User:Karina/thesis outline

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3 JAN

Intro 1000

Chapter 1 2000
intro 500
body 1000
conclusion 500

Chapter 2 2000
intro 500
body 1000
conclusion 500

Chapter 3 2000
intro 500
body 1000
conclusion 500

Conclusion 1000

9 NOV

Q: To what extent can we archive dance?
A look into capturing (choose 3 things: technique; rhythm; notation; culture; non-verbal communication) in social dancing


Intro

• Film / video is not enough to document dance, difficult to learn from
• Video only good from the perspective of an audience, not dancer
• Swing almost died out, although there are videos of dancers
  • Frankie Manning and Norma Miller brought it back in 1990s
  • Swing Kids movie and Gap commercial followed
  • Need personal connection / contact
  • Passing knowledge person-to-person
  • Today we can search 'Frankie' on YouTube and get plenty of content. 20-30 years ago you needed to know people who had tapes (thought added on 12th November)
  • Quotes from dancers that got taught personally by either Frankie Manning or Norma Miller
  • (hopefully a quote about notation)

• Why I am interested
  • As a dancer
    • hippocampus and MRI scans
    • loss of memory
    • retrieving memory
    • previously thought about project to capture the relationship between Sean and I (the urgency was in capturing us before it was too late, before we split ways and before my memory fades) - sadly our splitting came faster than expected
    • I have a fear of losing my ability to dance, of losing my memory (again), of forgetting the memories I am forming now with my new ‘dance family’
    • Swing is a dance I'm passionate about, practise 5-13 hours a week
    • Swing is a very popular dance again, even though it almost died out. What made this trend reappear? (What makes trends reappear? - larger scope, maybe too broad?)
  • As a designer
    • Tension between documenting and experiencing
    • Drive of society to capture everything
    • Unable to completely capture an experience yet
    • Own opinion about that chase - will capturing an experience help us be more empathetic / change of perspective?
    • Future of experience sharing / publishing

• Dance as a language
  • Judith Lynne Hanna - dance has grammar
  • Non-verbal communication
  • Non-verbal jokes
  • Connecting points (on body)
    • Shoulders, arms, hands, backs
    • Roles of leads v.s. follows
• Can dance be tangible?
  • Finding some tangibility in intangible experience
  • Show examples of intangible experiences - difficult to describe smell for example
  • It's archivable if tangible?
  • Explain the difference between archiving / documenting / preserving
    • Explain what archiving is to me (personally)
  • Explain aim in research question

Documentation in form of notation

• Different types of graphical notation
  • Examples of documenting dance in a written / graphical form
    • 17th–18th century Feuillet system
    • Works of Merce Cunningham
    • Works of Rudolf Benesh
  • Why does music have a universal (accepted) score system, and dance doesn't?
  • Listed above choreology aims and pros / cons
  • Partially archivable if broken down into sections
  • Laban v.s. footstep mats
  • Rudolf Laban incorporates direction, body part movement, duration and dynamics of the movement - but too complicated to learn
  • Footsteps inefficient - too simple, just feet position and their order
  • Neither show rhythm - e.g. salsa and samba mats look very similar, yet very different dance due to rhythm, speed, dynamic (atmosphere)
• My solution for capturing rhythm
  • Experiment #1: Basic choreology analysis
    • “Breaking the dances down into direction, speed and rhythm showed how changing one, influences another. The speed can change the tone, yet the rhythm must stay the same for the dance style to maintain identifiable.”
  • Music as a blueprint
  • Graphics showing step by step procedure (seconds, BPM, count, rhythm, footwork to rhythm)

