Michael Kimmel
Sigmund Freud University, Deparment of Psychology, Department Member
- University of Vienna, Cognitive Science Platform, Department Memberadd
- Social Cognition, Medical Anthropology, Embodiment Theory, Metaphor, Mental Images, Cognitive Apprenticeship, and 56 moreBody in Performance, Motion perception, Cognitive Poetics, Apprenticeship Learning, Stylistics; Literary Linguistics; Cognitive Poetics, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Dance Studies, Cognitive Anthropology, Theory of Metaphor and Rhetorics, Embodiment, Cognitive Narratology, Literary Metaphor, Enactivism, Phenomenology of the body, Phenomenology, Ethnography, Participant Action Research, Qualitative Methods, Motor Control, Motor Imagery, Cognitive Framing, Motion Tracking, Movement, Dance, Rituals, Healing Ceremonies, Beliefs & Values, Experience, The Senses, Ethnomethodology, Discourse Analysis, Mixed Methods, Empirical Phenomenology, Motion Capture, Conceptualization of Event Structure, Habitus, Ecological Psychology, Affordances, Cognitive Musicology, Image Schemas, Body Schema, Sensorimotor Neuroscience, Coordination Dynamics, Dynamic Systems and Control, Reader response Theory. The Embodied Mind. Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. Metaphor. Virtual Worlds and Embodiment, Gestalt Psychology, Human-Robot Interaction, Interaction, Embodied and Distributed Cognition, Distributed Cognition in Collaborative Learning, Paul Dumouchel, Cognitive Task Analysis, Systems Science, Distributed Cognition, and Craftsmanshipedit
This contribution discusses competencies needed for regulating systems with properties of multi-causality and nonlinear dynamics (therapeutic, economical, organizational, socio-political, technical, ecological, etc.). Various research... more
This contribution discusses competencies needed for regulating systems with properties of multi-causality and nonlinear dynamics (therapeutic, economical, organizational, socio-political, technical, ecological, etc.). Various research communities have contributed insights, but none has come forward with an inclusive framework. To advance the debate, I propose to draw from dynamic systems theory (DST) and "4E" (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended), cognition approaches, which offer a set of perspectives to understand what expert regulators in real-life settings do. They define the regulator's agency as skillfully imposing constraints on a target system and hereby creating context-sensitive openings for self-organizing dynamics, rather than "controlling" the system. Adept regulators apply multi-pronged and multitimescale constraints to achieve nuanced effects. Among other things, their skill set includes scarcely noted enactive processual competencies for "emergence management", which the intellectualistic and insufficiently ecologically situated accounts of the complex problem solving literature omit. To capture the nature of system regulation I advocate treating regulation dynamics and target system dynamics "symmetrically" by grounding regulator competencies in concepts from complexity theory.
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Somatic practices frequently use imagery, typically via verbal instructions, to scaffold sensorimotor organization and experience, a phenomenon we term "introjection". We argue that introjection is an imagery practice in which... more
Somatic practices frequently use imagery, typically via verbal instructions, to scaffold sensorimotor organization and experience, a phenomenon we term "introjection". We argue that introjection is an imagery practice in which sensorimotor and conceptual aspects are co-orchestrated, suggesting the necessity of crosstalk between somatics, phenomenology, psychology, embodied-enactive cognition, and linguistic research on embodied simulation. We presently focus on the scarcely addressed details of the process necessary to enact instructions of a literal or metaphoric nature through the body. Based on vignettes from dance, Feldenkrais, and Taichi practice, we describe introjection as a complex form of processual sense-making, in which context-interpretive, mental, attentional and physical sub-processes recursively braid. Our analysis focuses on how mental and body-related processes progressively align, inform and augment each other. This dialectic requires emphasis on the active body, which implies that uni-directional models (concept 0 body) are inadequate and should be replaced by interactionist alternatives (concept 5 body). Furthermore, we emphasize that both the source image itself and the body are specifically conceptualized for the context through constructive operations, and both evolve through their interplay. At this level introjection employs representational operations that are embedded in enactive dynamics of a fully situated person.
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My present reflections will center on a point the authors present as an afterthought, but that seems pivotal: mathematical knowledge is not comprised of perception–action loops alone. Instead, “guided coordination of sensorimotor and... more
My present reflections will center on a point the authors present as an afterthought, but that seems pivotal: mathematical knowledge is not comprised of perception–action loops alone. Instead, “guided coordination of sensorimotor and semiotic activity” is held to be essential. Shvarts and Abrahamson do not elaborate on how this happens. My aim is to sketch what an account giving equal weight to semiotic and embodied facets might look like, and to clarify why paying attention to the details of their interplay is crucial for evaluating ontological claims such as the monist position defended by the authors. I will presently address four questions: (a) why failing to tackle the semiotic pole explicitly is a risky methodological choice, (b) what literature we can draw on to address the embodied–semiotic relationship, (c) what empirical criteria ontological claims might hinge on, and (d) why a dialectic (and non-dualist) approach offers a credible alternative to monism.
