#mirror touch synesthete culture

[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror-touch synesthete culture is hating fight scenes in shows/movies

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[shashuthelittlevoidling]

What even is the Void

The void is many things, yet most notoriously of all it is nothing. It is the pre-existential nothingness from which all was created and to which all shall return. The void is beyond time and space, existing both outside of the universe entirely and between every gap between every sub-atomic particle. The void penetrates everything, destroys it, changes it, and leaves the infinite potential for new creation to occur. As such, the void is deeply linked with entropy. Understanding the void can be beneficial to any practitioner who wishes to change themselves and the world around them, but working with it too deeply can be very dangerous even to advanced practitioners as it is a very fast road to occult madness. Don't mess with it unless you really feel called to, and always take a guide with you who knows their way around the timeless spaceless paradox of existent non-existence. The void consists of various layers, although these layers are less defined than those of the planar realms. They're more like different flavours that your brain synesthetically translates into colours, forming endless fractals. Within the Qlippoth the void takes the form of Da'ath, the abyss that must be crossed before the practitioner can descend into the final three qlippa. Da'ath permiates both the tree of life and the tree of death and is but a different expression of the same fenomena in both cases, even more obviously so than any of the other spheres, as it is not truly a sphere to begin with, but rather the void between them. Beyond Thaumiel the void takes the form of three more layers. Tohu, Bohu, and Chasek, but we will not go too deep into those right now, as I still don't know enough about them myself. These layers however are also mirrored on the tree of life as Ain (Soph (Aur)), as source is both the antithesis of the void, and simultaneously the exact same thing. The void is often said to function as a hivemind, especially when talking about Da'ath, and though I have still to fully connect with it, there does seem to be such a thing. The void however, exists not only within the contemporary western left hand path, but accross many cultures and religions. Something, must always come from nothing. Often times it is compared to primordial oceans, mist, or simply chaos, and I would personally say that while the void is all those things, it also predates them, as an even emptier infinity. Though, at this point we can not speak of "predating" in any sort of linear time sense. When working with the void, you will become more like it, as you will practicing with any current, deity, or realm to be honest, but especially with the void it can make you lose touch with your humanity. And yet, to advance with it, you do have to become like it, Solve et Coagula. Destroy and create again, with limitless possibility. One must learn to be a part of it without being consumed by it entirely. The void is home to some, and scary to others.

Have a great day, and don't forget to hug your inner child today.

[northwindow]

march: entanglement

a connective syllabus

entangled life by merlin sheldrake

book on fungi and their relationships with plants, animals, and bacteria. sheldrake asks and answers questions about how fungi behave, how they evolved, how they influence our culture, and how they might continue innovating our world. see also the mushroom hour podcast (recommended by @astranemus :))

“queer theory for lichens” by david griffiths

expands on a famous paper on lichens by applying the notion of composite organisms (like a lichen, consisting of an alga and a fungus) to human relationships and sexuality.

selections from poetics of relation by édouard glissant

nine essays from carribean writer édouard glissant's work of postcolonial critical theory poetics of relation. its main subject is how languages and cultures exist in dynamic relationship, focusing especially on multilingualism, creolization, and the imagining of the other.

“sympoiesis” by donna j. haraway

from staying with the trouble, a book proposing new ways of thinking about our current epoch. haraway explores sympoesis, a word meaning "making with," first in the context of bacterial/animal evolution and then using "science art worldings" as models: rehabilitative collaborations between artists, scientists, and activists.

“the artist as ecologist” by gene youngblood

short article on how globalization and the internet have affected many artists' aims to explore relationships rather than forms or structures.

african polyrhythms by jade ping

spotify playlist featuring 11 hours of polyrhythmic (2+ simultaneous rhythm structures) music from africa. spotify users have made polyrhythm playlists in many other genres as well, including polyrhythms in club music by brandt brauer frick, polyrhythmic funk by mikeohope, and polyrhythms (mostly indie/rock) by joshlikessquash.

“descartes was wrong” by abeba birhane

cognitive science article that describes descartes' notion of cogito or self vs. world in contrast to relation-ortiented philosophies such as ubuntu. traces the impact of cartesian thought on the field of psychology and some alternatives for thinking about the self.

“entanglement” from invisibilia

podcast interview with a mirror-touch synesthete, who physically feels sensory experiences as she observes others having them. another good account of mirror-touch synesthesia is the essay "becoming others" from a woman looking at men looking at women by siri hustvedt.

