Matching Items (9)
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- All Subjects: Dance
- Creators: Rajko, Jessica
- Resource Type: Text
Description
No Doors: A Personal Exploration of Movement and Technology, details the interdisciplinary strategies that were used in the making of a series of interactive/reactive/immersive (IRI) installations that drew audiences into an experience and encouraged active observation and/or participation. The interdisciplinary IRI installations described in this document combined movement, sculpture, production design, and various forms of media and technology with environments in which participants had agency. In the process of developing this work, the artist considered several concepts and practices: site-specific, various technologies, real-time processing, participant experience, embodied exploration, and hidden activity. Throughout the creative process, the researcher conducted a series of four focus labs in which a small audience was invited to engage with the work as a way of gathering data about the effectiveness of the installations in facilitating active audience observation and/or participation. The data collected after each focus lab informed the revision of the work in preparation for the next focus lab, with the ultimate result being the production of a final exhibition of five interdisciplinary IRI installations. The installations detailed in this document were loosely based on five elements: water, fire, air, earth, and spirit.
ContributorsMcCaman, Sharon (Author) / Schupp, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Rajko, Jessica (Committee member) / Pinholster, Jacob (Committee member) / Tinapple, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The goal of this study was to look at touch and dance from different views to gain a better perspective on the benefits of touch, mainly when used in dance and also perhaps in broader contexts. Part of this investigation also looked at the stigmatized view of touch in the American culture and in turn the lack of knowledge about, and comfort with touch in our society. A personal research component involved the creation of a solo reflecting about the question of why I connect with touch so intensely. The bulk of the study involved facilitating touch experiences in two introductory level dance classes for high school students. Daily journal entries were collected from each of the eighty students that focused on their personal experiences with touch in a series of six movement sessions. The study shows that bringing touch to the dance classroom has multiple benefits, including promoting a greater understanding and acceptance of the sense of touch, a positive impact on students' views about dance, and a break down of preconceived notions about the mind and the body.
ContributorsSteinken, Brigitte Rose (Author) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Thesis director) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Dyer, Becky (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Dance (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The action of running is difficult to measure, but well worth it to receive valuable information about one of our most basic evolutionary functions. In the context of modern day, recreational runners typically listen to music while running, and so the purpose of this experiment is to analyze the influence of music on running from a more dynamical approach. The first experiment was a running task involving running without a metronome and running with one while setting one's own preferred running tempo. The second experiment sought to manipulate the participant's preferred running tempo by having them listen to the metronome set at their preferred tempo, 20% above their preferred tempo, or 20% below. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether or not rhythmic perturbations different to one's preferred running tempo would interfere with one's preferred running tempo and cause a change in the variability of one's running patterns as well as a change in one's running performance along the measures of step rate, stride length, and stride pace. The evidence suggests that participants naturally entrained to the metronome tempo which influenced them to run faster or slower as a function of metronome tempo. However, this change was also accompanied by a shift in the variability of one's step rate and stride length.
ContributorsZavala, Andrew Geovanni (Author) / Amazeen, Eric (Thesis director) / Amazeen, Polemnia (Committee member) / Vedeler, Dankert (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
This document analyzes the use of the Principles of Design within the applied project It’s My Party, a multimedia dance theatre production, as a means to address and overcome the stigmatization of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Through the orchestration of dance, music, props, acting, video, and spoken word, this interdisciplinary work investigates how these production elements synthesize into a transformative theatrical experience for audiences. Outlined in this document is the eight month design process. The process included concept design, assessing, processing, customizing the message, script development, rehearsals, and video production, and concluded with an evening length production. Analyzed through the structural narrative of The Hero’s Journey, this autobiographic work details the author’s HIV-positive (HIV+) coming out story from a restorative narrative perspective. By addressing the subject of HIV from a contemporary point-of-view, this project strives to reencode the troubling associations affiliated with HIV with an empowered and hopeful understanding.
ContributorsAlvarez, Ricardo (Author) / Schupp, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Magenta, Muriel (Committee member) / Rajko, Jessica (Committee member) / Standley, Eileen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
ABSTRACT
Connection, isolation, and female empowerment are not often explored nor analyzed together, yet often coexist harmoniously. Through processes of improvisation and dance making informed by feminist perspectives, the research investigated the intersections of empowerment, voice, knowledge construction and embodiment. It focused on women's ways of understanding their embodiment, the relationship between choice-making and meaning-making, processes of reflecting upon lived experiences, and exploring how experiences are expressed through the body and body attitudes. The research study explored and analyzed not only my own meaning making about connection, isolation, and female empowerment, but also the perspectives of fourteen young women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three. Using the themes of connection, isolation, and female empowerment as fuel for creative expression and movement development, my dancers and I collaborated on making an evening length work that reflected our findings based on connection, isolation, and female empowerment and as well as embodied values.
