DEEP FLOW: an embodied materiality of dance, technology, and bodily experience

In this research article, I argue that Deep Flow is an embodied materiality that may be experienced by exploring performative phenomenologies, entwining two different sets of research practice: phenomenological methodologies and artistic practice. In Deep Flow the practitioner entangles phenomenological methodologies, methods and research practices performatively such as embodied dance practice, the felt senses, drawings, verbal feedback and their analyses in relation to biometric data, from an embodied heart rate monitor. By looking inwardly, the practitioner experiences embodied phenomena and reveals these experiences in artistic practices in relation to the worlding in which they find themselves. These outcomes are considered as being differing materialities, flowing and converging through relational and phenomenological practice, Deep Flow and through this they become embodied by the practitioner, where new forms of embodied materialities emerge. I argue that in my practice, this is an experiential state, Deep Flow, where all human and non-human elements of the dance practice flow and course through the practitioner as an embodied materiality.

In Flow with Task Repetition During Collaborative Oral and Writing Tasks

The present study draws on Flow Theory to examine the relationship between task repetition and the quality of learners’ subjective experience during task execution. Flow is defined as a positive experiential state characterized by intense focus and involvement in meaningful and challenging, but doable tasks, which has been associated with enhanced self-confidence and task performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). While research shows that certain task characteristics interact differentially with the quality of flow experiences, no research has specifically examined such interaction with task repetition. Participants (n=24) were randomly assigned to a Task Repetition or a Procedural Repetition group. All participants first completed a two-way decision-making gap task in both the oral and written modalities and either repeated the identical task or a comparable task one week later. Data were collected with a flow perception questionnaire, completed immediately following each task. Results show that repetition positively influenced learners’ flow experience, but that modality was an important mediating factor.

Introspection confidence correlates with EEG decoding of self-generated thoughts and meta-awareness

The neurophysiological bases of mind wandering (MW) – an experiential state wherein attention is disengaged from the external environment in favour of internal thoughts, and state meta-awareness are poorly understood. In parallel, the relationship between introspection confidence in experiential state judgements and neural representations remains unclear. Here, we recorded EEG whilst participants completed a listening task within which they made experiential state judgments and rated their confidence. Alpha power was reliably greater during MW episodes, with unaware MW further associated with greater delta and theta power. Multivariate pattern classification analysis revealed that MW, and meta-awareness can be decoded from the distribution of power in these three frequency bands. Critically, we show that individual decoding accuracies positively correlate with introspection confidence. Our results reaffirm the role of alpha oscillations in MW, implicate lower frequencies in meta-awareness, and are consistent with the proposal that introspection confidence indexes neurophysiological discriminability of representational states.

The affect and its image in Gilles Deleuze's philosophy

There is no perception without affection. This necessity comes from the very fact that perception measures our possible action upon things, and thereby, the possible action of things upon us. For the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, affection occupies exactly this gap between the potentiality of action of the perceived objects and our virtual action upon them. This encounter between the affected body and the affecting body presumes the in-betweenness, an interval between a perception which is troubling in certain respects and a hesitant action. As opposed to emotion, which is directed toward a certain goal and demands actualization, affect precedes will, as a pre-personal intensity referring to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another. Influenced by Baruch Spinoza's concept of affect and Henri Bergson's thesis on movement that he considers the essence of cinema's movement-image, Deleuze creates his own theory of affect that finds its most obvious manifestation in the works of art. The artist creates affects, gives them to us, draws us into the compound, and makes us become with them. Deleuze's aesthetics produces the spectator's movement in-place through sensation. Through shapes and colours, the canvas vibrates, clenches or cracks open because it is the bearer of glimpsed forces. Like with Edward Munch's The Scream or Francis Bacon's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, the invisible forces become visible in themselves and thus the sensation becomes materialized right there on the canvas surface. In cinema, this materialization of sensation Deleuze recognized in the affection-image, abstracted from the causal and spatio-temporal relations to the images that surround it, and therefore open to a spiritual dimension. As power-quality, the affect gains its independence from the thing that expresses it and becomes an entity, a potentiality considered to itself.

