GLOSSARY OF PRACTICE

IMPROVISATION : Go With The Flow.

TIM FRANCIS

This first part of this paper will highlight the background of this phenomenon. The notion of a Flow of thought as a recognised psychological process can be traced to Albert Van Heim in 1871 in Switzerland. He was a geologist and his own near-death experience started his case studies into similar encounters by mountain climbers (Roszell, 1992) and found they achieved altered states of consciousness.  In 1904 William James of Harvard, who was studying ‘fight or flight’ reaction, expanded the research. Part of this altered state became known as Peak Experience, within his psychology circle, and noted philosophically for its mystical qualities (Nagler, 2010). It was physiology with Will Cannon in 1916 that provided a breakthrough though, determining that these varying changes in consciousness, was rooted in biology (Cannon, 1915). In the mid-20^th Century, Abraham Maslow found there was this common attribute of flowing thought as Peak Experiences, shared by all successful people (Grof, 2000).

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is known for coining the term Flow in the 1970’s. During years of study, he outlined the concept of being fully immersed in an activity is the key to being in a Flow state. This involved being totally unaware of outside interests and time passed by unnoticed

This optimal experience is achieved by what he termed an autotelic personality type. Which he established to be intrinsically motivated rather than a need for external objectives (Csikszentmihaly, 1992).

Keith Sawyer, who was an early collaborator through his PhD with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, developed the area of Group Flow. He found that among the key elements for this extreme group concentration, was a sense of shared vision for the task at hand. He studied with jazz musicians, this included close listening and when improvising, 'deep listening'. This Flow state within the group was enhanced by complete concentration, being in control and moving the project continually forward. Finding the balance between innovation and failure, with an abandonment of ego, was imperative during communication, familiarity and equal participation between members (Sawyer, 2008). 

Researchers began to measure this phenomenon throughout the subsequent years. They encompassed Flow questionnaires asking to identify and evaluate when and how being ‘in the zone’ originated (Engeser, 2012). An Experience Sampling Method was devised which required the participants to complete forms at randomly chosen times to record their experiences of being in a Flow state. The researchers, to avoid any unnecessary bias, coded the information. Eventually the wording for Flow changed to that of Runner’s High describing a state of euphoria induced with intensive running. In 1996 in Australia, Doctor Susan Jackson crafted a self-reporting Flow State Scale connected to sports research. This enabled the Flow experience to be both qualitatively and quantitatively monitored. Over the next few years this was refined and she produced a Flow State Scale-2 and a Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (Jackson and Ekland, 2004). These were used to empirically study and measure Dispositional and State Flow Frequency as a phenomenological concept.

There was an adverse effect to pro-active Flow research in 2002. This was due to the president of the Neuroscience Society Huda Akil. She declared in the New York Times that endorphins released into the brain from running were nonsense.

 

“This endorphin-in-runners is a total fantasy in the pop culture” (Kotler, 2008 p209). This caused traditional research into Flow to diminish quite significantly over the next few years.

This paper now leads into how flow has become more recently defined and brings us gradually into present day understanding.

The academic ‘comeback’ for Flow for contemporary acceptance, is Arne Dietrich’s (2003) paper discussing functional neuroanatomy of altered consciousness. He brings it right back in the psychological mainstream by focusing on pre-frontal cortex and showing it becomes deregulated or shut down, when Flow is reached. Dietrich argues that there is a common neural action during altered states of consciousness. Which is now known as transient hypo-frontality.

It is connected to diminished use of the pre-frontal cortex area while engaged in dreaming; runner’s high; drugs; daydreaming; and meditation. He shows how there is a lowering of inhibition and self-awareness when the pre-frontal cortex is not fully engaged and this has a direct impact on inducing a feeling of Flow. His findings have been a benchmark in this field of research that is generally recognized today. There is now an agreement that concentration grows as an ‘efficiency exchange’ from a conscious slower extrinsic mechanism, to a rapidly working subconscious intrinsic system (Kotler, 2004).

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   HELLO PHIL

THE FOLLOWING IS ONLY THE ROUGH DRAFT OF THE REMAINDER OF THE 3000 WORD PIECE...

IT IS THE GIST OF WHAT I WILL SAY BUT TO BE CORRECTLY STRUCTURED  AND REFERENCED IN THE TEXT ETC ...BUT IT IS THE GIST OF WHAT I WANT TO SAY.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHY IS NOT YET COMPLETE BUT SHOWS YOU MY INTENTION..

