[dance-tech] Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance, March Seminars
- From: Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:20:36 +0000
:: relayed info ::
Colleagues are warmly invited to CKP's March seminar programme. See schedule
and abstracts below.
All the events below are at the Canterbury campus.
Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance, March Seminars
Friday March 15th, Jarman Studio 2, 5 till 6.30
Jo Machon: The (Syn)aesthetics of Lundahl & Seitl’s Rotating in a Room of
Moving Images
Framed by the ideas and questions proffered in Josephine's forthcoming
book, 'Immersive Theatres - intimacy and immediacy in contemporary
performance', this informal presentation will consider the
(syn)aesthetics of immersive performance. (Syn)aesthetics describes both
a style of performance and a mode of analysis for that performance,
drawing upon neuroscientific research to define its own terms of
analysis. It adopts and adapts specific terminology from neurocognitive
research into the condition of synaesthesia and uses the sensual language
of the science to help explain and describe the way in which we
appreciate certain types of visceral performance, of which the immersive
form is exemplary. (Syn)aesthetics draws attention to qualities of
experience undergone that can lead to a richly layered 'sense-making' of
the work, both in the moment and subsequent to the event. To illustrate
elements of immersive practice and clarify aspects of (syn)aesthetics the
discussion will focus on Lundahl & Seitl's 'Rotating in a Room of Moving
Images'; applying a (syn)aesthetic analysis of the work Josephine will
examine how intimate and (im)mediate embodied encounters enable a 'felt'
appreciation of the concepts at the heart of this work.
Josephine Machon is the Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary
Performance at Middlesex University, London. Her book on 'Immersive
Theatres', which profiles the work of Lundahl & Seitl amongst other
innovators of the form, will be published in May with Palgrave Macmillan.
A chapter exploring ideas introduced in this seminar will be published
with Methuen in Nicola Shaughnessy's edited collection, Affective
Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being'. Josephine is
the author of Immersive Theatres: intimacy and immediacy in Contemporary
Performance' (2013) and (Syn)aesthetics: Redefining Visceral Performance
(2009, 2011). She is also co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in
Performance and Technology which includes the edited collections
Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and
Interactivity (2006), Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies:
Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance (2010) and Identity,
Performance and Technology (2012).
Wednesday March 20th, 5-7, Jarman 6, 5 till 6.30
Virginia Pitts (Department of Film, Kent School of Arts) and Soo Hee Lee (Kent
Business School)
Kinesthetics and Collective Creativity
Virginia Pitts: ‘Writing From the Body: Kinesthetics and Entrainment in
Collaborative Screenplay Development’
The predominant industry mode of screenplay development involves writers
sitting alone at a computer to produce numerous drafts in periodic consultation
with producers, directors and script editors. The exception to this rule is
the process of devising screenplays through guided actors’ improvisations.
However, in thedevelopment of my film, Beat(2010), a dialogue between dramatic
and choreographic improvisations was established and a process of “kinesthetic
writing” evolved as a result. US-based script consultant, Joan Scheckel,
employs comparable processes to develop narrative feature films collaboratively.
Based on her own film practice, interviews with Joan Scheckel, and scholarship
in disciplines ranging from the arts and humanities through cognitive
psychology to neuroscience, this paper employs the praxical knowledge and
inductive theorising germane to practice-based research to investigate how
musicality, movement and dance can be utilized in the collaborative development
of narrative screenplays, and proposes that the embodiedness of human
understanding evident in processes of entrainment such as kinesthetic empathy
and mirroring may be harnessed to enliven scriptwriting and function more
generally as a modus vivendi.
Dr. Virginia Pitts
Virginia's screen production work spans drama, documentary, screendance and
various hybrid forms for both film and television. Threading through her work
is an exploration of how the sensoryqualities of film can be harnessed to
communicate with audiences. In particular, Virginia’s films explore the
potential for kinesthetic empathy and haptic visuality to trigger emotional and
intellectual responses via the senses. Recent scholarly research explores
various forms of inter-subjective relations and the permeability of borders
between mainstream and experimental or marginal cinemas. Virginia is currently
developing the rhythmic structure of her next screenplay in collaboration with
a composer.
‘Digital Dance Archives: An Interactive Design Experience for Collaboration and
Creation’
Soo Hee Lee
s.h.lee@xxxxxxxxxx
Abstract:
Archiving dance, in comparison to visual arts, literature or music, has always
been more challenging, triggering huge intellectual debate and unease. Due to
its immaterial nature, dance as the ‘art of presence’ makes archiving a
demanding task, but also an urgent one in the fear of inevitable disappearance.