Memory

• Insight into history of discovery of memory
  • Kandel's sea slugs experiment and hippocampus
  • Brenda Milner - procedural memory
• Types of memory diagram
• Muscle memory
• Experiment #2: Jive mix up
  • “The moment when one step ended, and a new one started, is when we noticed hiccups in our fluidity. Our brains needed to process new information: what is the new step; in which direction will it go? Memory shows to be vital in maintaining flow.”
• Mihal Csiksgentmihalyi's flow
  • Brain can only process 110 bits per second
  • Difficult to learn a dance when thinking about count, rhythm, direction, spacial awareness
  • Learning one at a time is a better method
    • Once one is covered, and the more it’s practiced, the more muscle memory is trained
• Experiment #3: Learning a new dance style
  • “forgot about time passing by and enjoyed the moment, smooth like Bersgonian-event time”
• Interview dancers for their learning and memorising methods / tools (could I turn this into an experiment? find similarities in how people document? what do they document? - thought added 10 December)
  • Documentation (video / graphical notation / notebook)
  • Speed / rhythm / count (8-count, musicality, scatting)
    • Robert Levine’s Perception of Time
    • Structured clock-time v.s. flowing event-time
      • Norbert Wiener’s view on Newtonian and Bergsonian time (might not include if too long)
      • Newtonian-clock time and Bergsonian-event time (might not include if too long)
      • Alan Kay - not so clean B&W perspectives (might not include if too long)
    • Dance has both, structure in count and rhythm, flowing in movement and direction
    • Perception of time in dance: structured 8-count v.s. flexible scatting
    • Musicality: structure in jazz music (relate back to blueprint) - AABA
  • Spacial awareness (bird’s eye view, dancers perception, 3rd party perception)
• Relate back to Experiment #1: Basic choreology analysis?

Capturing an Experience

• How do we capture an experience?
• Struggle to capture something intangible
  • Will never be successfully documented / communicated
  • Difference in perception, difference in background, bias, even to future self
  • Future self, reimagining memory
• Proposing a system: transferring real, to abstract, back to real in layers
  • List and briefly explain each layer (rhythm, speed, movement, direction, intent / atmosphere)
    • Show comparison of different dance styles and how their layers differ / are similar
  • More data may communicate experience more?
  • John Cage’s Fontana Mix
  • Explain how each layer could be considered a reality
  • Dipping in and out of realities to understand bigger picture
    • Janet Cardiff’s Walks
  • In order to fall into flow, you need to forget about each layer individually, and combine them
  • Mixable realities
  • Show different types of media capturing the same element (e.g. video, sound and graphic score of rhythm)

• Include experiments throughout this chapter, like in previous chapters

Conclusion

• can we archive dance?
• can we archive rhythm? - yes, using notation
• can we archive memory? - partially, but bias, even to future self
• can we archive culture? -

Bibliography
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2nd ed. Hackett Publishing Comp.

Laurel, B. (2000). Computers as Theatre. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ [u.a.]: Addison-Wesley.

Slater, L. (2005). Opening Skinner's Box. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury, pp.205 - 223.

In 1953 Dr. Scoville’s discovered that memory has a specific location in the brain, in the hippocampus, not scattered around as thought before. Patient Henry Mollison was still able to brush his teeth after his hippocampus was removed, but wasn’t able to create new memories. Dr. Brenda Milner continued her research on Henry and was able to identify procedural, or unconscious memory. Dr. Eric Kandel at the same time tested how information travels through neurones of sea slugs. He was able to prove that every time a task is repeated, the stronger the webwork of carrying that task becomes, the stronger the memory, the stronger and smoother the electrochemical conversation between those particular synapses in the brain becomes. This would explain falling into a flow, whether for athletes, musicians or dancers. The more a task is practiced, the stronger the memory, the smoother the task becomes.

Ted Talk, (2009). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. [video] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en [Accessed 3 Mar. 2017].

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presented his research about flow during a Ted Talk in 2004. He explained how our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. That would explain how new dancers cannot fall into flow when trying to think about the rhythm, tempo, direction and body movement. Csikszentmihalyi continued with explaining how our brains need to feel high levels of challange and high levels of skill in order to be stimulated enough to reach flow. His key points that prove we have obtained it are:

* Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated

* A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality

* Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing

* Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task

* A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the bounderies of the ego

* Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes

* Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward

Wiener, N. (1965). Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pr.

