Investigators:

1: catalyze abrisamento 2: perform technical poetics 3: who plot together to bring about a positive and effective change 4: identify new meanings, new poetries that exist in the interstice and discovers their names 5: engage in regular exchange with other members of Laboratory 6: engage in specific projects propelled by questions that exist at the intersections of intellectual boundaries



Investigators

Katherine Bash, pierKatherine Bash

Katherine E. Bash,
Founder and Principal Investigator

Inquiry

A Field Guide to Observable Phenomena, A Tool for Aesthetic Practice

The purpose of this work is to create a Field Guide to Observable Phenomena with an emphasis on the [transitory, ephemeral, subtle] then the quest arises as to how to produce something that matches the same qualities. My methodology is highly dependent upon chance dialogs with people, with observations of the environment, with different entities. In fact, we could call the whole project a dialog with the changing substance of things through language and observation. The approach that I have taken thus far in terms of communicating what is found in these dialogs, or in just communicating the dialogs themselves is through the vehicle of then Entry.

A Field Guide to Observable Phenomena is the title of an ongoing project to which my thesis will make a contribution. This project began during my MFA at the University of Texas at Austin, published as A Field Guide to Observable Phenomena, A Tool for Aesthetic Practice. This volume, A Pragmatic Aesthetics will delve into some of the gaps left in the first: relationships between active observation and naming, the relationships between observer and phenomena, determining what is an observer and what are phenomena. This is the major gap of what this work will set out to fill in, to be written as an additional Volume of the Field Guide with a particular focus on Ephemeral Phenomena as explored the development through a Pragmatic Aesthetics.

The three working concepts and approaches that unify this Volume of the Field Guide

Bio

Katherine E. Bash, born in Texas, has received degrees in biology and design. Founder and Principal Investigator of the Itinerant Laboratory for Perceptual Inquiry, she engages the possibilities of creating new language as creative analysis of place. She currently pursues PhD by design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College of London.

Contact

info (at) itinerantlaboratory.org

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Ole Peters,
Investigator

Inquiry

Inspirations from Phase Transitions

Phase transitions in physical systems continue to pose unsolved scientific problems. For the last 200 years the field has been extremely fruitful, inspiring basic conceptual advances alongside the development of abstract mathematical techniques. The Laboratory for Perceptual Inquiry provides a framework for reflection -- is it a linguistic illusion that a concept like "universality by simplicity" has applications outside the field of phase transitions? My answer is a tentative no.

ILPI Disseminations

Bio

Ole has worked for various academic institutions and is currently most intrigued by atmospheric convection and the pretty shapes of clouds. He is generally in good humor and is supportive of any effort of using one's brains. Bad journalism, corruption, and a lack of appreciation for numbers can make him furious. His favorite numeral system is the unary one because it is more intuitive and people don't understand logarithms. He reads good books and tries to stay sane by spending a lot of time in the ocean.

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Michael Witmore

Michael Witmore,
Investigator

Inquiry

States of Readiness and the History of Poise

I am interested in philosophers, dramatists and visual artists who deal with states of "still-motion" -- instants in which an individual is both moving and at rest. The history of poise comprises the changing collection of ways in which individuals -- at different historical moments -- have readied themselves for "whatever happens," striking a posture that allows them to accommodate sudden changes of circumstance in the blink of an eye. This capacity for sudden tactical revision or dynamic self-correction was a virtue in the Renaissance, which is the period where I do my academic work, but it is also an ability that is cultivated in a number of contemporary artistic or cultural practices (for example, body contact improvisation in modern dance). Currently I am conducting a historical investigation into the nature of the "instant," which in the seventeenth century is the indispensable pivot concept for thinking about the non-uniform acceleration of bodies, the temporal interval of "wit," and the lifespan of an act of the will (what Hobbes called "conatus").

Bio

Michael Witmore is a literary critic and musician who has lived on both coasts of the U.S. and is now somewhere in between. His most recent publication deals with the philosophy of drama; it is entitled, Shakespearean Metaphysics (Continuum 2008). He is also the author of Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (Stanford, 2001) and Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cornell 2007).

ILPI Disseminations



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Et Alia

Eu Jin Chua,
Associate Theorist

Bio

Eu Jin Chua was born in Malaysia and educated in New Zealand. He has a background in film, literature, and architecture, and spent one semester in engineering school (a long time ago). He is currently a PhD candidate and Commonwealth Scholar at the London Consortium graduate school at the University of London (Birkbeck College with the Architectural Association, Tate Galleries, Science Museum, and Institute of Contemporary Arts). He is writing a thesis on art, film, aesthetics, and ecological thought, and has published in Postmodern Culture, The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature and in various exhibition catalogues. He spent the summer of 2007 at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University (where he became a diehard Spinozist - but not yet a Jamesleuzian).

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Catherine Dossin,
Historiographer and President of the Board

Bio

Born in France, Catherine Dossin studied literature and history before receiving a Master degree in art history from the Sorbonne with a thesis devoted to Andre Derain and the Return to Classicism. In 2002, she came to the United States to pursue a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Dr. Richard Shiff. Her dissertation in progress, entitled The Stories of the Western Artworld: Competing Memories and Historical Rewriting from the Fall of Paris to the European Invasion, examines the geopolitics of the Western Artworld in the second part of the 20th century. This summer she will be a fellow resident at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny. Upon her return from the residency, she will defend her dissertation and then head to Purdue University, where she was offered a position of Assistant Professor in Modern and Contemporary art.

In the spring of 2002, Catherine met Katherine Bash, with whom she engaged in a close working relationship, serving as a co-conspirator in the initial phases of the ILPI, and keeping records on its development, hence her title of Historiographer of the ILPI. She is currently President of the Board.



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