THE VIDEO IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE FORMAT AND NATURE OF A PERFORMANCE AND FLOW ANALYSIS...HOPEFULLY THE OTHERS WILL PROVIDE A FULLER EXPERIENCE OF FLOW....BUT EQUALLT LEE ALSO ADVOCATED EVEN PRESENTING FAILED ATTEMPTS ALSO...TO LEARN FROM ETC...

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU CAN ACCESS A FULL SCREEN TO SEE IT AND VIEW THE SUBTITLING ETC...AND IF THE AUDIO IS OK ?

THERE WILL BE OTHER VIDEOS AND WRITTEN ASSESSMENTS/ANALYSIS TO ACCOMPANY THEM.

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There were also advances in music and education which allowed further investigation by Martin and Jackson. (2008) Moreover, Jackson, Eklund and Martin created the Long FSS-2-General for monitoring Flow experience in broader contexts two years later. (2010)

The resurgence and major investment into Flow became prominent again though, due to the ways images of the brain became possible through science.

Jamie Wheele is an expert on neuro-somatics of ultimate human performance. Together with Steve Kotler, a New York Times best-selling author, set up the Flow Genome Project. Part of their team is the director of Red Bull's global athlete programme, Dr Andy Walsh. There is also the neuro scientist and writer Dr David Eagleman from Baylor College of Medicine and other well qualified professionals in the field of high performance psychology.

Furthermore, I have read several accounts by Andrew Newberg concerning neuro-imaging techniques, such as SPECT and fMRI.

 http://www.andrewnewberg.com/spect-images/



He also introduced Positron Emission Topography PET which is used for spatial resolution in clinical oncology. Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography is an imaging device utilising gamma rays, providing 3D imaging. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a technology for measuring flow in blood activity in the brain.

Newberg scanned the brains of Tibetan Buddhists and Franciscan nuns to measure blood flow during meditation and documented the changes in sensory and cognitive time-orientation. His results showed how becoming 'one with the universe' is affected by the transient Hypo-Frontality

Charles Limb is a surgeon, neuroscientist and a jazz musician at the University of California. He specialises in ontological treatments and conducted several fMRI experiments with jazz improvisation. He found deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which governs, amongst others, the self-critical part of the brain. He also discovered when the performers were improvising it incorporated areas of linguistic grammar and syntax, indicating not just spoken word but general auditory function with this brain location. He also found that when the musicians responded to happy visual stimuli their prefrontal cortex diminished correspondingly with this emotion. Interestingly, he noted that when creating sad music they showed an increase in visceral experience and more activity in the reward parts of the brain.

This is of particular relevance to my own research with improvising jazz myself, with musical collaborators and within African drumming and theatre performance.

These studies will involve using film ethnography to document how and when the performers reach this Flow state. The cameras will capture visual and audio nuanced moments that could otherwise go unnoticed. They will be analysed in a post-performance setting and reviewed by the performers to find the links into Flow.

In 1895, Felix-Louis Renault is credited with visually documenting a Wolof woman crafting pottery. This was the birth of film ethnography in the area of anthropological studies.

‘Nanook of the North’ , an inuit portrayal by Robert Flahety , is the well known 1922 ethnographic film to be associated with field studies. Considered a docudrama, a precursor to ethnofiction which in turn a forerunner of French New Wave of the 1950/60’s. The Portuguese were active in their post-revolution1970/80’s in this particular area of visual anthropology.

The sociolinguistic and educational anthropology as an ‘ethnography of communication’ was developed in the early 1970’s. Video microethnographic studying became prevalent in the classroom. The previous structuralist and functionalist approach was superseded by post-modernism and a more experimental research, currently practiced.

Sarah Pink is a well respected authority on anthropilogical studies and I read her books 'Doing Visual Ethnography' (2001) and 'Doing Sensory Ethnography.' (2009)

She explains in detail the need for of filmed observation during research. Her writings helped current understanding of ethnography in determining that written text is not superior to visual interpretations. The knowledge that it generates is more than a way of collecting data, as it also a clear indicator of social relationships and their ever-changing behavioral and cognitive variations.

