worth the effort.

Temporary Autonomous Zones

Burning Man - An archetypal T.A.Z.

A Temporary Autonomous Zone (T.A.Z.), first described by Hakim Bey, is a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Locating itself in the cracks and fault lines in the global grid of control and alienation, a T.A.Z. is an eruption of free culture where life and creativity are experienced at maximum intensity. It should feel like an exceptional party where for a brief moment our desires are made manifest and we all become the creators of the art of everyday life.

"Caged creative brilliance unleashed! I feel like a new kind of life form..." 
Anonymous "Burner"

For more please visit:
http://satoritango.blogspot.com/2005/10/temporary-autonomous-zones_23.html

Finite & Infinite Games...as dance...

An interdisciplinary dance film, Finite & Infinite Games, is a celebration of unity and color. Filmed at Judson Memorial Church in 2010 and premiered at Art Basil Switzerland, Games draws inspiration from philosopher James P. Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.” The suite of nine dances, directed and choreographed by Katherine Helen Fisher, explore the individual’s quest for generativity within community.

Visual artist C. Finley created the 48′x12′ non-repetitive geometric painted canvas as a comparative replication of the dance. Costumes by fashion designer Gai Mattiolo. Film by RJ Muna. Edited by Sam Chase. Score by Phillip Glass, Moondog, Michael Nyman, Riff-Ola, Food. A thisiswater Production.

Live performances of Games were presented at Judson Church and at Danspace Project in 2011.

Age Hacking with AAARG!

Back in 2011, when I published The Tao of Aging and Method Aging and the Infinite Game, I planned a third book to complete what I envisioned being a trilogy about aging. I took a turn in the road and found myself making a film (totally unrelated to aging) instead. Other zigzags have appeared since (e.g. an upcoming visit to Brazil...more on that in another post), but despite these meanderings in the drift, I can now announce that the third volume in the aging trilogy, AAARGH! Action Aging Alternate Reality Game, will appear before the end of the year. 

For info on the other two, please visit: http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Webb/e/B004L6SY7U/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Borges' Labyrinth

The passage below is from James E. Irby’s introduction to Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths, a collection of short stories, essays, and parables all too easy to get disturbingly lost in. He’s writing about the “creative deception” Borges uses to dissolve boundaries we take for granted, such as the distinction between literature and life:

“We are transported into a realm where fact and fiction, the real and the unreal, the whole and the part, the highest and the lowest, are complementary aspects of the same continuous being: a realm where ‘any man is all men’, where ‘all men who repeat a line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare’. The world is a book and the book is a world, and both are labyrinthine and enclose enigmas designed to be understood and participated in by man. We should note that this all-compromising intellectual unity is achieved precisely by the sharpest and most scandalous confrontation of opposites.”

Alternate Reality Gaming

Cinemorphics suggests that "you" are similar in many ways to a fictitious character in a film or novel and can be re-written. This re-write creates an alternate reality which "you" can then inhabit as you begin to perform your new persona in the "real" world. This method resonates in interesting ways with the world of alternate reality gaming, which we will explore.

Here is a short video from an ARG group in Belfast.




More detailed information may be found here... http://cinemorphics.blogspot.com/p/alternate-reality-gaming.html

Embracing Our (Many, Many) Selves

The Voice Dialogue method and Psychology of Selves developed by Hal and Sidra Stone have important implications for Cinemorphics. The short videos below are part of an Introduction to Voice Dialogue series... 

Hal Stone: The Total Self (excerpt) -- A Thinking Allowed DVD w/ Jeffrey Mishlove


The second video, Introduction to Voice Dialogue, is actually the first in the series. At the end of the video the second in the series will begin automatically, then the third, etc. There are nine videos in this series covering various aspects of the Stone's work.

"Church of Facebook" & Cinemorphics

This view of the increasingly pervasive use of social media in identity shaping has important implications for possible uses of Cinemorphics.

From Fraser Hamilton...
Is Facebook the new religion?
in Interaction design

Today I listened to an interesting interview with AS Byatt, the Booker Prize-winning author.
She suggested that social networks, formed and nurtured in applications such as Facebook and Twitter are replacing religion as way of identifying ourselves. Facebook is being used as a mirror.

