EMBODIED GESTURES

EMBODIED GESTURES
Author: Enrique Tomás
Publisher: TU Wien Academic Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2022-04-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 3854480474

This is a book about musical gestures: multiple ways to design instruments, compose musical performances, analyze sound objects and represent sonic ideas through the central notion of ‘gesture’. The writers share knowledge on major research projects, musical compositions and methodological tools developed among different disciplines, such as sound art, embodied music cognition, human-computer interaction, performative studies and artificial intelligence. They visualize how similar and compatible are the notions of embodied music cognition and the artistic discourses proposed by musicians working with ‘gesture’ as their compositional material. The authors and editors hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion around creative technologies and music, expressive musical interface design, the debate around the use of AI technology in music practice, as well as presenting a new way of thinking about musical instruments, composing and performing with them. The artistic research project ‘Embodied Gestures’ is coordinated by the Tangible Music Lab of the University of Art and Design Linz, and the Artifact-based Computing & User Research unit of the TU Wien. Publishing this book was possible thanks to the funding received from the Austrian Programme for Arts-based Research (FWF PEEK).

The Style of Gestures

The Style of Gestures
Author: Guillemette Bolens
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2012-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1421405180

With a foreword by well-known neuroscientist Alain Berthoz, The Style of Gestures convincingly makes the case that embodied cognition is essential to the reception, understanding, and enjoyment of art and literature.

Agency and Embodiment

Agency and Embodiment
Author: Carrie Noland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0674054385

In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland examines the ways in which culture is both embodied and challenged through the corporeal performance of gestures. Arguing against the constructivist metaphor of bodily inscription dominant since Foucault, Noland maintains that kinesthetic experience, produced by acts of embodied gesturing, places pressure on the conditioning a body receives, encouraging variations in cultural practice that cannot otherwise be explained. Drawing on work in disciplines as diverse as dance and movement theory, phenomenology, cognitive science, and literary criticism, Noland argues that kinesthesia—feeling the body move—encourages experiment, modification, and, at times, rejection of the routine. Noland privileges corporeal performance and the sensory experience it affords in order to find a way beyond constructivist theory’s inability to produce a convincing account of agency. She observes that despite the impact of social conditioning, human beings continue to invent surprising new ways of altering the inscribed behaviors they are called on to perform. Through lucid close readings of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Bill Viola, André Leroi-Gourhan, Henri Michaux, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary digital artist Camille Utterback, Noland illustrates her provocative thesis, addressing issues of concern to scholars in critical theory, performance studies, anthropology, and visual studies.

Emerging Perspectives on Gesture and Embodiment in Mathematics

Emerging Perspectives on Gesture and Embodiment in Mathematics
Author: Laurie D. Edwards
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1623965551

The purpose of the book is to establish a common language for, and understanding of, embodiment as it applies to mathematical thinking, and to link mathematics education research to recent work in gesture studies, cognitive linguistics and the theory of embodied cognition. Just as in past decades, mathematics education experienced a "turn to the social" in which socio-cultural factors were explored, in recent years there has been a nascent "turn to the body." An increasing number of researchers and theorists in mathematics education have become interested in the fact that, although mathematics may be socially constructed, this construction is not arbitrary or unconstrained, but rather is rooted in, and shaped by, the body. All those who engage with mathematics, whether at an elementary or advanced level, share the same basic biological and cognitive capabilities, as well as certain common physical experiences that come with being humans living in a material world. In addition, the doing and communicating of mathematics is never a purely intellectual activity: it involves a wide range of bodily actions, from committing inscriptions to paper or whiteboard, to speaking, listening, gesturing and gazing. This volume will present recent research on gesture and mathematics, within a framework that addresses several levels of mathematical development. The chapters will begin with contributions that examine early mathematical and proto-mathematical knowledge, for example, the conservation of volume and counting. The role of gesture in teaching and learning arithmetic procedures will be addressed. Core concepts and tools from secondary level mathematics will be investigated, including algebra, functions and graphing. And finally, research into the embodied understanding of advanced topics in geometry and calculus will be presented. The overall goal for the volume is to acknowledge the multimodal nature of mathematical knowing, and to contribute to the creation of a model of the interactions and mutual influences of bodily motion, spatial thinking, gesture, speech and external inscriptions on mathematical thinking, communication and learning. The intended audience is researchers and theorists in mathematics education as well as graduate students in the field.

