Slowed dance spectating and changes in time perception: A dialogue between aesthetics and cognitive science on zeitlupe in contemporary art
Résumé
The co-presence of bodies inherent to live performance coupled with the movement qualities of the dancers underlies the audience’s kinesthetic empathy (Foster, 2011). We were interested to quantify a change in “body-mind” state of the spectators brought about by a live rendition of Gourfink’s unique choreography that uses a contemplative practice to produce an extremely slow and hypnotic dance. Phenomenological studies of her work report a number of body-mind effects including a change in temporal perception (Gioffredi, 2008). We wanted to quantify changes in temporal perception, test for their specificity and assess their relation to changes in physiological rhythms (Joufflineau & Bachrach 2016). We combined physiological monitoring and subjective reports with two measures of temporal cognition before and after a 40-min live performance (12 subjects): a Spontaneous Tempo Production (STP) task (McAuley et al., 2006) and a task assessing the temporal window inducing the Apparent Motion effect (AM) (Marusich & Gilden, 2014). The same temporal tasks (14 subjects) were tested with a control choreography with a distinctly different quality of movement. Post-performance, we observed a significant slowing down of STP (t=15.01, p<2e-16), while AM was reported with longer temporal intervals between the flickering dots (t=4.017, p<6.53e-05). Neither of these effects was observed in the control condition. Revealing correlations were found between subjective reports concerning kinesthetic attention and the size of the effects. Correlations with changes in physiological data are being analyzed. The STP results indicate a slowing of the internal tempo of spectators. The AM results suggest an expansion of the “specious present” (Varela, 1999). The absence of similar results in the control condition argues that these effects were due to the specific quality of Gourfink’s choreography, and that contagion of body-mind states (Godard, 1994) should be included in the concept of interpersonal resonance.