“poem number two on bell’s theorem, or the new physicality of long distance love” by june jordan

poem by the american poet june jordan. her title references a critical theory in the field of quantum entanglement (i.e. entangled particles will display identical states even across great distances).

[timespakistan]

A silent devotion | Art & Culture | thenews.com.pk Suluk Wandering 14 If colour could only paralyse the viewer’s mind and imagination, it is here. Think of the opposite sensation. Of colours sombre, soft, so filled with angst that it could be a “bleeding piece of heart.” This is Shireen Kamran. In terms of colour, this is a sensation that is resonant, far from impulsive art. What matter are the qualities of paint and the art of painting itself. Kamran’s identity of abstraction is the artist expressing herself via colour and formlessness born out of the contemplated idiom. We are given the landscape or the mindscape by Kamran as concrete emotions. This is not enthusiasm; but there is introspection and self-freedom. Kamran’s work is neither spectacular nor demonstrative. It doesn’t shout; it whispers, and then falls silent. The silence in her art, within the works and between them, is not unlike our own calculated gulfs of silence, into which we fall and reveal ourselves, even as we resist. It is clear that she likes to play off strong accents against delicate rendering, adroitly manipulating these strategies to set up arhythmic exchange. The moody lyricism of her images can suggest tranquility as swiftly as it can anxiety; it negotiates a formal counterpoint between balance and disturbance, integrates fragments of composite and contradictory cohesions only to set them once more adrift. You look for signs to see if her pain is palpable. Tensions are created on the surface, and then intentions and dichotomies break cover. As the paint is banked down or piled up, or stroked in brisk staccato bristles, a mystery of infinitude develops. In her life practice, Shireen Kamran has cultivated a singular vocabulary of abstraction and landscape. The conceptual grounds of the oeuvre that went on show at Canvas Art Gallery in Karachi as Hiatus remain in dialogue with laws of the universe, the cyclicality of time as well as a manifest relatedness between human beings and the webbed fabric of ecology. This painterly world is textured with knowledge references that the artist has attuned to over a period of time – from realms as diverse as archaeology, ancient architecture, art history, sacred philosophy and poetry. The Lebanese American writer-poet and painter Etel Adnan reflects: “When you speak of transformation, you have a combination or contrast of a substratum – something that is permanent and something that changes. There is a notion of continuity in transformation.” It is this foundational continuity in the artistic journey as a transformative process that is revealed in Kamran’s latest body of paintings – tracing a steady pictorial lexicon as the bedrock of experience yet enabling a renewed quality of transcendence, like a view outside the window or an undulating walking trail. The continuity is also borne of technical choices – the artist has persisted in working with mixed-media since she began to paint. Through landscapes and cityscapes bearing resonant forms in lines, elemental shapes and dots, the artist maintains a consciousness around the geometric symbolism and symmetries held within nature. At times, the transformation of seasons plays out in these lively surfaces – from spring fever, a passage of wind currents, to the gathering of rain clouds, all becoming intimately conveyed in the sense boundaries of Kamran’s palette. In the artist’s words, “The signs of sound, touch, smell and shades of colour that emanate from a forgotten incident create an instant marker in the mind creating an emotive spirit. The mind holds on to that and finds a release in the act of painting. Painting soaks us in this spirit.” It is this foundational continuity in the artistic journey as a transformative process that is revealed in Kamran’s latest body of paintings – tracing a steady pictorial lexicon as the bedrock of experience yet enabling a renewed quality of transcendence, like a view outside the window or an undulating walking trail. Crooked trees entwine around a field of crops, while an eclipsed moon rests upon bare branches. Indian red and leaf green borders are marked on either side of the painting; these ways of framing the landscape are reminiscent of traditional scrolls and Basohli-style paintings, and often remind one of Howard Hodgkin’s abstracts inspired largely, by his own admission, by the Indian miniature. Some works appear tactile in their composition, providing a sense of dimensionality to the backdrop and detailed foreground: flowers with bending stems that appear as still life subjects of a Giorgio Morandi painting; tantric symbols float upon an ochre pigment ground. They meet an inverted mountainside, minuscule wave formations – and then the ground becomes a garden. Licks of blood fire and white sails are impressed into an earthen scene that resembles how earth tones transform with the passage of time. In another painting, moving lines open up to a terrestrial gradient of soil, shattering the linear gaze into a circulation. In the meditative spatial density of Kamran’s recent works there is still the quiet comprehension of the philosophic condition of formlessness. Some of the earth shades exposed in the artist’s work allude to the contours of baked clay. In fact, the artist’s home and studio remain filled with collections of clay figurines and wood crafted objects that compose an archive of living traditions. These cultural artefacts expose Kamran’s cultivated understanding of how modernist idiom remains uniquely connected to artisanal vocabularies and vernacular knowledge from across the subcontinent. Across her painterly work, especially in the past decade, rhythm construction becomes strongly manifest as Kamran’s strokes begin to appear as score lines for a song composition – with secret scripts that appear to settle upon azure patches and golden yellow ripe meadows. These are Kandinsky like, where colour flows resonate as visual chords and elicit synesthetic encounters. Shireen Kamran has cultivated a sensorial practice of seeing, which considers that the unknown element is inevitably encompassed in the composition of the known – like hidden galaxies that remain beyond calculation to the human eye, but nevertheless light up the celestial skies. This artist charts terrains of the sensed, rather than remaining controlled by a frontier of directly consumable reality. Thus, she builds image constellations as a limitless space. There is no way to remain unmoved in the company of Kamran’s paintings; they present a complex structure of feeling and planetary belonging within the dark vulnerability of our present. There is no grandeur here in these landscapes or mindscapes – there is only a spiritual quietude that propels itself into the extension of the self that retracts from the universe, to find another world. A world that diminishes the desire for external alacrities and multiplies the quest for transcendentalism. For Shireen Kamran, this desire is propelled by an overriding sense of mingled vulnerability to the outer world that results in the magnification of both curiosity and abject desolation. The dialectic between the inner and the outer world is not the only one mediated in these paintings: Kamran’s landscapes are like mappings that reverberate with a series of adjacent assimilations and associations. This is moody lyricism at its best, like the sunset that swathes the sky in its tenacity of multi-coloured hues; it is the torrent of darkness that creeps into the shades of trees; it is the ghostly galleon that vanishes from sight when the cloud of anxiety disturbs its very entity. Silent devotion for Kamran does not merely mirror a day, it is life in itself; it is the sunset of expectation that has drowned in the abyss of destiny. This is why the silent devotion becomes the negotiator. The writer is an art   critic based in Islamabad https://timespakistan.com/a-silent-devotion-art-culture-thenews-com-pk/11821/?wpwautoposter=1614506404