A binary division in understanding time can be found in Robert Wiener’s view on Newtonian and Bergsonian time. He explains this contrast using astrology and meteorology. Newtonian time, just like astrology, is strict and mathematical (scientific? measurable?). Wiener describes, “the positions, velocities, and masses of the bodies of the solar system are extremely well known at any time” (p.32). Newton used this time perception for engineering and space, not as a social human system. Bergsonian time on the other hand, like meteorology, is flexible and more adaptable to human experiences. Wiener continues, “the number of particles concerned is so enormous that an accurate record of their initial position and velocities is utterly impossible” (p.33). Bergson emphasised the difference between Newton’s reversible time in physics - where if the movement of the planets was rewinded, nothing would change - and Gibbsian irreversible time in evolution and biology - where rewinding would always cause something new. If you were to implement this time perception into dance, speed (counts / BPM) and rhythm are what create the structured blueprint, whereas motion moulds itself and cannot be recreated when rewinded.

8 NOV

Q: can we archive dance?
A look into capturing (choose 3 things: technique; rhythm; notation; culture) in social dancing


Documentation in form of notation

• Film / video is not enough, difficult to learn from it
• Swing almost died out, although there are videos of dancers
  • Frankie Manning and Norma Miller brought it back in 1990s
  • Swing Kids movie and Gap commercial followed
  • Need personal connection / contact
  • Passing knowledge person-to-person
  • Quotes from dancers that got taught personally by either Frankie Manning or Norma Miller
  • (hopefully a quote about notation)
• Different types of graphical notation
  • Examples of documenting dance in a written / graphical form
    • 17th–18th century Feuillet system
    • Works of Merce Cunningham
    • Works of Rudolf Benesh
  • Why does music have a universal (accepted) score system, and dance doesn't?
  • Listed above choreology aims and pros / cons
  • Laban v.s. footstep mats
  • Rudolf Laban incorporates direction, body part movement, duration and dynamics of the movement - but too complicated to learn
  • Footsteps inefficient - too simple, just feet position and their order
  • Neither show rhythm - e.g. salsa and samba mats look very similar, yet very different dance due to rhythm, speed, dynamic (atmosphere)
• My solution for capturing rhythm
  • Experiment #1: Basic choreology analysis
    • “Breaking the dances down into direction, speed and rhythm showed how changing one, influences another. The speed can change the tone, yet the rhythm must stay the same for the dance style to maintain identifiable.”
  • Music as a blueprint
  • Graphics showing step by step procedure (seconds, BPM, count, rhythm, footwork to rhythm)

Memory

• Insight into history of discovery of memory
  • Kandel's sea slugs experiment and hippocampus
  • Brenda Milner - procedural memory
• Types of memory diagram
• Muscle memory
• Experiment #2: Jive mix up
  • “The moment when one step ended, and a new one started, is when we noticed hiccups in our fluidity. Our brains needed to process new information: what is the new step; in which direction will it go? Memory shows to be vital in maintaining flow.”
• Mihal Csiksgentmihalyi's flow
  • Brain can only process 110 bits per second
  • Difficult to learn a dance when thinking about count, rhythm, direction, spacial awareness
  • Learning one at a time is a better method
    • Once one is covered, and the more it’s practiced, the more muscle memory is trained
• Experiment #3: Learning a new dance style
  • “forgot about time passing by and enjoyed the moment, smooth like Bersgonian-event time”
• Interview dancers for their learning and memorising methods / tools
  • Documentation (video / graphical notation / notebook)
  • Speed / rhythm / count (8-count, musicality, scatting)
    • Robert Levine’s Perception of Time
    • Structured clock-time v.s. flowing event-time
    • Norbert Wiener’s view on Newtonian and Bergsonian time
• Newtonian-clock time and Bergsonian-event time
  • • Alan Kay - not so clean B&W perspectives
    • Dance has both, structure in count and rhythm, flowing in movement and direction
    • Perception of time in dance: structured 8-count v.s. flexible scatting
    • Musicality: structure in jazz music (relate back to blueprint) - AABA
  • Spacial awareness (bird’s eye view, dancers perception, 3rd party perception)
• Relate back to Experiment #1: Basic choreology analysis?

