Movement Analysis: examples, applications, research, projects

April 3, 2024January 6, 2025

New Publication with MIT Press!

Making Meaning with Machines: Somatic Strategies, Choreographic Technologies and Notational Abstractions through a Laban/Bartenieff lens (Oct 2023)

Amy LaViers and Cat Maguire (WholeMovement) are published with MIT Press!

The book is supported by digital resources at makingmeaningwithmachines.com as well as being open source at mitpress.mit.edu under Making Meaning with Machines. MIT Press describes the book:

A rigorous primer in movement studies for designers, engineers, and scientists that draws on the fields of dance and robotics.

How should a gestural interface react to a “flick” versus a “dab”? Versus a “punch”? Should robots reach out to a human counterpart with a direct, telescoping action or through a circuitous arc in space? Just as different movements express the different internal states of human movers, so too can the engineered systems behind robots.

In Making Meaning with Machines, Amy LaViers and Catherine Maguire offer a refreshingly embodied approach to machine design that supports the growing need to make meaning with machines by using the field of movement studies, including choreography, somatics, and notation, to engage in the process of designing expressive robots.

Drawing upon the Laban/Bartenieff tradition, LaViers and Maguire sharpen the movement analysis methodology, expanding the material through their work with machines and putting forward new conventions, such as capitalization, naming, and notation schemes, that make the embodied work more legible for academic contexts.

The book includes an overview of movement studies, exercises that define the presented taxonomy and principles of movement, case studies in movement analysis of both humans and robots, and state-of-the-art research at the intersection of robotics and dance.

Making Meaning with Machines is a much-needed primer for observing, describing, and creating a wide array of movement patterns, which ultimately can help facilitate broader and better design choices for roboticists, technologists, and designers.

“Dance artists LaViers and Maguire take readers on a fascinating scholarly tour of human movement and offer a compelling program for roboticists, technologists, and designers seeking fresh perspectives on human-machine interaction.”
Naomi Ehrich Leonard, Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University

“By capturing both the appearance of movement and its meaning through novel notation, LaViers and Maguire ask us to actually move and use that movement to innovate computational movement analysis and robotic design.”
Thanassis Rikakis, Dean and Professor, Iovine and Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, University of Southern California

“LaViers and Maguire bring their deep choreographic knowledge of dance to those who want to ‘make robots dance.’ By moving towards fundamental felt meaning-making processes, better robot interactions can be designed.”
Kristina Höök, Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology; author of Designing with the Body: Somaesthetic Interaction Design (MIT Press)

MIT Press site

May 11, 2020April 3, 2024

Let’s Be Honest: The Online Environment in the Context of the Movement Experience

KStudd May 8, 2020

Teaching online – specifically offering somatic experiences for students that are intended primarily as somatic practice, is problematic on multiple levels. This needs further discussion I believe.

In this discussion I am not addressing classes that are not primarily focused on creating a somatic awareness and experience. For example, a dance class that has a different foregrounded intent (although clearly of course, can be framed as a somatic experience.) I also acknowledge that there are classes and courses that are very well suited to online education.

It is rather the plethora of online movement offerings and the trend to switching from the embodied classroom experience to the virtual environment due to the current situation that I want us to address more deeply and reflect on. This is the purpose of this missive.

The somatic educational experience is generally focused on awareness of an individual’s sensations and this in turn can often be a trigger for feelings and thoughts. This process involves awakening or deepening conscious awareness of emotions or thinking patterns. Indeed, this can be a fundamental goal of the experience – i.e. a deeper access to one’s Inner experience and bringing it into conscious awareness in order to better understand it or to find other possibilities etc.

In a real time /real space educational environment – what I will call the embodied classroom – vs the virtual classroom, the teacher or facilitator of the experience can, and should, and generally does monitor the situation. In other words, they “read the room”, or in LBMS parlance – read the Dynamosphere. The teacher can go back and forth between Direct attention and Indirect attention in the environment of the embodied classroom. This facilitates the Rhythm of Individual and Group and Self and Other that is dynamically in play. The teacher also has ways that they are self-monitoring (more about this later). In this way they monitor the whole – the group as well as individuals within the group and themselves.

This brings me to what has become (at least for me) a huge concern regarding the efficacy and responsibility – and do I dare mention it – the ethics – of online teaching that need more attention than I have generally seen deeply discussed.

I will address this from a story of my own experience – so a bit of heuristic research if you will in this subject matter.

I recently was a participant in an online somatic education type of class. The instructor was working from the embodied metaphors of our organs to engage the participants inner experience (NB this was not a BMC class as the experience was framed as a Fundamental Principle of Core Support). Engaging through an embodiment of metaphor was how I understood the essence of the experience of what was being suggested that we participants explore. We were directed to explore activating our movement from the heart. As soon as I began to engage with this experience, I immediately realized that my heart was frozen – immobile and I felt that I was a “heartless” person. I felt that the only movement available to mobilize from this place was in the action of Retreating and Enclosing. A sadness overwhelmed me, and tears streamed down my face… I hope you can appreciate the vulnerability that I choose to reveal here and why I think this is important to do here.

Now I am not a newbie in experiencing how my own activation of the movement of self can be very revealing and take one to a very deep place. So, I had experience and understanding of this somatic emotional release/response. But what if I did not? What about those with a history of depression that such an experience triggers? Just as I am often disturbed when I see that someone leads a breathing exercise without any real recognition of what it can potentially trigger (yet another topic for further discussion) I find myself questioning what do we teachers need to articulate when we engage in leading these experiences. Particularly when we cannot actually be fully present, but only can be partially present such as in the context of online somatic experience classes.

