A post by Honey Jernquist

Where is your imagination? Let’s point at it — right now — with your index finger.

Really commit to it, and sit with it, pointing out that place or spot, somewhere on your inside, where you site that feeling, that flicker: imagination.

Let’s talk about it. 

I’ll tell you where I feel my imagination — mostly right in the center of my head, dancing with some kind of rippling, zippy, zappy, neuro-electrical netting, coursing through my weird what-am-I-doing-here flesh body — whoa, the Me-ness! Whoa the You-ness! Whoa, the inside! Whoa, the outside!

But don’t think about it too hard.

Run with it!

Have fun with it!

There’s a quasi-visual quality about it, yes, but it’s more nuanced than that.

Sometimes I taste it on the tip of my tongue or that I might lift softly off the earth — my body, a portal or a membrane through which everthing is modulated. 

It’s both science-y and new age-y. Infinity meets mortality.

The more I’ve thought about this weird play of inside and outside — the way each of our imaginations drapes itself over everything in the material world with the possibilities and the realities of the past, present, and future, and makes our communal reality — the weirder and more infinitely inside and outside imagination becomes for me. Imagine more infinity! 

We’ve just started talking about it. Aphantasia/hyperphantasia are recent words. The spectrum of experience with the inner voice/monologue is a stone just turned over. Maybe it’s been too weird and awkward. Maybe we haven’t quite known how. Maybe we’ve been too dismissive of the imagination, and its insistent indefiniteness, to really get into the thick of it with each other. In my experience even artists don’t really talk about it. Maybe imagination is always so busy seeming elsewhere as spectacle, or too constantly and perpetually close in its interplay with the quotidian and mundane. Good thing we’re talking about it now! It’s very important!

I think that’s some of the reason for this blog: to pierce this veil. My contribution, I think, is to ask how does imagination feel? How deep and how far can it go? How direct can we be in our inquiry? 

Below is a prototype score I created last year as research for my MA in Exhibition and Experience Design. Through a series of scores considering the imagination, people are invited to imagine a series of scenarios demonstrating aspects for consideration of “Where is the imagination?”

In the process of considering imagination and a prototype on the imagination, I realized our focus of work with the imagination is usually focused on output or results, a materialization, often cited as “creativity”. Exploring my own somatic responses, I felt like we were skipping a step. We all feel imagination within us, but really where? What is that experience? What does it feel like? What is it like to share the experience with others?

Leaping off from my own performance work, and reflecting on historical mental puzzles, I created eight linked imagination prompts/scores (see pictures/prompts below) to key into a variety of basic experiences that engage with different “visualized” perspectives on imagination. I kept the experience open and conversational as this is a crucial aspect of this prototype: getting people to talk about their experiences. I followed the scores up with some simple quadrant graph surveys to assess basic ideas of fun and interest - was the experience “worthwhile”, and how the experiences felt to perform.

One very important thing to consider in this investigation is that the “mental image” aspect of this prototype functions, like all things, on a spectrum, from aphantasia (no visualization aspect of imagination) to hyperphantasia (extremely, even excessively, vivid visualizations). Ultimately, the entire exercise is about generating exchange about what the imagination experience is like for each of us, and is open to all.

Secondly, the prototype involves pointing, which is a powerful gesture. Acquired in infancy, and used dynamically throughout life, in certain contexts and cultures pointing may be considered rude, especially pointing at others. The encultured power of this action does come into play here. Feeling scrutinized is weird! But the power of this gesture in these exercises is palpable and important for its power of scrutiny. Pointing may occur in any way that a participant might deem to be pointing.

Please try the scores, alone or with others, and let me know what you think. See what happens when you take more notice. See what happens when you keep pointing. Thank you!

Original Participatory Score: “Where is the imagination?” Prototype activation, Fall 2024

“Where is the imagination?” score breaks down into eight embodied investigations of different experiences and awarenesses of imagination (for each, see the prompt/picture below):

1. Imagination in the body/self

2. Imagination in another (body)

3. Imagining together, the same idea

4. Imagining what someone else is imagining

5. Imagining viewing yourself (“third person”)

6. Imagining view from yourself (“first person”)

7. Imagining transformation of self

8. Projecting imagining out of the body

This is a guided experience. Guide is an active participant in the experience.

Throughout the experience, guide should be prepared to conversationally share biology, neurology, and philosophy ideas on the imagination, as well as their own experiences of the scores.

The vibe is casual, fun, and conversational. 

Scores are held for some amount of time. 

Encourage people to hold on to the pointing and engage with that time.

Experience/Talk/Share.