Meeting in the gap

Yesterday, in South Africa, making my way to my boarding gate for my flight back to Dubai, I passed a little shop selling Ndebele art.

Today, 24hrs later, I had lunch in an Iranian restaurant.

 

These photos were taken within one day of each other and between them was a gap - the gap of place, the gap of time, the gap of culture.

Yet now you see them both, brought together by my sharing them with you in this here2here space where we meet. 

This space is in itself a gap between us and yet it is a gap not void of content. On the contrary, it is the space of untapped potential, the space of creativity, the meeting place of various personalities, cultures and worldviews, made possible by technology.

It is a reminder of the many gaps we encounter on a daily basis.

The beauty of communication can only be appreciated by acknowledging pauses between words, whether they be spoken or written. Music is filled with pauses between notes, gaps between movements.

There is the transition point between ending one task and beginning another, the time of waiting for a new phase in one’s life to begin, or even the time spent waiting for the lights to change while on the road. 

These gaps are not wasted spaces or wasted time. They are filled with potential when we become mindfully aware of them. 

There is always a moment between an experience and our response to it. The simple act of pausing and finding this gap is proving to have many benefits on many levels of being.

As we begin to find these gaps, inner rhythms can be acknowledged, and when necessary, alignments made with the universal rhythms present all around us. These universal rhythms have always been there, but it is as if we are only now, not only as individuals but also as a collective, beginning to hear them.  

One place these universal rhythms are to be found is in the gaps between cultures. These gaps were once thought of in a negative way, as if they were points of separation and divide. On closer inspection they are a meeting place to discover similarity, interconnectedness, unity and creativity.

Meet you in the gap!  

Spaces to Places

Recently opened in Downtown Dubai, The Pavilion is a contemporary art space which not only encourages dialogue between art and its audience, but is also a vibrant space for the neighborhood, with galleries, a cinema, library, espresso bar and restaurant. The architect Abboud Malak has said, “It’s anything you want it to be; just come and bring your computer or socialise. It’s a versatile space and encompasses everything.... The people will make the space what it is.”

I often go there to do research, write or hang out with friends. The design with its natural woods has a very calming effect. It is a place where creatives can work, socialise or simply be.

Spaces become places when individuals or communities endow them with meaning. Spaces become places through the participation of people.

One’s experience of a particular space evokes emotion and memory and gives rise to what is often referred to as a sense of place. Some spaces are so designed that they encourage the individual to spend time there alone, others invite participation and interaction with others, and others encourage both.

Right now, we find ourselves having to move, more and more, in online space. 

 

In a sense we have become online nomads, meeting fellow travelers from different places, countries and cultures in a space not limited by time. We often tend to wander from site to site, perhaps unaware that we are actually in search of online oases. These are sites that nourish and refresh, and where we are met with online hospitality.  When this is not so, we simply click away and are transported down another corridor.

Whereas many see today’s technologies encouraging placelessness, this need not be the case. What is required of us now is a special generation of architects and designers, creators of online spaces which become special online places for current and future users. 

Physical spaces designed by architects to encourage reflection or interaction are not empty. Their features encourage occupants of the space to interact with it in a particular way.

Online spaces need to be created in this way too.

Just as decorators move shapes around to find the right place and the right fit, so too the positioning of words, widgets, links, videos etc can be approached with mindfulness.

It is encouraging, for example, to see new blog technologies coming in to being that will move away from the linear and allow positioning of videos, pics and words all over a blank page. Such collage like blogging will most definitely promote creativity.

The spaces we occupy online deserve our respect.  We can declutter by regularly emptying our mail boxes. We can consider not retweeting that which we have not read or watched.  A mindful online presence will require that we don’t simply fill the space we encounter with mere words, simply for the sake of filling it. 

If we have our own website, we should be aware that the home page is an online door. What image does it portray to the first time visitor. Does it encourage the visitor to enter? Is it welcoming? Does the architecture of the website enable the visitor to meet others there? Does it encourage the visitor to return? Does the visitor feel at home there?  Does its mindful design include windows that provide vistas, and bridges that lead to new sites. 

Is it a pavilion, a dome, a light filled space where others are encouraged to be?

 

          I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do 

anything I wanted. - Jack Kerouac

The space where we meet online is like this too. It is certainly vast, and when we look at our handheld gadgets, it is certainly glowing. What are we going to do with it? What are we going to create?

Light Through - Electronic Stained Glass

There are some days that seem to be filled with colour.

Last week, shortly after my return from the Liwa Desert, I visited a centre in Dubai called Wafi and experienced such a day. Camera in hand, I clicked away. When selecting a few of the images to share in a gallery, I noticed that most of those I had chosen involved light shining through glass.

I was immediately reminded of an interview I had been listening to, in which Jeremy Johnson discussed the terms “light on” and “light through” with John David Ebert. 

Light can shine on something or light can shine through something. Marshall McLuhan, a communications theorist, used the terms “light on” and “light through” to highlight the media that went hand in hand with various cultures throughout the ages.

In the west, in the Middle Ages, light had shone through.  The stained glass windows of many cathedrals are testimony to this. They told stories to the beholder and were meant to point the one looking to a Presence beyond. The dominant belief at the time was that the light of Spirit was shining through all that was taking place.  

The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 15th century had ushered in the Renaissance, an age of “light on”.  The printed word had to be looked at.  Light had to be shone on the printed word so that the eye could read it.  

The digital age has once again ushered in “light through”, and the gadgets we currently use are like electronic stained glass. Their high resolution makes them luminous and beautiful, with light shining in from behind.

These gadgets make it possible for you and I to meet and exchange information immediately.  Even right now, our spaces are overlapping. We are sharing a common boundary and an exchange is taking place.

When two entities interconnect, be they systems, concepts, devices, cultures or human beings, the common boundary they share and where an exchange of information and/or energy takes place is known as an interface. 

The place where we are currently meeting, I have chosen to call here2here. In it, we are able to “interface” - which I will translate as - meet in the space between our faces. here2here is the common boundary we share right now, a space where our subtle energies meet. In this space, you somehow shine through to me and I shine through to you, with webcams and apps such as facetime providing a possible enhancement of this meeting. 

Aaron Koblin in his TED talk, quotes: “The culture of the 19th century was defined by the novel, and the 20th century by the cinema. The culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.”

I am of the opinion that the interface will again allow us to become aware of a special light shining through, a light symbolizing the transcendent.

Already the miracle of this is becoming apparent as, for example, interfacing is making it possible for east and west to allow light to flow through to each other. 

Special online museums are enabling us to view each other’s art and so learn more about the culture of the other. The resulting fusion is producing new masterpieces. 

The exhibition, “Through The Looking Glass” by Syrian artist, Mouteea Murad, is currently running in Dubai. When I viewed the exhibition, I was immediately reminded of stained glass, not knowing then, that this would be the topic of this blog!

I include the picture I took of one of his artworks here, because it symbolizes for me in image, that which I have attempted to say with words. 

I include too, a video featuring the music of Jon Hopkins. The piece is entitled, “Light through the veins” and the sounds and images of this video speak too, where words fail.