In generations past, religions were defined people and societies: what is acceptable, what the social norms are, how to behave, and so on. However, with the demise of religion (at least in the west), we’re now looking at reality as it really is. We’re left to work out how to say who we are.

While the broadcast media – press, TV, radio – help us define ourselves, increasingly social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs let us work out who we are. We ask ourselves “How do I differ from this person?”, “Is this something I would do?”, and so on.

With religion playing less and less of a role in our lives, we are coming to learn that you only exist if you tell people you are there.

Psychology Today Article & Cinemorphics

Here's an article that obviously can be read from the POV of Cinemorphics:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201404/reinvent-yourself

The article discusses WHAT to do to reinvent yourself, but comes up short in the "how to do it" department...i.e....the METHOD.

Cinemorphics adds the Method to the madness of re-creating your self.

Cinemorphic Play (Cinemorphing)

An extreme example of the exercise described below from Improv Everywhere...
 

On October 25, 2005 I posted a brief exercise suggestion, Operation 3 - Madonna - Brando, which I re-present and elaborate on below. This is one of a new group of exercises and experiments, which emphasize Cinemorphic play. 

Spend the day "as" a well known personality. i.e. pretend you are…say… Johnny Depp or Lady Gaga all day…identify with and play an array of different personas. Don't just feel it from the inside…act it out. Do impersonations. Variation: Be an animal for a day…a gorilla, say…or a cat.

This casual exercise can be developed in detail also to interesting effect e.g…

Reincarnation: Research some dead historic figure, either well known or obscure, then “reanimate” them, complete with accurate costume, props, speech patterns, etc. in actual locations.

Doppelganger: Do the same for a living person, again either well known or obscure. Create their double. Possibly confront them with themselves.

Movie/theater/literary characters: Do the same with a well described fictitious character.

Make scenes: Once a character is ready to “manifest” in public, work with one or more other players who have also developed characters along one of these lines, to put together scenarios, either scripted or improvised, to perform, with variations, in several locations, e.g. a café, a train station, in a park, etc…anywhere there will be an audience that can either just watch or become “spect-actors” (Boal).

Note: These scenes can also be played out in public with the players not yet in full historic/double/fictitious character and costume…just as actors rehearsing, to interesting effect. This would be more like Boal’s Invisible Theater.

Record these experiments with HIDDEN cameras if desired. Obviously recording them with even a small crew will change/damage the effect. It may be, in the case of period costumed players, that the spect-actors will record the scenes with their phone cameras. “Insider” friends of the players can also do this, of course. An interesting side effect of this would be a subsequent viral YouTube post.

CINEMORPHICS 2.0: Cinemorphic Play

Cinemorphics was originally conceived  and practiced as a method of reality handling that could address certain problems...e.g. substance abuse, shyness, aging, etc. and only secondarily as a technique for pure self expression...i.e...."playing with your self".

In Cinemorphics 2.0, the emphasis shifts. We are currently assembling a set of routines, exercises and games, which, while similar to many practiced in groups and individual sessions addressing problem solving in the past, put the accent on a different beat...the amplification and elaboration of the players' creativity.

One of the modified routines states partially...

"...look at yourself as a constantly evolving work of performance art. This is an advanced exercise that can involve much hard work and development…or not…if the player, once told that he/she is a fiction, “gets it”.

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

Oscar Wilde

Dates for a new Cinemorphics 2.0 Workshop will be announced here in the next few weeks.

Fernando Pessoa revisited

On October 19, 2005 I posted a short piece to this blog about ALWAYS ASTONISHED: Selected Prose by Fernando Pessoa, which may be found HERE. Pessoa's life and work is of particular interest to Cinemorphics because of his method of creating "heteronyms", alternative personas, all of whom composed work "in character". Here is an excerpt from a short biography of Pessoa...

