scholarly journals Improvisation as a Way of Knowing

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Training Methods ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Past Experimental Work ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
Perception Action

This paper proposes a theory of improvisation as a way of knowing. Different musicians may know about similar musical structures in different ways; different ways of knowing facilitate particular kinds of perception and cognition that underlie different performance behaviors. Some of these ways of knowing can facilitate improvisatory performance practices. The details of these improvisatory ways of knowing can be characterized by psychological and neuroscientific experimental work that compares differences in perception and cognition between groups of musicians depending on their training methods and performance experiences. In particular, perception-action coupling is a promising place to begin making such comparisons. This approach provides an alternative operationalization of improvisation for scientific study that is not susceptible to the problems that arise when describing cognitive processes in culturally contingent and music-theoretically relative terms such as novelty, spontaneity, and freedom, as past experimental work has done. Its hypotheses are also more readily falsifiable. This perspective can also connect an understanding of musical improvisation to other domains of improvisation and to historical and ethnomusicological work, as well as square it with more general theories in cognitive science, such as perception-action coupling. Finally, such a formulation has productive implications for work on improvisation thatdoesengage with concepts like novelty, spontaneity, and freedom that are traditionally invoked in improvisation discourse.

Is Expertise All in the Mind?

2019 ◽  
pp. 242-261
Author(s):  
Chris Baber
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Physical Interaction ◽  
Environmental Constraints ◽  
Optimal Parameters ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Perception Action

In this chapter, theories that explore the relationship between action and performance are reviewed. These theories ask whether our cognitive activity depends on “internal representations” or whether it can be explained by our interaction with the world around us. In other words, rather than projecting a model of the world outwards in order to plan and guide our actions, these approaches see physical interaction with the world as a form of cognitive activity. In other words, the focus of cognition is less about using mental representation and more about perception–action coupling between us and our world. The conclusion is that this points to an account of expertise which sees it as a matter of sensitivity to environmental constraints and opportunities, together with the ability to focus on optimal parameters in a given situation. The chapter consider ways in which such sensitivity could be probed through field study and interview with experts.

Choral Monuments

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Shrock
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Musica Ficta ◽  
And Performance ◽  
War Requiem ◽  
Felix Mendelssohn

This book provides extensive and in-depth material about eleven epoch-making choral masterworks that span the history of Western culture from the Renaissance to the modern era. Included are Missa Pange lingua (Josquin Desprez); Missa Papae Marcelli (G. P. da Palestrina); B Minor Mass (J. S. Bach); Messiah (G. F. Handel); The Creation (Joseph Haydn); Symphony no. 9 (Ludwig van Beethoven); St. Paul (Felix Mendelssohn); Ein deutsches Requiem (Johannes Brahms); Messa da Requiem (Giuseppe Verdi); Mass (Igor Stravinsky); and War Requiem (Benjamin Britten). The works are presented in separate chapters, with each chapter divided into three basic sections—history, analysis, and performance practice. Discussions of history include biographical information about composers related to the work at hand, historical perspectives, and text sources. Analyses are focused on formal and musical structures, salient compositional techniques, and elements of music particular to the work being discussed, including parody and motivic organization. The discussion of performance practices includes primary source quotations about a wide range of topics, from performing forces, tempo, and phrasing of each work to specific issues such as tactus, text underlay, musica ficta, metric accentuation, rhythmic alteration, recitative, fermatas, and ornamentation. Musical examples and primary source quotes illuminate the material.

scholarly journals It’s Time to Change Direction on Agility Research: a Call to Action

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Young ◽  
Russell Rayner ◽  
Scott Talpey
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Primary Outcome Measure ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Change Of Direction ◽  
Movement Component ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
Perception Action ◽  
Opinion Article

