ICI Freiburg

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.

  1. Move, come to an end, wait until you arrive, move again
  2. Eyes closed, touched by two people, (1) be touched, (2) meet the touch, (3) be moved by touch
  3. Eyes closed, listen to movement instructions while (1) imagining moving, (2) moving, (3) imagining moving.