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Scholars are increasingly recognizing that creativity is grounded in the active sensorimotor engagement with the environment and materiality. Affordances – recognizable pointers to action opportunities in the ecology – provide a helpful... more
Scholars are increasingly recognizing that creativity is grounded in the active sensorimotor engagement with the environment and materiality. Affordances – recognizable pointers to action opportunities in the ecology – provide a helpful prism for analyzing how this happens. Creative practitioners, as they seek aesthetic opportunities or innovation, depend on their sensitivity towards potentialities in their action space. Presently, we apply a high-zoom lens to a crafts process, giving our micro-genetic research design an affordance focus. By investigating one of the authors, a ceramicist and a practitioner-researcher, through her process of making of a vase, we tracked how affordances are responded to, developed, shaped, invited or, where necessary, rejected, as the ceramicist “routes” her creative trajectory. Several insights emerge: (1) The ceramicist’s decisions – initially about general directions, then about aesthetic details – unfold while engaging with the clay; they emerge in stepwise fashion, but with a holistic orientation. (2) Choosing among affordances requires parallel sensitivities to object functionality, aesthetics and creativity, as well as technical feasibility; adhering to the proper technical procedure that provides the very basis for creatively relevant affordances to later arise. (3) While the hands and eyes engage with short-lived affordances the ceramicist must keep in view higher-timescale affordances that ensure a good task progression for making a vase, and affordances for the material’s overall “workability”. (4) The ceramicist typically relates to momentary affordances in light of expected as well as imagined others, to ensure a coherent end product. (5) Affordances contribute to material creativity in more ways than typically recognized in the literature. They range from serendipitous “finds” to options developed with a large degree of creative autonomy; affordances may also be indirectly invited and practitioners strategically change probability distributions as well as providing an enabling background for generative action. Thus, a crafts practitioner brings forth unconventional affordances through active engagement, using a mix of exploration, strategy, and imaginative potential. Affordance theorists err when stressing the possibility to just “find” creative options or that perceptual acuity is the sole skill.
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An affordance perspective highlights how resourceful the ecology is for creative actions of all sorts; it captures how creativity is grounded in materiality. In contrast to "canonical affordances" (i.e., "ready-to-hand," mundane... more
An affordance perspective highlights how resourceful the ecology is for creative actions of all sorts; it captures how creativity is grounded in materiality. In contrast to "canonical affordances" (i.e., "ready-to-hand," mundane instances), creative affordances point to unconventional or surprising action opportunities that are nonetheless valued. Our initial aim is to discuss how to frame the affordance concept to make it attractive for the study of creativity. We propose a dialectic position that reconciles aspects of the realism of ecological psychology with the constructivist view more typical of creativity scholars. We stress that novel options frequently depend on constructive actions; novelty cannot always simply be "found" or just waits to be used. Many creative opportunities only emerge from how person actively engages with the ecology. Our second aim is to explore specific ways that creativity is mediated through affordances, based on illustrations from crafts and dance. These suggest that affordances span various timescales and mediate in multiple ways, from noticing existing potentials, via active affordance shaping, to background activities that indirectly invite or enable novelty. In conclusion we discuss how a person's creative "vision," imagination and combinatoric ability, all fundamental creativity mechanisms, relate to affordances and how fruitful creative directions may be perceptually hinted at.
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As scholars have recently emphasized, creativity is not restricted to the individual mind; it can happen in and through interaction. To evaluate the legitimacy of claims about "distributed creativity," we propose a compare-and-contrast... more
As scholars have recently emphasized, creativity is not restricted to the individual mind; it can happen in and through interaction. To evaluate the legitimacy of claims about "distributed creativity," we propose a compare-and-contrast approach to Argentine tango. Tango is an improvisational leader-follower dance of a formally constrained kind, yet one that also allows for a range of modes of being creative together in real-time interaction. Six dance couples were filmed while improvising and subsequently interviewed. Based on video vignettes of a few seconds duration, we microgenetically reconstructed the embodied "give-and-take" between partners, from which creative trajectories emerge. The spectrum of cocreative modalities ranges from creativity realized in interaction, but bearing some mark of the individual, to creativity, in which the interaction itself becomes an operative mechanism. Cocreation can happen in forms guided by a single person, yet jointly executed ("leader creativity"), in subordinate spaces that provide for some individual creative autonomy within a collective dynamic, in parallel or additive creative interaction forms, but also in genuinely multiplicative forms in which self-organizing interaction dynamics become a powerful causal factor that leverages creativity. To accommodate these various modalities, we argue for a dynamic-systemic account, which looks at interdependencies between micro-and macrolevels. Our framework recognizes different degrees of creative autonomy within interaction; it hereby avoids a dichotomy between individualistic accounts and interactionism with a purely collective-level focus.
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In 2005, referenda about the EU’s constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present essay... more
In 2005, referenda about the EU’s constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present essay describes metaphors in British journalism beginning with the year before the referenda and ending a few months after them. In 675 examined newspaper articles from the Sun and the Guardian, mostly commentaries, diverse conceptual patterns are found that belong to five major headings (= metaphoric target domains): the EU as political entity, the EU constitutional treaty, the process of EU integration, the impact of the No votes on the European polity, and proor anti-constitution campaigning prior to the referenda. A software-assisted and full-scale survey of metaphors is undertaken to identify recurrent conceptual metaphor patterns. This is followed by a theoretical analysis that aims to exemplify how cross-buttressing tendencies in the metaphor field...
