Skarf

Re-re-repeat...

"Repeat again and again an action is stimulating when it is organized looking ahead. The substantial thing of the routine can change, metamorphose, improve, but the emotional compensation lies in the personal experience to repeat. This experience is nothing strange, we all know it: is rhythm. Already present in the human heart contractions, the artisan has extended it in his hand and eye."

Richard Sennet  "The Craftsman"

hey guys! i saw this picture today and of course, after last week in madrid i notice how big and strange his hands are.. i had to share this with you.. ;)

hope you're all fine!

joana

Knitting...

"According to a commonly used measure, to produce a master carpenter or a musician it takes 10,000 hours of experience. Several studies show that,as the craftsman progresses, his ability improves

Sound Hands

What do you think an academic class is?

Minerva emerged as a headache from Zeus. As the goddess of wisdom, could only proceed from the upper part of his body. The head, so far from the earth, tends toward the sky, the place of the gods. In the Western tradition, the body is opposed to the mind. The latter placed in the origin of knowledge and of being of the noble thoughts, science and art. For years, science was conceived as the result of the mind.

Let's Sign and Flamenco Day

“The study of deaf shows us that much of what is distinctively human in us - our capacities for language, for thought, for communication and culture - do not develop automatically in us, are not just biological actions, but are, equally, social and historical in origin; that are a gift - the most wonderful of gifts - from one generation to another. We see that Culture is as crucial as Nature.” (Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices)

Hands Atlas

Atlas is the name given in Greek mythology to a titan who, along with his brother Prometheus, contested the power of the gods of Olympus in order to make that power available to man. Legend has it that while Prometheus had his liver torn out by a vulture in the far East, Atlas was forced (in the West, between Andalusia and Morocco), to bear on his shoulders the weight of the celestial vault. It is also said, that from this weight he gained an unsurpassable knowledge of the world and an – albeit hopeless – wisdom.

Sound Hands

Learning About Poker´s Body Language

Dancing Hands

Seeing Voices

These questions were formulated after reading the book of Oliver Sacks "Seeing Voices". We try here to give some answers, selecting some extracts from the book. 

-        Can we think without language? 

"...About one child in a thousand, however, is born with no ability to hear whatsoever. Years ago such people were called deaf-mutes. Often they were considered retarded, and in a sense they were: they'd never learned language, a process that primes the pump for much later development. The critical age range seems to be 21 to 36 months. During this period children pick up the basics of language easily, and in so doing establish essential cognitive infrastructure."

-        Is Sign Language a natural language or a code?

"Those not conversant in Sign may suppose that it's an invented form of communication like Esperanto or

José de Ribera, El Greco, Diego Velázquez

We use the word monster in order to characterize the hands that present a disorder. Obviously a monster hand is the hand that physiologically is different of the usual and custom hand but it´s still a hand.

However, what distinguished a normal from a monster hand depends on the CONTEXT that belongs. El Greco´s "hands" were monster hands in their epoch.(Efi Giannopoulou)

Hands are one of the most significant limits of the human body; they are the end of the figure, a boundary difficult to draw, but fundamental in the composition of the painting. Looking for hands in painting is looking for how painters had resolved the problem of the hands.

But looking for monster hands in painting is looking for different entities. Monster is a large, ugly and frightening imaginary creature. The painted hand seems that it has its own identity, like a strange creature which sends signals.But the painted hand is painted by the painters hand… 

Μy introduction to craft as a form of knowledge, which differs
from the usual modes of classroom teaching, came from reading the Book
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's educational treatise Emi/e (1762) at an
early age. Emi/e is a strong polemic, cast ίπ the form of a story about
a boy and his tutor, against learning by rote and social conditioning
and ίπ favour of the development of the individual child - what would
today more prosaically be called, after Jean Piaget, 'the psychogenetic
educational principle" ...is concerned with the learning of
a craft, in Emile's case carpentry: 'If, instead of making a child stick to
his books, , employ him ίπ a workshop, his hands work to the advantage
of his intellect, he becomes a philosopher while he thinks he is simply
becoming an artisan.'

Christopher Frayling

Whistle Hand

Joinery: cutting and fitting wood joints without using nails

hold me to hold you

Well all you have to do, is try and please me That’s all I want from you, come on and squeeze me I need you bad, it makes you glad So give me your hand, I’ll hold it tight / Rolling Stones-Give me your hand (and I’ll hold it tight) Lyrics

Cause everyone gets lost sometimes But what’s the meaning? It’s just a feeling I’ve got my fingers crossed Fingers crossed Lyrics

...Ariadne helped him by giving him a sword and a ball of red fleece thread that she was spinning, so that he could find his way our of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. It is said that Ariadne was the first architect… because she managed to go out of the labyrinth.

Breakfast debate

- Can we think without language?
- Is Sign Language a natural language or a code?
- Do prelingually deaf people speak when they sleep?
- Can we perceive past memories or abstract ideas without language?
- Are there any characteristics of sign language that speech does not have?
- Does sign language drag any stereotypes? (Check out words like, man, women, girl, boy, gay …)

Monster Hands

 

   

APPROACHING LAYERS THROUGH HANDS

First Experience: Hands Without Seeing

Second Experience: Hands Without Hearing

Third Experience : Atlas

ATHENS WORKSHOP "WORKING WITH HANDS"
at Polytechnic University of Madrid, Superior Technical School of Architecture

See more details at the ATHENS programme webpage:
The ATHENS Programme show