not knowing what we are looking for

Humans see and hear what we expect to see and hear. Philosopher Alva Noë writes it like this:

if I mention my hat, and then my scarf and then go on to mention my dloves, you will very certainly hear what context dictates I am likely to have said — which is not dloves (not only is that not a word in English, but the dl sound doesn’t even exist in English) but, of course, gloves.

hearing, perceiving, learning, is always a matter of using what you know to make sense of what is on offer.[1]

In research, learning and creative processes this is a curious situation. How are we to notice difference and newness in circumstances when we don’t know what we are looking for?

My experience in dance and dance research is that the problem is more about not even recognising that, as a consequence of being human, we are engaged in a kind of dilution of experience and attention.

The challenge then becomes to build perceptual tools and systems of communication with others (and with ourselves) that help reveal the things we want to see and hear, and that we imagine we have seen and heard.

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1. http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/07/25/425871061/the-art-of-knowing-what-youre-looking-for  ↩

blind spots

… when you’re researching in media res, the new ideas or details or stories that you stumble across are much more useful to you, because you can immediately see the slots where they belong

— Steven Johnson medium.com/the-writers-room/281c7539ad92

Writer, Steven Johnson, pushing for getting started writing earlier than you might think. I recognise and encourage this approach to writing. It also supports the critical idea that understanding and ideas develop through the act of writing (as Johnson suggests by including the Doctorow quote).

Writing as a student or academic is about finding strategies to develop your own thinking in relation to what is already there in the world, and then communicating these in a form and manner that is appropriate to those ideas. Johnson’s point is that writing is – rather reflexively – actually one of those strategies.

The same could be said of the act of choreography. It is through practicing choreography that I become aware of – or sensitive to – the gaps of the material and ideas I am developing. Choreography, in this respect, is not an abstract activity. It is sustained activity that requires the same degree of rigour, patience and unswerving commitment[1] as the act of writing.

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1. Which is not to say it can’t happen very quickly.  ↩