Vital Signs 2: Paper Session 2c
Researching feelings, affect and experience
Tuesday 7 September, 4 - 5.30pm
'Drawing as Countersignature to Experience' - Dr Matthew Reason (York St John University)
This paper explores the use of drawing as a tool in qualitative research workshops designed to explore audience experiences of dance.
As part of the ‘Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy’ AHRC-funded project, I conducted visual-arts based workshops with audience members after different dance performances. Working on different occasions with both adults and children, the workshops used drawing and painting to mediate, extend, focus and disrupt conversation in which the participants were asked to reflect back upon their experiences and memories of the performance they had seen.
In its development the methodology engages various overlapping approaches – art therapy, projective techniques in marketing, ideas of participative enquiry – all centred around the concept that the task of drawing will provide insights into individual’s experiences that are somehow ‘deeper’ or more ‘insightful’ than that produced by ‘mere’ talk. The use of drawing also suggests the ability to access knowledge in forms other than the verbal, something particularly attractive when dealing with the medium of dance.
This paper will explore the concepts and questions raised by this approach, including issues of rigour, evidence, the impact of medium on expression and the challenge of interpretation and dissemination. The paper will also explore the manner by which drawing is a transformative medium and how issues of transformation, imitation and (mis)interpretation – typically considered problematic in considering real world data – are appropriate to our exploration of responses to art and other lived experiences.
'Exploring the Fan/Music Relationship with Memory Work and Music Elicitation' - Dr Nicola Allett (University of Manchester)
In studies of music fandom and music cultures, the fans relationship with music is largely overlooked. Yet, looking at the distinct attachments and experiences that music offers the fan could give greater insight into music-centred identities. In order to do so, however, requires methods that can draw out feelings, descriptive accounts and memories of the music experience. This paper considers my use of memory work and music elicitation within semi-structured group interviews with Extreme Metal music fans to generate data concerning the everyday fan practices and the distinct investments and attachments fans have to Extreme Metal as both a music genre and a music subculture. Each method aided the disclosure of Extreme Metal fans’ attachments and thick descriptions of their experiences of listening to Extreme Metal music. The paper reflects on my adoption of each method, the research process and how they influenced the resulting data. It considers the success of these methods in eliciting memories, feelings and attachments and highlights the importance of considering intangibles, such as feeling, as data.
'‘Image-Affect’ in the Social Dreaming Matrix and its Potential in Psycho-Social Research ' (Working Title) - Julian Manley (University of the West of England)
I begin by briefly defining what is meant by the terms ‘social dreaming’, ‘image-affect’ and ‘psycho-social’ in the present context. In doing so, and with reference to the philosophical understanding of ‘affect’ in the writings of Spinoza as the inspiration for the post-modernist ideas of Deleuze, I begin with an exploration of the meaning of ‘affect’ and its importance in this context. The discussion then moves on to making connections between ‘affect’ and the visual imagination. I will be proposing that the ‘visual’ that we are concerned with when talking of ‘affect’ is the same as the image in the unconscious mind made manifest in the social dreaming experience - the ‘image-affect’. I will discuss the nature of this image, its patterned, organic, timeless and active qualities, drawing on experiential examples – transcripts and images - from social dreaming matrices. In discussing the ‘image affect’ in its practical manifestation, I will be exploring its potential use in research. I will also suggest that its very nature, (previously discussed), makes it difficult to use in a social dreaming context when it is transformed into a physical still imagery, such a painting or photograph. I will thus be making a distinction between the ‘image-affect’ in the mind and the objective representation of the image.
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