I went to Carrizo Plain with some dear friends April 8. We arrived at sunset. We enjoyed the the Wildflower Super Bloom 2017. Here are the results/byproducts of the continuing study.
Kismet Arts Tangent
Art Collective
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I flew out to Tennessee to see my father in the hospital. I arrived early Monday morning. I enjoyed spending these days with my dad and his loved ones. I appreciated the nurses and other staff. I brought my markers with me and procured some printer paper. I made drawings and taped them on my dad’s overbed food tray table that was at the foot of his bed.
Study of Sunset with Wildflowers I drove from Knoxville to Johnson City. It took about two hours. I had coffee and borrowed Auntie Lisa’s car. As I drove along the highway a little after midnight, I passed many of those box trucks doing their deliveries. The moon was yellow at first and it reminded me of what my aunt said about what my dad looked like so I wouldn’t be surprised. She described his jaundice and water weight. The moon became white in appearance and it would dance in and out of my windshield as I drove towards my father.
Study of Sunset with Wildflowers I’ve been doing a lot of these studies with sunset with wildflowers. In this drawing, I was interested in that idea of two perspectives of realities meeting. My dad lay in bed and occasionally his arms would come up like he was leading an orchestra and was about to start directing. Terryl, my dad’s sweetie, said that was from the toxins interacting with his other brain chemicals causing Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder.
At this point, he wasn’t able to get up. The urine bag was connected to a plastic box with a clear front. His urine on display. I looked it up just now and tried to match the color with my memory. It wasn’t a healthy yellow but more like PANTONE 17-1563 TCX Cherry Tomato. It was a pretty color.
Coladog Startling Butterflies One of my favorite memories with my dad. We were biking the Appalachian Trail (Appalachia: The Pronunciation Matters) with our dog Cola who came across a bunch of lil blue butterflies and they fluttered all around him.
Watching for the Green Flash I was born and raised in Hawaii. Dad would point to the horizon at sunset and tell us to watch for the Green flash. I remember distinctly seeing it just once. When I was maybe 4 or 5 from our pouch in the mountains with a view of the horizon in the distance past the city. When I was about to reveal this drawing to Jenny (my oldest sister) and Terryl, they enthusiastically remembered my dad’s fondness of seeing the green flash or at least looking for it when possible.
Watauga Lake My dad loved sailing. He was part of a sailing club and so was his first cousins. He crewed on a boat called Changes In Attitude.
Kalihi Valley Verily, with its rank luxuriance of vines and blossoms, its groves of forest trees, its shady nooks and grassy lawns, its crystal brook and its wild and beautiful mountain scenery, with that charming far-off glimpse of the sea, Kalihi is the Valley of Enchantment come again!
The first home I remember with my family. In this beautiful valley, we would take drives through mountain tunnels, hold our breaths and make wishes. Driving by the mountains, there are slivers, random single thread tinsel of waterfalls.
Plumeria There was a Plumeria tree by the pool in our apartment building where dad would do laps. He wore one of those tiny speedo swimsuit– uh, swim pieces?– that always made him seem extra devoted to the act of swimming. I had to remind Terryl multiple times what these flowers are called. I guess Dad never talked about them. They are beautiful flowers used to make leis with an unforgettable scent. When I smell a scent at a candle store or in the aromatherapy aisle at Whole Foods, I’m transported to my childhood.
Bird of Paradise Terryl reminded me that Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia) was/is Dad’s favorite flower. I was working on this during Dad’s last concert. He loved Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
Ho‘Okena Beach Park I asked Terryl, “where is your favorite place with dad?” She told the story of the time she and dad went to the Big Island and spotted a pod of Spinner Dolphins and rushed out to swim with them. Terryl loves this drawing. I made this drawing the day my dad breathed his last breath.
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To talk about these tracks separately might have helped the curious see the explorations that I have achieved through Adobe Premiere Pro and the simple interface and mechanics of nesting and layering. Alas, I don’t take great notes and tend to get excited and improvise and impulsively copy and paste, making the process obscured by randomness.
With these videos, I’m doing visual and audio explorations. Techniques with visual: turbulence, distort, tint, contrast and brightness, magnify, and blending modes. In most of them, I repeat a one minute video.
Audio explorations: I use field recordings (using a binaural microphone mostly, but there’s a hydrophone–mono that I also use). I worked with performers: David Samas, Dani Robison, Cory Harrison to get some sounds from real instruments in less controlled environments (there’s a bird or two in the tracks). I also play a few. In this playlist, there is a calimba, glass harp, double bass, clarinet, xylophone, and piano. There are tracks with rain, water, and rattle sounds. There’s one track with soft-spoken gibberish and another with singing gibberish.
For the distortion of the tracks. Some sounds are slowed down (never sped up). Some when I slow them down I maintain the pitch. Some of the clips are clipped down to a single note (or phoneme) and others I let go and you hear more of the improvisation of the performers.