[bci-art]

E.E.G KISS

Karen Lancel, Hermen Maat, 2016

Can I kiss you online? How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data? Can we transfer a kiss and it’s intimacy online? Can we measure a kiss and what kissers feel together? Do we want to save our private kisses in a transparent database - to be used by others? 

In E.E.G. KISS the artists investigate how a kiss can be translated into bio-feedback data. They deconstruct the kiss, to reconstruct a new synesthetic kissing ritual. In a Global Kiss-In, through feeling, seeing, hearing, touching all participants together share a kiss. The artists: "Tele-presence technologies extend our bodies beyond biological boundaries in time and space, but they prevent us from touching. In a poetic, electric environment for kissing and measuring, for synchronizing and merging, we research a shared neuro-feedback system for networked kissing." 

Performance installation In performances and live kissing experiments with Brain Computer Interfaces, visitors are invited to kiss. While kissing and wearing E.E.G. headsets, their brainwaves are measured and visible as E.E.G. data. A floor projection encircles the kissers with the real time streaming E.E.G. data, as an immersive data scape. A soundscape is generated by the Brain Computer Interface, which translates the real time E.E.G. data of ‘kissing brains’ into a algorithm for a music score: an E.E.G. KISS symphony. The public around is part of the kiss, of the sound and of the immersive E.E.G.-data-visualization; both as an aesthetic experience as well as based on acts of kissing resonating when mirrored in the brain. 

How does your kiss feel in E.E.G. data? In EEG KISS, data are researched as 'Co-Actors' shaping our intimate relations. The artists: "In a participatory process of sense-making, we invite participants to give meaning to
 the very abstract, sometimes mystifying E.E.G. data-visualization of their kisses. Instead of scientific interpretation and validation, people who kissed interprete the data-visualization based on their shared memories of kissing and on imagination. Often the kisses are remembered as intimate processes of 'co-creation’ and the data are perceived as 'A portrait of our kiss'.” Share your private kiss Each unique E.E.G. KISS visual data sequence is saved in a database, and can be printed as an E.E.G. KISS Portrait. Each E.E.G. KISS soundscape is saved in a public database on the website; to be downloaded and shared. The soundscape is developed with Tijs Ham at STEIM Amsterdam. 