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We introduce this special issue on ”Meaning making: Enactive, participatory, interactive, symbolic” by first pointing out where cognitive-semiotic and ecological approaches agree: meaning is to be construed as a dynamic, multiscalar... more
We introduce this special issue on ”Meaning making: Enactive, participatory, interactive, symbolic” by first pointing out where cognitive-semiotic and ecological approaches agree: meaning is to be construed as a dynamic, multiscalar phenomenon. We then review the six papers in relation to one another, revealing both overlaps and sites of possible tension. We view these tensions as foci for further development of cognitive semiotics in its aim to be a truly transdisciplinary science of meaning.
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This chapter discusses cognitive, sensorimotor, and interactional prerequisites for improvising together in tango argentino. Tango is a highly structured and precise skill where the demands of interaction and expressiveness converge:... more
This chapter discusses cognitive, sensorimotor, and interactional prerequisites for improvising together in tango argentino. Tango is a highly structured and precise skill where the demands of interaction and expressiveness converge: improvisational choice, the leader’s selection from a knowledge base, is concurrently constrained by the interplay of sensorimotor and coordinative skills. Tango creativity is primarily combinatory; it creates serial structures within a matrix of decision points and traversable linkages. For breaking down what it takes to improvise together, three resources may be discussed. Two among these designate basic skills that are unspecific to improvisation (and thus equally needed when dancing tango choreographies), whereas the third kind of resource supplies improvisation- and creativity specific cognitive bases: (1) Individually, dancers ensure postural and configurational well-formedness, dynamic stability, action-readiness, and receptivity. (2) Interperson...
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This paper explores conceptual tools whereby narratively competent adults conceptualize the structure of literary events, as opposed to their scene content. My focus lies on how narrativity as a mode of thought is constituted through... more
This paper explores conceptual tools whereby narratively competent adults conceptualize the structure of literary events, as opposed to their scene content. My focus lies on how narrativity as a mode of thought is constituted through metanarrative discourse and what role embodied representations play in it. This global level of story cognition takes the form of conceptual metaphors such as TIME IS A PATH, CAUSALITY IS FORCE, or THEMATIC REALMS ARE SPACES/PLANES. Two kinds of evidence for this claim are combined: (a) linguistic metaphors for story gist, and, more extensively, (b) metaphorical gestures that accompany story summarization and commentary. Based on footage in which German literary critics discuss books, my specific task is to identify the various dimensions of story logic that gestures refer to. Overall, the data suggests that narrative form is systematically rooted in spatial logic and that dedicated structural devices dynamically co-evolve with the retelling of content....
Using a video-supported cognitive ethnographic and phenomenological approach, we address the interactively generated dynamic of bouts in Aikido. This "soft" martial art enables a defender to blend with and then redirect an... more
Using a video-supported cognitive ethnographic and phenomenological approach, we address the interactively generated dynamic of bouts in Aikido. This "soft" martial art enables a defender to blend with and then redirect an attacker's aggressive energy so as to break his balance, while preserving an ethos of non-violence, mutuality, and respect. Our analysis explores the skills used to minutely adapt to the opponent, the causal-temporal structure of Aikido, notably the cumulative effect build-up and main decision points in a bout, as well as the perceptual cues from inter-body geometry, timing, and force dynamics that inform decisions. We then contrast different interaction scenarios by focusing on micro-events that shape defensive preferences. For a successful defense, technical modulations or even the preferred technique itself can be selected as the interaction unfolds ("decision-making-in-action"). For a closer look, we analyze the interplay of multiple parameters: flexibility of intention (i.e. early deciding vs. keeping options openlonger), technique (i.e. type of lever or throw), initial body symmetry, step combinations, spacing and timing relative to the attacker, degree of force, as well as possible skill differentials. We describe complex interdependencies between these parameters, which can be balanced in various ways as agents respond to the interaction dynamic.
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This contribution surveys strategies for analyzing highly coordinated forms of collaborative dance improvisation, based on tango argentino. Specifically, we take interest (a) in micro-coordination at the <1 s timescale in dance... more
This contribution surveys strategies for analyzing highly coordinated forms of collaborative dance improvisation, based on tango argentino. Specifically, we take interest (a) in micro-coordination at the <1 s timescale in dance elements such as steps or rotations, (b) in meso-scale patterns of 2–8 step “figures”, and (c) in general enabling macro-patterns maintained throughout, a kind of “grammar” of tango. Across these timescales, dancers supply individual action-readiness, dynamic stability, proper form and connectivity, while jointly “managing” structures of interpersonal coordination such as enabling configurations. Our study engages qualitative and quantitative methods in a dialogue. Starting with micro-genetic elicitation interviews, dancers reported ideomotor concepts, perceptual triggers, and didactic imagery. Besides general (e.g. postural) habits, task-specific forms or techniques, and attentional foci, this yields insights into the interlocking contributions and information flow between tango leaders and followers within units as small as half-steps. The subjective data was then “frontloaded” into a motion-capture study in which six expert couples, fitted with 2 × 21 light-point reflectors, executed various tango techniques. We developed kinematic indicators for individual and interpersonal coordination (degree of coupling, relative movement onset and action timing, role specifics); we also measured geometries underlying various tango tasks and style variations. The combined data suggests a micro-coordination model where dynamic interdependencies enable precise mutually adaptive action. The criss-crossing signals, e.g. when the increasing lability of the leader’s torso triggers the follower’s leg extension at the beginning of a forward step, suggests task-, phase- and body-part specific contingencies whereby leaders and followers micro-coordinate actions with respect to one another.
