Visual Memory

Dancers learn by watching, doing, marking, and creating imagery that helps to retain movement patterns. These approaches may have developed intuitively, but recent brain studies in memory confirm they were on the right track. 

Consider the work of movement science pioneers Lulu Sweigard and Mabel Todd (founders of Ideokinesis), who heavily employed visualization in their methods. They intuited the mirror neuron theory, which holds that there are special groups of neurons in the brain that respond in a similar fashion whether watching or doing a movement.

Dancers are lay brain scientists of sorts, on the forefront of understanding the interplay between learning, memory, and the relationship between mind and body.

Auditory Memory

-The Auditory memory is the ability to process information presented orally, analyse it mentally, and store it to be recalled later.

 

-Those with a strong capacity for this type of memory are called auditory learners.

- The ability to learn from oral instructions and explanations is a fundamental skill required throughout life.

Kinaesthetic Memory

Kinaesthetic Memory is the sensation by which bodily position, weight, muscle tension, and movement are perceived. How we receive information in this form is by using our senses (shown in diagram above) to enable our body to memorize the information going in.

HOW does this memorizing take place?

Scientists have discovered that there are a large number of internal brain structures which work together with the input and output brain structures to form fleeting images in the mind. (2003) Using these images, we learn to interpret input signals, process them, and formulate output responses in a deliberate, conscious,way.

But after a while, the "seeing-thinking-doing" gradually becomes "seeing-doing" because your muscles seem to "know" and "remember" just what to do. What you're learning now is speed, i.e. how to perform the task carefully and quickly. That's muscle memory.

Scientists call this "kinaesthetic memory" or "neuro-muscular facilitation" and they speak of "sensory-motor" learning, since you are combining sensing input, i.e. what you see with your eyes, with motor output, i.e. what you do with your body. 

- Oliver Gaviglioli and Ian Harris (1 Jan 2003). Thinking Visually: Step-by-step Exercises That Promote Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic Learning. England: Pembroke Publishing Ltd. 25-54.

Psychological stuff

As beginners at psychological frameworks, an important start to improving knowledge was to learn from the basic level of how do we remember?

We wanted to know how your memory goes through the motions in order to recollect. Does it remember movement more, less, easier, harder?

We are intrigued...

Inspiration from everywhere..

Graeme Sullivan, 2006,  Artefacts as evidence within changing contexts.Working Papers in Art and Design 4. Available onlinehttp://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol4/gsfull.html

“A central feature of art practice is that it embodies ideas that are given form in the process of making artworks. Irrespective of the informing sources, media preferences, or image-base, the artist exercises individual control over the creation and presentation of artefacts as forms of knowledge. Further, the images and ideas created have the capacity to not only change the artist’s conceptions of reality, but also influence the viewer’s interpretation of artworks. Consequently art practice can be seen as a form of intellectual and imaginative inquiry, and as a place where research can be carried out that is robust enough to yield reliable insights that are well grounded and culturally relevant.

Changing ideas..

When exploring the idea of site specific work on April 28th, we came to a standstill. Although we knew we were interested in the researching and documenting protocols, we found little else of interest in the space area. We decided to go for a more adventurous idea of memory.

The main points we want to explore are;

Personal memory
Dancers movement memory
How do we record what we learn
(Physically and mentally)
How does one recall movement in the brain

These became the basis to some of our research questions...

1) what is the process of remembering and recording movement
2) how does a dancer pick up steps
3) how does a dancer learn off of video as a tool of memory recapping
4) do counts and numbers help more for movement memory or is it internal breath

Looking into these concepts sparked a range of activity ideas for our sessions of research.
We decided an interesting one would be to create movement for a class, and movement for a camera, playing the dance girls a video of something vs learning it kinaesthetic ally. We want to record the different ways the girls learn, and see if it is harder one way or another.

Another activity we thought would be fun was looking in learning styles for memory of movement. The style arguably most widely acknowledged and used is the VAK preferences.

• Visual
• Audio
• Kinaesthetic

There are three learning modalities adopted from Barbe, Swossing and Malone (1979), which consider the strengths and concepts of these ideas. The main issue is the concept of having a 'style', when arguably it is just a preference. Peter Flemings VARK model is an adaption of this. 

We are now in the process of devising these activities for exact time and content precision, when finished we will upload! We also are making a schedule for the timeline we have, in order to keep a tab on how much time we are spending on what, as to not fall behind

Bye for now

C x

Walter Burke Barbe; Raymond H. Swassing; Michael N. Milone, Jr. (June 1979). Teaching Through Modality Strengths: Concepts and Practices. Columbus, Ohio: Zaner-Blosner.

• Walter Burke Barbe; Raymond H. Swassing; Michael N. Milone, Jr. (June 1979). Teaching Through Modality Strengths: Concepts and Practices. Columbus, Ohio: Zaner-Blosner. ISBN 978-0-88309-100-5.

• Walter Burke Barbe; Raymond H. Swassing; Michael N. Milone, Jr. (June 1979). Teaching Through Modality Strengths: Concepts and Practices. Columbus, Ohio: Zaner-Blosner. ISBN 978-0-88309-100-5.

First Ideas

Our first ideas were exploring something that we have altready studied, but did not delve deeply into.

We discussed;

Gender
Identity
Spectating
Roles
Space

We then discussed what methods we are comfortable in, and decided on improvisation. We felt that improvisation with identity and gender is something we explored in the Gecko workshops, and wanted to push ourselves. We then ruled out Roles, as it would not fit in with the improvisation in site specific work.
This left us with spectatorship and site specific work, which work well together.

Theoretical frameworks

The potentials of space by A Oddley (2006) was a framework we looked into. It discussed online the theory of sceneography, and touched on space. From this book we took on several points, such as the importance of space in dance, and the impact of changing space. We also drew on the booklet given to us by Sarah Alexander on Site Specific work. From this we begun our research in the library on practitioners and there work involving space and audience placement.

Goodbye for now =)