Unconscious mental imagery

Historically, mental imagery has been defined as an experiential state—as something necessarily conscious. But most behavioural or neuroimaging experiments on mental imagery—including the most famous ones—do not actually take the conscious experience of the subject into consideration. Further, recent research highlights that there are very few behavioural or neural differences between conscious and unconscious mental imagery. I argue that treating mental imagery as not necessarily conscious (as potentially unconscious) would bring much needed explanatory unification to mental imagery research. It would also help us to reassess some of the recent aphantasia findings inasmuch as at least some subjects with aphantasia would be best described as having unconscious mental imagery. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.

Intersecting Horizons

How are we to imagine a situation in which I am simultaneously yet severally multiple subjects? Many contemporary writers on personal identity have said that one can imagine a scenario involving the fission of a person, a situation where as a result of division what was up to that moment a single person subsequently continues as two distinct people. One solution to the challenge of multiple embodiment is to defend the view that persons are individuals of a special sort, higher-order individuals somewhat akin to kinds. And yet the deeper issue is not metaphysical but phenomenological, and it isn’t a puzzle about the multiple embodiment of a single person but about a person’s simultaneous embrace of multiple first-person positions. Pessoa introduces the term ‘intersection’ as a philosophical term of art to denote the unified phenomenology of a doubled, interwoven experiential state. In one place he gives, as an example, the hypnagogic state. While the hypnagogic state occurs spontaneously, Pessoa claims that states of ‘intersecting sensation’ can also be brought about through the conscious exercise of guided attention. Yet Pessoa abandoned his experiments in intersectionist poetry, and his view seems to have undergone a shift. I wonder if he recognized that the force of the idea behind simultaneous subject plurality, that is, the experiential possibility to be in multiple subject positions simultaneously yet severally, is not fully realized in the concept of an emulsified experience.

Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct

Mobile media support our autonomy by connecting us to persons, content and services independently of time and place constraints. At the same time, they challenge our autonomy: We face new struggles, decisions, and pressure in relation to whether, when and where we connect and disconnect. Digital wellbeing is a new concept that refers to the (lack) of balance that we may experience in relation to mobile connectivity. This article develops a theoretical model of digital wellbeing that accounts for the dynamic and complex nature of our relationship to mobile connectivity, thereby overcoming conceptual and methodological limitations associated with existing approaches. This model considers digital wellbeing an experiential state of optimal balance between connectivity and disconnectivity that is contingent upon a constellation of person-, device- and context-specific factors. I argue that these constellations represent pathways to digital wellbeing that—when repeated—affect wellbeing outcomes, and that the effectiveness of digital wellbeing interventions depends on their disruptive impact on these pathways.

Individual and Cultural Differences in Predispositions to Feel Positive and Negative Aspects of Awe

Psychological research on awe has largely focused on its positive dimensions, both in terms of the experiential state of awe and individual trait-based predispositions to awe experience. Little is known, however, about awe’s negative-valence dimensions, such as individual tendencies to experience awe as threatening. To gain a broader understanding of awe, the current study investigates individual predispositions to feel negative aspects of awe (i.e., threat) and positive aspects of awe (e.g., beauty) and examines how these two tendencies are interrelated. Additionally, this study uses both Japanese and US samples to explore whether predispositions to feel awe vary across cultures. Two studies (total N = 1245) suggests that in both Japanese and US samples, predispositions to feel positive and negative aspects of awe were separable. However, there were cultural differences: North Americans were more predisposed to feel positive aspects than Japanese, and the predispositions to feel positive and negative aspects were positively correlated for Japanese, but not North Americans. This contributes to a better understanding of how the valence of awe may be influenced by culturally-mediated patterns of affect.

Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct

Mobile media support our autonomy by connecting us to persons, contents and services independently of time and place constraints. At the same time, they challenge our autonomy: We face struggles, decisions and pressure in relation to whether, when and where we connect and disconnect. Digital wellbeing is a new concept that refers to the (lack) of balance that we may experience in relation to mobile connectivity. This article develops a theoretical model of digital wellbeing accounting for the dynamic and complex nature of our relationship to mobile connectivity, thereby overcoming conceptual and methodological limitations associated with existing approaches. This model considers digital wellbeing an experiential state of optimal balance between connectivity and disconnectivity that is contingent upon a constellation of person-, device- and context-specific factors. These constellations represent pathways to digital wellbeing that – when repeated –affect wellbeing outcomes. Digital wellbeing interventions are effective when they disrupt these pathways.