Realising I became what I thought was missing for others in my upbringing.

For many years, including from the time I wrote 'Recovered, Not Cured...', I have come to realise that I have been a spokesperson for discussing the difficulties of growing up-especially as pertains to peer group pressure, sexuality and drug use and its effects.

In essence, I did not have the person(s) to speak about these issues with growing up, so in my many public talks and lectures that had a focus on schizophrenia, but also more generalised themes discussed above, I was literally becoming the healer or teacher I felt I had missing in my life as I grew up, and became a young adult.

A lot of my talks led me to speaking to young adults and high school children. I would use my experience as detail in regards to sexuality and drugs and also mental health issues. I let them know of the consequences of poor choices, and self awareness. Often I told them I was happily gay, which was true by those later years.

I have realised what I was intuitively acting out and doing in real life was to be that big brother or guardian that I felt was lacking in my early life and early adulthood. Of course I had support in some ways, but not all ways.

I have realised this after these reflections above, and the culmination of 'The Universal Embrace', really, is the crystallisation of those themes.

There is a great amount of self actualisation where there used to be confusion, and in the construction of the embrace I validate a loving male to male relationship in terms of many aspects including spirituality, politics, the emotional and the physical. I'm reflexively describing my life right now, but it is also making a statement-that all loving relationships are valid and tthat this is the essence of a positive and healthy outlook on life which I have arrived at in later life. I hope that it is seen as a guiding force for all peoples, especially gay people, that some resonate happiness is possible, even though you may seem to be misunderstood in your youth.

I didn not realise it at the time I was doing a lot of talks and interviews that my self actualisation and growth through experience had led me to be able to help and heal people. I think this is a really positive thing which is continued with the exercise of creating 'The Universal Embrace'.

'Company' reflected chairs that anthropomorphically represented a cosy couple, which was reflexively describing my relationship in about 2011.

Reflections, relationships and resonance

There is something macroscopic and microscopic about my visual narrative that utilises a golden rectangle and concurrent spiral emanating from it.  It speaks of the moment of an embrace people at a Buddhist temple, as it has evolved. One of those persons is myself-the other is actually my partner.

It is quite a departure from other dark or disturbing art I have produced in the past. Gone is the angst and worry and isolation. Here it reveals something I cherish-hugging, and especially with my life partner.

In the past, isolation and sexual ambiguity were pivotal in my work, yet this is a celebration, of lived experience that is present. I’m literally re-creating something positive and rewarding in my life-probably the most rewarding thing ever, the affection between my partner and I.

I can not really recall in my artistic past the celebration of being queer in any form, I guess as you get older, you do grow into who you are and become comfortable with directly expressing gay lovers instead of meandering and symbolic frustrations and turmoil.

I have just turned 40, and I was having a drink last night with friends-I have to say that I told them I love being this age. I love to know who I am and its so comforting to be in a mature relationship that makes me whole.

I think the unfolding of the spiral in the interactive design speaks of the infiniteness from which you came from, the journeys and the experiences that led me to this point. It feels nice to be celebratory in this way.

The largest square in the design is the focus of this unravelling, in that the all important heart chakras of us are meeting exactly in the centre. This was pivotal to the design. It cemented the focus on all that’s good about a healthy relationship.

There is a fatalistic dimension to the design, where have these people come from to arrive at this point? The description does not need to be long, for the instant of the embrace is the here-and-now. It’s a dimension that I find myself in real life, and I couldn’t be more grateful. The spiral speaks of a winding past leading to the love sharing of the event, that makes it easy to consider the present more effectively, whilst still validating a long narrative in life and experience to this point. The emphasis though, is on the love between two people.

The self reflexivity and the growing more and more to the concept of self-actualisation has never presented itself more in a positive way in my work, its quite a joy to work on.

Resonance is a concept that is integral to this event. The whole dimension of the interactive frame is underpinned by the golden rectangle, which is realised of the concept of Phi. Philosophically, this means that this instant, this moment, is perfect and complete-it is also the sum of its past, and an affirmation for the future.

I just love the idea and strive to be more mindful of my thoughts as I go about my day, in that I try and catch negative thoughts, record them, and turn them into positive ones. Worry is such a wasted emotion - which I grapple with, but this reflection relies on thinking about the self in all its dimensions.

It is quite startling that in the animation in which I can ‘turn off’ my partner, the image of me hugging no one looks ridiculous! I read an article lately of when research comes to a halt because of a subject being lost. My partner knows my paranoias well, ‘No, Maureen is not saying we are going to break up!’, as Maureen my supervisor had suggested the article.

Being resonant with each others thoughts, so close, is something I have experienced with select people in my life. My partner does not consider himself spiritual, but whenever the TV is on, or I have a slight look in my eye, sometimes he guesses the thoughts I am having at that moment. Its quite funny and extremely intuitive. I want to talk more about intuition later, in where do ideas come from? How are they stored/caught-where do your thoughts go?

The concept of resonance I think also relates to the way how reality unfolds, the unfurling ‘spirit spiral’, you can see across nature in things like fern trees and in ammotite fossils. For example, I was considering a background that had to be exactly half sky, and half earth, to fit the dimensions of the design, representing earth and sky, maybe dark and light, or ethereal and tangible.

I was looking through some photos I had taken on my iPhone from this year and the Buddhist temple struck me so solidly as the one to use! There was no need to go to an airport and take a photo, as I originally planned to represent the transient nature of relationships over a lifetime. There it was on my computer! I love Buddhism and its poetic Zen nature, and although not religious, use the Dalai Lamas words, ‘Don’t use Buddhism to be a Buddhist, use it to better what you already are’.