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In 2005, referenda about the EU's constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present... more
In 2005, referenda about the EU's constitutional treaty were held in several European countries, which resulted in a No vote in France and the Netherlands and which left the European polity both devastated and clueless. The present essay describes metaphors in British journalism beginning with the year before the referenda and ending a few months after them. In 675 examined newspaper articles from the Sun and the Guardian, mostly commentaries, diverse conceptual patterns are found that belong to five major headings (= metaphoric target domains): the EU as political entity, the EU constitutional treaty, the process of EU integration, the impact of the No votes on the European polity, and pro- or anti-constitution campaigning prior to the referenda. A software-assisted and full-scale survey of metaphors is undertaken to identify recurrent conceptual metaphor patterns. This is followed by a theoretical analysis that aims to exemplify how cross-buttressing tendencies in the metaphor...
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This article provides some groundwork for applying the cognitive linguistic theory of force dynamics (Talmy 1988, 2000) to narrative discourse. It proposes that Talmy's analytic apparatus is suitable for revealing character-related... more
This article provides some groundwork for applying the cognitive linguistic theory of force dynamics (Talmy 1988, 2000) to narrative discourse. It proposes that Talmy's analytic apparatus is suitable for revealing character-related dynamics in literature, especially by exploiting the previously unnoticed convergence with the notion of actancy proposed by the narratologist Greimas (1966). Force imagery both in ordinary action descriptions and in metaphor opens a vista on how readers infer, stabilize, and elaborate narrative macro-representations of “who wants what” and “who does what to whom?” Hence, texts subtly encode aspects of higher-level story logic through forces, enabling readers (and scholars) to detect and scale up coherence patterns that shed light on character motives, protagonist interaction, and plot dynamics. A full-scale text linguistic analysis is proposed. My case study of about 500 text units found in Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's novella Carmilla (1872) reveals...
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Feldenkrais and Shiatsu enable somatic learning through continuous tactile coupling, a real-time interpersonal dynamic unfolding in a safe dyadic sphere. The first part of our micro-ethnographic study draws on process vignettes and... more
Feldenkrais and Shiatsu enable somatic learning through continuous tactile coupling, a real-time interpersonal dynamic unfolding in a safe dyadic sphere. The first part of our micro-ethnographic study draws on process vignettes and subjective theories to demonstrate how bodywork is infused with systemic sensitivities and awareness for non-linear process management. Expressed in dynamic systems parlance, both disciplines foster metastability, adaptivity, and self-organization in the client's somato-personal system by progressively reconfiguring systemic dispositions, i.e., an attractor landscape. Doing so requires a keen embodied apperception of hierarchies of somato-systemic order. Bodyworkers learn to explore these in their eigenfunction (joints, muscles, fascia), discriminate coordinative organization in small ensembles, and monitor large-scale dynamic interplay. The practitioner's "extended body" reaching forth into the client's through a resonance loop even...
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My case study of Heart of Darkness analyzes the role of image schemas in shaping narrative macrostructures and in organizing literary metaphor systems. Assuming that we can reconstruct global story meaning from local image-schematic... more
My case study of Heart of Darkness analyzes the role of image schemas in shaping narrative macrostructures and in organizing literary metaphor systems. Assuming that we can reconstruct global story meaning from local image-schematic metaphors, I propose a ...
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... subsistence. Bird-David argues that forest dwelling people, such as the Nayaka of South India, the Mbuti of Congo, or the Batek of Malaysia, share a central metaphor THE ENVIRONMENT (THE FOREST) IS A PARENT. The ...
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This article presents a software-based methodology for studying metaphor in discourse, mainly within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Despite a welcome recent swing towards methodological reflexivity, a detailed... more
This article presents a software-based methodology for studying metaphor in discourse, mainly within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Despite a welcome recent swing towards methodological reflexivity, a detailed explication of the pros and cons of different procedures is still in order as far as qualitative research (i.e. a context-sensitive manual coding of a text corpus) is concerned. Qualitatively oriented scholars have to make difficult decisions revolving around the general research design, the transfer of linguistic theory into method, good workflow management, and the aimed at scope of analysis. My first task is to pinpoint typical tasks and demonstrate how they are optimally dealt with by using qualitative annotation software like ATLAS.ti. Software not only streamlines metaphor tagging itself, it systematizes the interpretive work from grouping text items into systematic/conceptual metaphor sets, via data surveys and checks, to quantitative comparisons and...
