This international collection brings together scientists, scholars and artist-researchers to explore the cognition of memory through the performing arts and examine artistic strategies that target cognitive processes of memory. The strongly embodied and highly trained memory systems of performing artists render artistic practice a rich context for understanding how memory is formed, utilized and adapted through interaction with others, instruments and environments. Using experimental, interpretive and Practice-as-Research methods that bridge disciplines, the authors provide overview chapters and case studies of subjects such as:
* collectively and environmentally distributed memory in the performing arts;
* autobiographical memory triggers in performance creation and reception;
* the journey from learning to memory in performance training;
* the relationship between memory, awareness and creative spontaneity, and
* memorization and embodied or structural analysis of scores and scripts.
This volume provides an unprecedented resource for scientists, scholars, artists, teachers and students looking for insight into the cognition of memory in the arts, strategies of learning and performance, and interdisciplinary research methodology.
Dr. Pil Hansen is an Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary, Canada; a founding member of Vertical City Performance; and a dramaturg. Her empirical and PaR experiments examine cognitive dynamics of memory and perception in creative processes. With Bruce Barton, she developed the multi-disciplinary research model 'Research-Based Practice'. Hansen chairs the PSi Working Group on Dramaturgy and Performance; her award-winning creative work has toured nationally and internationally; and her scholarly research is published in Connection Science, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, Performance Research, Theatre Topics, and Koreografisk Journal among other journals and ten essay collections on dramaturgy, cognitive performance studies, and research methods. Hansen co-edited the essay collection Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (2015). Current and recent artistic collaborators are: Kaeja d'Dance, Theatre Junction Grand, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Public Recordings.
Amy Cook, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English at Stony Brook University, New York, USA, is the author of
Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science, (2010) and essays in, among others,
Theatre Journal,
TDR,
SubStance, the
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism,
Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, the
Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (forthcoming). She was the co-chair of the Working Group in Cognitive Science and Performance for American Society for Theatre Research from 2010-2014.
Dr. Bettina Bläsing is a responsible investigator at the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University, Germany. She studied Biology at Bielefeld University and Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bettina worked as science journalist and editor, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and University of Leipzig before joining the Neurocognition and Action Research Group at Bielefeld University in 2006. Her main research interests are mental representations of body, movement and space; the control and learning of complex movements and manual actions; and expertise in dance.
Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'
She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).
