Performing Vitalism

April 20th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The activity of theatrical performance (acting, dance, live art etc.) is theorised primarily in terms of anthropology (Schechner, 1976, 1990, 1993) and cultural studies. These approaches are valuable and robust, although they do leave a void at the centre of the practice. What is absent is a comprehensive theorisation of the subjective ontology of the performer herself.

Having said this, there is a considerable body of vernacular knowledge, what might be called ‘folk theories’ of acting and other performative acts, a kind of ‘naive science’ of performance. An analysis of this knowledge, as embedded in the writings of actors, directors, teachers, critics, etc. demonstrates that these folk theories show a high degree of consistency and coherence, comparable to, but more convincing than, the coherence hypothesised by Pat Hayes (1979) regarding ‘naive physics’.

One significant component of this body of knowledge is an apparent shared belief in a power, essence, or life-force, paralleling the Vitalist theories of living systems which dominated human sciences up until the late 19th Century. Similar energy descriptions can also be found in non-Western philosophies and practices, variously referred to as prana, chi, ki, mana, etc. This mythological energy, whilst roundly dismissed in all rational theoretical discourses, is alive and well in the folk theory of performance. This paper will demonstrate the ubiquity of this energy concept in the particular domain of performer training techniques, and will demonstrate that the usage of this concept is part of a coherent, comprehensive, and practical discourse, albeit irrational.

Hayes, P. J. (1979). The Naive Physics Manifesto. Expert Systems in the Microelectronic Age. D. Michie. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

Schechner, R. (1993). The future of ritual: writings on culture and performance. London; New York, Routledge.

Schechner, R. and W. Appel (1990). By means of performance: intercultural studies of theatre and ritual. Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press.

Schechner, R. and M. Schuman (1976). Ritual, play, and performance: readings in the social sciences/theatre. New York, Seabury Press.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Energy, Essence, Exercises, Hayes, Pat, Naive Physics, Performance, Schechner, Richard | No Comments »

The Flow of Space

May 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I went to a workshop last week which I said I would report back on, but I’ve just realised that I never did so here is a description of one of the exercises.

Hold a rock in your hand.

Hold you hand out to the side and feel the rock in the following ways.

  1. Imagine the rock has a force inside it (call it weight). Feel the force striving to get to the ground. The rock is almost alive and is pushing against your palm its its desire to return to its natural resting place on the earth.
  2. Imagine the rock is being pulled toward the earth by a force (call it gravity). The pull of the Earth is like a magnet acting on the rock, and you can feel this attractive force through your hand.
  3. Imagine you are standing in a shower; a shower not of rain, call it space. You can feel the space flowing down on you from above, an etheric downpour acting on every part of your body. The rain of space cascades onto the rock and pushes it toward the earth, and only the upward pressure of your hand holds the rock steady against the flood.

Each of these different interpretations of the feeling of holding a rock in your hand is subtly different. Hold onto the last interpretation.

Space is water. Standing is swimming.

Posted in Energy, Exercises, Rock, Story | No Comments »

Presence, Being, and Charisma

June 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It will be claimed that the concept of charisma is identified in one or more of four processes;

  • Celebrity recognisability - in which charisma is a function of the degree to which the possessor has gained public and/or media attention.
  • Supernatural power - in which the possessor is assumed to have some gift, energy, or magic that confers charisma upon them.
  • Actual authority - where the possessor of charisma also has access to material resources, knowledge, force, etc that is desirable.
  • Beauty/attractiveness - in which the possessor of charisma also possesses other, less mysterious, attractions.

The notion of presence within performance (and in non-theatrical contexts) will be related to these various processes of charisma production. It will be proposed that there are techniques to produce presence/charisma in performance in which the embodied signs of these processes are manifested.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Energy, Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Energies of Creativity

July 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Highly effective work by coaches Loehr and Schwartz uses the metaphor of energy, and particularly the metaphor of an energy economy, to underpin techniques for the optimisation of performance, particularly in the areas of sport and business. In this work, four different types of energy are identified; physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. (In this case the term ’spiritual’ is used loosely and may mean ‘intention’ or ‘mission’ or ‘purpose’). This model of different types of energy might also be usefully applied to the creative process, or the performance of creativity.

