“SAYA-SOMA” : Shadow Body in Encoded System
Future-Focused Core Shamanic Digital / Algorithmic Integrative Consciousness Ceremonial Research
2020 - 2021
This research has formed a 2 year practice-led self-initiated research program.
As part of residency Body in Algorithms, Zero Corners, 2020-22
The first 3 page essay will be published in 2023.
Curated by Ashley Middleton and Georgia Perkins.
The drawings on this page are a part of a much larger body of work around studies into Algorithmic portals to Objective Psyche.
[img: horntorus]
[IMG: COSMOLOGY MAPPING IN PROCESS - TOROIDAL PSYCHE EXPRESSED IN 2D, DEC 2021]
ABSTRACT //
‘Power relations inscribed in algorithms flood the human body through consumable media and fabricate a network of contradictory potentials. The body, defined in and through these systems of quantifiable data, finds itself in a parameter of logic in which the sensory experience revives with the technological. How do we engage with the senses, feelings and emotions of our bodies as we swim on the waves of coded networks?’**
Our bodies, extend into all spaces, we intra--act** “within a reality of continuously intermingling, flowing lines or strands of unfolding, agential activity, in which nothing (no thing) exists in separation from anything else, a reality within which we are immersed both as participant agencies and to which we also owe significant aspects of our own natures.” We inhabit the world -- and the world inhabits us.*** To intra--act with technology, means to intra--act with a force forging evolution : zeitgeist.
** Text excerpt derived from Zero Corners, Body in Algorithms Residency, 2020 - 22, Georgia Perkins, Phd, and Ashley Middleton.
** Intra--action: How entanglement precedes thingness, and relational dynamics are co--responsible for how things emerge. Cf. Barad, Karen (2007): Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.
*** Shotter, John (2014): Agential realism, social constructionism, and our living relations to our surroundings: Sensing similarities rather than seeing patterns. Theory and Psychology, Vol. 24, Issue 3. pp. 305--325.
‘Power relations inscribed in algorithms flood the human body through consumable media and fabricate a network of contradictory potentials. The body, defined in and through these systems of quantifiable data, finds itself in a parameter of logic in which the sensory experience revives with the technological. How do we engage with the senses, feelings and emotions of our bodies as we swim on the waves of coded networks?’**
Our bodies, extend into all spaces, we intra--act** “within a reality of continuously intermingling, flowing lines or strands of unfolding, agential activity, in which nothing (no thing) exists in separation from anything else, a reality within which we are immersed both as participant agencies and to which we also owe significant aspects of our own natures.” We inhabit the world -- and the world inhabits us.*** To intra--act with technology, means to intra--act with a force forging evolution : zeitgeist.
** Text excerpt derived from Zero Corners, Body in Algorithms Residency, 2020 - 22, Georgia Perkins, Phd, and Ashley Middleton.
** Intra--action: How entanglement precedes thingness, and relational dynamics are co--responsible for how things emerge. Cf. Barad, Karen (2007): Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.
*** Shotter, John (2014): Agential realism, social constructionism, and our living relations to our surroundings: Sensing similarities rather than seeing patterns. Theory and Psychology, Vol. 24, Issue 3. pp. 305--325.
SUPPORTING THEORY //
The body-psyche lives within the coded system of our personal and collective fragmentations. Everything that humans perceive and create is related to these fragments and codes, different states of sensorial embodiment. The communication of Spirit merges with our emotional, mental and spiritual algorithms or ‘code’.
In this developing research praxis the “Saya-Soma" is seen from an exploratory and shamanically informed perspective, as a technology of the body/psyche/spirit. (Saya, Sanskrit for early evening/shadow, Soma, pertaining to somatic; of the body.) The “Saya-Soma” as embodiment of shadow, presents herself through encounters with resistance, speaking her coded language though activated trauma-body.
What this research praxis offers is a visionary post-internet, post-anthropomorphic blending of relational complex system healing, supported by ancient multiperspectivism - which describes the unbreakable nature of the human spirit.
In [core] shamanism, trauma is understood as fragmented soul and perceived as missing or split off soul power. Through the lens of psychotherapy, trauma is understood as fragmented aspect of the psychic-self, one who split off as function to survival. Intra-psychic, fragmented and exiled parts ‘work’ following set coded systems. Based on strong belief, much like a coded algorithm, they write an entire reality, dwelling in undifferentiated aspects of psyche and becoming distorted and inflexible.
Through the lens of non-duality consciousness theory, fragmentation is ultimately illusion. The sensorial body - the feeling body - is the continued and constant experience point where to encounter connectedness with environment: Gravity.