hippocampus
MRI scans
loss of memory
retrieving memory

Capturing an Experience

• How do we capture an experience?
• Struggle to capture something intangible
  • Will never be successfully documented / communicated
  • Difference in perception, difference in background, bias, even to future self
  • Future self, reimagining memory
• Proposing a system: transferring real, to abstract, back to real in layers
  • List and briefly explain each layer (rhythm, speed, movement, direction, intent / atmosphere)
    • Show comparison of different dance styles and how their layers differ / are similar
  • More data may communicate experience more?
  • John Cage’s Fontana Mix
  • Explain how each layer could be considered a reality
  • Dipping in and out of realities to understand bigger picture
    • Janet Cardiff’s Walks
  • In order to fall into flow, you need to forget about each layer individually, and combine them
  • Mixable realities
  • Show different types of media capturing the same element (e.g. video, sound and graphic score of rhythm)

Dance as a Language

• Judith Lynne Hanna - dance has grammar
• non-verbal communication
• non-verbal jokes
• connecting points (on body)
  • Shoulders, arms, hands, backs
  • Roles of leads v.s. follows

Conclusion

• can we archive dance?
• can we archive rhythm? - yes, using notation
• can we archive memory? - partially, but bias, even to future self
• can we archive culture? -

Bibliography
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2nd ed. Hackett Publishing Comp.

Laurel, B. (2000). Computers as Theatre. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ [u.a.]: Addison-Wesley.

Slater, L. (2005). Opening Skinner's Box. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury, pp.205 - 223.

In 1953 Dr. Scoville’s discovered that memory has a specific location in the brain, in the hippocampus, not scattered around as thought before. Patient Henry Mollison was still able to brush his teeth after his hippocampus was removed, but wasn’t able to create new memories. Dr. Brenda Milner continued her research on Henry and was able to identify procedural, or unconscious memory. Dr. Eric Kandel at the same time tested how information travels through neurones of sea slugs. He was able to prove that every time a task is repeated, the stronger the webwork of carrying that task becomes, the stronger the memory, the stronger and smoother the electrochemical conversation between those particular synapses in the brain becomes. This would explain falling into a flow, whether for athletes, musicians or dancers. The more a task is practiced, the stronger the memory, the smoother the task becomes.

Ted Talk, (2009). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. [video] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en [Accessed 3 Mar. 2017].

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presented his research about flow during a Ted Talk in 2004. He explained how our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. That would explain how new dancers cannot fall into flow when trying to think about the rhythm, tempo, direction and body movement. Csikszentmihalyi continued with explaining how our brains need to feel high levels of challange and high levels of skill in order to be stimulated enough to reach flow. His key points that prove we have obtained it are:

* Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated

* A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality

* Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing

* Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task

* A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the bounderies of the ego

* Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes

* Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward

Wiener, N. (1965). Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pr.

A binary division in understanding time can be found in Robert Wiener’s view on Newtonian and Bergsonian time. He explains this contrast using astrology and meteorology. Newtonian time, just like astrology, is strict and mathematical (scientific? measurable?). Wiener describes, “the positions, velocities, and masses of the bodies of the solar system are extremely well known at any time” (p.32). Newton used this time perception for engineering and space, not as a social human system. Bergsonian time on the other hand, like meteorology, is flexible and more adaptable to human experiences. Wiener continues, “the number of particles concerned is so enormous that an accurate record of their initial position and velocities is utterly impossible” (p.33). Bergson emphasised the difference between Newton’s reversible time in physics - where if the movement of the planets was rewinded, nothing would change - and Gibbsian irreversible time in evolution and biology - where rewinding would always cause something new. If you were to implement this time perception into dance, speed (counts / BPM) and rhythm are what create the structured blueprint, whereas motion moulds itself and cannot be recreated when rewinded.

26 OCT

Note for Marloes:
didn't change much since 5th October

• added synopsis in bibliography
• added more reasons why I'm interested (as a dancer) - finally starting to understand my drive and aim, so first two paragraphs will need to be changed, no need to re-read them

What you want the thesis to be about?
I'm investigating the tension between documentation and experience. As technology advances, we are trying harder and harder to capture experiences. No matter how much we try to explain or document the action, we are only communicating a fragment of it. Whether sharing holiday photos on social media, or culinary shows, the viewer will not receive the 'full picture' unless the viewer experiences it themselves. Even then, it is a personal / subjective version of that experience. We can try to fill in those missing gaps by backing it up with more media: showing more photos; playing certain music (summer soundtrack); or explaining how something smells. The more we add to this 'archive' / collection of documentation, the closer we are to sharing the experience, yet are we getting any closer? What tools could help us do that? Will we ever manage? What may happen once we achieve that? (Will that be a simulation? - possibly too far? maybe final thought for thesis?)