Planning, I generally have an idea of what I want to find out. No, sometimes, I just like surprising myself. I recently had a composing lesson that covered cypher notation using numbers (used in gamelan, but other things too, I imagine). It makes sense for me because I’m really unconcerned with pitch at this point and just want to create intervals. Also it’s way easier to read, write, and translate than dots on lines. In some of the tracks, one can hear the four bars of four counts. With three others doing half notes and then whole notes (or whatever, just the idea of different paces).
I found that: it feels more coherent when I use fewer instruments and when I map out how the track will go on paper before opening the app, I’m more ready to decide something is done than slapping on other stuff. I think the star of this playlist is the glass harp. The notes are sustained in such a way that create a limitlessness to it. Unlike percussion that is hit, or wind instruments, the glass harp (with two hands and some water) can be sustained for longer with a same volume. There’s a beating that I find irresistible and organic.
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I was at the The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse and found a sketchbook that is the exact right size for zine pages. I created over 40 drawings for two volumes of a coloring book. I divided them into two books, one titled “This Bequest of Wings” and the other, “The Grass Divides as with a Comb”. Lately I’ve been enjoying making the titles of things from Emily Dickinson poems. They are so lyrical and feel very contemporary still.
For sale (or was) at Dog Eared Books. They are an interesting bookstore because they buy their zines outright, and they only took one of each, so if they are still there, what a treat!
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How this came about: I was walking around in Oakland and I read a sandwich board sign with a bunch of workshop titles. I thought it said Making Your Plant Meditate. I thought that would be cool and funny. It was Making Your Plant Medicine, but I decided to see if there was interest for the Plant Meditation workshop anyway.
When I went to drop off the zine with the event outline in it, Justin Carder of E.M. WOLFMAN asked me if I wanted to host a workshop and I was like yeah, ok, makes sense. Surrogate Plants Provided By Oakland.Secret
I had this idea that I would invite some people to perform in between exercises pieces 10-15 minutes long. This was my first event like that and I’m grateful for the people who worked with me on this and to Ben Unger for sound engineering the event.
above is a still from the only visual documentation from the event @movementstudy on Instagram: “performed some movement to accompany some sounds at plant meditation workshop hosted by @katcountiss 2day 🌱”
~~event description~~
E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore
410 13th St, Oakland, CA 94612
Saturday, March 18th, 2:30-4:30pm
Suggested Donation $5-$10 (proceeds to artists)
Commemorative workbook for sale
We are thrilled to host the first Making Your Plants Meditate workshop, featuring live performances by Plant Meditators
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NEW TO PLANT MEDITATION?
Do plants meditate? Do they want to meditate? Do they want? Plant meditation is a highly speculative field and we will begin to explore through mindfulness and experimentation.
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OUTLINE OF THE WORKSHOP
A condensed version of the 6-week course, this workshop aims to begin the process of creating a practice between human attendees and plants that expands definitions and liberates paradigms– with a focus on sound and language.
Bring your plant. Surrogate plants will also be available.
We start on time, so please arrive 10-15 minutes early.
Below is the copy from the zine that can be used for future workshops and you can try it at home!
Relax your:
roots shoots stems leaves stamen anthers ovules fruits flowers seeds nodes stomatas veins buds axils pedicels bracts bracteoles sepals petals perianths tepals corollas hypanthiums nectaries androceiums gynoeciums filaments pistils stigmas pollens styles alates bark branches bulbs cladodes corms cuticles lenticels prickles rhizomes scandents piths stolons tendrils thorns tubers petioles and stipules
Draw your companion plant
Draw an imaginary plant
Group Exercise: Calming – Focus: thought and disassociation
Goals: Through language ~ creating new thoughts ~ repetition leading to clarity
Action:
- List seven words/phrases on the tear-offs.
- Tear them off and take one of them and pass the rest to your left
- Pick one from the pile you receive and pass to the left
- Repeat until you have seven word/phrases
- Say them out loud or silently, repeat through a specified time duration (ex. 1 min, 5 min, 10 min).
- Mix them up and find the order that resonates with you.
- Share
Exercise: Listening and Consent – Focus: friendship
Goals: By practicing patience, gentleness and consent, we become better companions. By listening through different devices, our perceptions shift, creating room for new paradigms.
Action:
- Focus on the plant. Feel its presence. Can you receive? Does it want to be engaged with you? Let’s practice “no”s. Pretend you received a “no” biev. That’s fine. Look down, bow, and back away slowly.
- Focus on the plant. Feel its presence? Proceed to attach a contact microphone (or some other device you would like to use). Observe its textures and sounds.
Exercise: B. e . a . t . – Focus: Rhythm and Energy
Goals: Using time intervals, we create boundaries like play pens. We are able to explore a kind of controlled carefreeity in this newfound space.
Action:
- Listen to some tracks with beats, or no beats.
- Feel time passing in these measured intervals.
- Imagine using these set times again and again. What would you do?
- Write out some times, perhaps use the minutes and seconds that you’ll do something on piece(s) of paper.
