Challenge: create three neuroscience experiments that are of interest to improvisers and dancers as well as neuroscientists – during the 300-person 2017 Freiburg Contact Improvisation Festival. 12 days start to finish, with 10 collaborators from neuroscience, performance studies, sociology, cybernetics, psychology, literature, philosophy, Alexander technique, choreography, anthropology; speaking three different languages (French, Spanish, English). Using guerilla equipment: portable EEG, eye trackers, accelerometers, heart and breathing trackers, video recording, and microphenomenology.
Research creation method: talk, argue, propose and try movement experiment, discuss equipment, formulate protocol ideas, try, repeat.
Focal Result: What happens just before a movement arises?
Festival Goal: develop three ideas into full protocols, prototype them, practice, design equipment, train participants, recruit subjects, design training, set up and take down lab in 2.5 hours each of three times.
- Move, come to an end, wait until you arrive, move again
- Eyes closed, touched by two people, (1) be touched, (2) meet the touch, (3) be moved by touch
- Eyes closed, listen to movement instructions while (1) imagining moving, (2) moving, (3) imagining moving.