AbstractAgility is an important skill for both attackers and defenders in invasion sports such as codes of football. On the sporting field, agility requires reacting to a stimulus, often presented by an opponent’s movement, before a change of direction or speed. There is a plethora of research that examines the movement component of agility in isolation, which is described as change-of-direction (COD) ability, and this is thought to underpin agility performance. This opinion article proposes that COD ability should not be researched as the only or primary outcome measure when the objective is to inform agility performance in invasion sports. It is argued that pre-planned COD movements and tests lack ecological validity because they lack perception-action coupling and involve movement out of context from the game. The movement techniques and strength qualities required for the performance of COD tests can be quite different to those required for agility. It is suggested that COD tests can be applied to sports that involve pre-planned COD movements, but researchers should endeavour to use agility tests when studying invasion sports. Some new methods for assessing one-on-one agility contests are reported as potentially valuable for future research, and examples of research questions are provided.

scholarly journals The Ways of Knowing the Pandemic With the Help of Prompted Autoethnography

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780042096013
Author(s):  
Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Different Types ◽  
And Performance

This article discusses how different forms of autoethnographic production prompted by diverse forms of academic self-expression can lead to different types of knowing. Utilizing five examples from the Massive_Microscopic project, where participants responded to 21 different prompts inviting autoethnographic reflections about COVID-19 global pandemic, the article explores the responses from the perspective of alternative ways of knowing, reflecting on questions of motherhood, self-care, and performance in academia. Whether visual, rhythmic, or text produced from the perspective of things, the different modalities of the prompts allowed unexpected knowledge to emerge and supported deeper and more colorful reflections. Exploring the personal experience with the pandemic is expanded by the qualitative inquiry supported by different (self-)expression formats.

Perception-Action Coupling in Grasping of Children with Down Syndrome

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert J.P. Savelsbergh ◽  
John van der Kamp ◽  
Walter E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Children With Down Syndrome ◽  
Hand Size ◽  
Dimensionless Ratio ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
Perception Action

Twenty-one children with Down syndrome (DS) and 20 without disability, ages 3 to 11 years, completed the experiment in which they were asked to grasp and lift cardboard cubes of different sizes (2.2 to 16.2 cm in width). Three conditions were used: (a) increasing the size from the smallest to the largest cube, (b) decreasing the size from the largest to the smallest, and (c) a random order of sizes. Children with DS were found to have smaller hand sizes in comparison to age-matched children without DS. In addition, the shift from one-handed to two-handed grasping appeared at a smaller cube size for children with DS than for children without DS. However, when the dimensionless ratio between object size and hand size was considered, the differences between groups disappeared, indicating that the differences in grasping patterns between children with and without DS can be attributed to differences in body size.

Toward a Trans* Method in Musicology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Baitz
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
Material Conditions

This chapter shows that the methods used to approach queer musical subjects cannot adequately account for transsexual ones. To show this, I distinguish queer methods from transsexual methods, while acknowledging a continuum between those extremes. Queer aesthetic and interpretive models highlight a transcending of bodily and other material structures; transsexuality invests in the body. Transsexual studies situate embodiment and material conditions as primary sources of knowledge (or forms of “counterknowledge”), thereby providing new ways for musicologists to consider the meaning that musical structures hold. Likewise, transsexual artists become legible within musicology through an application of transsexual studies (notably including phenomenology and new materialisms) to music. Ultimately, by integrating transsexual epistemologies with queer ones, a new way of knowing music (a “trans* method”) is suggested.

scholarly journals Virtual Environments for Sport Analysis: Perception-Action Coupling in Handball Goalkeeping

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Vignais ◽  
Benoit Bideau ◽  
Cathy Craig ◽  
Sébastien Brault ◽  
Franck Multon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Task ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Perceptual Judgment ◽  
Task Condition ◽  
Sports Science ◽  
Radial Error ◽  
Judgment Condition ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
Error Distance ◽  
Perception Action