Instead of looking at experiences as a whole, I will mainly focus on social dancing. The research is a fluid connection between psychological theory regarding topics such as: memory; falling into flow; spacial awareness; (graphical) notation; and unspoken-communication / interaction between the dancers, as well as practical experiments related to these topics. There is no strict rule whether I take a theory and create an experiment out of it, or create an experiment and find appropriate theory to back it up. One experiment leads to another as topics are related. (The experiments are the methodology / correlation between thesis and graduation project.) The experiments are conducted with both participants who dance, and those who do not. Although the focus is on social dance experience, most experiments do not aim for the participants to dance. Topics such as: social interaction; non-verbal communication; or spacial awareness can be expressed in other forms (think Sims).

Reasoning why I'm interested:

• importance of mix reality (viewing experience from different perspectives / using different media (film + notation + sound), resemblance vs. representation - Nelson Goodman)
• future of experience sharing / publishing
• simulations - can we push it too far?
• experiencing someone's experience? will it ever really work? will it bring social / political awareness or respect? what's the danger behind it? (again, possibly too far. maybe final thought for thesis?)

Reasoning as a dancer:

• how can I best communicate an experience?
• to what extent should I communicate my experience, and let the viewer / student have their own? (structure v.s. fluidity, not so B&W)
• previously thought about project to capture the relationship between Sean and I (the urgency was in capturing us before it was too late, before we split ways and before my memory fades) - sadly our splitting came faster than expected
• I have a fear of losing my ability to dance, of losing my memory (again), of forgetting the memories I am forming now with my new ‘dance family’

Dance is a non-verbal language passed down from person to person. If it isn’t recorded, it will be lost. Swing almost died out, until it was reintroduced by Frankie Manning and Norma Miller in the 1990s. Choreology, graphical or written dance notation, is a method for conservation, yet there are many versions. They range from overly simplistic footstep maps which only communicate footwork, to Lebanotation which represents many aspects such as direction, body part movement, duration and dynamics of the movement, yet is difficult to read and requires time to learn do decode the language. Conserving dance with the use of video is fine if it’s for watching purposes only, yet once it is used for teaching or recreation, it becomes too fast and/or time consuming to constantly rewind small sections.


How it relates to your research at the Piet Zwart so far?
Special Issue 02: Pushing the Score

• look into graphical notation and scores
• John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Rudolf Laban and Rudolf Benesh
• Levine's Time Perception - clock time v.s. event time (how that relates to Wiener's Newtonian v.s. Bergsonian Time)
• structure v.s. fluidity: how does that translate to dance?

notes from Karina/self-directed/Capturing Memories In Time

• how to capture memories?
• dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory, structure of memory / neuroscience and muscle memory
• Psychology of dance

previous written piece: Time Perception in Dance

• Levine's Time Perception - clock time v.s. event time (how that relates to Wiener's Newtonian v.s. Bergsonian Time)
• 3 experiments backed with psychological theory

• experiment 1: basic choreology analysis
  • which analysed rhythm, spacial orientation and notation systems
  • with the psychological base of dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory
  • and artistic base of: Merce Cunningham; Rudolf Laban; and Rudolf Benesh

• experiment 2: Jive mix up
  • aimed to see how much the fluidity of a dance was disturbed when the order of the choreography was changed
  • with the psychological base of dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory
  • with the theoretical base of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s take on flow

• experiment 3: Learning a new dance style
  • noting the experience / challange of learning Swing basics during a private class without any prep
  • with the theoretical base of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s take on flow

Bibliography
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2nd ed. Hackett Publishing Comp.

Laurel, B. (2000). Computers as Theatre. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ [u.a.]: Addison-Wesley.

Slater, L. (2005). Opening Skinner's Box. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury, pp.205 - 223.