Nature Embodied

Nature Embodied
Author: Anthony Corbeill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691187800

Bodily gesture. A Roman worshipper spins in a circle in front of a temple. Faced with death, a Roman woman tears her hair and beats her breasts. Enthusiastic spectators at a gladiatorial event gesticulate with thumbs. Examining the tantalizing glimpses of ancient bodies offered by surviving Roman sculptures, paintings, and literary texts, Anthony Corbeill analyzes the role of gesture in medical and religious ritual, in the gladiatorial arena, in mourning practice, in aristocratic competition of the late Republic, and in the court of the emperor Tiberius. Adopting approaches from anthropology, gender studies, and ecological theory, Nature Embodied offers both a series of case studies and an overarching narrative of the role and meanings of gesture in ancient Rome. Arguing that bodily movement grew out of the relationship between Romans and their natural, social, and spiritual environment, the book explores the ways in which an originally harmonious relationship between nature and the body was manipulated as Rome became socially and politically complex. By the time that Tacitus was writing about the reign of Tiberius, the emergence of a new political order had prompted an increasingly inscrutable equation between truth and the body--and something vital in the once harmonizing relationship between bodies and the world beyond them had been lost. Nature Embodied makes an important contribution to an expanding field of research by offering a new theoretical model for the study of gesture in classical times.

Gestures

Gestures
Author: Giovanni Maddalena
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2024-09-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110785846

Over the past few years, scientists and philosophers have discussed the concept of gesture as promising to overcome hyper-intellectualist conceptions of human beings. Its ascendancy reaffirmed the importance of the pragmatic, relational dimension in human experience and cognitive processes. Many questions arise when we focus on the cognitive role of gestures, especially in the new cultural landscape shaped by the digital revolution. Does the idea of gestures highlight the preeminence of bodily experiences? Does it lead to the thinning of the distinction between humans and nonhuman animals? Do gestures help us rethink the allegedly higher human capacities in an antireductionist vein? Do gestures involve reasoning? Are they purely external actions? Do they serve to communicate, or is all communication a form of gesture? What kinds of social relations are involved in the concept of gesture? According to a multidisciplinary orientation, the book inquiries into the possibilities and issues opened up by attending to a philosophy of gestures in philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and communication studies. Given the current centrality of gestures, the general aim of the book is to reconsider the meaning of "gestures" and try to answer old and new questions.

Movement Matters

Movement Matters
Author: Sheila L. Macrine
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0262368986

Experts translate the latest findings on embodied cognition from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to inform teaching and learning pedagogy. Embodied cognition represents a radical shift in conceptualizing cognitive processes, in which cognition develops through mind-body environmental interaction. If this supposition is correct, then the conventional style of instruction—in which students sit at desks, passively receiving information—needs rethinking. Movement Matters considers the educational implications of an embodied account of cognition, describing the latest research applications from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science and demonstrating their relevance for teaching and learning pedagogy. The contributors cover a range of content areas, explaining how the principles of embodied cognition can be applied in classroom settings. After a discussion of the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of embodied cognition, contributors describe its applications in language, including the areas of handwriting, vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension; STEM areas, emphasizing finger counting and the importance of hand and body gestures in understanding physical forces; and digital learning technologies, including games and augmented reality. Finally, they explore embodied learning in the social-emotional realm, including how emotional granularity, empathy, and mindfulness benefit classroom learning. Movement Matters introduces a new model, translational learning sciences research, for interpreting and disseminating the latest empirical findings in the burgeoning field of embodied cognition. The book provides an up-to-date, inclusive, and essential resource for those involved in educational planning, design, and pedagogical approaches. Contributors Dor Abrahamson, Martha W. Alibali, Petra A. Arndt, Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Jo Boaler, Christiana Butera, Rachel S. Y. Chen,Charles P. Davis, Andrea Marquardt Donovan, Inge-Marie Eigsti, Virginia J. Flood, Jennifer M. B. Fugate, Arthur M. Glenberg, Ligia E. Gómez, Daniel D. Hutto, Karin H. James, Mina C. Johnson-Glenberg, Michael P. Kaschak, Markus Kiefer, Christina Krause, Sheila L. Macrine, Anne Mangen, Carmen Mayer, Amanda L. McGraw, Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz, Mitchell J. Nathan, Antti Pirhonen, Kelsey E. Schenck, Lawrence Shapiro, Anna Shvarts, Yue-Ting Siu,Sofia Tancredi, Chrystian Vieyra, Rebecca Vieyra, Candace Walkington, Christine Wilson-Mendenhall, Eiling Yee