In sports science, the link between the experimental protocol and the subject's behaviour in real condition is a key issue. Virtual reality enables to examine this topic because of the reproducibility of situations and the total control of animated humanoids in situations similar to the real world. This study aimed to analyze the influence of the degree of perception-action coupling on the performance of handball goalkeepers in a virtual environment. 8 national handball goalkeepers were asked to react to the actions of a virtual handball thrower in two conditions: a perception-action uncoupled condition (defined as a judgment task) and a perception-action coupled condition (defined as a motor task). In the judgment condition, goalkeepers were asked to make a perceptual judgment with their hand in their own time after the virtual throw; in the motor task condition, goalkeepers had to react in real-time to the virtual throwing motion. Results showed that percentage of successful response was higher in the motor task condition and radial error (distance between the ball and the closest limb when trial was unsuccessful) was lower for the same condition. Implications of our findings are discussed, as well as suggestions for further research..

scholarly journals Performing with Plants in the Ob-scene Anthropocene

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-142
Author(s):  
Annette Arlander
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
Performance Art ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Art Form ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance As Research ◽  
Artistic Research

Is there a way for the anthropocentric and anthropomorphic art form par excellence, the theatre, or performance art for that matter, to expand beyond their human and humanist bias? Is the term Anthropocene in any way useful for theatre and performance studies or performance-as-research? In the anthology Anthropocene Feminism (Grusin 2017) Rosi Braidotti proposes four theses for a posthumanist feminism: 1) feminism is not a humanism, 2) anthropos is off-center, 3) zoe is the ruling principle, 4) sexuality is a force beyond gender. These assertions can undoubtedly be put on stage, but do they have relevance for developing or understanding performance practices off-stage and off-center, such as those trying to explore alternative ways and sites of performing, like performing with plants? In this text, I examine Braidotti’s affirmative theses and explore their usefulness with regard to performance analysis, use some of my experiments in the artistic research project “Performing with plants” as examples, and consider what the implications and possible uses of these theses are for our understanding of performances with other-than-human entities, which we share our planet with.

scholarly journals (The) Margin(s) Speak! A Multifaceted Examination of Practising ‘Men who have Sex with Men’ Development in Bangkok

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
James Burford
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Performative Writing ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Development Interventions ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Sex With Men ◽  
Development Literature

<p>In this study, I explore the experiences and understandings of twenty-seven participants involved with ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM) development interventions in Bangkok, seeking to better understand the complex realities that emerge in practising MSM development. I endeavor to interrogate the development field’s limited understandings of sexuality as well as the discourses present (and absent) in existing Queering Development research. By acknowledging my personal journey in and through this re-search, I also examine authentic ways-of-being a queeresearcher, noting the challenges I faced and power I discovered in re-searching and re-presenting my own work. Ultimately, I explore the link between the paucity of local developing queer narratives in Queering Development and the limited space students have, to be visibly queer in mainstream theses – to do this I use the metaphor of ‘the margins’. In framing this re-search, I draw nourishment from queer, critical, poststructural and Participatory Action Research epistemologies. Methodologically, I carried out semi-structured interviews and focus groups, as well as using other tools such as mapping and story writing. I also spent time ‘hanging out’ at both Rainbow Sky and Bangkok Rainbow, enabling both a deeper appreciation of the work carried out by the organisations as well as providing an opportunity to gather materials. The generation of data did not cease once I left ‘the field’; I continued to produce autoethnographic texts including poetry and a re-search performance which I used both as a method of enquiry and re-presentation of this study. This multifaceted approach enabled diverse questions (emerging across disciplines) to be addressed in my work. To re-present my analyses of participants’ accounts I have celebrated different ways-of-knowing re-search. I have used poetry and consciously performative writing, visual art (including graffiti) and performance alongside traditional scholarly prose. This approach enables multiple voices to emerge all over the page, questioning the hegemony of the bound, straight-lined thesis and the ‘legitimate’ knowledges it generally contains. I argue that queer postgraduate students may be able to open spaces to produce authentic work, despite pressures to perform straight research texts. Yet, pressures to conform to traditional understandings of theses may be painful reminders of their own positions in academia and society. Overall, my study offers intimate, multifaceted perspectives on the agency of MSM development practitioners in Bangkok and my own experience of finding power through queeresearch. I hope it will contribute to more nuanced understandings of local practitioners of MSM development in Queering Development literature, and to scholarship on queer postgraduate students’ experience of re-search more generally.</p>

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