INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY

FEEDBACK SESSION 15/05/14

In today's session we talked about the progress we had made so far with our project in order to receive some feedback and thoughts from Noyale and from the group.

Our project has now moved on from being such a broad topic as memory and is now focusing on memory within improvisation which although is still a broad topic, it feels as if we are becoming more specific about what we are researching as the project moves forward. This was evident to the group through our discussion with them.

We had some good feedback from Noyale which we can work on and incorporate into a further practical session which will take place on Tuesday (20th). After seeing how we looked at how dancers took on other dancers movement in our previous practical she suggested using the following activity to look at this further and test the dominance within a group.

-We choose a rhythm that everyone creates a movement or short phrase to by use of improvisation that they can repeat over and over again for a period of ten minutes. Eventually everyone will begin moving the same. The aim of this activity is to show who within the group has the dominance.

We also will incorporate looking at how rhythm affects improvisation and memory, somehow incorporating this into the practical. This is something that will be discussed on Monday.

In addition to this we plan to look into the relationship between collective and personal memory and how this affects improvisation in a group setting (i.e whether an individual will remember more personal experiences or whether external influences will affect their memory of what has happened).

-Collective memory refers to the shared pool of information held in the memories of two or more members of a group.

-personal memory - memory for episodes in your own life

PRACTICAL EXPLORATION

We only managed to get three participants for our practical session so two of us decided to join in to make up the numbers whilst the other filmed and documented the session. We explained our ideas and research question to the group before beginning the practical.

As planned we revealed the objects for seven seconds and asked the group to create a movement from their chosen object.

For example:

Amy chose the glove and created movement based on shape, positioning her body in a way that resembled the dimensions of the glove.

Jess chose the bracelet and created movement based on the design and pattern, moving arm around her wrist in a way that replicated this.

Terri chose the candle and also chose to create movement based on the shape but also incorporated elements of its use. She turned to create the circular shape and used her hands to mimic the flame of the candle.

Charity chose the make up brush and based her movement on the literal use. She created literal movement, using gestural movement to show exactly how you would use this item.

Laura chose the nail varnish bottle and chose to base her movement on literal use. She created movement to show the opening of the bottle and how you would paint your nails.

We then asked them to repeat this process with a new set of objects but this time changing the way that they created the movement, for example Amy would have to create movement based on the literal use of the object rather than the shape. We did this to allow the participants to create inorganic movement and to move in ways they would not necessarily do naturally.  
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The next stage of the session was to focus on seeing how our participants responded to the improvisation of others. To do this we decided to ask them to pick either one of their movements they had created and to develop that through a five minute improvisation task. We wanted the participants to take this movement, use their instinct to come into the space and respond to others movement.

Through this task we saw a variety of shapes, patterns and literal movement in relation to each object. We also saw some relationships being built through repetition of movements and participants joining in and mimicking others at the same time.

However, the most interesting development from this task was seeing them move out of their comfort zones within improvisation even though the development was small, it was interesting to see much more variety in their improvisation movement vocabulary.

We wanted to explore the role of memory each individual has of their own previous dance experience and how this influences them whilst improvising. 

After discussing this question after this task each participant agreed that they felt their previous dance training DID have an impact on the way in which they think about movement and perform it especially within improvisation.

We also asked the participants questions which gave us some important feedback-

Upon seeing that most of the participants responded to the shape of the objects, we asked why this was.

Their responses were-

-Initial reaction to the object.
-visual
-concept

We asked how they thought their previous training had influenced them-

-sceneography
-they generally draw on previous technique training when improvising
-take on others movement

On how they think about entering the space-

- If they see an opportunity to fill the space
-whether or not they can create a dynamic with another person
-creating interest
-whether their movement would compliment another's.
-how the movement would look to the audience.
-Spatial awareness.

When choosing an object what thing did you remember about it the most?

-Shape
-Originality
-Whichever one gave the most opportunity to create movement.

MEMORY TRAY

Activity One:

a) In our first practical session we will present the participants with a tray of 7 objects - the number recommended for short term maximum memory. This tray will be covered up and will be revealed to the participants for 7-10 seconds. This will allow them to notice and pick out any item of significance to then create improvised movement using their chosen objects as stimulus.

Each participant will pick their object, create movement and then write down how they responded to the object in their notebook ie shape, colour, texture or for its literal use. They will then repeat this process however they will be given a different way of responding to the movement the second time. This is to draw them out of their comfort zone and allow inorganic movement to occur.

b) The secong half of the session will be a chance for the girls to use memory and instinct more in a five minute installment. They will be allowed to come in and out of the space as they please, performing either of their own two motifs. We will develop this further by allowing them to use others choreography and motifs to create a collage effect of all of their own personal styles. This will be the starting point and the stimulus for the rest of the choreography created.

Activity Two:

Memory and emotion exercise - We will read the participants two seperate lists of 7 words.

EMOTIONS (example) sad, angry etc...

MEMORY (example) water, love etc...

Each participant will pick one word from each column and create a short motif linking the two words together drawing on memorable experiences. Example: water and sadness reinacting a drowning experience.

We hope that these experiments will allow us to practically answer and explore our research questions as well as giving us movement for choreography. The whole process will be documented on film, blog and notepad.

Thoughts on three new research questions

• What role does memory of previous experience/dance training have when improvising in dance?

• How do dancers acknowledge and change response methods through improvising with objects?

• How do dancers use short term memory to recall and influence their improvised movement?

Exploring the role of memory in Improvisation

"when improvising, where thought and intuition are merged, the mind is said to just tell your body how to move".

People with high working memory capacity generated more original and novel ideas than those with low working memory capacity. People with high working memory capacity were also more persistent than those with low working memory capacity. That is, they generated lots of ideas within a category. Other statistical analyses suggest that this difference in persistence explains the difference in the originality of people’s ideas.

This may take affect whilst improvising regarding whether the individual has a high working memory capacity or a low one.

In order to be creative, it is important to get beyond familiar ideas. Chances are, when you start thinking about something,  the first few things you come up with will be variations on ideas you have encountered in the past. Only after you think through those more mundane ideas are you likely to start really generating something new.

Reflection on todays presentation- 6th May

In today's session we got the chance to present our project and the research we had gathered so far to the group and through the means of a workshop try out some practical activities to gain additional evidence to enable us to progress further in our project.

We decided to show our presentation first on the basis that it would give our participants a clear idea of our project and prepare them for the workshop. Once we had done the presentation we received feedback from the tutors. 

They were pleased with the amount of research that we had done and could see that we had put in a lot of effort but they were concerned that we were focusing too much on how people learn dance in a scientific/psychological way and that our project seemed too educational. We were advised that we had not looked enough at how we would use choreography to test our research enquiries. They were also worried that the research we were doing was too broad and not specific enough. Although saying this they also said that a lot of research projects such as this begin as being quite broad and become more refined as they progress, which is what we hope will happen with ours.

As a result we did not end up doing our workshop, postponing it till Thursday so that we can make some changes. 

Going forward we have decided to brainstorm and look more specifically at how we can look at memory and dance from a choreographic perspective. We will also plan our next practical session with this in mind.

More from Duke University

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BYkIL0EufQ&noredirect=1

An interesting article....

http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/July-2010/Your-Body-Memory-Builders

Existing Studies

A quiz devised by Duke University to collect data on visual learning...

http://dukedpn.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6JAM4STD7cVLUK8