Shared Creativity and Flow in Dance Improvisation Practice

This thesis investigated shared creative processes and the role of flow experience in group dance improvisation. A literature review suggested that dancers associate high-quality performance with 'being in the flow', and that group flow is a peak experience when a group is performing at its highest level. The first study explored the role of flow in dance creative practice and improvisation through qualitative content analysis of individual interviews with six dancers. Absorption with activity and enjoyment were themes in dancers' reports of flow. Group improvisation facilitated flow and creativity through maintaining desired focus for longer, lowering self-judgment and inspiring novel solutions. The second study investigated the occurrence of flow and its shared character within group improvisation using video-stimulated recall and questionnaire methods (n=16, 4 groups of four dancers). It showed that group flow was rather rare and it was more likely when a group had worked together for longer. Dancers reported that a group in a high-flow state engaged with a task in a more complex way, sharing, transforming and supporting each other's ideas, while low-flow groups worked more with mimicry and bodily manipulation. Dancers perceived tasks performed in a high-flow state as more creative. The third study explored the relationship between dancers' flow experience and creative outcomes from a third person perspective. A total of 203 participants (77 experts and 126 nonexperts) rated excerpts of high- and low-flow dance improvisation (five each) using Consensual Assessment Technique. Experts judged high-flow collaborations as more creative, and more coherent, technically advanced, aesthetically appealing and meaningful, however there were no significant differences in nonexperts' ratings. The fourth study explored whether synchronous arousal, measured by cross-recurrence quantification analysis of heart and breathing rate, was a physiological basis for group flow (n=8 group, 4 dancers per group). Although no relationship between synchronous arousal and flow was found, spontaneous synchronization of dancers' heart and breathing rate in improvisational group tasks was observed, unrelated to synchronized activity. Overall, the studies conducted confirmed that flow was a highly creative state for dancers, in which they performed better. The presence of others and quality of group collaboration supported the occurrence and amount of flow. However, group flow occurred rarely and was more likely when a group had worked together for longer

Our GIFT to All of Us: GA(Y)AM: Preface

This special issue of AVANT is all about Cognitive Innovation. It is not about CogNovo, the interdisciplinary and international doctoral training programme that produced three different Off the Lip events. It is not about Off the Lip 2017, the novel symposium format we developed to collaboratively create a publication resulting in this special issue of AVANT. It is not about the seemingly heterogeneous collection of papers that follow this preface. Collaborative Approaches to Cognitive Innovation required something else, something we are starting to capture in the four GIFT principles. While this special issue is not solely about CogNovo, Off the Lip events, or the content of the following submissions, all these aforementioned elements were necessary to shape our current understanding of Cognitive Innovation, the very process which led to numerous publications, exhibitions, and events during the past three years. In a sense, all of our previous endeavours have culminated in this collection of 26 distinct pieces of work, yet we hope and believe that this special issue also marks a beginning. Let us explain

Between Minds and Bodies

The audiovisual installation Between Minds and Bodies aimed to recreate the dancers' experience throughout an improvisational session. The installation was shown during Off the Lip 2017 from 16 to 18 August and at the Balance Unbalance 2017 conference from 21 to 23 August in Plymouth, UK. The video files contain the narrated experience of each of the four participating dancers using the video-stimulated recall method introduced in 'Dance Improvisational Cognition'. While each file contains all four audio tracks, one of the dancers' voice is selected as the default for each video file

Movement coordination as a measure of togetherness in improvised dance duets

The study focuses on the mechanisms through which dance brings people together. We recorded 7 improvised dance duets and asked 5 skilled improvisers to rate the perceived togetherness in the recorded dances. Subsequently, we employed pose tracking techniques and developed a quantitative measure of the stability of interpersonal movement coordination between dancers, demonstrating that it strongly correlates with experts' togetherness ratings. Based on follow-up interviews, we revealed that experts' understanding of togetherness converges to a stable construct, involving a state of responsive, mindful attention. This construct can be grounded in the objective properties of movement coordination. These properties can be framed within the context of dynamical systems, suggesting potential systemic organization principles, such as moment-to-moment adaptation, that promote togetherness. Our mixed-methods research has implications for various fields, including psychology, cognitive science, and art studies

Development of the My Cult-Rural Toolkit

The EU H2020 RURITAGE project takes 20 case studies, considered to be Role Models (RMs) of successful heritage-led rural regeneration from Europe, to analyze them and transfer knowledge and learning to a network of Replicators (Rs). To quantify the success of these RURITAGE interventions, a monitoring framework has been developed which includes a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and a co-monitoring program. This program takes a bottom-up approach working with key stakeholders to understand their values. The My Cult-Rural Toolkit described in this paper has been designed and developed to support the co-monitoring program. The toolkit includes various methods allowing expert and non-expert engagement with the landscape valuation process through embodied and situated approaches. All the co-monitoring tools share the principle of gathering data through real-time interaction in the place of interest, following principles of the embodied approach to ecosystems’ valuation. The toolkit employs both participatory hands-on workshops (Mini-Landscapes, Object Mapping, and Walking Maps) for in-depth understanding of values attached with landscape, and digital mobile apps (Rate my View App and Landscape Connect App) for exploratory, participatory mapping. This paper describes the toolkit and discusses benefits and limitations of its usage in the context of co-monitoring of cultural and natural heritage (CNH) inspired rural change

Comparison of the quality of solutions achieved by dyads (A), difference between the quality of dyadic and individual solutions (B), duration of conversations (C) in three conditions: chat, mobile phone and face-to-face communication.

<p>Comparison of the quality of solutions achieved by dyads (A), difference between the quality of dyadic and individual solutions (B), duration of conversations (C) in three conditions: chat, mobile phone and face-to-face communication.</p

State transition diagrams in 3 media conditions: chat (A), mobile phone (B), face-to-face (C).

<p>State transition diagrams in 3 media conditions: chat (A), mobile phone (B), face-to-face (C).</p

Trajectories of discussion stages in 3 communication conditions (face-to-face, phone and chat) and averaged over all media.

<p> On X-axis each point refers to a fraction of the total number of utterances ordered in time. The Y-axis depicts the fraction of utterances of each category in the given time frame.</p

Descriptive statistics of individual level variables used in the study.

<p>Descriptive statistics of individual level variables used in the study.</p