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Title:	Joint action aesthetics dataset, 2016
Keywords:	SYNCHRONY DANCE AESTHETICS JOINT ACTION 2018
Description:	Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers’ movements, and the spectators’ affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators’ heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance–and perhaps all performing arts–in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts. This dataset contains time-series for performer and spectator variables for all four performances. <p>Across all cultures, people dance. Yet, little is known about what function dance and the performing arts fulfill in society, or why TV shows such as "Strictly come dancing" are so popular. We propose that the appeal of dancing and watching dance partly lies in promoting and communicating successful cooperation between people. Research in social psychology has shown that when two people meet, they become more like each other. They imitate each others' accent, speech rate and syntax; they look at the same things and use the same words; they adopt similar postures, gesture alike and gently sway together. This behavioural coordination studied in social psychology seems to produce feelings of liking and affiliation between pairs of people. Similarly, when small groups of people interact, and move together, they also feel closer to each other and are more likely to cooperate. We will use dance as a means to study how moving together is linked to liking each other. Similarly, observing other people move together may produce aesthetic pleasure because it showcases successful social interactions. Our research aims to provide novel insights into the role that dance and the performing arts fulfill in modern society. In a set of experiments, we will test this hypothesis by inviting groups of people (non-dancers) to participate in "dance workshop" experiments that teach moving in synchrony. Rather than asking participants to just "do the same", we will work with professional dancers and choreographers to apply principles from dance and choreography to examine different ways of moving together. Following these workshops, we will assess cooperation, sympathy and liking between participants of the workshop and members of the audience. Performers and audience members will be equipped with small motion sensors and we will also record their electrical brain activity. This will allow us to link different ways of moving in synchrony (or asynchrony) to brain activity, cooperation and liking. In a follow-up functional neuroimaging experiment we will link aesthetic pleasure derived from observing collective human movement to specific brain mechanisms. We will also explore clinical applications of our research project. For example the perception of human movement is impaired in patients with autism. Training to move in synchrony might help to improve such deficits in recognizing other people's actions because it requires to carefully monitor how movements are performed. Similarly, increasing awareness of an action by moving in synchrony may boost memory for an already performed action. In obsessive-compulsive disorder compulsive checking involves a vicious circle in which more checking paradoxically leads to less confidence in memory and impairs attention. Increasing action awareness through "over performing" obsessive actions or moving in synchrony with others could thus reduce obsessive behaviours such as washing by making it easier to remember that the action was performed already. In summary our research project combines expertise in dance, social psychology and neuroscience (a) to study how cooperation can result form simply moving together, (b) to understand aesthetic appreciation of dance and the performing arts, and (c) to develop new treatments for psychological disorders. Further, our research will provide new insights into the role that the performing arts fulfill in society and may also yield commercial applications for the creative industries.</p>
URI:	https://t2-4.bsc.es/jspui/handle/123456789/60472
Other Identifiers:	852812 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852812 https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-852812
Appears in Collections:	Cessda

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