Sensuous Participation

Extra Sensuous Perception

When I first set off on this blip journey almost nine months ago the idea was to take a picture as I was out and about in my local world: walking, running, cycling, commuting between home and work during the week. An observation of a single moment each day. But it is impossible to remain a detached observer in this way. The act of blipping soon started to put me in places I wouldn't normally have been in.

That change started quite simply when I would choose a slightly longer walking route from the train station, taking the canal rather than the road. That has now extended to taking a run on the moor before heading into to the office. Rather than taking a blip while I'm out training, the emphasis has been turned on its head so that it would be more accurate to say that I now get my training done while I'm out blipping! The act of observing has radically changed the world I observe.

This just highlights something which I knew already but is all too easy to overlook as we go about our normal day-to-day business, that we are continually creating our own reality. In the words of Morris Berman, "we are sensuous participants in the very world we seek to describe". And in a way, over the course of these last nine months, I feel I've become more and more sensuously engaged in the whole photographic process. It's become much less about the objective recording of a moment and far more about the subjective participation in that moment.

The act of blipping helps me feel present to the world in a more profound sense than I think I have ever previously experienced. It's possibly akin to the practice of meditation. And I am now left wondering if it is this state of mind to which I've become addicted rather than the blipping in itself? I may need to sleep on that one!