Paint Dancing and Multiple Modalities
Back in January I stumbled upon an event here in Seattle called PaintDancing. An evening at a local private studio with paper, tempera paint, music and snacks, benefiting a local food bank. I bit. I was taken by the mixing of the modalities of paint, music and movement.
In the online world, this idea of mixing and marrying modalities is becoming increasingly important to me. We mix tools (computer, phone, digital cameras). We mix how we construct our interations over time (synchronous, asynchronous, time-shifting). We mix our internet based tools (blogs, wikis, forums, video and audio tools). We mix our communications modalities (text, images, audio, video.) 
But we still haven't really brought our bodies into this. I got thinking more about this after doing an interview with Robyn McCullough who works with the field of somatics.
I often joke with people when I'm on a conference call that I have to describe my body language, an element of my cultural heritage. In asynchronous forums I will describe "leaning into the screen" with attention. I will post ::nodding:: in a chat room to "show" listening. I have embodied my body in text. But I sense there is more. What do you experience?
It turns out there is a video - dark, but you get the picture, of our gathering.
posted by Nancy White at 11:29 AM
1 Comments:
Nancy,
I think this is such an important part of online interaction... bringing our body-speak into the experience and equally as important bringing our body awareness into our interacting.
In my online interactions (at the moment I'm thinking of blogs, forums and skyping) I am quite articulate about how the content and material is landing in my body, how I find myself responding (like your leaning in and nodding) and also how and emotion shows up within me. What I have found in my personal research on this is that communicating in an embodied manner actually communicates an embodied experience to the other. People tell me that they can feel what I'm saying inside of them, that reading me can sometimes be a visceral experience.
You know... this makes me wonder about mirror neurons. We don't have the visual cues for mirror neurons (which is how they were discovered) but I wonder if we provide verbal and text-ual expressions of our body interactions are we in some way firing the mirror neurons in one another?
I also think that inviting awareness of our bodies into the conversation is so important for our abilities to be fully present (our bodies are a big part of us!) and our integral health in the world of online interaction.
Thanks for bringing up the question! And I'm thinking about paint dancing on Friday night... are you going again?
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