User:Karina/thesis

jump to graduation project

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5 NOV

how does your brain recall memories?
how comparable is a brain to an archive?
how does your brain compare to an archive?

3 NOV

How can we better approach capturing complex experiences through archiving?

three actors of interactions:

• own experience (Self)
• experience in dancing with others
• experience of audience

2 NOV

1 NOV

Meeting with Michael

how to revisit experience?
not about observing
perception of performer, not audience

can you gain sense of sight again?
one of the few tangible aspects in dance: contact with parter

buzzing suit in Todays Art from 2014
could try out to open up joysticks, buzz rhythm on legs (not feet) to get audience to feel rhythm

Brian House
Janet (mixable realities, gives bigger depth when hearing her previous audio recordings)

experiments / tests

1. record the sound / rhythm in footsteps
2. record dance body cam
3. buzzing rhythm

1. talk to blind dancer, see their point of view
2. talk to elderly from Dans Paleis

Ted: Alone Together by Sherry Turtle
look at both past and present views

replaying my experience in somebody else's body
keep in mind, not same experience (bias)
not even for future self (reinvent memory)

dance becomes abstraction, becomes dance again
real -> symbolic -> real
breaking complex into layers (look at Michael's notes)

Swing in Rhythm exercise with Becky
lead / follow during swing outs
not tugging, but softly placing one hand above the other (almost levitating)

notes from that class (26th October)
Issues to be aware of in swing outs:

• followers being too early at 4
• not being too far away at 8
• followers coming forward too early at 1
• leads pulling
• keeping arms relaxed and low
• chests facing each other

breaking elements
guttorngard?

set game - create a set that is either:

• all the same
• all different

30 OCT

Vox: Why this awful sounding album is a masterpiece

I love the explanations and supporting visuals to Vox's Earworm podcast by Estelle Caswell. I've added her videos numerous times on this wiki page. All 6 videos available here

Here is another that I missed:
Vox: How a recording studio mishap shaped ’80s music

how to transcribe this video?
try voice to text technique using Google Docs

Meeting with Andre

dance as a system
constants, patterns

mathematical / scientific
formula behind pop songs / jazz songs
generative music, computer write sonata

David Burn (Bob Wilson - Dirty Dozen Brass Band)
Vox relation

notation is not the work, it's the blueprint / a score
Florian - context?

what separates dance and music with resource of score?
music has a way of transmitting score. score is accepted in music, but not in dance - why?

what is this important to you?
look at practitioners that look at memory
search on jstor key terms: dance & memory

Steve Paxton & Trisha Brown
'Material for the Spine'

main problem: not approaching the matter in a way I could deal with

• SongSim looks only at one element (lyrics)
• easy to encapsulate structure
• macro view

can you quantify dance by anything?

write / express BPM differently - shorter distances between lines, show faster BPM
make own notations on Labanotation

Special Issue 02 performance was a two part outcome

1. a (graphical) documenting tool that I could personally use in the future
2. playful, slightly educational, interactive experience for the audience

this frame could be used for the graduation project too

generative systems
squared paper - each square a second
visualisation

"basing on this, this and that factor, found these variables, time is constant"
WSA - looked at language of time to measure / quantify it

Johanna Drucker - Graphesis
pervious event in NY (Sept 2017)

29 OCT

I want the audience to decode a transcribed dance language (notation)
Figure it out by doing?
Mix and matching layers

Measuring time, time perception
Measuring dance
Dance perception

Decoding the language of dance
Need to describe it to document it
Different ways to describe dance (onomatopoeias, rhythm, scatting, graphical notation, BPM)

What was Laban's aim, drive, purpose?

Impossible to fully archive experience?
I suggest tackling this by making a coding system to capture an intangible object / experience / dance

My frustration? Video is actually a shitty medium to capture dance (an experience).
Aim: propose a new system / method / medium. Hopefully can be used for more experiences than just dance

Language has a key (alphabet) and is spread through word of mouth, contact with people.
The medium to archive it / preserve it (apart from word of mouth) are audio (recordings, songs, radio), visual (books, posters) and audio-visual (plays, films, tv)

How did some languages survive when suppressed during history / wars? Why did some die out? How are they being decoded?

26 OCT

Look for podcasts here

"SON[I]A aims to be an alternative way to receive the information produced during Museum activities; audio information brought to us by characters who take part in activities in and around the MACBA."

Feedback from Marloes and Steve

• 1-2 lines for research question
• if describe practise, what is it about?
• think about reader

25 OCT

why I am so keen on documenting / capturing dance?