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... as often plants metaphors into individual body awareness, a point that is examined in detail ... This points to processing at multiple hierarchic levels as well as the meshing with ... Scheper Hughes and Lock (1987) distinguish three... more
... as often plants metaphors into individual body awareness, a point that is examined in detail ... This points to processing at multiple hierarchic levels as well as the meshing with ... Scheper Hughes and Lock (1987) distinguish three perspectives on embodiment in social and cultural ...
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Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity... more
Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity related skills and the rich spectrum of creative resources CI dancers use. This spectrum begins with relatively idea-driven creation and ends with interactivity-centered, fully emergent creation: (1) Ideation internal to the mind, the focus of traditional creativity research, is either restricted to semi-independent dancing or remains schematic and thus open to dynamic specification under the partner’s influence. (2) Most frequently, CI creativity occurs in tightly coupled behavior and is radically emergent. This means that interpersonal synergies emerge without anybody’s prior design or planned coordination. The creative feat is interpersonally “distributed” over cascades of cross-scaffolding. Our micro-genetic data validate noti...
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This article presents a framework to describe how professional experts regulate complex adaptive systems (CAS), a skill found across bio-psychological, ecological, technical, and social contexts. The regulation aim is to facilitate and... more
This article presents a framework to describe how professional experts regulate complex adaptive systems (CAS), a skill found across bio-psychological, ecological, technical, and social contexts. The regulation aim is to facilitate and constrain the self-organization of a CAS; regulators engage in dynamic decision making while the system evolves. While many naive regulators are overtaxed when they encounter nonlinear and multi-causal dynamics, less is known about how experts perform. I argue that a rich set of competencies can make expert performance distinctive. The basic sensitivities for CAS that shape the general philosophy of practice and a role identity as process facilitators provide some foundation. Turning this into an applied skill set, however, additionally requires (a) the creation of mediating interfaces with a “target” CAS, (b) interaction skills for exploring and stimulating the CAS, (c) the use of domain knowledge about the system’s nature and structure for conceptualizing its state as well as dynamics, (d) the use of analogical reasoning, categories, heuristics, and models to make “if-then” inferences from systemic problem constellations to holistic strategies, and (e) synoptic and meta-regulative capabilities that allow supervising the mix of deployed resources relative to the demands of ongoing task. These CAS regulation tools mesh in variable ways and can mutually amplify each other, i.e. synergize. Illustrations for the framework come from two somatic therapies (aka bodywork), the Shiatsu and Feldenkrais methods, in which therapists use manual techniques as a regulatory means to help their clients.
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Feldenkrais and Shiatsu enable somatic learning through continuous tactile coupling, a real-time interpersonal dynamic unfolding in a safe dyadic sphere. The first part of our micro-ethnographic study draws on process vignettes and... more
Feldenkrais and Shiatsu enable somatic learning through continuous tactile coupling, a real-time interpersonal dynamic unfolding in a safe dyadic sphere. The first part of our micro-ethnographic study draws on process vignettes and subjective theories to demonstrate how bodywork is infused with systemic sensitivities and awareness for non-linear process management. Expressed in dynamic systems parlance, both disciplines foster metastability, adaptivity, and self-organization in the client's somato-personal system by progressively reconfiguring systemic dispositions, i.e., an attractor landscape. Doing so requires a keen embodied apperception of hierarchies of somato-systemic order. Bodyworkers learn to explore these in their eigenfunction (joints, muscles, fascia), discriminate coordinative organization in small ensembles, and monitor large-scale dynamic interplay. The practitioner's “extended body” reaching forth into the client's through a resonance loop eventually bec...
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Recent voices in creativity research emphasize the vital role that processes of active engagement and interaction play. These distributed, interactivity-based, and ecological accounts critique the reduction of creativity to mental... more
Recent voices in creativity research emphasize the vital role that processes of active engagement and interaction play. These distributed, interactivity-based, and ecological accounts critique the reduction of creativity to mental mechanisms and eschew the methodological individualism that underlies this view. Instead, they elevate socio-material couplings to a genuine causal mechanism, hereby explaining why others "are good to be creative with" beyond mutual inspiration or mere constraints on creativity. With improvised dance duets as our example, we introduce a microanalysis that unpacks these mechanisms from a first-person viewpoint: We describe how the embodied communication at the sub-second scale, a continuous "give and take" between dancers, mediates the co-creation process and how reciprocal micro-actions cumulate into more complex creative effects. Secondly, we distinguish convergent and divergent co-creation dynamics, degrees of playful exploration vs. adaptive pressures, and degrees of individual creative autonomy. Thirdly, we argue that the mix of external constraints, joint exploration, and individual ideation provides a fertile mechanism for co-creation. Finally, we discuss forms of individual creative vision that respect and exploit the dynamic ecology, which can manifest in immediate micro-inspirations, but also in subtle modulations of ongoing process, and in "cultivating" the wider system in ways that benefit novelty.
