Cave Forms worked with collectivity from many angles. The Cave Coast collective practiced foundationally and explicitly with the inquiry, “what is the dance between authorship and collective imagining?” The Collective was invented as a stream of Cave Forms from the onset to explore what could be learned or developed together that could not grow in personal research. Another basic question that was the basis of this collective stream: how to create social spaces that support the work of the instigator, and at the same time have enough room for people to be in their own creative inquiry and growing, simultaneously?
At base, Cave Forms works with connectivity, exchange, and togetherness. One of the paradoxes of being in a cave or a cloth “cave” is that one is provided personal space, but that space is necessarily in relation (to the cloth, with the environment, in place). The very nature of the aesthetic research of Cave Forms that differentiates it from Caving is that there is an intention to feel more than one side, that one can experience sensation from within and also practice with the quality, understanding, or perception that they are being seen. This came to be called “sensation and design” (thank you karen nelson for the phrase), and it is a basis for many ways in practice and in scores that Cave Forms works with imagining and collectivity.
Also in terms of collective imagining, the concept of three was primary in the project. The Three Treasures — in Taoist practice essence (earth), energy (human), and spirit (sky)— are interconnected aspects of life vitality, and are conceptually and formally the seed for a panoply of trios of Cave Forms (see Codex in middle column). This interconnectivity is best seen in the iconography of the vivid grove site: cave, channel, and constellation, aka earth, humanity, and sky-mind. This tripling provided an imagistic form that is embedded with collectivity from its base.