How still is still? Exploring human standstill for artistic applications

We present the results of a series of observation studies of ourselves standing still on the floor for 10 minutes at a time. The aim has been to understand more about our own standstill, and to develop a heightened sensitivity for micromovements and how they can be used in music and dance performance. The quantity of motion, calculated from motion capture data of a head marker, reveals remarkably similar results for each person, and also between persons. The best results were obtained with the feet at the width of the shoulders, locked knees, and eyes open. No correlation was found between different types of mental strategies employed and the quantity of motion of the head marker, but we still believe that different mental strategies have an important subjective and communicative impact. The findings will be used in the development of a stage performance focused on micromovements

Even a two-year-old can do it! The early stages of learning to understand moving-image media

Film scholarship has consistently avoided discussing how we learn to understand the complex, multimodal systems of communication that moving-image media (referred to here as ‘movies’) have evolved into over the last 125 years. This article offers some reasons for this neglect: in particular, the popular assumption that movies are extremely easy to understand, and the relative lack of research on two-year-olds – the crucial phase in which this learning must take place. Drawing on a 20-month study of a pair of dizygotic twins, a vignette of their early viewing behaviour illustrates the features of focused attention which characterized their investment of energy in trying to make sense of movies. An analysis of this phenomenon, using concepts from embodied cognition, shows how instinctive responses relate to thought and reflection. Setting two-year-olds’ movie-watching within the wider contexts of story-reading, play and the enjoyment of repetition, the article provides evidence that such learning does take place and can be seen as a significant aspect of two-year-olds’ “entry into culture”.      &nbsp

Toddlers and Movies: A Fresh Approach

For more than a century, parents have been warned about the supposed dangers of letting children under 3 watch moving-image media. But the evidence on which these warnings are based remains remarkably limited. Crucial failings today include the rarity of ethnographic studies in the home, a prioritisation of research on “digital technologies” and an almost total neglect of toddlers’ early cultural experiences with media other than print. This chapter starts from the proposition that research on children and media needs to move away from a preoccupation with risk and to place more emphasis on the crucial but much-neglected 0–3 period, in which, as well as learning to talk, infants and toddlers start learning to understand several significant and unique cultural forms, of which moving-image media (referred to here as “movies”) are probably the most prominent for many. Debates about whether we do all have to learn how to understand movies, and the problems of studying toddlers, are discussed. Based on the author’s own research and drawing on embodied cognition theories as a rich source of insights into toddler behaviour, three examples of toddler viewing behaviour are described (focused attention, emotional responses and self-directed viewing) and interpreted as potential evidence of learning in progress. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges that must be confronted by those who wish to explore toddlers’ “movie-learning” further

Mind and Matter

Do brains create material reality in thinking processes or is it the other way around, with things shaping the mind? Where is the location of meaning-making? How do neural networks become established by means of multimodal pattern replications, and how are they involved in conceptualization? How are resonance textures within cellular entities extended in the body and the mind by means of mirroring processes? In which ways do they correlate to consciousness and self-consciousness? Is it possible to explain out-of-awareness unconscious processes? What holds together the relationship between experiential reality, bodily processes like memory, reason, or imagination, and sign-systems and simulation structures like metaphor and metonymy visible in human language? This volume attempts to answer some of these questions

Some secret language: how toddlers learn to understand movies

The starting-point of this thesis is the hypothesis that, from at least 22 months old, children who watch movies (i.e. any moving-image media) may be learning how to make sense of them. Rather than looking for evidence of precursors to further learning (such as language, literacy or technological skills) or for the risks or benefits that movie-watching may entail, the thesis argues that viewing behaviour provides enough evidence about the practices and processes through which children of this age learn how understand movies, to indicate that this is a significant achievement, and has implications for later development. Data were gathered during an ethnographic study of two of my grandchildren (dizygotic girl and boy twins), covering a 20-month period (from ages 22 to 42 months) but focusing particularly on their third year of life. Analysis of the resulting 12.7 hours of video, together with observational field notes and parental interviews, draws on a combination of sociocultural and embodied cognition approaches in addressing the challenges of interpreting two-year-olds’ movie-viewing behaviour. Following the literature review in Chapter 1 and a description of the research design and method in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 provides a chronological account of three sequences of viewing events. The themes that emerged from the analysis of these sequences are discussed in Chapter 4, on emotion, and Chapter 5, on social and cultural learning. The thesis recognizes the role of movie-watching in human ontogeny, arguing that it is driven by emotions, and enabled by embodied simulations, and that the early learning enabled by children’s intensive – and often self-directed – viewing and re-viewing of movies is complementary to all their other cultural and social learning