In 1953 Dr. Scoville’s discovered that memory has a specific location in the brain, in the hippocampus, not scattered around as thought before. Patient Henry Mollison was still able to brush his teeth after his hippocampus was removed, but wasn’t able to create new memories. Dr. Brenda Milner continued her research on Henry and was able to identify procedural, or unconscious memory. Dr. Eric Kandel at the same time tested how information travels through neurones of sea slugs. He was able to prove that every time a task is repeated, the stronger the webwork of carrying that task becomes, the stronger the memory, the stronger and smoother the electrochemical conversation between those particular synapses in the brain becomes. This would explain falling into a flow, whether for athletes, musicians or dancers. The more a task is practiced, the stronger the memory, the smoother the task becomes.

Ted Talk, (2009). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. [video] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en [Accessed 3 Mar. 2017].

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presented his research about flow during a Ted Talk in 2004. He explained how our nervous system is incapable of processing more than about 110 bits of information per second. That would explain how new dancers cannot fall into flow when trying to think about the rhythm, tempo, direction and body movement. Csikszentmihalyi continued with explaining how our brains need to feel high levels of challange and high levels of skill in order to be stimulated enough to reach flow. His key points that prove we have obtained it are:

* Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated

* A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality

* Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well we are doing

* Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task

* A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the bounderies of the ego

* Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes

* Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow becomes its own reward

Wiener, N. (1965). Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pr.

A binary division in understanding time can be found in Robert Wiener’s view on Newtonian and Bergsonian time. He explains this contrast using astrology and meteorology. Newtonian time, just like astrology, is strict and mathematical (scientific? measurable?). Wiener describes, “the positions, velocities, and masses of the bodies of the solar system are extremely well known at any time” (p.32). Newton used this time perception for engineering and space, not as a social human system. Bergsonian time on the other hand, like meteorology, is flexible and more adaptable to human experiences. Wiener continues, “the number of particles concerned is so enormous that an accurate record of their initial position and velocities is utterly impossible” (p.33). Bergson emphasised the difference between Newton’s reversible time in physics - where if the movement of the planets was rewinded, nothing would change - and Gibbsian irreversible time in evolution and biology - where rewinding would always cause something new. If you were to implement this time perception into dance, speed (counts / BPM) and rhythm are what create the structured blueprint, whereas motion moulds itself and cannot be recreated when rewinded.

5 OCT

What you want the thesis to be about?
I'm investigating the tension between documentation and experience. As technology advances, we are trying harder and harder to capture experiences. No matter how much we try to explain or document the action, we are only communicating a fragment of it. Whether sharing holiday photos on social media, or culinary shows, the viewer will not receive the 'full picture' unless the viewer experiences it themselves. Even then, it is a personal / subjective version of that experience. We can try to fill in those missing gaps by backing it up with more media: showing more photos; playing certain music (summer soundtrack); or explaining how something smells. The more we add to this 'archive' / collection of documentation, the closer we are to sharing the experience, yet are we getting any closer? What tools could help us do that? Will we ever manage? What may happen once we achieve that? (Will that be a simulation? - possibly too far? maybe final thought for thesis?)

Instead of looking at experiences as a whole, I will mainly focus on social dancing. The research is a fluid connection between psychological theory regarding topics such as: memory; falling into flow; spacial awareness; (graphical) notation; and unspoken-communication / interaction between the dancers, as well as practical experiments related to these topics. There is no strict rule whether I take a theory and create an experiment out of it, or create an experiment and find appropriate theory to back it up. One experiment leads to another as topics are related. (The experiments are the methodology / correlation between thesis and graduation project.) The experiments are conducted with both participants who dance, and those who do not. Although the focus is on social dance experience, most experiments do not aim for the participants to dance. Topics such as: social interaction; non-verbal communication; or spacial awareness can be expressed in other forms (think Sims).

Reasoning why I'm interested:

• importance of mix reality (viewing experience from different perspectives / using different media (film + notation + sound), resemblance vs. representation - Nelson Goodman)
• future of experience sharing / publishing
• simulations - can we push it too far?
• experiencing someone's experience? will it ever really work? will it bring social / political awareness or respect? what's the danger behind it? (again, possibly too far. maybe final thought for thesis?)