"Literary alter egos were popular among early twentieth-century writers: Pound had Mauberley, Rilke had Malte Laurids Brigge, and Valéry had Monsieur Teste. But no one took their alter ego as far as Pessoa, who gave up his own life to confer quasi-real substance on the poets he designated at heteronyms, giving each a personal biography, psychology, politics, aesthetics, religion, and physique...

...At least seventy-two names besides Fernando Pessoa were "responsible" for the thousands of texts that were actually written and the many more that he only planned. Although Pessoa also published some works pseudonymically, he distinguished this from the "heteronymic" project: "A pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be."

The entire bio may be found HERE. A powerful study in character play.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/752#sthash.ohzmK8Mn.dpuf

At least seventy-two names besides Fernando Pessoa were "responsible" for the thousands of texts that were actually written and the many more that he only planned. Although Pessoa also published some works pseudonymically, he distinguished this from the "heteronymic" project: "A pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be." - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/752#sthash.ohzmK8Mn.dpuf

At least seventy-two names besides Fernando Pessoa were "responsible" for the thousands of texts that were actually written and the many more that he only planned. Although Pessoa also published some works pseudonymically, he distinguished this from the "heteronymic" project: "A pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be."

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/752#sthash.ohzmK8Mn.dpuf

Selfshifting

"You" are a bodymind, not a body with a mind or vice versa. Things that influence either, influence both…powerfully.

"You" are a verb, not a noun. "You" are fluid, constantly changing…at every level. The static "you" is a persistent illusion.

"You"… "Your self", persona, ego…”who you are”…however named, is a construct that is formed by the interaction of genetics, imprinting, conditioning and learning. "You" have little input into this process until after "you" have been thoroughly shaped by "your" parents, peers, culture.

Now consider that this "you" that "you" now seem to be is, actually, very much like a fictitious character that may appear in a novel, play or movie and may be re-written, re-produced and re-performed, using the techniques of those media…

More specifically…

When someone asks, who are you?, your response may include your name, age, sex, race, height, weight, hair and eye color, where you live, whether you are married or not, whether you have children, what you do for a living, your hobbies, your likes and dislikes, your religious beliefs, your hopes, fears, hang-ups, skills, etc. If pushed, you could produce an exhaustive "character" description of all of the things that, when combined, make up what you take to be you. You identify with this description, this construct.

This description of who you take yourself to be...your ego/persona/self...includes genetic, biological and physical components as well as culturally conditioned, learned and psychologically "shaped" components. Most of these components have been assembled over a long period of time without your input. (e.g. you were born with black hair and learned to speak Spanish growing up.) Some you believe you have intentionally cultivated (e.g. you decided to learn to play the guitar and make your living as a musician). In many cases the distinction between which of your attributes were come by intentionally and which were thrust upon you by nature or nurture is very blurry.

In any case, this description of who you think you really are, this construct with which you identify, can be looked at in another way. If written out, your description of yourself reads like a character description in a movie script, play or novel. Consider yourself a fictitious character that has been devised by the haphazard, natural forces of ordinary life in the world but which you have believed is the real and only you.

Now that you realize that this "you" that you can observe and describe is very much like a character in a movie, consider the possibilities. If your life is a movie and you are the star, lets have a look at how your character was written...to a great extent not by you...and how you are being directed...also in many cases not by you. If you don't like what you see, demand a re-write. Your character...your self...is not written in stone. It is malleable and can be re-written, then rehearsed and performed by you...at first with the collaboration of and direction by a professional and then by you alone. You can also learn to be your own best, most discerning audience, write your own reviews...decide what is working and what is not. You become the producer, the star performer, the critic. You learn how to take charge…

You learn how to Selfshift…you learn Intentional Selfshifting. You are now able to see yourself as an actor not a person…an actor who is playing with the self…engaged in the endlessly entertaining Infinite Game of life instead of just wading through the daily drudgery. You may construct several variations of your self that you can shift among, identifying and dis-identifying with one after the other depending on which one you want to “wear” in any given situation. You now have a “wardrobe” of personas to choose from, all the while realizing that none of them are really YOU. You are now the creator of these characters, these selves/personas/egos, not their slaves. You are the master not the servant, the host not the guest.