The teacher of this class had no way to actually observe that this was my response. And this reality made me reflect upon my own teaching experiences in the classroom when I have observed that a student was “being moved” in this way or had shut down or walked away or given some other sign that I observed – such as leaving the room, stopping participation or crying, etc.

In such situations I make a decision about how or if to connect to the individual. I may choose to simply be a witness and hold the space, or I may inquire if they need some support or assistance. Or I might ask someone else to check in with them. Or I may wait until a break and take them aside or, or, or … The point is that I am in a much better place to make a decision as to what could be supportive of their experience and supportive of the goals of the class that I am leading.

Now just take a moment to reflect on the practice of “muting” the participants in Zoom sessions – a necessary evil? Hmmmm

So, let us be honest – this ability to adequately respond is VERY LIMITED in the virtual classroom setting. Now I am not suggesting that we not have virtual online classes. We should. These they offer many possibilities for helping to connect us and to bridge our alone experience with others.

But let us also REALLY acknowledge the problems and limitations in the online medium in somatic educational interaction. In addition to the somatic emotional response aspect that I illustrated through the example of my personal experience, there are many other aspects of this virtual learning that also need to be addressed. This includes the lack of touch. Those of us who teach embodied practices often facilitate action and connect through intentional touch. This is NOT possible in the virtual classroom. Much more can and needs to be said about this. I am also very distressed at all the articles that I have recently seen as part of the practice of social distancing suggesting that we “do away with the handshake” and instead adopt the bow. Those writing these articles are well meaning but generally, in my estimation, have no real understanding of movement, including the action of touch and so they should not be opining about the significance of actions when they are not experts. We are – and we should make this clear – another topic for long discussion …

Then there is the interrupted phrasing that seems too often happen in the virtual environment of interaction. Sometimes this is due to the technology, but also it is due to a much more impaired ability of the participants to read the signals of interaction through the screen.

There are the aspects of technology that can be frustrating of course – the tech itself can be problematic in poor connections impairing seeing and hearing and the glitchy and unnerving aspects of time when there is a lag or a freeze. These can be minor irritants, or they can be quite more and contribute to stress and stress as we know, is often a process of accumulation. Tech stress is something that cannot be simply dismissed – as it is another “straw” on the proverbial back of the camel.

Many have spoken about Zoom fatigue and how exhausted this type of teaching is. We need to have a much more robust conversation about this phenomenon. Clearly the Exertion/Recuperation is out of balance – let’s use our considerable skills to name why and to share this with the world. I believe that in interacting through the screen there is much less ability to self-regulate by looking away, attending to self, shifting attention from group to individual – all this becomes “out of whack”. – This can be ameliorated perhaps to some extent by better practices. However, the medium itself is NOT conducive to the balance that is much more readily available in the environment of the embodied classroom. And this needs to be emphatically made clear.

I recognize the need and reality of online teaching, but I do think we need a more thoughtful and measured response and approach as I fear that this can become a panacea. Particularly when it is put into practice as an economic response to crisis and not foregrounding the intent of the educational training in somatic practice. There is certainly a great deal of – jumping on the band wagon of accessing band width in promoting education going on I see – and this bears reflection from this community.

March 30, 2020April 3, 2024

3 Things We Need to Sustain Us, Now More Than Ever

Why Flowsensing, Weightsensing and Breath Support (a Bartenieff Fundamental Principle ) are the key.

By K. Studd (2020)

Recently, in connecting to the students of an LBMS international training program, I encouraged the group to really continue to find how movement can help sustain them in these very challenging times. I said, in closing an email, “to keep moving and, in particular, to draw upon Flowsensing, Weightsensing and Breath Support.” One of the group’s members (P) asked why I singled out these 3 specific LBMS concepts in particular. Here is my reply:

In answer to your question, P – Well, several reasons –

First, because these 3 things are the baseline of all our movement, so the most basic foundational place to get in touch with ourselves. They can give us access to find our grounding, to find the capacity for both Mobility and Stability, and often also for active Exertion as well as passive Recuperation – NB we do not have to always activate to exert, of course, or become passive to recuperate, but these often go together and are built into the waking/active vs. sleeping/passive pattern of all animals. So, again, these activities are a baseline of Exertion and Recuperation balance.

Second, also remember that Flow is associated with empathy and with a universal life force that contains and connects us all. Whereas Weight is our own experience of ourselves in the world – self agency. So, finding this universal/individual aspect, too, is essential I think in such times.

Third, Breath helps us on so many levels. It links directly to Flowsensing and all manifestations of Flow, and it also allows us (through active awareness and sensation) to experience the ongoing connection between Inner and Outer. Breath is vital and has become such a sensitive image symptomatic of this pandemic. Our breath is something we take for granted. Generally, we experience that we will breathe with or without our awareness. But we can also modify how we breathe. We can choose how to breathe and use this capacity to actively breathe more fully or change its rhythm and phrasing. This makes breath a very unique part of the human movement equation.

So all of the 3, Flowsensing, Weightsensing and Breath Support can serve us and do not require us to “do” too much, but rather connect us to a balance between our “being” and “doing” selves. Connecting to the thematic dualities and continuum of Inner/Outer, Exertion/Recuperation, Mobility/Stability, Universal/Individual, Being/Doing are an essential ingredient in continually finding balance and Wholeness.