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

The music of organising: Exploring aesthetic ethnography

Through a discussion of Ingarden’s phenomenology, this paper proposes an aesthetic ethnographic methodology. Aesthetic ethnography enables the researcher to view organisations as if they are works of art. This involves observing the continual oscillation between order and chaos, a quality Schiller terms as the play impulse. The shifts in focus from naïve outsider (Emotional Attachment) to critical insider (Cognitive Detachment) and then to informed outsider (Integrated Synthesis) are explored, followed by a case study of a symphony orchestra undergoing governance change

Of epistemic tools: musical instruments as cognitive extensions

This paper explores the differences in the design and performance of acoustic and new digital musical instruments, arguing that with the latter there is an increased encapsulation of musical theory. The point of departure is the phenomenology of musical instruments, which leads to the exploration of designed artefacts as extensions of human cognition – as scaffolding onto which we delegate parts of our cognitive processes. The paper succinctly emphasises the pronounced epistemic dimension of digital instruments when compared to acoustic instruments. Through the analysis of material epistemologies it is possible to describe the digital instrument as an epistemic tool: a designed tool with such a high degree of symbolic pertinence that it becomes a system of knowledge and thinking in its own terms. In conclusion, the paper rounds up the phenomenological and epistemological arguments, and points at issues in the design of digital musical instruments that are germane due to their strong aesthetic implications for musical culture

The Space Between Us; Taking Stock, Looking Ahead

The attempt to theorise certain concepts like “the region†or "spatial development" should begin with the conceptualisation of the very basic element of them that is space. In the fields of contemporary economic geography and geographical economy there are two broad perspectives of “spaceâ€, which both have formed the basis of a long standing debate in multiple dimensions (eg. deduction- induction, quantitative- qualitative etc). The first perspective sees space as a container of action. Action is clearly demarcated from space, which has become “neutral†and no dynamic relation exists between them. Regions then can be compared and the measurable elements of action can be analysed and modelled through positivism. Scholars from the second perspective partially reject that way of thinking and tend to emphasise on the role of past and that of embeddedness of action in time-space. These see space as a medium for action. Every region (or locality) here is an existent alterity (historically produced) with its own politics, institutions and culture that cannot be compared with other regions in a positivistic sense, nor best practices can be easily transferred. What matters is the inter-relational action that produces space and at the same time it is influenced by space. Action and space form a duality in time. Instead of the statistical comparative methodology and modelling of the first perspective, what is of importance here, not only in terms of methodology but also in terms of policy making, is the deep relational experience of the researcher/ policy-maker with the space. The paper argues that what is needed is not a demarcation line between those two streams of literature but an interdisciplinary approach that gives an emphasis not on the sum of them but in the synthesis of logics and methodologies in an approach that promotes holisticity.