Personal
meanings and artistic processes: a study of multi-modal improvisation
Abstract
This study illuminates the experience of improvisation across modes of
artistic forming. It examines the perceptions of a number of artists,
including the researcher, who participated over an extended period in
a series of multi-modal improvisations and related artistic constructions.
Experiential phenomenology, heuristics, and hermeneutics inform the research
methodology. The study explores ways of describing the inner experience
of artistic making in the context of individual and collaborative processes
involving movement, sound, forms of writing, speech and the medium of
film.
The study uses a phenomenological method to describe the experience of
four multi-modal improvisers (using movement, vocal and instrumental sounds,
and speech) through a series of improvisations. Individual and group core
themes of experience are also described from which a depiction of improvisation
experience is constructed.In a second and emergent phase of the study
an auto-reflective approach is employed to explore meanings arising from
the researcher’s immersion in the initial experiential data of the
improvisations and his subsequent imaginative speculation on artistic
possibilities.
Finally, a third phase of the inquiry employs a personal narrative method
to tell the story of four artistic processes that occurred parallel and
subsequent to the series of multi-modal improvisations. In this phase,
the constructed, written and performed materials of the collaborating
artists and co-researchers are an integral part of the presentation of
the findings.
The study’s emergent methodology and the juxtaposition of phenomenological,
hermenuetical and ‘narratives of the self’ approaches, reflects
postmodern, feminist, and constructivist influences on qualitative research
and artistic practice.
Intersubjectivity is a feature within both the experience of artistic
making and the methodology of the researcher’s investigation. The
parallels to therapeutic practice are acknowledged and the findings have
relevance to dance, music and multi-arts therapy.
The artists and co-researchers involved in the study were all based in
Melbourne, Australia. The data were sourced through interview, written
reports, journals, and other modal (non-verbal) forms of expression such
as visual representations, diagrams/schemata, movement, and vocal responses.
Original copies of manuscripts, artwork, voice and video recordings constitute
the research documentation.
The study allowed the following major findings to be revealed:
- The participants of multi-modal
improvisation had unique kinaesthetic and somatic experiences. There
were however invariant constituents to the experience of multi-modal
improvisation including moments of ‘doing or acting’ without
conscious premeditation, feelings of uncertainty or insecurity, intention,
the forming of concepts and shared aesthetic frameworks.
- The processes of artistic
forming involved intersubjective responses in which personal meanings
emerged and were communicated. The artistic form(s) reflected awareness
of corporeal experience, the particularities of spatial environments
and time/moment, and memory/remembered experience.
- There was continuity to
themes of participant experiencing across various forms of artistic
expression or modes of artistic forming. There was also continuity of
subjects of artistic representation.
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Collaborative creative
arts practices
Paralleling the mental
health expressive arts project has been several other projects including
the Now project with Roger Alsop. Part of
our process has been to reflect on the ways we communicate. The following
was drafted as a background paper to jointly authored one that Roger and
I are writing.
This paper reflects on collaborative
practices from a corporeal and movement based perspective.
Collaboration involving movement and sound based arts has a considerable
history and this paper focuses on aspects of our collective experience
through the late 90’s to the present.
In particular we reflect upon the shifts in the nature of power relations
in collaboration and the environment in which the multi-various manifestations
of polymodal and cross-disciplinary activity takes place.
Until recently movement artists and composers or sound designers arguably
had roles that reflected the movement artist’s directing responsibility
and the sound designer or composer’s role to fulfil a brief that
was often dictated by the movement based or physical score of the performance.
That is not to say that critical debate about overall form, duration,
venues didn’t take place. But sound and music creators were less
likely to be initiating collaborative projects and arbitrating authoritatively.
Exceptions abound - one assumes that Cage and Cunningham were not only
mutually stimulating but equally conscious of a respectful and mutually
empowering collaboration.
