Participatory sense-making in physical play and dance improvisation: drawing meaningful connections between self, others and world
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Carolien Hermans
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The starting point of Carolien Hermans' research is how both children's physical play and dance improvisation by professionals can be considered somatic practices where sense-making manifests itself in and between bodies, and through movement. Hermans makes use of the concept of ‘participatory sense-making’ (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007) to understand the role of movement, and the lived experience, in the way we make sense of self, others and world. This philosophical-scientific premise is closely aligned with enactivism, a movement in cognitive science that claims that cognition is not so much an internal, mental phenomenon as it is the result of the dynamic relationship between an organism and its environment. Enactivism offers an alternative to traditional models that conceive of cognition as an internal information-processing process in which perception and action serve primarily as inputs and outputs. Body, context, and (the lived) experience thus play a crucial role in the sense-making process.
Movement Practice: A developmental research journey in improvised drumming
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Conor McAuley
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
About this exposition:
This work documents a progressive journey in improvised drumming. Research was centred around movement, and focused on three major players in the improvised world; Milford Graves, Chris Corsano, and Steve Davis.
The page contains written text analysis of performance, as well as video performance, voice-over, and face-to-camera critique. This mixed methodology, whilst lending itself well to the documentation of progress, resulted in a deepening of knowledge that has now crucially been folded back into my own practice.
Research questions include:
What can I learn from analysing the playing of other drummers? Why do we (drummers) move in certain ways in performance, and why do we play the things we do? What are the processes involved in movement? What can I learn from and how can I develop an awareness around a movement practice? All these questions are aimed at improving my own movement practice behind the drum kit. They were at the fore of this entire portfolio. I address these questions in text, and through video documentation of my own playing.
Themes include:
The role of the body, expression, embodied play, and animated/gestural play. An overarching theme of movement is central to all of this.