[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment: week 3

Fri Jul 18 00:21:01 EST 2014

Hi All
This has been a really thought provoking discussion so far, which I have been very much enjoying.  Sorry for the late check in this week.  I am in the middle of a research project at the moment and so I am in the midst of shifting thoughts and rich provocations from the field experiences, so I will offer some raw reflections from that.  So apologies if some of the thoughts are not fully formed yet and I would be interested in thoughts and questions that you might have.

This discussion is resonating with me very strongly.  Through dancedigital, I am currently undertaking research with young people in the development of an ipad software application for key stage 1 and 2 and SEN.  The discussions concerning layers of experience, where the virtual starts/ends, and this issue of otherness - self and other, embodied self-technological other - is very relevant to the design issues that we are encountering in developing the app.  We have been including the children in our design discussions as well as observing them in testing situations.  Keeping movement generation at the heart of activities invited by the app is very important to us.

I had been wondering if embodiment refers to an explicit process - one that becomes recognised by the doer. Which leads to the question of how tacit embodied knowledge comes to be known?  I do resonate with the idea of assemblages and convergences - 'the body being a cluster of complex forces', is how Deleuze articulates this - which does seem to be a sensible way of including the many ways of knowing and experience that cohere in ourselves, change and re-configure from moment to moment.  When observing children play with the testing stations that we had set up, they are very open to integrating their activity with the interfaces - the app and tasks become part of their world, their mind and their experience - there is little distinction between self and other and rather a synthesised world emerges for them.  Many of the children had a readiness to give up the 'I' of their selfhood in order to work collaboratively with the technology - it became part of their perceptual and experiential field, again suggesting integrated and systemic processing of information.  I wonder if an out of body experience is ontologically possible?  More, that as suggested, different aspects of experience, intuitive and tacit knowledge come into our field of knowing.  

I thought it might be interesting to share some excerpts of our raw observations. This morning I was observing 7-9 year olds playing with kinect apps through a large screen and computer screen, and the polyfauna app through a hand held ipad mini. 

Brief report of observations on kinect dot app:
The app captures the body of the mover in a animation of dots that change colour based on proximity to the camera.  
This colour modification coupled with the spatial proximity encouraged lots of moving through the space.
Collaboration was encouraged because the children could compose a rainbow of colours by groups of them arranging in different proximity to the camera - which clearly delighted them
The children could make their own bodies several colours by extending and retracting gestures in space
The children were captivated by their digital representation and enjoyed moving with their avatar, who on the large screen, was much larger than them - the larger avatar encouraged the children to move in creative ways so that they could see different patterns emerge in colours and form.
When the same app was run on the computer screen, the spatial range of the children's movements decreased by more than half - I found this very interesting in terms of scale and the experience of embodiment in interactive play/making
The children used an extensive range of gestures, linked movements, solo pathways and group formations.  

Brief report of observations on the polyfauna app:
The handheld nature of the app restricted the movements of the body - the ipad needed to be held in sight.  The small screen encouraged the arms to be bent.  Most of the movements were walking pathways through space, of different speeds.  Children changed their perspective by moving the ipad towards and away from them and sharing it between them.
The children's attention to the polyfauna app was held by the task to find the red dot - this was a very engaging task for them and generated some competition between individuals.

There are lots of issues that we have addressed already - not least deciding that we would develop the prototype for ipad 3!  That in itself has a large range of limitations and possibilities.  We are wanting to research the learning impact of all of these activities - I was very interested in the collaboration and shared learning that was encouraged - the learning together through interactive tasks.

I also wonder about investigating otherness in both interactive and ecological contexts.  The work that I have undertaken in both digital and environmental performance work through systems that decentralise the human, re-position human agency and hierarchical assumptions in knowledge making....I think I have write a separate post about that!

all best 

Tamara

Tamara Ashley, MFA, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Dance
Course Co-ordinator, MA Dance Performance and Choreography
Department of Performing Arts and English
University of Bedfordshire
http://www.beds.ac.uk/shiftdance/about

Artistic Director, dancedigital
www.dancedigital.org.uk

________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Sue Hawksley <sue at articulateanimal.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2014 2:23 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment: week 3

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear Garth

Thanks for the questions you raise about the fluidity of 'self' and the different layers of awareness of lived-experience.

On 15 Jul 2014, at 14:48, Garth Paine <gpaine62 at me.com> wrote:

>  I wonder how we situate our thinking when it is sooo complex to become aware of the point of reference we establish.  I wonder this because I want to find where the virtual begins?
>
> recently a friend shared with me a small experiment probably known to all of you:  Please silently read the following several times - "I can hear the voice in my head reading this sentence"
>
> Which made me think about how virtuality is inbuilt - there appears to be several of me: me reading, me listening, me observing the listener and critiquing the experiment, me in physical form seemingly hosting all of these facets of the self etc - and they all seem distinct and material in some way - so there appears to be at least 4 of me and therefore I am confused perhaps about which is what - ie. where the no-virtual and the virtual transition and which me is embodied and how?

I have been thinking more about  the virtual in terms of potential, and from a performance and theatrical perspective, in terms of play. This might be a play of or on the imagination, sensation, affect, cognitive processes, neural pathways etc. and playing on the confusion of selves and bodies, the plasticity of the brain. Research into mirror neurons reveals that what you see done by another is as important to the brain as what you do yourself. The tactile-vision substitution system (TVSS) developed by Paul Bach-y-Rita reveals that what you feel done is as important as what you see (as Sophia's research is examining).  Electromagnetic stimluation, or damage to, the temporoparietal junction can create hallucinations or out-of-body experiences or the effect of something being as if it were other - something or somewhere or someone else etc. But if we can already 'be' many bodies, where is 'out-of'body'? or is it just another body, always potentially available, revealed by what
 ever medium facilitates it coming to attention?

Story can also capture the imagination and generate individual or group illusions, or mass delusions. After the Fox sisters heard ghostly rapping noises in their farmhouse in the 1840s, they approached Phineas T Barnum, and came up with a format for a show which enabled masses of people to 'see' and 'hear' the dead. Playing on grief and fear and hope, the spiritualist seance seems to me to be an example of a shared virtual space, and a form of distributed cognition. The technologies used by mediums to create apparitions were lower-tech than VR systems (candles and cheesecloth secreted in bodily orifices, brought to 'life' by some clever manoeuvres) but it seems to me there is a lot in common in the quest to create surrogate bodies or experiences.

best, Sue

SUE HAWKSLEY
independent dance artist
sue at articulateanimal.org.uk
http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk

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