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

yet I am still focused on notation, memory, the brain, archiving, capturing an experience
what makes it so urgent, so personal?

could it be anything, subconsciously, related to my MS? I do 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’

I don’t want yet another project related to my health (Mind as a Dossier and Epilepic) in my portfolio. I don’t want to be that designer / creative that always falls back on this topic, possibly showing myself as a victim to pity over. The previous 2 were uplifting, educational, eye-opening, helpful.. but do I really want that to be my thing?

small project idea:
play around with light sensitive material that makes text vanish with time
text can be read for a few seconds after contact with light, then disappears
in order to keep the content of the book documented, photos on the phone should be taken? - will that work? isn’t that more light?
comparison to memory. the book is the knowledge that you have a memory, the content is the memory itself
e.g. “I remember eating dinner last night, but I can’t remember what it was”

Look back at previous texts, The Psychology Of Time Synopsis and Time Perspectives and Cultural Diversity, which look into Philip Zimbardo's time perception. I’d consider myself future TP, always planning ahead, excited about future, sometimes worried

• Past TP - focused on positives
• Past TP - focused on negative
• Present TP - hedonism (focus on joys of life)
• Present TP - fatalism (doesn't matter, life is controlled)
• Future TP - life goal oriented
• Future TP - transcendental (life begins after death or the mortal body)

Anna's feedback (summary from recorded conversation)

• don’t worry about it
• nothing to worry about, reasoning behind the start of the project (why I am doing it?) is not evident in work that is presented
• great to have personal starting point, personal things make great things
• everything you're going to do is going to be some representation of yourself, one way or another
• base of project can be health, go off of it, represent it so it's not read as "poor me, I'm sick"
• talk about archiving dance in a more generalised sense, say what you find interesting

The full conversation will be transcribed from audio soon. Here is a snippet that followed:

A: have you tried to discover what would be the best way to gather this experience into one medium, or do you have to have multiple mediums?

K: that's when I started looking into realities, and mixable realities, because if you just focus on one, the more you put data, the more you can express an experience.. although, as a viewer you will never have my experience, you will have your experience. Maybe if you've been to Crete before, then you could re-see what I saw. So you will never manage to get to a point where we can fully have the same experience.

A: Because that's also based on previous experiences

K: So it becomes a bias for sure

23 OCT

Feedback from Aymeric

pick one topic
one is not going to be better than the other
what do you really want to dive into?
make it concrete

1. notation - non-universal / language specific
2. mixable realities - experiencing the intangible
3. subculture - transmission of knowledge
4. archive - usefulness, temporary, making things public

how would you share / present this?
why interesting? in any other field?

1. documentation - graphical / video / notebook
2. special awareness - bird's eye view
3. time / speed / rhythm - structured 8-count / free-flow scatting

sharing in community

Literate programming by Donald Knuth

interest into education: what's the best way to communicate?
perception
normalise / universal method is questionable
again universal method
subtle / diverse, people are perceiving knowledge differently

thesis structure doesn't need to be scientific
experiments / content / tools / methods as text, not appendices
thesis is distant reflexion

diversity in methods

1. topic
2. applied to dance
3. what's the urgency to look into this topic? - reflect

• cultural diversity (preserve, not normalise world)
• pragmatic (interesting because truth in diversity in education. look into history of educational methods)

1. find manner to show collected material

22 OCT

Facebook: Living In The Moment by Jason Silva

11 OCT

Experiment idea:
learn new Lindy steps with a friend using YouTube videos created by own dance school

10 OCT

YouTube: Brain Coupling by Jason Silva

9 OCT

Feedback from Andre

• start small approaches / tests / prototypes / experiments
• explore small themes continuously
• have 3-4 weeks to experiment
• then have 3-4 weeks to reflect on annotation from afar, to narrow down question

• what project could you do in 1 week?
• own note: don't want experiments just conducted by me, it'll be subjective / I know what outcome I want
• how do you represent your outcome? vector image / gif / sound file / sound image

use 3D glasses analogy - experience vs. data
difference in perception

Monoskop: Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art by Salomé Voegelin
sound is fleeting, not attainable
even static image is fleeting / an illusion

Cartographics: a site-specific audio-choreography by Petra Sabisch
strong effects with simple means: headphones; rooftop; mirror(?)
YouTube: Alter Bahnhof Video Walk

wikipedia: Conway's Game of Life
flow-chart-like
make choreographic description, then perform it

to do:

• make one experiment during holiday
• document it in blog / video / graphic notation
• add woman from movement workshop last year onto 'who could help you' list

25 SEPT

Psychology of dance

Dancehub: 5 Interesting Psychological Studies Involving Dancing
(not great source, but has many links to studies related to topic)

1. Dancing Improves Your Brain
2. Mental Practice Can Lead To Improved Dancing
3. The Evolution Of Human Dance May Have Been A Mistake
4. Dancers Can Learn Routines In Different Ways
5. Girls Under Age 16 Have The Most Dancing Confidence

1. Dancing Improves Your Brain Psychology Today: Why Is Dancing So Good for Your Brain?
more references / cited studies about how dancing can improve the brain

2. Mental Practice Can Lead To Improved Dancing
University of California Santa Clara Cruz: UCSC dance research published in prestigious Psychology Science journal

3. The Evolution Of Human Dance May Have Been A Mistake
American Psychological Association: Dance, dance evolution
not many animals have close connections between auditory and motor skills
"Psychologists’ research on the power of movement is giving us insight into why we first danced and how cultures built on that ancient impulse."