Connection, isolation, and female empowerment are not often explored nor analyzed together, yet often coexist harmoniously. Through processes of improvisation and dance making informed by feminist perspectives, the research investigated the intersections of empowerment, voice, knowledge construction and embodiment. It focused on women's ways of understanding their embodiment, the relationship between choice-making and meaning-making, processes of reflecting upon lived experiences, and exploring how experiences are expressed through the body and body attitudes. The research study explored and analyzed not only my own meaning making about connection, isolation, and female empowerment, but also the perspectives of fourteen young women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three. Using the themes of connection, isolation, and female empowerment as fuel for creative expression and movement development, my dancers and I collaborated on making an evening length work that reflected our findings based on connection, isolation, and female empowerment and as well as embodied values.
ContributorsGallagher, Grace (Author) / Dyer, Becky (Thesis advisor) / Standley, Eileen (Committee member) / Rajko, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Metaphor as a way of thinking permeates daily life. It affects how people understand and experience everything. It also plays an important role in artistic creation. The idea of creating highly personal but commonly understood metaphors was central to the research and creation of Ink. I created this work to find out how I—as a Chinese artist with unique personal experiences, educational experiences, and cultural perspectives—can explore metaphors that would resonate with predominantly Western audiences. This research specifically addressed the metaphorical meanings of the colors black and white and drew from my visual artistry to compose dances, stage setting, and costume design.
ContributorsLiang, Yingzi (Author) / Rajko, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Kim, Marianne (Committee member) / Rex-Flint, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Places That Shape You documents the development and experience of composing and presenting Places That Shape You, an evening-length dance performance examining the relationship between culture and urban spaces, inspired by the physical parameters that cities provide for our lives. In the performance, a blend of postmodern contemporary movement vocabulary, text, projection, a mattress, 12 phonebooks and an overhead projector were used to a tell a story through the contrast of objects both obsolete and current. Musical collaborator, Austen Mack, created an original score that worked in partnership with the movement, advancing the unfolding of concepts about public and private spaces, community, memory, expectation and abstraction. In collaboration with six dancers, the choreographer conducted movement and archival research investigating personal stories, urban theory, somatic experience, place-making, and memories left in the spaces people inhabit, culminating in an evening length performance.
ContributorsWillcox, Halley (Author) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Lerman, Liz (Committee member) / Rajko, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Impermanence is constant within the world humans live in; the physical environment is ever-changing, parallel with human evolution. Although the moment of a human lifespan is fleeting in comparison to their surrounding landscapes, the evidence of movement that lapses through time and space in relation to body and place reveals a hidden dance that soars across the history of humankind. This document explores the relationship between moving bodies and various environments, specifically how an individual’s perception of place influences the way people dance. Given the author’s background as a choreographer, performer, and filmmaker, the goal and method of this document is to understand the author’s and his ensemble of dancers’ perceived senses within a given geographic environment and to merge personal dialect in an artistic product. Ultimately, what was found was translating into an evening-length, movement-centered presentation.
The author's curiosity with foreign landscapes and his exploratory spirit are the driving forces for this project. Before arriving at the thesis topic, the author knew that environmental exploration and dance would be at the forefront of the research. Similar to a museum exhibition context, this document yearns for variety, and studies the environments through an event that encapsulates it all. This document explores the author’s multiple artistic interests in photography, film, and live performance, all of which were presented in a single event.
The author's curiosity with foreign landscapes and his exploratory spirit are the driving forces for this project. Before arriving at the thesis topic, the author knew that environmental exploration and dance would be at the forefront of the research. Similar to a museum exhibition context, this document yearns for variety, and studies the environments through an event that encapsulates it all. This document explores the author’s multiple artistic interests in photography, film, and live performance, all of which were presented in a single event.
ContributorsFung, Lawrence (Author) / White, Marcus (Thesis advisor) / Standley, Eileen (Committee member) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This chapter is not a guide to embodied thinking, but rather a critical call to action. It highlights the deep history of embodied practice within the fields of dance and somatics, and outlines the value of embodied thinking within human-computer interaction (HCI) design and, more specifically, wearable technology (WT) design. What this chapter does not do is provide a guide or framework for embodied practice. As a practitioner and scholar grounded in the fields of dance and somatics, I argue that a guide to embodiment cannot be written in a book. To fully understand embodied thinking, one must act, move, and do. Terms such as embodiment and embodied thinking are often discussed and analyzed in writing; but if the purpose is to learn how to engage in embodied thinking, then the answers will not come from a text. The answers come from movement-based exploration, active trial-and-error, and improvisation practices crafted to cultivate physical attunement to one's own body. To this end, my "call to action" is for the reader to move beyond a text-based understanding of embodiment to active engagement in embodied methodologies. Only then, I argue, can one understand how to apply embodied thinking to a design process.
ContributorsRajko, Jessica (Author)
Created2018