In all the event is a positive one, and I cant wait to begin analysing it with creative intuition that is yet unmapped.

The location of the embrace has quite by chance or intuition become the location of a Buddhist Temple. I think it wonderfully fits the design and could not feel more comfortable as a narrative of me discussing some buddhist texts.

Constructing the embrace- the locale or scene of the event

I was mucking around last night with the concept of the embrace and was excited to come up with what I did!

My partner and I a few months ago had visited the local buddhist temple, the 'Heavenly Queen', excuse the pun, near Footscray.

Not only did I need a background image that had a horizon line in the centre horizontal of the interactive image, but the photo fit perfectly philosophically because I lend towards Buddhism as a religion.

The original idea was going to have the embrace happen at an airport, reflecting on the relationships I have had over a lifetime, and exacerbating the context of a loving embrace. I think that sense of impermanence is conveyed well within the confines of a buddhist structure.

I animated the image so that some sense of interactivity could be seen at the following link:

http://www.theuniversalembrace.com/#!deciding-the-location-of-the-embrace/cte5

I have attached a unified pic here, that shows the imagined heart chakras located on the two dimensional plane in the centre of the largest square in the golden rectangle, with the 50% air, 50% ground, and the location behind.

The Universal Embrace happens in the context of a local buddhist temple.

Deciding how many levels/changes of interactivity there will be in The Embrace

Due to the nature of the design of the interactive strip at the top of the final interactive design, I have decided that the amount of different perspectives in the final interactive copontnt will be 27.

This is explained in the diagram below. Three elements of three, a circle, square, and triangle are represented in blocks of nine.

I think this will create a working environment which is not too overwhelming and I will be able to illustrate 27 different panels that will be presented in the final piece.

A tragic embrace from politicised reporting media

How awful, that in this photographic embrace two people have been tragically killed.

I don't like to look at it much but it seems to catch the feeling of tragedy for the whole country of Bangladesh and other places on the sub continent that houses these dangerous factories to make the garments that countries like Australia buy.

Its an important image in this study in that it forces the reflexivity of dealing with an unfair world-our own mortality, and the chance operations that await out individual lives.

It is in stark contrast to the celebratory embrace in this study, but if considering all embraces, an important political one that asks ourselves of being grateful to be alive.

April 25, 2013. Two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/05/08/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/#ixzz2Snjo2YYR

Using layers to show interactivity, turning 'off' and 'on' elements of The Embrace

I'm hoping uploading this animated GIF will allow people to see how I intend to use layers to make the interactive design of 'The Universal Embrace'.

In this image, you can see how I can use color and selective layers of the same image to be able to reveal different aspects of this singular figure.

In the final presentation of 'The Universal Embrace', I will be seeking to complicate and simplify visually the complex physical, emotional, spiritual, and political aspects of the said 'event'.

In this image, you can see how I have used color and digital manipulation to differentiate in seeing this particular image within different contexts. Even though this is a looping animation, the finished design will be able to be manipulatable by the experiencer, thus creating an interactive way of the viewer to experience the many complicated qualities that occur of a moment of love and commitment.

I'm having trouble showing an animated gif here, but please click this link to see what I mean:

The evolving unravelling of a creative process

Interestingly, my project is evolving in such a way that the process of discovery and creativity is live on the internet.

In this way, I suspect that the process of writing will be entirely available online and that thoughts and reflections will build up in my blogger database, with new edits and thoughts added to entries as time progresses.

I would like to find a way to quote books and references in a way that can show them while I type, create and discover, so I will have to look into endnotes and see if I can export references as this body of writing is important in my evolving, cumulative narrative.

I am also going to look into dictation on my Mac, so that in fact I will be able to say text, quite a different process from typing it. In this way the project becomes more interactive when I input data, and will have the appearance of a more accessible language as I speak my words.

I think drawing this technology together will enable the project to really come to life in all electronic dimensions.

Combining two people hugging visually from a photo

I'm very excited to commence the visual representation of two people hugging and looking into the process of how the interactivity may appear.

Here in this following photoshopped image you can see how I have isolated myself and the person I'm hugging in order to be able to ultimately engage in the interactivity of 'turning aspects on and off' within the final design.

I was struck by the feeling of isolation when you see only one person isolated in the embrace. It reminds me of the shared nature of an embrace, how it is dependant on two people.

There is self love. then there is love with another person, and I think this image illustrates that point very soundly.

The feeling of transience with relationships strikes a chord too, with the middle image of the second person being transparent. How many people who do you engage with in this way over a lifetime?

The journey of having different people in your life is part of the fabric of a persons unfolding narrative.

This image, a still from what is intended to be the interactive component, talks of unfolding narratives of people over a lifetime, and their sometimes transient nature. The fact that I am the main protagonist helps with rendering the self in terms of narrative.

Thinking of the end design

I've done some adjustments to where the toggle buttons might go in order to make the design interactive.
I've also used color to highlight visually - divinity, love, engagement.

I think this is a nice template to explore such a wonderful gesture as a hug.

Thinking about plants, design and maths

Early on when I was designing or thinking about this project, I was in the yard and decided to take a photo at my feet of a weed growing in the cracks of the concrete.

I did, and marvelled at it, as I always marvel about how wonderful plants are, and especially liked it because it had my feet in the picture with my favorite converse on.

When I got inside, I uploaded it from my iPhone and onto my computer, and started to sketch over it with a Wacom Tablet. I imagined it following or that I was tracing some sort of wonderful organic yet mathematic design.

Around the plant I placed a yellow energetic glow, as if the resonance of its energy went further out that could be seen with the naked eye.