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Content Provider | ACM Digital Library |
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Author | Kirsh, David |
Abstract | To explore the question of physical thinking -- using the body as an instrument of cognition -- we collected extensive video and interview data on the creative process of a noted choreographer and his company as they made a new dance. We report here on two phenomena: 'marking' and 'riffing'. Marking refers to dancing a phrase in a less than complete manner. Dancers and theorists tend to assume that dancers mark primarily to save energy. But closer study shows that because marking behaves like a physical representation it can serve as a vehicle for thought. It lets dancers reflect on their movement in more focused ways than either dancing 'full out' or reflectively thinking entirely in their heads without moving at all. The second phenomenon, riffing, is a practice the choreographer has of physically trying out movement ideas before sharing them with his dancers. The obvious reason to riff is to practice a movement before teaching it. Again, though, close ethnographic study suggests that riffing serves a second function. It may be performed more as a technique for generating new ideas than for practice. When riffing, it seems that the choreographer is taking an idea that first arose in one sensory modality and mapping it into another modality. Different sorts of movement ideas are generated in our different sensory systems -- vision, kinesthetic, haptic, proprioceptic. Each system codes a movement in a slightly different way. By mapping between these modalities representational or experiential differences can be exploited for creative ends, provoking new ideas in the choreographer and giving him insight into the aesthetic possibilities of a movement. Both these phenomena suggest that the body can be harnessed as a thing to think with in a manner that extends the central idea of embodied cognition. The essence of embodied cognition is that cognitive processes are grounded in modality specific brain systems; that the way we originally acquired concepts through sight, sound, and touch, for instance, continues to affect our understanding of those concepts, long after they have been abstracted from specific senses. Understanding, therefore, is akin to simulation. When we grasp the meaning of a situation -- a person cutting a tomato, or the wind whipping up the sand at the beach -- we reactivate sensory traces of what it would be like to cut a tomato or to feel and observe sand being blown in the wind. Our research on dance extends the idea of embodiment because it shows how working across modalities reshapes conceptualization beyond its origins. It shows how the body can figure in extending the range of thought. It also shows how the body can carry some of the weight of thinking -- it can mediate certain forms of thought. |
Starting Page | 15 |
Ending Page | 16 |
Page Count | 2 |
File Format | |
ISBN | 9781450308762 |
DOI | 10.1145/2037296.2037303 |
Language | English |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
Publisher Date | 2011-09-13 |
Publisher Place | New York |
Access Restriction | Subscribed |
Content Type | Text |
Resource Type | Article |
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