Lecture 30/11/18
Today we have been asked to do an exercise where we needed to touch our fingertips with another classmate that we know the least. After that, we have been asked to free write for 10 min about our experience.
Below I quote what I wrote in these 10 mins.
“Having a bodily contact with someone who you know a little is definitely not easy. Sometimes “dance therapy” or “contact improve” even with people you know can be awkward and unpleasant. You are trying to stay focused on a mental statement –meditate but when the process involves the contact with another person then it’s getting more complicated and you easily get distracted. You tent to feel that touching someone violates yours and their privacy. This is happening because you are indicated to do any sort of contact, it’s not your choice of action. It ‘s different when you want to hug someone and when someone instructs you to do so.
Focusing on the actual feeling of the connection, it was so interesting that if you concentrate enough you can feel the other person’s pulses. At the same time, you have a mental connection with the person as you can feel the same awkwardness. “
// end of 10 min writing
The second exercise involved the use of technology. We have been asked that one of us will look the other through the camera of their phone. We live in an era where smartphones are part of our lives and sadly our selves. The use of the phone was a really clever adding on the exercise as it revealed aspects of these devices that we are not aware, emotions and meanings that we don’t realize in our everyday use of them.
Below is my second 10 min writing regarding this exercise.
“If you want to make a meditation exercise difficult then involve a camera. Really difficult to concentrate on your self, to forget this “item” that works as a barrier between you and the other person. It was really hard to just stand there and forget that you probably being filmed. You want to look nice, to pose, to move because that’s what you have been used to do when someone holds a camera in front of you. And since you are now looking for any stimulus that will make you move in a rhythm, and nor because you feel awkward, you hear everything like the noise from the projector and the clock on the wall. You really cannot forget that there is someone there filming you. When the eyes are open, the exercise is even more difficult, you can not concentrate on the person in front of you. There is this barrier, the device that separates you”.
//end of 10 mins writing
After discussing and considering the exercise, my mind stuck on the fact that you can be your self. You feel the presence of the camera that violates your freedom of being and doing whatever you want. An example comes to my mind when an artist perform in front of an audience of iPhones how different they may consider their performance. It is probably more challenging and stressful to perform with all your heart, to let your self-free, to live the moment, to express your self, to make a mistake when there are so many cameras filming every movement of you, every word you say, every note you play. Now I really appreciate when I go to a play or a concert that filming and photographs are forbidden, that must give performers a great freedom.