To engage succesfully/optimally in a creative process the following four energies need to be engaged:

  • Physical - this is a combination of raw physical fitness, in which one is not physically ill, plus having possession of the actual physical skills necessary to carry out a creative act (which includes practical creative skills such as synectics, scamper, triz etc)
  • Emotional - to optimally create one should have enough emotional balance to be able to function, and also be sufficiently ‘in touch’ with one’s emotions to be able to discriminate aesthetically.
  • Mental - one should be in possession of sufficient knowledge about the domain of practice one is operating within, and have knowledge and information about the material and ideas one is using.
  • Spiritual - one should have a reason to do it, even if this reason is a ‘bad’ one such as making money or pleasing people or showing off.

Some more about energies of Creativity

  • More energy does not necessarily mean better art. Aim for enough of each type of energy rather than more than enough.
  • There is a hierarchy of energy (this is important). You have to make sure the physical energy is in place first, then the emotional, then the mental, then the spiritual. If you don’t have the physical energy, nothing happens.

Loehr, J. and Schwartz, T. - The Power of Full Engagement. The Free Press, New York, 2005.

Posted in Energy, Loehr, J. and Schwartz, T., Spirituality, Sport, Training | No Comments »

Mind, Performance, Creativity, Attention

July 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

There is a high level of correlation between the following phenomena and concepts:

  • experienced states of mind
  • brainwave patterns
  • use of attentional resources (energy)
  • phases in creative processes
  • phases in the performance of a task (including theatrical or art tasks)

These correlations suggest the functioning of a common process which, in all likelihood, in partly material and partly metaphorical. A greater awareness of this process should allow for the development of techniques for greater control over the process, and a consequent enhancement or optimisation of the performance of a range of tasks (including theatrical tasks) and enhanced creativity.

Posted in Creativity, Energy, Metaphor, Mind, Neuroscience, Performance, Theatre | No Comments »

Impetus and Energy

August 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Naive Physics cannot handle abstract (non-embodied) concepts (in that sense Naive Physics is an organised system of embodied metaphors). Therefore a concept such as ‘energy’ cannot figure with Naive Physics as it does within rational physics, as a purely mathematical or other abstraction. Instead it is conceived of as a SUBSTANCE; a limited resource which provided motive power and which, in common with physical substances, can be transformed, transferred, accumulated, depleted, much as a fuel is conceived in engineering. The Impetus Theory of energy and motion, which is part of the Naive Physics perplex, (and was a part of mainstream ‘rational’ physics from Aristotle onwards) makes explicit use of this ENERGY=FUEL metaphor. This historical correspondence between naive and rational physics was only broken in the 17th century by Newton in his formulation of the laws of motion. In Newton’s schema, motion is conceived not as an unusual state of matter requiring a fuel or impetus to maintain, but as a natural relative state or property. The only ‘energetic’ principle that is required within the Newton paradigm is during acceleration and deceleration, and this cannot be conceived as the transfer of a limited fuel resource into the body of the moving object.

Posted in Energy, Naive Physics, Newton, Isaac, Physics, Substance | No Comments »

The Tao of Water

August 21st, 2006 Fred McVittie

The metaphors which we use to conceptualise time overlap significantly with with those for being and energy. This metaphor is water-based and allows for these three distinct phenomena to be merged or synthesised. A particularly significant example of this synthesis is in the Chinese philosophy of the Tao, (which Alan Watts refers to as ‘The Watercourse Way’ [1975]), and in which these three phenomona are merged into a single concept.

Posted in Energy, Liquid, Metaphor, Time | No Comments »

Copenhagen Interpretation of Performance

January 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Part of the successful implementation of the Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg is an attitude toward the mechanisms of quantum theory, the ‘mechanics’ itself, which is best described as ‘agnostic’. For example, the famous ‘double slit’ experiment of Young describes an entity called a ‘probability wave’ which governs the path and location of specific photons of light which pass through the slits. However, according to Heisenberg, since this probability wave cannot itself be measured this wave is not to be regarded as an actual physical entity, but rather as a kind of mental scaffolding which helps us to interpret the results of the experiment. The (imaginary) wave does not exist in the (quantum) world, but functions as a tool to allow us to think of that world. This ‘model agnosticism’ extends to the theories, equations and formulae which are the effective descriptors of those aspects of the world which are beyond personal embodied experience. Such theories also do not describe the world but describe what kind of model we need to create in order to be able to think of the world, and such models are always, eventually, grounded in embodied sensory experience.

A parallel process may be in operation within some performer training systems which make extensive reference to entities which have no material reality. These include concepts of ‘centre’, ‘energy’, etc. Whilst such concepts may well have no physical existence they may function as components within a model of the world in which a certain sort of performance behaviour is optimally produced.

