Dehju Dfff

Dehju Dfff

Susan Mortimer March 2008

u1 project�proposal
Working Title: Lost Every Day Movements.

My intention when I first undertook this MA in September 2007 was to look at movement and moments of balance and stillness within movements. I had hoped to work with dancers on this project as I had in previous projects. Quickly I realised this was not going to be possible due to time, family commitments and funding.
Returning to the generic ideas that drove me I looked back towards my own personal body understanding, asking why activities such as drawing with ink and brush, cutting in to lino or wood had prompted me in to undertaking a dance foundation course which had lead to obsessively photographing jazz dancers I knew from the London jazz dance club scene.
On starting the MADA course I was unprepared for the difference that online learning with no physical interaction had upon me. I found in many ways my experience of the personalities of those on the course were more powerful than if we were meeting face to face and also surprisingly found that during the on line chat sessions I was still physically reacting and using body language in response to the typed dialogue and responding with physical gestures where no physical interaction was taking place

Aims:
My aim is to create self portraits and portraits of individuals made from our everyday movements. These pieces will use sequences of movements to begin to explore the link between a person's identity and their movements. Having so far identified that there are two categories of movements those which support non verbal communication (e.g.: body language) and those which are pure movement/actions (e.g.: standing, walking, sitting, lying down etc.) I wish to examine how the omission of these movements in virtual environments may be changing our identities and relationships, expectations and mores.
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Understanding these shifting differences in mental approach and cognitive understandings are becoming an...