INTIMACY & BIG DATA: critical reflections The artists: "A kiss is an obvious case of intimate, emotional interaction, based on bio synchronizing, spatial nearness, touch, sight, fluids, smell, endurance. But in an online kiss, this intimacy is influenced and shaped by technologies, institutions and social processes. Now when our embodied private kiss data are to be quantified, on what data design do we validate this interaction? Who is responsible for and who will benefit from our quantified kisses? 

Can we trust our own E.E.G. Kiss data? Or should we rather protect our intimacy? In E.E.G. KISS we do not protect our intimate, private data. Instead, we create with these data a new hybrid, relational ritual allowing for public intimacy. Rather than focussing on the privacy of the kiss intimacy, we focus on how intimacy is embedded in publicness and public cultural negotation. In communal intimate orchestrations, ‘kissers’ and spectators witness and share their perception of embodied, tele-matic kissing. Instead of looking for private prosthaetic interfaces for networked touch, we focus on mirror processes, brain interface and shared neuro-feedback systems. In this way, we aim to create a shared sensitive public space, response-ability for the power of synchronizing through touching, watching, breathing, kissing, sharing presence - in today’s merging realities. Worldwide, we invite our audiences for this ungoing artistic research, in hosted performances, installations, lectures, collaborations, workshops. 

Art, Science & Technology E.E.G. KISS emerges from the artistic research Shared Senses, further conducted at Delft University of Technology in the context of Lancel’s PhD trajectory (Promotor: Prof. dr. Frances Brazier). In Meeting Spaces and Meeting Rituals the artists deconstruct automated control technologies (surveillance, social media, brain computer interfaces, quantifying biometric technologies) to rethink and inspire sensitive relations based on intimacy, tacit knowledge, digital synesthesia, bio-synchronisation, sensory and aesthetic perception. In EEG KISS, artistic experiments are conducted for designing reflection on BCI mediated social relations. At the same time, these experiments propose a future vision on orchestration of BCI mediated ,social syntheses. Lancel/Maat propose that participants experimentally kiss each other to connect with observers and thus be part of a ‘communal neuro feedback system for kissing’. The familiar relation between ‘who you kiss and who is being kissed, what you see and what you hear’ is disrupted, for a new reflective synthesis.

 In collaboration with and generous support: Mondriaan Foundation, STEIM Amsterdam, EYE Film Institute Amsterdam, Waag Society Amsterdam AILlab, Angewandte Innovation Lab University of of Applied Arts Vienna Artists-in-residency TASML - (Tsinghua University Art and Science Media Laboratory Beijing), Tsinghua University Beijing Neuro-engineering lab, University of of Applied Arts Vienna, Digital Synesthesia Group, University for Technology, Delft / Participatory Systems Initiative UvA University of Amsterdam - Neuro-aesthetics and Neuro-cultures research group NWO, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research). Baltan Laboratories Eindhoven, Fourtress Eindhoven, Holst Centre Eindhoven (sponsor E.E.G. headsets IMEC) Fourtress.nl Eindhoven (sponsor end development E.E.G.KISS software) Eagle Science Amsterdam

source: Karen Lancel http://www.lancelmaat.nl/work/e.e.g-kiss/

[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror touch synesthesia is loving spiders but feeling uncomfortable looking at them sometimes because sometimes when they crawl you can feel them on your skin by just looking at them 😖 not a great feeling

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror Touch synesthete culture is being able to sing to every song you hear, even if it's for the first time because you can feel where the singer places his tongue while singing

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[synesthete-culture-is]

mirror touch synesthesia culture is having the weirdest boundaries of what people can do in front of you (and not wanting to impose but oh my god it hurt)

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror-touch synthese culture is closing your eyes when there’s a fight scene in a movie. Not because you‘re scared, but because you really would rather not feel like you’ve been punched in the gut

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Possible mirror-touch synesthesia culture is seeing other people being tapped or touched then jumping to see if anyone tapped me in which nobody did

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[synesthete-culture-is]

About Synesthesia

For anybody who wants to know more or who has just started learning!

What is synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sense activates a response in another sense. In simpler terms, it basically means that two or more senses can be connected, leading a synesthete (person with synesthesia) to associate senses that others probably don't associate!

As an example: my synesthesia connects my sense of hearing to my sense of sight. Whenever I listen to music, I associate colors and images with the sounds I'm hearing.

Estimates on how much of the population has synesthesia varies - as few as 1% or as many as 10% of the global population could have synesthesia. We just don't know.

What kinds of synesthesia are there?

Here are some (but certainly not all) types of synesthesia.