Traditional dance documentation, as creating a score in order to reconstruct a
dance work is often considered as limited, failing to reflect the ‘liveness’ of
any performance. In contrast to informative and historical approaches to dance
archives, choreographers such as Wayne McGregor, Emio Greco and William
Forsythe have embraced digital media and interdisciplinary perspectives placing
‘living archive’ at the heart of the creative process. ‘Living archive’ as a
dance archive enhanced by digital technologies is now a medium that
communicates experience and enables interdisciplinary collaboration between
choreographers, dancers, philosophers, cognitive scientists and human-computer
interaction experts. Scholars, such as Scott deLahunta, replace mere archival
information with the notion of ‘resources’ that consolidate knowledge, past and
present experiences, while channelling interdisciplinary team working within
which debates and critiques leads to new approaches of creating dance.
This talk stresses the role of digital media in archiving, which are able to
enhance documentation of creative process, while paving the way to rethink,
reinvent and reflect on dance practices toward new techniques, methods and
approaches. As dance archives become an integral part and medium of dance
creation, they are evident to what Bolter and Gromala define as ‘remediation’.
In particular, they are underpinned by ‘transparent remediation’, inserting
past dance experiences, while capturing and archiving the outcome of present
collaboration. In contrast to previous forms of dance archiving, they enable
creative exploration and experimentation as an interactive process with digital
media that leads to the discovery of new movements and ultimately new dances, a
process called ‘reflective remediation’. In conclusion, this talk will examine
to what extent interdisciplinarity influences dance archiving and thus dance
studies and research: do choreographers need to leave certain skills behind
–what Richard Sennett calls ‘de-skilling’– in order to develop new skills, or
does interdisciplinarity broaden and push the boundaries of performance art in
order to reinvent, rethink and ultimately remediate itself based on new
resources that enable new perspectives to arise. Ultimately, dance archives are
discussed as by-products of this interdisciplinary creative process that fuel
creativity and maintain memory not just as a score, but as an interactive
design experience that occurs in a given place and time.
Soo Hee Lee is Professor in Organization Studies at Kent Business School,
University of Kent. He is also an adjunct professor at the GraduateSchool of
Culture Technology, KAIST and a visiting professor of the Creative Design
Institute, Sungkyunkwan University. He is the Director of the Creative City
Forum and a Fellow of the 21st Century Foundation. He has published on science
and technology policy, arts policy, design management,innovation, comparative
institutions, and international business. More recently his research has
explored digital convergence, remediation and collective creativity in
architecture, fashion, food and contemporary dance.
Wednesday March 27th, 4Bridging Art & Science: little pictures and bigger ones,
4.14 (University of Kent, Canterbury Campus SW101)
Philip Barnard
Scientific Advisor, Wayne McGregor Random Dance and
Visiting Scientist, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.
Joint Session between Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems
(http://www.kent.ac.uk/psychology/research/ccncs/) and the Centre for Cognition
and Kinesthetics and Performance (http://www.kent.ac.uk/ckp/)
Relationships between art and science have always been intricate –
philosophers, scientists and cognitive archaeologists have wondered at, and
debated the nature and origins of human innovation and creativity. Scientists
have used their kind of systematic and hard data about perception, thought,
language, meaning, emotion and social interactions to elucidate the workings of
the creative arts and how they affect the minds of individuals and groups.
Equally artists have been inspired by, and can draw upon all sorts of different
technologies and scientific ideas in the process of making an artwork. This
talk will summarise and draw upon a decade-long collaboration between the
Choreographer Wayne McGregor and cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.
It will show examples of little pictures – pieces of evidence about the
thinking of choreographers and dancers – particularly on the roles of variation
in the use of imagery. It will also set these littlepictures in the context of
three classes of “bigger” pictures that address the inferential problems of
linking ideas about brains, minds and behaviours, how bridges are built and
used between sources of inspiration and artworks and how the processes of
artistic innovation in the generation of a specific artwork unfold over time.
It will conclude by providing two examples of how understandings these bigger
pictures can support the augmentation of artistic processes, not only for the
artistic elite but also in the classroom.
ALL WELCOME
Dr Nicola Shaughnessy
Professor of Performance
Director of the Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance
School of Arts
Jarman Building
University of Kent
Canterbury
CT2 7UG
01227 764000 (switchboard)/01227 827516 (direct line)
http://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/staff-profiles/profiles/main/shaughnessy_n.html
http://www.c4ckp.org/
www.imaginingautism.org
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Applying-Performance-Socially-Affective-Practice/dp/0230241336
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