Perhaps there has long been a visual and verbal primacy in theatrical
events that has reflected the Cartesian modelling of our worldview well
into the twentieth century. We searched for single truths and looked at
causal or action reaction explanations. Performances followed linear structures
and roles of audience and performer were clearly established. Dance reflected
romantic and modern perspectives of the world. For example the European
choreographer Jiri Kylian worked with an eclectic mix of existing music
by composers such as Janacek, Schoenberg, Takimitsu and Stravinsky to
create narrative or abstract performance works. The illustration or representation
of stories, moods or human behaviours was centred in the body of the performers
and the capacity of bodies to ‘evoke’ or ‘tell’
through the material gesture or skilful action. The pre-existing music
gave structure and foundation to the visual creation.
There are many other forms or models of process and artistic outcomes
of course.
Dance has been integral but not dominant in the work of artists who can
be described a s polymodal – artists like Meredith Monk have woven
action, sound, music and word together into performance. The primacy of
the visual is challenged and the sensory experience of this work can require
the faculties to be interactive and flexible.
Every performance inevitably reflects social and cultural views of its
creative context. Movement based artists are not a singular entity. The
nature of training institutes or formative environments from which artists
emerge is incredibly diverse. Perhaps in the western world there is a
plethera of performance genres and forms. It is a scene made more volatile
and dynamic as global communication becomes affordable, populations are
mobile and new networking opportunities arise such as the internet.
Enter the performance artist and installation artist. Laurie Anderson
stands on melting ice blocks in New York playing violin, Stelarc with
his new take on the body as site for performance hangs from fishhooks
and develops prosthetic devices extending the bodies capacity. And countless
others including Robert Wilson who merges dramatic, operatic, dance and
visual form in explorations of time and space in ‘Einstein on the
Beach’ challenge and destabilize long held notions of performance
as we slide towards a new millenium of hybridity and non-fixity. We find
ourselves in a period where innovation becomes a tenant in mission statements
of arts funding organisations and artists who previously had been ignored
or overlooked because of their difference now find new categories of art
created to enable their recognition.
At the Victorian College of the Arts the past decade has seen many changes.
If we look at those relating to collaborative practices there is much
to remark on. There is now a department - the Centre for Ideas –
which delivers a core undergraduate curriculum to all students across
all disciplines. Students choose electives presented by academics and
artists of many persuasions. They complete collaborative contracts in
which concepts, ideas and practices are explored. Arts are examined in
a larger cultural context, and located in a world that can be viewed in
many ways. Perspectives such as post modernist, feminist, minimalist,
social constructivist contribute various means of understanding or making
sense of being human.
What was once an ancillary department attached to the dramatic arts –
production – is now a ‘School’ of its own – wherein
the ‘arts" of lighting, costume making, set design, puppetry,
and sound design are specialist areas. The hegemony of disciplines of
dance, drama and music over contextual attributes such as spatial design
or technological ‘embellishments’ is not as it was. Enhancing
and ensuring fulfilment of creative capacity of all participants in collaborative
projects has become a goal – not only of those once marginalised,
but as a consequence of growing experience of the significant benefits
to creative process.
Animators from the School of Film and Television are working with choreographers,
sound designers are conceiving projects together. As lecturers delivering
programs we find ourselves not only facilitating dialogues but also being
engaged in these explorations ourselves. We find our artistic research
and the epistemological development of our students gravitating together.
The student centred learning approach that was a catch phrase of a few
years back in pedagogic methods – has seen collaborative or parallel
inquiries emerge involving staff and students. For example sound designers
and choreographers have been exploring ‘space as identity’.
This has been a site-specific project for students, while our most recent
work together – ‘Now’ - has similar themes though it
realises them in a digital media installation. The axis of our project
has been the technological solutions for rendering our emergent design
for this interactive piece. The dialogues we have shared cover ecological
themes, questions of creating ‘gaps’ for audience cogitation
and thoughtful engagement, developing physical environments conducive
to audience participation and others that reflect the autobiographical
nature and self experiencing of the process. Our experience has resonances
with that of our students in their own work and it is in sharing these
that learning and artistic creation have the most vibrancy and fruitfulness.
.
Another student trait of recent time reflects computer literacy and the
digital creative tools that are starting to saturate institutions and
private lives alike.