Grapheme-Color Synesthesia: individuals with this type of synesthesia associate colors (and sometimes textures!) with written symbols, such as letters and numbers. A lot of grapheme-color synesthetes, for example, associate the letters of the Roman alphabet with different colors! (Note that such synesthetes can also associate the same colors with different letters/numbers/symbols. It varies wildly from person to person!)

Chromesthesia: this type of synesthete associates sounds with colors and/or images (or abstract visualizations). Some chromesthetes may see colors when they listen to music, and the colors depend on the varying aspects of the music they listen to. Some see moving images or patterns when listening to music as well. Still others may associate colors and/or images when hearing everyday sounds, such as people's voices or the creaking of a staircase! This type of synesthesia can often result in hearing sensitivity for those who have it - Misophonia is thought to potentially be connected to synesthesia.

Spatial-Sequence Synesthesia: this type of synesthesia affects how people see certain sequences, such sequences being numbers, the alphabet, the months of the year, the days of the week, a timeline, etcetera. Spatial sequence synesthetes see or imagine these sequences in the physical space surrounding them; as an example, one might see the months of the year as a spiral that surrounds their body, or physically picture the number line when doing math (this specifically is also known as Number Form Synesthesia). Again, it all depends on the person!

Auditory-Tactile Synesthesia: with this type, the synesthete experiences physical sensations in their body when certain sounds are heard. These sounds could be music and/or everyday sounds. As an example, an auditory-tactile synesthete may experience fluttering sensations on their scalp when listening to music, or they may feel as if they are being touched when surrounded by sounds in public locations.

Ordinal Linguistic Personification: this type of synesthete will associate ordered sequences (numbers, letters, months, etc) with genders and/or personalities. For instance, they might think of the number 2 as a short-tempered man, or otherwise associate letters and numbers with human traits!

Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia: with this type of synesthesia, one experiences tastes in association with certain words. For example, this kind of synesthete might experience the word "experience" as lemon flavored, and otherwise associate tastes with specific words! (Note that the experienced tastes don't always correspond to tastes that exist in real life. A word might have a distinct taste, but a taste that cannot necessarily be connected to any food or other taste that actually exists.)

Mirror-Touch Synesthesia: synesthetes with this type of synesthesia will physically feel the touches that they witness other people experiencing. A mirror-touch synesthete may see someone getting tapped on the shoulder, for example, and feel that shoulder-tap themself, even though no one has physically touched them. (This has the potential to be painful, however, if the synesthete witnesses the physical pain of another person.)

Awesome, right? In many cases, yes! Having synesthesia provides a unique and often beautiful experience to the synesthete. However, there can be negative effects. A grapheme-color synesthete may have trouble focusing on reading due to the varied coloration of the letters they see, or have trouble with numbers for the same reason. A chromesthete may experience sensory overload much faster due to intense visualization of sound. While synesthesia can be very positive, it's also important to recognize that it can be disadvantageous in certain situations.

Now, onto the last section:

Associative Vs. Projective Synesthesia

In general, there are two ways to experience synesthesia.

Projective Synesthesia: this is probably the most well-known conception of synesthesia. Projective synesthetes physically experience their synesthesic associations. For instance, a projective grapheme-color synesthete will actually see the alphabet with the colors that they associate with letters!

Associative Synesthesia: but projective synesthesia isn't the only way of having synesthesia. Associative synesthetes intrinsically know that their associations exist, but they do not physically experience them. A grapheme-color synesthete may know that the letter E is yellow, but they will not actually see the letter E as yellow. An associative chromesthete may know that a certain song is purple, but they will not physically see purple; they will simply have the instant and internal knowledge that the song is purple.

This concludes my synesthesia post! I hope it's helpful to anyone who reads it, and I hope that you, dear reader, have an excellent day / night / whatever time it may be.

[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror-touch synesthete culture is loving videos where people pet animals because you can feel the fur on your hand but also hating those videos because they can easily overstimulate you

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror touch synesthesia is drawing your favorite ship cuddling when your touch starved because you can sorta feel the warmth. It's not the same as a real cuddle but I think that's why i subconsciously draw that alot.

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[synesthete-culture-is]

synesthete culture is sending your platonic partner a song because it has very nice vibes and energy and it's a mood but it's about eating a computer piece by piece and you forgot your partner has mirror touch synesthesia so now u feel bad

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[synesthete-culture-is]

mirror-touch synesthesia is realizing you have it and going “oooohhh is that why i dislike gifs/videos of hands sometimes”

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[synesthete-culture-is]

Mirror touch synestesia is realizing that one of the reasons you don't like watching The Incredibles is because watching Elastagirl contort her body makes you feel really weird

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