Its use as the principal way of documenting visual data, is the basis of my research question. To capture the body and facial characteristics, the change in voice mannerisms and general sensory interaction for performers entering Flow state. This exploration and discovery in the field enables a host of revelations, discussions and analysis during and in post-performance reviewing.

I understand the reception of filmed ethnography can be contrastingly reviewed. Not just for my own research purposes directly but also from my understanding of academic acceptance.

Karl Heider's book 'Ethnographic Film' Revised Edition 2006 includes his acknowledgement of various changes and references to how ethnographic film is used in teaching and how ethics and finances play a vital part. His original 1976 book received considerable criticism, especially from Jay Ruby in the Department of Anthropology at Temple University in Philadelphia.

He describes Heider's view as purely a means to provide documentaries about exotic people. Concluding that he would need a book-length's rebuttal for her full appraisal of the book. He wrote that Heider had not referenced Ruby's own previous work on visual anthropology so couldn't possibly be fully inclusive on this subject.

His actual display of contempt for Heider's original book has made me aware of the potential for personal reasons to maybe cloud or influence professional opinion.

Ruby although, phrased an interesting question himself, as part of a paper for the 'Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication'...

“Is an ethnographic film a filmic ethnography?” (1975)

The need for ethics in ethnographic film and/or filmic ethnography is an area that is important in my study with collaborators for Flow. I will take on board Martyn Hammersley and Anna Traianou's work on qualitative research during my Flow improvisational journey. They argue that the emergent and flexible areas of questioning produce qualities and results that are difficult to predict sometimes in a pre-study analysis. The outcomes/outputs can vary considerably from what is legislated for during the outset. (Hammersley and Traianou, 2012) They argue that there is a 'ethics creep' towards bureaucracy with its formality within the social sciences. Nevertheless, they do acknowledge the need for dedication, objectivity and independence as values required within social research.

The general misconception, that the written word takes precedence over visual images to create human knowledge is addressed (MacDougall, 2006) as a need for new social aesthetics when searching for cultural patterns. He has a preoccupation with representing images in ethnography, not purely as a substitute for written text but as an alternative and complimentary action. The notion of images reflecting and leading to thought is discussed in detail. That we rely on this association particulary with language, is attributed to using reason to understand this as a mind's only means of comprhension. MacDougall further argues that there is more to visual imagery and ethnographical interpretation via the emotional sensory activation and the visual representations of imaginations. With this in mind, I can take the perception of my filmed ethnography to rethink and recognise new feelings of visual discovery. The way I use the camera to capture a mixture of responsive, constructive and interactive ethnographic footage will have an impact on the perception of how and when Flow is reached. This will be one of the main reasons why the post-analysis review of the filmed performances will provide compelling data on the actual process of improvisation. To accentuate my meaning here I advance the argument that the knowledge of being, is equal to and for my purposes, more suited to the pursuit of Flow, than the usual preservation of written meaning.



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Bibliography

Cannon, W.B. (1915) Bodily Changes in Pain, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement. London: D. Appleton and Co.

Csikzentmihalyi, M (1992) Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Dietrich, A. (2003) ‘Functional Neuroanatomy of Altered States of Consciousness: The Transient Hypofrontality Hypotheses’. Consciousness and Cognition. Available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810002000466. Accessed 02/01/17.

Engeser, S. (ed) (2012) Advances in Flow. Berlin: Springer Science and Business Media.

Grof, S. (2000) Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research. N.Y.: Suny Press.

Jackson, S and Eklund, R. (2004) The Flow Scales Manual. WV.: USA.

Kotler, S. (2014) The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Dublin: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Kotler, S. ( 2008) West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief. N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing. p 209

Nagler, M. (2010) The Search for a Non-Violent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families and Ourselves. CA. USA: New World Library. p 72.

Roszell, C. (1992) The Near-Death Experience: In the Light of Scientific Research and the Spiritual Science of Rudolf Steiner. MA. USA: SteinerBook. p 30.

Sawyer, K, (2008) Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. N.Y.: Basic Books.

The performances with collaborators are all improvised sessions and the ones with myself initiating the Flow are revealing when I was able to induce a Flow state.

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The performances with collaborators are all improvised sessions and the ones with myself initiating the Flow are revealing when I was able to induce a Flow state.  
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This is a session that produced a mild form of Flow for two of us drumming together. We were playing a basic rhythm to experiment with the inducement of some kind of Flow state.


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TBC




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