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What do musical creativity and musical skill acquisition have in common? In what sense is creativity implicated in the development of novel musical abilities, and how does the process of building a repertoire of musical skills affect... more
What do musical creativity and musical skill acquisition have in common? In what sense is creativity implicated in the development of novel musical abilities, and how does the process of building a repertoire of musical skills affect creative cognition? In trying to answer to these questions, the present chapter adopts conceptual resources from research on ecological dynamics, and discusses relevant contexts in which creative abilities and skill acquisition interact at different levels and timescales. Our examples include infants engaging in their first musical discoveries, adult expert improvisers, as well as collective forms of learning. To examine these settings, we highlight the power of situated, transactional meaning-making and its underlying dynamics. In doing so, we place emphasis on (i) the creative skills that arise
through exploration of, and active engagement with, an ecological field; (ii) a flexibility-warranting generative system in which softly assembled structures allow to respond to real time constraints, and which frequently incorporate external dynamics into “live” synergies; and (iii) the ability to modulate, give direction to, or actively exploit emergent dynamics. We trace these transactional mechanisms in the early musical activities of infants, before discussing how expert improvisers build on similar capacities, complexify and, in part, transcend them.
through exploration of, and active engagement with, an ecological field; (ii) a flexibility-warranting generative system in which softly assembled structures allow to respond to real time constraints, and which frequently incorporate external dynamics into “live” synergies; and (iii) the ability to modulate, give direction to, or actively exploit emergent dynamics. We trace these transactional mechanisms in the early musical activities of infants, before discussing how expert improvisers build on similar capacities, complexify and, in part, transcend them.
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This article introduces a micro-phenomenological method for interpersonal synergy research, which operates on a sub-second timescale or slightly higher. This is illustrated by two short sequences of joint creativity from Contact... more
This article introduces a micro-phenomenological method for interpersonal synergy research, which operates on a sub-second timescale or slightly higher. This is illustrated by two short sequences of joint creativity from Contact Improvisation (CI), a dance where duets produce spontaneous interaction patterns in constant flow and with deep connection of their bodiestheir synergies stretch across body boundaries. My aim was to systematically take stock of components of these synergies, to describe sharing patterns, and to reconstruct how joint functionalities such as acrobatic lifts may spontaneously emerge. One focus concerns synergy dynamics, from micro-scale processes of interactive synergy build-up to transitions and larger "flows" in which one synergy evolves into another. A complementary focus concerns how a duet structurally organizes its "collective physics" (weight sharing, skeletal alignment, inter-body muscle chains, etc.) and adjusts them for regulation purposes. The proposed method strikes a balance between subjective meanings and biomechanic descriptiveness, thus providing applied benefits (e.g., for trainers), scholarly benefits (e.g., for modeling improvised synergies), and benefits for interdisciplinary discourse.
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"4E" cognitive science has demonstrated that embodied coupling offers powerful resources for reasoning. Despite a surge of studies, little empirical attention is paid to discussing the precise scope of these resources and their possible... more
"4E" cognitive science has demonstrated that embodied coupling offers powerful resources for reasoning. Despite a surge of studies, little empirical attention is paid to discussing the precise scope of these resources and their possible complementariness with traditional knowledge-based inference. We use decision-making in Shiatsu practicea bodywork method that employs hands-on interaction with a clientto showcase how the two types of cognitive resources can mesh and offer alternative paths to a task: "Local" resources such as embodied presence, empathy, attunement, as well as skilled perception-action coupling are not only central for implementing a successful therapeutic intervention. The immediate coupling with a client also offers basic means of deciding about fitting and meaningful interventions. Yet, when comprehensive intervention strategies are at stake, Shiatsu decision making must be complemented through "non-local" resources, notably inferences rooted in anatomy/ physiology knowledge, categories, heuristics, and mental models. To draw out implications for "4E" cognitive science, we argue that "local" embodied coupling and "nonlocal" conceptual inferences can functionally complement, inform, and scaffold each other in a dialectic process.
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This paper reports on projects researching sophisticated interaction and improvisation in five domains of bodywork, pair dance, and martial arts. A general taxonomy of the requisite competencies in proficient experts is worked out, which... more
This paper reports on projects researching sophisticated interaction and improvisation in five domains of bodywork, pair dance, and martial arts. A general taxonomy of the requisite competencies in proficient experts is worked out, which spans multiple timescales and ecological scales (individual, interpersonal). Taxonomy alone, however, cannot explain how concrete, rich tasks unfold: Only the micro-genesis of interrelations between component skills across cognitive, motor, and interpersonal levels provides an explanation, i.e. ways in which functionally distinct mechanisms coalesce or compete. Qualitative methods are proposed to map the diachronic and/or synchronic synergy-building whereby complex behavioral arcs arise. We found that many agent resources used for synergy-building reflect posits by embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognitive science. The " 4Es " highlight mechanisms of interactivity, direct perception, and structural interpenetration. Complexity-related terminology, popular in " 4E " debates, allows us to capture how component practices are metacognitively managed and how cross-catalysis between mind, body, interaction, and environmental parameters is stimulated.
Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity... more
Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity related skills and the rich spectrum of creative resources CI dancers use. This spectrum begins with relatively idea-driven creation and ends with interactivity-centered, fully emergent creation: (1) Ideation internal to the mind, the focus of traditional creativity research, is either restricted to semi-independent dancing or remains schematic and thus open to dynamic specification under the partner’s influence. (2) Most frequently, CI creativity occurs in tightly coupled behavior and is radically emergent. This means that interpersonal synergies emerge without anybody’s prior design or planned coordination. The creative feat is interpersonally “distributed” over cascades of cross-scaffolding. Our micro-genetic data validate notions from dynamic systems theory such as interpersonal self-organization, although we criticize the theory for failing to explain where precisely this leaves skilled intentionality on the individuals’ part. Our answer is that dancers produce a stream of momentary micro-intentions that say “yes, and”, or “no, but” to short-lived micro-affordances, which allows both individuals to skillfully continue, elaborate, tweak, or redirect the collective movement dynamics. Both dancers can invite emergence as part of their playful exploration, while simultaneously bringing to bear global constraints, such as dance scores, and guide the collective dynamics with a set of specialized skills we shall term emergence management.
Research Interests:
Using a video-supported cognitive ethnographic and phenomenological approach, we address the interactively generated dynamic in Aikido. This “soft” martial art enables a defender to blend with and then redirect an attacker’s aggressive... more
Using a video-supported cognitive ethnographic and phenomenological approach, we address the interactively generated dynamic in Aikido. This “soft” martial art enables a defender to blend with and then redirect an attacker’s aggressive energy so as to break her balance, while preserving an ethos of non-violence, mutuality, and respect. Our analysis explores the skills used to minutely adapt to the opponent, the causal-temporal structure of Aikido, notably the cumulative effect build-up and main decision points in a bout, as well as the perceptual cues from inter-body geometry, timing, and force dynamics that inform decisions in each phase and allow overall self-monitoring. We then contrast different interaction scenarios by focusing on micro-events that shape defensive preferences. For a successful defense, technical modulations or even the preferred technique itself can be selected as the interaction unfolds (“decision-making-in-action”). For a closer look, we analyzed the interplay of multiple parameters: flexibility of intention (i.e. early deciding vs. remaining open longer), technique (i.e. type of lever or throw), initial body symmetry, step combinations, spacing and timing relative to the attacker, degree of force, as well as possible skill differentials. We describe complex interdependencies between these parameters, which can be balanced in various ways as agents respond to the interaction dynamic.
Our title can be read as trivially true, namely, that perceived affordances shape real-time interaction dynamics. A less trivial reading suggests that affordances themselves interact in a shared dyadic field, such that the number and... more
Our title can be read as trivially true, namely, that perceived affordances shape real-time interaction dynamics. A less trivial reading suggests that affordances themselves interact in a shared dyadic field, such that the number and quality of As and Bs affordances are dynamically coupled with bidirectional causality. In dance, martial arts, or team sports agents strategically comodulate each other’s affordances while pursuing their aims. In Aikido, where agents try to break their opponents’ balance, this trade-off globally approximates a zero-sum game—the better A’s affordances, the lousier B’s affordances. The agents are subject to ceaseless cross-causation in this shared field. Practitioners seek to obstruct their opponents’ options while strategically enabling, augmenting, and sculpting their own by employing subtle perceptual manipulation skills,redirecting force, brinkmanship, and switching techniques opportunistically. To overcome static views, we conceptualize affordances as cascading and having fluid onsets; we also identify nested affordances in goal hierarchies and describe a spectrum of affordance functions. Ultimately, we suggest rethinking the ontology of affordances as being sensitive to dynamic engagements, hence defined relative to interpersonal emergence.
This contribution surveys strategies for analyzing highly coordinated forms of collaborative dance improvisation, based on tango argentino. Specifically, we take interest (a) in micro-coordination at the <1 s timescale in dance elements... more
This contribution surveys strategies for analyzing highly coordinated forms of collaborative dance improvisation, based on tango argentino. Specifically, we take interest (a) in micro-coordination at the <1 s timescale in dance elements
such as steps or rotations, (b) in meso-scale patterns of 2–8 step “figures”, and (c) in general enabling macro-patterns maintained throughout, a kind of “grammar” of tango. Across these timescales, dancers supply individual action-readiness,
dynamic stability, proper form and connectivity, while jointly “managing” structures of interpersonal coordination such as enabling configurations. Our study engages qualitative and quantitative methods in a dialogue. Starting with micro-genetic elicitation interviews, dancers reported ideomotor concepts, perceptual triggers, and didactic imagery. Besides general (e.g. postural) habits, task-specific forms or techniques, and attentional foci, this yields insights into the
interlocking contributions and information flow between tango leaders and followers within units as small as half-steps. The subjective data was then “frontloaded”
into a motion-capture study in which six expert couples, fitted with 2 × 21 light-point reflectors, executed various tango techniques. We developed kinematic indicators for individual and interpersonal coordination (degree of coupling, relative movement onset and action timing, role specifics); we also measured geometries underlying various tango tasks and style variations. The combined data suggests a micro-coordination model where dynamic interdependencies enable precise mutually adaptive action. The criss-crossing signals, e.g. when the increasing lability of
the leader’s torso triggers the follower’s leg extension at the beginning of a forward step, suggests task-, phase- and body-part specific contingencies whereby leaders
and followers micro-coordinate actions with respect to one another.