Posted in Centre, Copenhagen Interpretation, Energy, Performance | No Comments »

Energy in Metaphorland

July 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie

The landscape of metaphor through which our thoughts move is a shifting, unstable terrain, with its own laws and properties different to the real world of lived experience. In some ways Metaphorland is simpler; there is no quantum uncertainty or relativity effects, no dark matter or eleven dimensional superstrings, all that is there is Newtonian and embodiable, everything is medium sized and everything moves at medium speed. In other ways Metaphorland is truly alien however. The constancies and solidity of the real world are absent here, and the objects mix and move, roiling and turning like the currents of the ocean.

Some entities here have particular status, and the nature of these objects, and of their particularly shape-shifting abilities, is significant. One such entity is that which we refer to as ‘energy’. Energy as it exists in Metaphorland has no corrolate in the real world, where it refers simply to a set of relations. In the real world you can’t touch, taste, smell, or hear energy, but here where metaphors live it has a very real existence and that existence is completely available to the metaphorical sense. In fact energy in Metaphorland has two forms of existence, and the exchange between these forms is a key currency here. These two forms can be understood as ENERGY IS FORCE and ENERGY IS SUBSTANCE. When it is a substance it flows from one place to another, sometimes moving sluggishly and almost congealing to a solid, at other times turning volatile like superfluid Helium. As a substance we can hold it in our hands and contain it in vessels and pipes. We can swap it for other entities and use it to move our machines and printing presses. When energy is a force we feel it against the surface of our skin and altering our balance, urging us in one direction or another. It pushes us around and pushes around the other objects of the metaphorical world.

Posted in Energy, Metaphor, Newton, Isaac | No Comments »

Carrying Over of Beliefs

February 15th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The holding of a belief is a cognitive mechanism which allows us to carry out certain mental activities which, without that belief, would be either impossible or extremely resource intensive. If, each time we looked over the edge of a cliff, we had to assess the likelihood that stepping over the edge would result in our death, then we would be incapable of acting. The firm belief that we have in the inevitability that this action would lead to our death relieves us of this arduous assessment process and allows us to use our limited cognitive resources elsewhere.

This process is analogous to the mathematical technique of ‘carrying over’ when adding up large numbers. In this technique the numbers to be added are placed above one another and the columns of numbers formed are added one column of digits at a time starting with the units, then moving up to the tens, the hundreds, the thousands, and so on. When a column of digits adds up to a number larger than ten then the first part of this product is ‘carried over’ by being included in the next column of digits. When this next column of digits is then added the number which has been carried over is also added. The significance of this is that the number carried over is not usually checked at this point, it is simply taken as a fact of the mathematical technique. The number represents an element of the earlier calculation and is given the same status as the rest of the numbers in the column. In a sense, therefore, the number carried over is ‘believed’ to be a relevant and accurate part of the addition process, a belief which could in fact turn out to be fallacious if the previous addition was shown to be inaccurate. Such a fallacious belief would affect the total calculation resulting in an incorrect final answer.

This analogy serves to indicate the status of beliefs within the cumulative and interconnected processes of cognition. Given that we cannot fact check every single perception and conception, we must rely on the carrying over of beliefs from earlier parts of the thought process, or the history of our thought processes, if we are to function at all. When I see a tree in front of me I do not have sufficient cognitive resources to always confirm this perception using another sensory mode, nor can I always call on another person to confirm this perception. I am obliged to believe the evidence of my unalloyed and individual eyes. More abstractly, if I am to make sense of many of the complex and ephemeral experiences which typify human existence then the sheer number of beliefs which I would have to mobilise in order to live these experiences would far exceed my ability to confirm them ‘on the fly’. Again, I would be obliged to trust in the numbers carried forward from earlier parts of the calculation. I would have to use beliefs laid down earlier in my life, possibly in childhood, and possibly even laid down in the biochemistry of my being itself, just to get through the day.

I would anticipate that, if the aim of the establishment of beliefs is to minimise the drain on cognitive resources such that these resources can be spent on more life-supporting activities, then there would be a natural resistance to the revision of such beliefs. Going back over a calculation is an arduous and resource intensive process, and the earlier in the calculation an error is made the more effort would have to be spent having to correct it. By analogy, the earlier in one’s life, or in the life of one’s species, that a belief is laid down the more difficult it would be to muster the effort to go back and check the figures.

Posted in Belief, Cognition, Energy, Mathematics | No Comments »