Reasoning as a dancer:

• how can I best communicate an experience?
• to what extent should I communicate my experience, and let the viewer / student have their own? (structure v.s. fluidity, not so B&W)

Dance is a non-verbal language passed down from person to person. If it isn’t recorded, it will be lost. Swing almost died out, until it was reintroduced by Frankie Manning and Norma Miller in the 1990s. Choreology, graphical or written dance notation, is a method for conservation, yet there are many versions. They range from overly simplistic footstep maps which only communicate footwork, to Lebanotation which represents many aspects such as direction, body part movement, duration and dynamics of the movement, yet is difficult to read and requires time to learn do decode the language. Conserving dance with the use of video is fine if it’s for watching purposes only, yet once it is used for teaching or recreation, it becomes too fast and/or time consuming to constantly rewind small sections.


How it relates to your research at the Piet Zwart so far?
Special Issue 02: Pushing the Score

• look into graphical notation and scores
• John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Rudolf Laban and Rudolf Benesh
• Levine's Time Perception - clock time v.s. event time (how that relates to Wiener's Newtonian v.s. Bergsonian Time)
• structure v.s. fluidity: how does that translate to dance?

notes from Karina/self-directed/Capturing Memories In Time

• how to capture memories?
• dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory, structure of memory / neuroscience and muscle memory
• Psychology of dance

previous written piece: Time Perception in Dance

• Levine's Time Perception - clock time v.s. event time (how that relates to Wiener's Newtonian v.s. Bergsonian Time)
• 3 experiments backed with psychological theory

• experiment 1: basic choreology analysis
  • which analysed rhythm, spacial orientation and notation systems
  • with the psychological base of dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory
  • and artistic base of: Merce Cunningham; Rudolf Laban; and Rudolf Benesh

• experiment 2: Jive mix up
  • aimed to see how much the fluidity of a dance was disturbed when the order of the choreography was changed
  • with the psychological base of dr. Brenda Milner’s procedural memory
  • with the theoretical base of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s take on flow

• experiment 3: Learning a new dance style
  • noting the experience / challange of learning Swing basics during a private class without any prep
  • with the theoretical base of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s take on flow

Bibliography
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2nd ed. Hackett Publishing Comp.

Laurel, B. (2000). Computers as Theatre. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ [u.a.]: Addison-Wesley.

Slater, L. (2005). Opening Skinner's Box. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury, pp.205 - 223.

Ted Talk, (2009). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. [video] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en [Accessed 3 Mar. 2017].

Wiener, N. (1965). Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Pr.



Old notes
I'd like to

• publishing the unpublishable
• capturing an experience
• how to capture an experience?
• to what extent can we capture an experience?

• capturing an experience or relationship
• Sean's connection
• notation
• archive
• dance as language (conversation between people)

• how can I best communicate an experience?

Feedback: worried about: sharing experiences in the future - dangerous thing to get into, if it was to be a reality sometimes it feels archival, conservation, but also experiments based on memory, spacial awareness.. is it one thing, are they connected

1st & 2nd paragraph: address 2 separate things general enquiry, 2nd is inability for photograph to capture emotion how does dance fit? the way it’s introduced sounds like 2 different avenues dance as cultural society that has no alphabet communicate to offspring, transmit tradition, history, culture (not standard western culture)

depending how far you want to push it, simulation is another thing. feels like something different. feels less like history media representation rather than historical representation

documenting but it’s real time

time perception sounds good huge aspect of archival and cultural context

archival and document social dance experience (emotionally)? define the goal a little more

figure out your medium how to represent data, how to represent thesis itself (book? poster? film?)

investigate other forms of dance, cultural anthropology, dances that died out, that may lead to to another direction + backs swing death mention ceremonial, ritual dances in different cultures (that may help)

non-verbal communication - research more into that / explain it in more detail / not easily documented

personal & subjective experience, how will you document it as a global experience? you want others to participate explain how it’s not just my experience - interviews with dancers explain simply, no matter how much I share my experience, you will interpret it subjectively “mallorca is great

instructions and teaching other people, constituent part about these experience (“video is fine, but not to learn from”)

“The experiments are conducted with both participants who dance, and those who do not. Although the focus is on social dance experience, most experiments do not aim for the participants to dance.” - those who like it and those who don’t