The body-psyche lives within the coded system of our personal and collective fragmentations. Everything that humans perceive and create is related to these fragments and codes, different states of sensorial embodiment. The communication of Spirit merges with our emotional, mental and spiritual algorithms or ‘code’.
In this developing research praxis the “Saya-Soma" is seen from an exploratory and shamanically informed perspective, as a technology of the body/psyche/spirit. (Saya, Sanskrit for early evening/shadow, Soma, pertaining to somatic; of the body.) The “Saya-Soma” as embodiment of shadow, presents herself through encounters with resistance, speaking her coded language though activated trauma-body.
What this research praxis offers is a visionary post-internet, post-anthropomorphic blending of relational complex system healing, supported by ancient multiperspectivism - which describes the unbreakable nature of the human spirit.
In [core] shamanism, trauma is understood as fragmented soul and perceived as missing or split off soul power. Through the lens of psychotherapy, trauma is understood as fragmented aspect of the psychic-self, one who split off as function to survival. Intra-psychic, fragmented and exiled parts ‘work’ following set coded systems. Based on strong belief, much like a coded algorithm, they write an entire reality, dwelling in undifferentiated aspects of psyche and becoming distorted and inflexible.
Through the lens of non-duality consciousness theory, fragmentation is ultimately illusion. The sensorial body - the feeling body - is the continued and constant experience point where to encounter connectedness with environment: Gravity.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS // DATA
Can we heal our own Saya-Soma (collective shadow body), if we act upon healing the fragmented digital ‘body-entity’?
What if these bodies are interchangeable, one and the same?
What impact does the digital realm have on consciousness, the act of creativity and the post-digital-body?
How can this become a tool for intentional growth within the digital to support collective integration and ‘new world’ consciousness, for a post-’extractivist’-era?
The research questions were worked through within non ordinary reality, in practice, through drum journeys, ritual, dance journeys, dreaming and downloads, oracle readings and divinations, in accompaniment with ordinary reality research methods.
Can we heal our own Saya-Soma (collective shadow body), if we act upon healing the fragmented digital ‘body-entity’?
What if these bodies are interchangeable, one and the same?
What impact does the digital realm have on consciousness, the act of creativity and the post-digital-body?
How can this become a tool for intentional growth within the digital to support collective integration and ‘new world’ consciousness, for a post-’extractivist’-era?
The research questions were worked through within non ordinary reality, in practice, through drum journeys, ritual, dance journeys, dreaming and downloads, oracle readings and divinations, in accompaniment with ordinary reality research methods.
The field-based shamanic research work activates a tool / the function of decentralising.
The forms of this practical work could take the action of soul retrieval, extraction, power transferral, ecstatic dance, sound activated trance or other presence and somatic technique related with experiencing the digital.
The forms of this practical work could take the action of soul retrieval, extraction, power transferral, ecstatic dance, sound activated trance or other presence and somatic technique related with experiencing the digital.
Research is made in collective altered states of consciousness, based on individual experience [individual relationship with reality] and held in ceremonial connection with Soul, Spirit and Otherworld, pertaining to access organic dataset.
[IMG: From an early presentation of the project]
WHY LOOK THROUGH THE DIGITAL MIRROR? //
THE POST-HUMAN BESOULED IDENTITY-BODY //
The effects of social media on parts of the psyche that have been exiled or abandoned, call a need for more awareness of generating compassionate power treatments of the social-digital. And that is only one aspect of the digital identity body.
Can we abstractly transform our collective trauma body, if we take personal ownership to heal our own perceptions of fragmented digital “body”?
What if these bodies are interchangeable, one and the same?
How can this become a tool for more intentional growth within the digital to support integration and new would consciousness, for a post-patriachy and post-internet era?
How does the identity/soul integrated with the online spaces transform our inner constellated identity/soul?
THE POST-HUMAN BESOULED IDENTITY-BODY //
The effects of social media on parts of the psyche that have been exiled or abandoned, call a need for more awareness of generating compassionate power treatments of the social-digital. And that is only one aspect of the digital identity body.
Can we abstractly transform our collective trauma body, if we take personal ownership to heal our own perceptions of fragmented digital “body”?
What if these bodies are interchangeable, one and the same?
How can this become a tool for more intentional growth within the digital to support integration and new would consciousness, for a post-patriachy and post-internet era?
How does the identity/soul integrated with the online spaces transform our inner constellated identity/soul?
“At a time when many people are feeling the deep splits within themselves, as well as suffering the deep splits and fault lines of the collective culutre,
what is needed is not a series of binary choices.