Second Language Conversations

Second Language Conversations
Author: Rod Gardner
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2005-12-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780826488008

"This collection is the first to consistently adopt Conversation Analysis as an approach to second language interaction. By examining first and second language speakers' participation in a wide range of activities, it challenges the dominant view of 'nonnative speakers' as deficient communicators. Proposing instead to understand second language users' conversational participation as interactional achievement, the book makes a powerful case for 'ethnomethodological respecification' in second language research." Professor Gabriele Kasper, University of Hawai'i Conversations involving speakers whose first language is not the language in which they are talking have become widespread in the globalized world. Migration, increased travel for business or pleasure, as well as communication through new technologies such as the internet make Second Language Conversations an increasingly common everyday event. In this book Conversation Analysis is used to explore natural, casual talk between speakers in a second language. The contributors shift emphasis away from controlled contexts such as the classroom towards more sociable environments in which people go about their daily routines. English, German, French, Japanese, Finnish and Danish are all analyzed as second languages within a variety of professional, educational and sociable situations. This collection of essays aims to present naturally occurring Second Language Conversations in order to show what speakers in these situations do; how they utilize first language conversational practices, and whether or not grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation help or hinder the construction of meaning. >

Beyond the body? The Future of Embodied Cognition

Beyond the body? The Future of Embodied Cognition
Author: Guy Dove
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2016-03-22
Genre: Cognition
ISBN: 2889197972

Embodied cognition represents one of most important research programs in contemporary cognitive science. Although there is a diversity of opinion concerning the nature of embodiment, the core idea is that cognitive processes are influenced by body morphology, emotions, and sensorimotor systems. This idea is supported by an ever increasing collection of empirical studies that fall into two broad classes: one consisting of experiments that implicate action, emotion, and perception systems in seemingly abstract cognitive tasks and the other consisting of experiments that demonstrate the contribution of bodily interaction with the external environment to the performance of such tasks. Now that the research program of embodied cognition is well established, the time seems right for assessing its further promise and potential limitations. This research topic aims to create an interdisciplinary forum for discussing where we go from here. Given that we have good reason to think that the body influences cognition in surprisingly robust ways, the central question is no longer whether or not any cognitive processes are embodied. Instead, other questions have come to the fore: To what extent are cognitive processes in general embodied? Are there disembodied processes? Among those that are embodied, how are they embodied? Is there more than one kind of embodiment? Is embodiment a matter of degree? There are a number of specific issues that could be addressed by submissions to this research topic. Some supporters of embodied cognition eschew representations. Should anti-representationalism be a core part of an embodied approach? What role should dynamical models play? Research in embodied cognition has tended to focus on the importance of sensorimotor areas for cognition. What are the functions of multimodal or amodal brain areas? Abstract concepts have proved to be a challenge for embodied cognition. How should they be handled? Should researchers allow for some form of weak embodiment? Currently, there is a split between those who offer a simulation-based approach to embodiment and those who offer an enactive approach. Who is right? Should there be a rapprochement between these two groups? Some experimental and robotics researchers have recently shown a great deal of interest in the idea that external resources such as language can serve as form of cognitive scaffolding. What are the implications of this idea for embodied cognition? This research aims to bring together empirical and theoretical work from a diversity of perspectives. Subtitling is one of the most important disciplines in the history of social sciences, with the help of cognitive psychology. Researchers are encouraged to submit papers to discussing the future of embodied cognition, methods, models, or theories.