notes

Most thoughts are tiny, roaming around spaces trying to make sense of what is happening in the space immediately around them. They first grew in other spaces, adapting to be highly specialised to sense different things, e.g. what kind of place this is, what the decor is like, what things are in the space and which memories they trigger, people's body language and expressions, keeping track of the conversation etc, to feed information back to the thoughts closer to or in the body, that make sense of all this and the others that decide what to do next. Each has capacities to move, look out for things, to change their display to send messages, to feed, grow, and interact with other thoughts in other ways. They all bring the capacities to do different things that they adapted for different places and times, to explore what is happening in this space and time.Maybe they are even more highly specialised, not just able to 'sense people's body language and expressions' but particular kinds, e.g. Aggression, sarcasmOrSense body types, e.g.

Ant colony type behaviours of externalised thoughts and feelings, out foraging and exploring the space in all directions at once, as they send info and energy other thoughts that are close enough and leave pheromone messages to be found. Some ideas and emotions make it back to the body, to be considered and possibly acted upon and some don't. The hive mind sends the most thoughts to follow the trails with the most pheromones. There could be a build up of anger, that doesn't connect back to me, hanging mid air between someone is doing something that upsets me and me. In fact most of the thoughts and feelings being explored in the room, the signals won't make it back to me strong enough to convince me to pay attention to them and act on them. Pheromones to ants are triggers to tell other ants something about what is here, food, threat etc.What is the mind/space equivalent?

Imagine different types of thoughts and feelings moving through the space

Feeling parts Parts of the self that show up as sensations in bodywork Self defence images - representing how your character wants to be seen, layers of these filter which perceptions, sensations get through to the heart, guts and brain. Foragers - different senses scouting out the space, looking for particular images, leaving trails depending on how confident they are Expectations - ideas of what should happen next. How you/your character and other people should behave and be treated, how the world should work. Like introspects projected back out, lots of “shoulds”

Foragers Imagine these felt parts of yourself are sending sensory foragers out into the scene, like foraging ants, each specialised to look for something in particular. They leave different strength trails depending on how convinced they are they have found their match) - what are they looking for? Finding? Avoiding? not finding? What are other peoples sensory foragers looking for in the scene at this moment? Place fragmented images to represent where they are in the scene at this moment.

Self defense images For each character, create fragmentary outer skins, 50cm out from the body, using layers of inward facing augmented image fragments to represent feelings and sensations from the skin inwards and outwards. Outward facing augmented image fragments are placed on the outside of the skin, representing ways the character could behave.

We can use them both to describe what our character is aware of feeling and what they arent, and what they do and don't want to show of themselves.

e.g. I feel a sense of things pressuring and emanating from my brow, a sense of pressure down on my eyes, then energies emanating from them, something numbing and stilling my mouth, a feeling of forces pushing down on my lower back and clenching my arse.

Imagine your self defence images arranged in layers inside and outside your body.

How are they defending the body from information trying to get to awareness in the brain? What are they Looking for? Not wanting to see? How are they filtering your embodied sensations and urges to act? Which urges make it through to your directors (parts ready to perform different ways you might stand, your facial expressions, what you look at, how you look at it, what you say, how you say it) - What are they showing? Hiding? Trying to make happen?