Expanding Spatial Intelligence through Drumming for Architectural Designers

OVF’s Joy Tang recently did a UnityDrum session with the Taipei-based Interbreeding Field team. They recently completed a project restoring an abandoned paper mill. This is the 10th year of the tradition of Interbreeding started by its current director Li H Lu. Lu received his M.A. (Master of Architecture) at SCI-ARC（Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

In Joy’s words:

The whole team was inspired to engage and the director asked me to continue the class with them. Lu is very interested in how I coordinate the rhythm within and with-out. I see the struggles in him and each student when they drum. I design the process as I intuitively know and use my knowledge and love for drumming as the tool for me to reach the goal of our time together.

They told me that they want to do some team building (as the drum brought out so much of them they could not just want everything accomplished in one drum circle) so I decided to have everyone there to decide what they want to accomplish. The idea was to design the event so that all goals could be met. I started with the question I asked them to give to the circle and told them to find their own answers while being with the circle.

Each person found the answers they were looking for. This was based on their own sharing of what the goals were. It is my design to make everyone in the 2 hour process a full participant and owner of their own quest. We also share collectively and openly as a temporary community feeling the power of the being that the drum represents and brings out in us.

When I speak of the “power of the being” what I mean is that we feel each other’s presence in a candid way - and create a space to show one’s own emotions in a safe place that we co-created.

Joy creates a space for describing and talking about things through the drumming process and engaging people that is needed for the collective organism to breathe. This is referring to both the collective group congregated and also the individual. The objectives of the people involved were considering/cultivating that ability first of how to relate to the wholeness within themselves and the larger group whole of which they the participants are a part of.

The oneVillage Initiative (OVI) has the Physical Convergence Points (Unity Centers) inside the Integrated Knowledge Wheel graphic that explains the OVI process at the conceptual level. However this does not mean or imply necessarily that the physical has to be a permanent one, it is merely the space that the group decides to make for its congregation at that point of time in Unity as a Collective. It is a vision of people in unity, not by being forced or coerced, but by being active participants in the reintegration process of being whole with themselves, the world and universe once more and overcoming the alienation of our modern culture. Also we avoid getting too attached to the disparity that we feel or out of suffering, we may have experienced and focus instead on our innate ability within to transcend, heal and overcome the challenges that each of us has to deal with in a unique way. Drumming provides us the means to revisit our own capacity and it is more direct than any other tools i feel as the drum is representative and symbolic of the heart beat of life.