Not simply an accumulation of more information, but what is needed is a descent to interior places of wisdom.”
- Micheal Meade [On Myth & Co-creation]
[ IMG: NOTES/DOWNLOAD : TRAUMA INTO INTERSECTIONALITY ]
[ IMG: FAULT LINE BINARY SKETCH [LEFT], WORLD-MIRROR FUNCTION TO SOUL POWER- THROUGH TRIGGERS/TRAUMA,SKETCH [RIGHT], DOWNLOADS, 2021 ]
[ IMG: SHADOW FAULT LINES SKETCH [LEFT], TRAVELLING THROUGH THE LACUNA SKETCH [RIGHT], DOWNLOADS, 2021 ]
[ IMG: HEIGHTS, MIDDLE, DEPTH, SKETCH [LEFT], MAP OF CONSCIOUSNESS COSMOLOGY - SEARCHING FOR DIGITAL SHADOWS, [RIGHT], 2021 ]
[IMG: COSMOLOGY MAPPING IN PROCESS - TOROIDAL PSYCHE EXPRESSED IN 3D, DEC 2021 ]
RESEARCH STRUCTURE / PROCESS // OUTCOMES
2023:
Essay #1 in Body In Algorithms Publication
-------
2022:
OUTCOMES IN SOUND: ALGORITHM OF THE MIRROR MIND, June, 2022.
- A stand-alone sound performance part of a forthcoming album, and also interwoven through current 1HR Live Set from C-REFUND called INANNA’S DESCENT
-------
2021:
CONNECTED ONLINE OPEN PRAXIS:
RAVEBODY RELEASE, Dec - Jan 2021.
CONNECTED RESEARCH CEREMONY:
DANCE IN THE DIGITAL WATERFALL, July 2021.
2023:
Essay #1 in Body In Algorithms Publication
-------
2022:
OUTCOMES IN SOUND: ALGORITHM OF THE MIRROR MIND, June, 2022.
- A stand-alone sound performance part of a forthcoming album, and also interwoven through current 1HR Live Set from C-REFUND called INANNA’S DESCENT
-------
2021:
CONNECTED ONLINE OPEN PRAXIS:
RAVEBODY RELEASE, Dec - Jan 2021.
CONNECTED RESEARCH CEREMONY:
DANCE IN THE DIGITAL WATERFALL, July 2021.
2020:
OPEN CALL FOR SHAMANIC PRACTITIONERS TO JOIN THE RESEARCH,
[NOV 2020]
Pre Requisite for Researchers:
- acknowledgement of the Sacred - as being the third possibility, encompassing two halves. This acknowledgement of the whole, as sacred comes with an acknowledgment of Spirit as the creators of our experience, who co-emerge with our gaze.
- holistic, non-heirachical, non-local gaze [post feminist/queer]
Context:
“Where the sea meets the land, life has blossomed into a myriad of unique forms in the turbulence of water, sand, and the wind. At another seashore between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are not facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenships in the physical and digital world.” - Ishii Hiroshi (2009)
Water Process:
“What it is that water touches, in me? What is it that water can connect with, in me?
So that the moment when I connect with water, this can be a psychic bath.” - Malidoma Patrice Some.
Alchemy:
“The torture stories come from the dark. But if you retell the horror without creating the dark anew, you feed it. You do not break the mould. We need to dream the dark as a process, and dream the dark as change. to create the dark in a new image, because the dark creates us.” - Starhawk
OPEN CALL FOR SHAMANIC PRACTITIONERS TO JOIN THE RESEARCH,
[NOV 2020]
Pre Requisite for Researchers:
- acknowledgement of the Sacred - as being the third possibility, encompassing two halves. This acknowledgement of the whole, as sacred comes with an acknowledgment of Spirit as the creators of our experience, who co-emerge with our gaze.
- holistic, non-heirachical, non-local gaze [post feminist/queer]
Context:
“Where the sea meets the land, life has blossomed into a myriad of unique forms in the turbulence of water, sand, and the wind. At another seashore between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are not facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenships in the physical and digital world.” - Ishii Hiroshi (2009)
Water Process:
“What it is that water touches, in me? What is it that water can connect with, in me?
So that the moment when I connect with water, this can be a psychic bath.” - Malidoma Patrice Some.
Alchemy:
“The torture stories come from the dark. But if you retell the horror without creating the dark anew, you feed it. You do not break the mould. We need to dream the dark as a process, and dream the dark as change. to create the dark in a new image, because the dark creates us.” - Starhawk