- Write out something that you’ll do. Shout, whisper, speak, read, play, dance, feel.
Exercise: Scales and Scores- Focus: Map to Ritual
Goals: With materials and elements listed, we may dream how they fit together on a page using fresh notation systems/ text/ graphic/ etc.
Action:
- Brainstorm some elements: mood, time, spectrum (scale, what do you want to use to create a variety of a thing?), materials, spatial exploration
- Create a time duration and consider using a time grid or another way to notate time.
- Plot out what you want to happen when.
- Try it out. Feel free to write parts for other people in the workshop.
Exercise: Observation -Focus: memory
Goals: We experince the world every day. Taking notes allows what we perceive through are senses to marinate as we experience other things. Writing is a way of seasoning how we move through memory.
Action:
- What have you been thinking about lately? Take this ten minutes to write it out. Let yourself observe yourself without editing (you can do that later).
- (Later) Review what you’ve written and lightlyte what seems worth thinking about some more.
Exercise: Create Your Own Experiments – Focus: Process
Goals: Scientists use experiments to develop their understanding of change over time. Allow yourself to wonder about what if. By approaching experiments in a minimalist mindset (aka doing something boring) you might find ideas come to you in that calmness.
Action:
- List out contexts for your practice. Consider: materials, action, proof of concept, variables, duration, theme, role models, allies, and a deadline.
Video
zinemypm <- read this for the bios of the musicians for the March 18th workshop and thanks again to E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore in Oakland, CA. The audio has been unedited. The creaking you’ll hear is from the rustic floorboards. Featuring: Dani Robison, c a a s i l k, Dan Gottwald, Cassidy Barnes, and Elana Chavez.
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Bad photo alert I made a 8-pieces of paper folded in half zine. That’s 32 pages if you include the cover. I was inspired by my coworker at the chocolate factory. She’s a zine-maker.
I handwrote poems and recent performance works and a description for a workshop that I am going to run called “Making Your Plants Meditate.”I also included collages I made using an old Life Magazine (classic weird stuff in those, always).
It was a new process working with the photocopiers at FedEx. I liked the feeling tho. Considering that I have two years of formal graphic design training, it was great not using any of those computer programs to create the zine.
It was liberating when I decided that my new zine should just be called “Selected Works.” I am working on a variety of things and couldn’t figure out how to consolidate a theme. Some stuff in there: John Cage’s Ten Rules, A collage that says “A Demon Dog Made You Do It”, poem called “Moon Valentine” and more!
It’s for sale at EM Wolfman for $5.
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A page from my notebook, feedback from the Field on Dance Therapy Dance Therapy (this particular exercise) is highly dancer dependent. I really appreciated the feedback. That day I was feeling a bit under the weather, didn’t get enough sleep and so I just went through the motions on some of the prompts and it showed. It was a good thing to get these notes before the performance.
The performance went well. Afterwards a teacher came up to me and said she was inspired to do a version of Dance Therapy for her students in elementary school. One person said I totally “hammed it up.” There was a prompt where the good thing of the week was “sliding through the mud at Strawberry Canyon” and the corresponding movement was me on the floor, joyously pretending to breast stroke, and paddle and make mud angels.
I split my pants on stage. They were just my street pants and I was enthusiastically going down to a prayer pose for a movement based off of a good moment sharing a difficult time and getting support. I’m gonna get some nice dance pants soon. Still, I regret no photos of me dancing were taken during the sessions. I’m planning on doing this exercise and documenting the movements.
Some of the Field were asking about how I came up with the movements. In the process of getting the prompts, I occasionally ask questions to get a clear idea in my notes that I then scatter about the stage. A lot of it feels like charades, where you find something to communicate, something part of the scene unfolding visually in my head and just go for it and make changes, improv.
Some memorable moments from my point of view over the 6 times Dance Therapy has been performed
- prompt: conversation with son about college tuition | movement: gesturing the movement of the tassel on the mortarboard hat becoming heavy and drug around like a ball and chain
- prompt: being sick | movement: lying down on the stage for a long satisfying while without moving.
- prompt: finding a parking spot at the women’s march | movement: miming being in a car and walking around the stage in perpendicular directions (like streets)
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This week’s Dance Therapy (last Sunday)
I asked everyone (small session, only 5 people) the best parts and worst parts of their weeks, jotting a few words for each on a receipt roll and then ripped it up and scattered the moments, folded on the floor, announcing each as I picked up the scraps and read them, putting some in my pocket and throwing others back on the floor and doing a little movement for each until all were in my pocket. For those familiar with improv, this idea was inspired by the game Blind Line, where the audience suggests lines and then they are strewn about the stage and randomly interjected.
Feedback, the audience remarked on the unpredictability, would it be a good or bad one? and the phrasing, some movements were literal, abstract, etc.
After the session, one of the field members suggested to me that I try a summarizing sequence where I put all the moves (I can remember) into a dance at the end. I think I’ll try that.
Kismet Arts Tangent 