The capacity for using computer software to mix sound and or vision, to
create in digital mediums has afforded a different meeting ‘place’
for movement based makers (choreographers and dancers) and those working
in sound or digital visual mediums. There is a new breed of co-authoring
artists who are highly interactive and versatile. They are capable of
creating solo or collaboratively, they are often proficient in a number
of computer based programs such as director, flash, photo-shop, poser,
pro-tools, final cut pro, max to name a few.
Our creative interactions – collaborations – that punctuate
the past decade have included work for theatre – ‘Playback’
- and improvised performance. Our approach in ‘Playback’ was
to somewhat perfunctorily discuss the thematic core of the work –
the notion of play. Don created movement phrases with eight performers
– some of these were loose improvisations others more accurately
detailed and structured, while Roger explored ways of projecting words
or short phrases that arose in the playground context in the form of digital
media. He also developed a collection of recorded sounds of urban life
and an evolving and accumulating foundational sound construction. The
urban sounds could be mixed and played live in the performance. The projected
texts were randomly moving in the space. There was scope for variation
in all the materials although for the season at the Gasworks Theatre in
Melbourne this was not explored as much as it might have been. The overarching
principle in this creative dialogue was to work independently in short
bursts to produce materials – these were then trialed together and
adjusted as we individually saw fit. There was little intervention on
each other’s material – we tended to respond creatively to
each small contribution and the performance work emerged in ways that
neither of us could have fully envisaged.
In the improvisation season Cracking it open, Dancehouse, Melbourne in
2002, we collaborated with performer Jane Mortiss. This was the inaugural
year of what has become an annual event on the improvising calendar in
Melbourne. Our relationship was mediated by the intent to improvise using
three modes – vocal sounds, words and movement. We planned to create
a randomly changing projected environment and we embraced the opportunity
to ‘be’ in the space without any further scoring or ‘scripts’
of any kind. We three don’t improvise frequently together and this
lack of ‘knowing’ one another’s behaviours and ways
of being present in the live performance context contributes towards an
experience characterised by very heightened mutual awareness.
(Susan Engel (1999) – context is everything)
When Jane and Don were developing a performance installation for the Bega
gallery as part of a ‘Wild Art exhibition; in 2002, Roger was approached
with the question of how voices might articulate tensions arising from
the debate about the Towamba river’s future. The Towamba is a significant
source of water for the far south coast towns of Eden, Merimbula, Pambula
and Bega. Roger’s cutting and pasting of recorded words selected
from a visual calligraphic component of the exhibition became a ‘low
tech’ solution involving two CD recordings. The capacity to respond
to challenges and work in ways that ‘fit’ the circumstances
characterise much of our working relationship. Our ‘Now’ project
was triggered by a comment from Roger – can you create this installation
without a ‘body’? Don’s response has been not fully
equal to the task but has significantly shifted outside his normal operating
zone.
The key words in describing our ‘modus operandi’ would include
flexibility, process – let it evolve, lateralness or horizontal
rather than vertical and lets explore the materials and talk about meanings
later. The insistence on choreographic structures, dancer skill, sonic
expertise that was once treasured seem less important than finding basic
forms than have essential and possibly ordinary qualities. It is in the
structure that spaces for readings or meanings by others emerge. Being
aware of technological tools gives the concepts currency and extends the
potential for communication. Our context is changing as fast as technologies
are being invented.
There is another process afoot – one that is more recently brought
to consciousness as performative contexts, sites, venues and audience
expectations have broadened. Much of this has museums, galleries, video
games and technologies to thank. Our audiences are able to react, to interact
and are not averse to participating.
The collaborative dialogue has been enlarged to re-unite with the anticipated
audience or community. They are less tacitly there than before and this
is exemplified by Don’s journal notes from the ‘Now’
project.
Don: the problem has been to find ways to mediate the digital media
so as to create layers of particular kinds of images, and explore these
to create a sense of shifting or moments of in-determinancy. As the project
unfolded I began to name or identify the underlying essence(s) of these
images. I wanted to understand what was thematised by the collected media.
I came to the view it was not so much moving past bushes, touching trees,
noticing twigs and leaves, BUT about exploring the visual and aural experience
and allowing it ‘scope’ to stimulate memories, thoughts and
feelings. Structuring ‘scope’ for engagement by me, and ultimately
others, became the litmus test for me progressing this project.
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