Core of Culture Presents:
Journey through the Dance of Form
With Chelley Sherman and Joseph Houseal
A 5-part workshop that begins in ancient Asian wisdom traditions and ends in cutting-edge computational art featuring an astonishing array of visual elements, still and moving.
5 SUNDAYS:
November 3, 10, 17, 24 & December 1 2024
2:30pm PST | 4:30pm CST | 5:30pm EST
90 minutes/ session. Live on Zoom.
All sessions are recorded and available for one year
This series of workshops bridges ancient traditions, advanced interdisciplinary sciences, and art to explore how various forms—from embodied practices, yogic dances, and spiritual rituals to computational models and emergent systems—reveal the invisible structures that shape reality.
By examining how these diverse elements weave and morph across time, and across physical, biological, and energetic domains, we illuminate the patterns that give rise to our conscious and sensory experiences. The ancient and the contemporary are joined in mutual illumination.
By elevating these forms from the subconscious to conscious awareness, over the course of the workshop participants will discover how to use these models as tools to actively engage in transforming their own way of thinking and being. Please join us for a robust and mind-expanding exercise.
PROGRAM DETAILS BELOW
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Pacing The Big Dipper, Taoist Visualization Diagram
WEEK 1 (NOVEMBER 3)
Introduction: Core of Culture director Joseph Houseal welcomes Chelley Sherman and the participants in the class. As a prelude to Chelley's presentation of a Diagram of Emergent Pattern that shows the unfolding of hidden forces and patterns that shape both nature and consciousness, Joseph will provide brief introductions to 7 wisdom traditions referenced in this course, and visual images associated with each:
- Vajrayana Buddhist monastic Cham dance
- Newar Charya Nritya Dance
- Taoist Pure Form charts
- Talismanic cipher scripts
- Hindu Tantra paintings
- Togal/Dzogchen meditation
- Japanese Noh theater.
After this, Chelley will introduce the Diagram of Emergent Pattern that serves as a structure for the workshop:
Void-Wave-Point-Line-Symmetry-Circle-Spiral-Array-Nth Dimension-Projection-Dissolution- Rebirth
WEEK 2 (NOVEMBER 10)
1. The Void: Emptiness
Exploring the concept of emptiness in Eastern philosophy and its connection to quantum dynamics and the quantum vacuum.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Taoist philosophy and meditation techniques
- Japanese Noh Theater
- Tantra Paintings
2. Quantum Dynamics and Electromagnetic Fields: Pure Consciousness as Potentiality
A deep dive into quantum waves, electromagnetic fields, and their parallels with spiritual concepts, enhanced by computational art and diffraction models.
Related Wisdom traditions:
- Rainbow Bodies of Light
- Togal Visions
- Zangtok palri (Guru Rinpoche’s palace of Light in another dimension)
- Self-arising visions.
3. The Point: 1D Space, Local Reality: Seed of Awareness
Symbolic points as the most fundamental unit of existence, local reality, and the bioelectric “self” in relation to cognition and unicellular organisms.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Single-pointed meditation
- Noh theater
- Taoist meditation techniques
4. The Line: 2D Space, Vector, Journey, and Connection
Examining linear time, vectors, integrating wisdom forms with Fourier transforms and computational art.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Vajrayana mandalas
- Charya Nritya
- Japanese Noh
- Tantra paintings
WEEK 3 (NOVEMBER 17)
5. The Circle: Unity, Wholeness, and Cycles
Exploring how cognitive boundaries expand through bioelectricity.
Related wisdom traditions:
- The symbolism of circles in Togal Visions
- Cham dance
- Mudras
- Mandalas
5.1 Oscillations and Harmonics: Archetypal Energies
Focusing on oscillations, harmonics, waves, and fields, including cymatics and hydrogen wave functions, and a look at harmonic oscillations in the brain. Vibratory patterns.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Theosophical Thought-forms
- Energetic archetypes in Vajrayana practices of Charya Nritya and monastic Cham
- How sound and shape take form.
6. The Spiral: Growth, Evolution, and Flow
A study of fluid dynamics, natural forms, and spirals; psychocosmograms and spiral mathematics in computational art and immersive media.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Daoist Talismanic scripts and cyclical cosmology
- Cham dance
- Tantra paintings
Vajrayana Buddhist Cham dance mandala
WEEK 4 (NOVEMBER 24)
7. The Array: Interconnectivity, Dynamic Form, and Complexity
Exploring three-dimensional growth, complex networks, and dynamic systems in nature and ancient traditions. Investigating relationships between dynamic forces and their relationship to states of consciousness; uncovering patterns in natural, biological, and chemical systems. Work with interactive computational and artistic models.