4. Dancers Can Learn Routines In Different Ways
Duke Chronicle: Research investigates the science behind dance

5. Girls Under Age 16 Have The Most Dancing Confidence (not related?)
The Guardian: Why do people dance?

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Springer: Thinking in action: thought made visible in contemporary dance by Catherine Stevens and Shirley McKechnie

Buy entire journal for EUR 42.29
or find through HR mediatheek
download links here
link to downloaded file

Abstract
Contemporary dance—movement deliberately and systematically cultivated for its own sake—is examined in the light of the procedural and declarative view of long-term knowledge. We begin with a description of two settings in which new works of contemporary dance are created and performed. Although non-verbal, contemporary dance can be a language declared through movement and stillness of the body. Ideas for new movement material come from objects, events or imaginings that are spoken, seen, heard, imagined, or felt. Declared through movement, the idea becomes visible. Communication in dance involves general psychological processes such as direct visual perception of motion and force, motor simulation via mirror neurons, and implicit learning of movement vocabularies and grammars. Creating and performing dance appear to involve both procedural and declarative knowledge. The latter includes the role of episodic memory in performance and occasional labelling of movement phrases and sections in rehearsal. Procedural knowledge in dance is augmented by expressive nuance, feeling and communicative intent that is not characteristic of other movement-based procedural tasks. Having delineated lexical and grammatical components in dance, neural mechanisms are identified based on Ullman’s (Ullman in Cognition 92:231–270, 2004) alignment of lexical knowledge with declarative memory and mental grammar with procedural memory. We conclude with suggestions for experiments to test these assumptions that concern thought in action in composition, performance and appreciation of contemporary dance.
check out their 60+ references

reference if want to add to own bibliography
Stevens, Catherine; McKechnie, Shirley (2005). "Thinking in action: Thought made visible in contemporary dance". Cognitive Processing. 6 (4): 243–252. doi:10.1007/s10339-005-0014-x.

Jstor: A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning: Dance Education in K-12 Curriculum by Judith Lynne Hanna

20 SEPT

ABC Radio: Songlines: the Indigenous memory code
Japing Aboriginal Art: Why Songlines Are Important In Aboriginal Art
Amazon: Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation by Joseph Weizenbaum (1976)

13 SEPT

look into: scatting as a measurement of time in dance

• it gives more possibilities (to distinguish the 4-'a'-5 counts)
• look into history, how / why / when it originated - Harlem late 1920s?
• learn to scat? what is important that may not seem obvious?

13 SEPT

Human Memory: Sensory Memory

• Sensory memory is the shortest-term element of memory
• Unlike other types of memory, the sensory memory cannot be prolonged via rehearsal
• decays or degrades very quickly, typically in the region of 200 - 500 milliseconds (1/5 - 1/2 second)
• visual stimuli is sometimes known as the iconic memory
• aural stimuli is known as the echoic memory
• touch as the haptic memory
• smell processed in olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex
• smell is strongest as olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex are nearest to the hippocampus

Meeting with Steve
Before starting PZI I was planning to look into digital publishing, interactive PDFs, change in technology and publishing, print vs digital. My thesis would have probably been an analysis of a section of publishing.
At the moment I feel that would be too simple. I'm more interested in creating something I might not get a chance to in the future: a large-scale installation / experience. This would not use a traditional publishing method as a means of communicating my research.
Do I stick to a topic that interests me and use publishing as a means, rather than analyse publishing itself?

• dance notation is a form of communication / publishing
• experiments as research method
• look at Victor's (fine art) thesis - diagrams
• editorial: how will yo present experiments (event? publication?)
• discrete things & how they come together?
• my practise addresses this, this and that
• these things create chapters, which allow for development

• literacy / non-verbal communication
• Sean v.s. new dance partners
• being a good lead or follow. listening communicating signs / signals. communicating by touch
• notation as a means of instruction

• aim: what am I doing? what do I want to make out of it?

Next steps:

• look through previous experiments
• where will they take me? what experiment will flow next? don't stress, it'll flow
  • experiment 1: time perception
  • experiment 2: rhythm and notation
  • experiment 3: flow
  • experiment 4: memory and senses?
  • experiment 5: archive?

7 SEPT

Memories are stored in different senses.
We see, hear, smell things that remind us of things. Smell is able to bring very powerful flashbacks.
Can a movement reminds us of something / anything?

Contact

• Het Danspaleis
• dr Mol / dr Donselaar (Maasstad)
• dr Bert Aldenkamp (Kempenhaeghe)
• therapists?
• bravo europoort - psychiatry specialists / memory tests