such as steps or rotations, (b) in meso-scale patterns of 2–8 step “figures”, and (c) in general enabling macro-patterns maintained throughout, a kind of “grammar” of tango. Across these timescales, dancers supply individual action-readiness,
dynamic stability, proper form and connectivity, while jointly “managing” structures of interpersonal coordination such as enabling configurations. Our study engages qualitative and quantitative methods in a dialogue. Starting with micro-genetic elicitation interviews, dancers reported ideomotor concepts, perceptual triggers, and didactic imagery. Besides general (e.g. postural) habits, task-specific forms or techniques, and attentional foci, this yields insights into the
interlocking contributions and information flow between tango leaders and followers within units as small as half-steps. The subjective data was then “frontloaded”
into a motion-capture study in which six expert couples, fitted with 2 × 21 light-point reflectors, executed various tango techniques. We developed kinematic indicators for individual and interpersonal coordination (degree of coupling, relative movement onset and action timing, role specifics); we also measured geometries underlying various tango tasks and style variations. The combined data suggests a micro-coordination model where dynamic interdependencies enable precise mutually adaptive action. The criss-crossing signals, e.g. when the increasing lability of
the leader’s torso triggers the follower’s leg extension at the beginning of a forward step, suggests task-, phase- and body-part specific contingencies whereby leaders
and followers micro-coordinate actions with respect to one another.
Research Interests:
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Research Interests:
This is a book project I plan to finish by late 2013; here is a preliminary table of contents. The purpose of the book is to introduce a cognitive ethnographic approach to sophisticated interaction skills, present innovative empirical... more
This is a book project I plan to finish by late 2013; here is a preliminary table of contents. The purpose of the book is to introduce a cognitive ethnographic approach to sophisticated interaction skills, present innovative empirical phenomenological methods that my team developed, and situate the results in the current theories of embodied, enactive, embedded, extended and distributed/team cognition as well as Ecological Psychology (notably affordance theory). Case studies material comes from pair dance (Tango argentino), martial arts (Aikido) and bodywork (Feldenkrais, Shiatsu).
"0. Introduction: Why affordance theory is less ecological and dynamic than it might be 2
PART I: A CONTEXTUAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION-ACTION CYCLES 8
1. Gibson’s heritage and beyond 8
2. Analytic dimensions 21
3. Sensing skills 24
4. Action skills 31
5. Imagery skills 36
6. Representational aspects for managing and enhancing the senses 42
7. Backdrops of embodied semiosis: The system level 48
PART II: MICRO-GENETIC CASE STUDIES 55
8. The phenomenological ethnography of skills 55
9. “Thin slices” of co-regulation 66
10. Nodes (decision points) 70
11. Conceptually enhanced sensing – the dynamic control space model 74
12. Expert concepts and principles 84
PART III: MACRO-PERSPECTIVES: INTEGRATION, LEARNING, AND SYSTEM COMPARISON 89
14. Apprenticeship 89
14. A comparison of systemic contexts: Affordance profiles in four disciplines 91
15. Zoom out: Affordances “in the wild” as an interdisciplinary challenge 98
"
"0. Introduction: Why affordance theory is less ecological and dynamic than it might be 2
PART I: A CONTEXTUAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION-ACTION CYCLES 8
1. Gibson’s heritage and beyond 8
2. Analytic dimensions 21
3. Sensing skills 24
4. Action skills 31
5. Imagery skills 36
6. Representational aspects for managing and enhancing the senses 42
7. Backdrops of embodied semiosis: The system level 48
PART II: MICRO-GENETIC CASE STUDIES 55
8. The phenomenological ethnography of skills 55
9. “Thin slices” of co-regulation 66
10. Nodes (decision points) 70
11. Conceptually enhanced sensing – the dynamic control space model 74
12. Expert concepts and principles 84
PART III: MACRO-PERSPECTIVES: INTEGRATION, LEARNING, AND SYSTEM COMPARISON 89
14. Apprenticeship 89
14. A comparison of systemic contexts: Affordance profiles in four disciplines 91
15. Zoom out: Affordances “in the wild” as an interdisciplinary challenge 98
"
If you are interested in the book, you can get a hardcopy from me.
(2002, with B. Herzog-Punzenberger & K. Müller): Forschungslandskarte Kognitionswissenschaften. Ergebnisse für Österreich [Austrian Cognitive Science Map. National Results], Institute of Advanced Studies (Institut für Höhere Studien) & WISDOM, Project Report to the Austrian National Bank (390 pp.) more
You can download the table of contents and a summary here.
Conference panel with my participation