Related wisdom traditions: A dive into complex spiritual and mental forms including:
- Daoist star and body maps
- Noh theater
- Monastic Cham and Tantra paintings
7.1 The Array: Emergence and Agents
Focusing on the concept of emergent form, forms that self-arise when conscious and autonomous agents interact with intelligence, and one another, in unlikely and surprising places. We’ll also explore how emergent consciousness, neural networks, transformative and reconstructive meditation are vehicles for non-dual awakening.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Dzogchen meditation
- Noh theater
- Zen meditation, experience of enlightenment
- Initiate dance practices
- Tantra paintings
WEEK 5 (DECEMBER 1)
8. The nth Dimension & Projection – Transcendence and Multi-Layered Reality
Explores fractals and recursion as fundamental structures of both nature and computation, and how they reveal deeper layers of reality; the self as a nested network of cognitive systems, bioelectric memories.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Noh theater
- Vajrayana visualization meditation
- Charya Nritya and embodied visualizations
- Taoist Pure Form charts.
9. Dissolution , Rebirth and Return
The cycle of the four seasons is the great model of organic rebirth in Nature, replicated in the many cycles of organic and psychological emergence.
Related wisdom traditions:
- Japanese Noh theater
- Monastic Cham dance
- Vajrayana sand mandalas
- Basic meditation visualization practice
ABOUT CORE OF CULTURE:
Core of Culture educates the public, practitioners and scholars about disappearing cultural heritage. We are dedicated to safeguarding intangible world culture, and assisting the continuity of ancient dance tradition, and embodied spiritual practices where they originate, and beyond.
Instructors
Joseph Houseal
Joseph Houseal is founder and director of Core of Culture, a non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding intangible world heritage with an emphasis on endangered dance and movement traditions in the healing, meditation, and martial arts. After a decades long international career as a dancer, choreographer, and director, Houseal began working with ancient Asian dance traditions and has spent the past 25 years working in cultural preservation of sacred dance traditions in the Himalayas and beyond. Houseal has conducted 25 remote dance documentation
expeditions in Asia, and has been Research Fellow at the New York Public Library, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Center, and has been a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council 5 times. Houseal was awarded the Banff Mountain Award in 2003, the first for a cultural project. In 2009, Conde Nast recognized Core of Culture’s work with the Global Vision Award for Cultural Preservation.
His work has been shown in 14 museums worldwide and is part of 5 permanent museum collections. His writings on dance have been translated into Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, and German. The Bhutan Dance Collection is the most widely accessed collection within the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library, for more than 11 years. A contributor to Ballet Review in New York, for 34 years, Houseal writes a monthly column for Buddhistdoor Global. His book, Buddhist Dances, Movement and Mind, will be published by Motilal Banarsidass, in 2024.
Chelley Sherman
Chelley Sherman is a creative technologist and liminal researcher whose work, through immersive installations, data-driven bio-simulations, and digital recreations of complex dynamical and self-organizing systems, delves into the nature of non-ordinary states of consciousness, perceptual illusions, and contemplative practice.
These computational models give rise to emergent, lifelike patterns and behaviors that form the foundation of the immersive works, which become, in essence, meditative psycho-cosmograms. Her works draws viewers through noetic perception and symbolic representation to connect to a higher dimensional order of understanding, inviting them to explore the profound depths of consciousness and the fundamental nature of reality.
Through the expressive medium of computation, Chelley leverages concepts like annealing, optics, fluid dynamics, and agent-driven behaviors to evoke the ineffable essence of consciousness and its multifaceted expressions in the physical and metaphysical realms. This practice connects to a broader sense of vastness, and the fluid, ever-changing nature of perception. It inspires patterns of creation and expressive cosmologies.
Over the years, her portfolio has expanded to include acclaimed VR installations. Chelley was named the featured artist of the United Nations Women's Global Film Festival. Her work has also been featured in important multimedia festivals SXSW, Nuit Blache and Mutek. Chelley's contributions to the development of real-time systems at Sphere Las Vegas, as well as her Emmy Award-nominated immersive films, have been
highlighted in Time Magazine as “pioneering advancements in technology.” They join her collaborations with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as admired works.
