Submitted by DNB Staff - August 19, 2010
Written by Oliver Bandel, Karen Bradley, Gretchen Dunn, Ellen Goldman, Peggy Hackney, Ben Lambert, Jeffrey-Scott Longstaff, and Charlotte Wile.
[Following is a compilation of discussions originally posted on the CMAlist from June 22, 2010 to July 6, 2010.]
Discussion #1 - From Ben Lambert, June 22, 2010
Friends, I'm a Mod 3 in the LIMS program. Preparing for my Certified Project on Dynamosphere. Karen Studd has told me that there was an interesting Dynamosphere list serve discussion with Carolyn Moore (among others). However, I haven't been able to find it using the list serve search function. If you have access to the written record I would be EXTREMELY grateful if you could forward it along to me. (Feel free to send me any other illuminating thoughts or suggested readings as well.)
All the best,
[Ben Lambert]
Discussion #2 - From Oliver Bandel, June 22, 2010
As you can see at the end of your mail, there is a webpage mentioned. If you go there and click on archive, you will come to the following page:
Discussion #3 - From Jeffrey-Scott Longstaff, June 25, 2010
Hi Ben,
Oliver mentions the archive, but you probably noticed it only goes back as far as August 2004 (when the list serve was updated to include the automatic archive), so the huge quantity of CMA list discussions prior to that will not be in that archive.
Dynamosphere: the key text is in Laban's Choreutics (1966) – my memory is that 'shadow forms' comes into play here..... and that Laban experimented notating efforts with spatial direction signs together with a indication of this as "shadow" - i.e. an 'effort' (but I'd need to double check on that).
Keep in mind that the dynamosphere does NOT refer to effort-space affinities. It is a parallel 'sphere' in the sense of a 'formal space' whereby Effort relationships and transitions between efforts can be mapped.
Of course a kinesphere-dynamosphere affinity can be used, but the dynamosphere itself is the effort stuff, and can be performed with any kinespheric relationships (affinity, counter-affinity, or whatever).
Thus, "effort scales" might be 'mapped' in the dynamosphere.
The 'space' of the dynamosphere is a grid to express relationships, not the actual space of our 3-dimensional world.
This confusion of perceiving the dynamosphere as consisting of the effort-space affinities sometimes occurs.... hence my mention to try to clarify that. A good reading of choreutics makes it clear the the kinesphere and dynamosphere can relate, but also can be different.
Besides the parts in Laban's Choreutics... an author Alan Salter made some interesting uses of spatial representations of effort-sequences, these are also dynospheric... however I think these works are probably only available in England (Laban [Center] Library has them) - or perhaps Laban Guild in England.
Especially relative to effort represented as a dynamosphere: Alan Salter – "the curving air"
Of course Laban's use of the cube to display relations amongst the 8 basic effort actions is a well known Dynamosphere, as the 'space' shows how related (how much is shared) amongst different effort actions. (I'd recommend Laban & Lawrence book Effort for this to view this as an effort-cube – not called a dynamosphere there... but that is what it is).
Other 'dynamospheric' forms are in Marion North's Personality Assessment – I think in one of the appencides (??) she puts the effort-states (and other things?) in geometric relationships – these are great dynospheres (pardon my spelling) as they are not at all correlated with the space of the kinesphere (hence avoids the confusion of the dynamosphere representing effort-space affinities).
Using Marion's effort-ocathedron representing relations amongst the 6 Effort States, I expanded this to create an interesting 'dynamosphere' made from a truncated octahedron
This can represent relationships between - 4 Effort drives (action, vision, spell, passion) - 4 Effort factors (weight, space, time, flow) - 6 Effort states (stable, mobile, dream, awake, near, remote) the 6 square surfaces of the truncated octahedron each are one of the 6 Effort states. The 8 hexagon surfaces of the truncated octahedron are either one of the 4 Effort factors, or one of the 4 Effort drives.
Notice that in a "network" either the vertices (points) can be named, or just as well, the surfaces can be named (and these two options are identical... since naming the 6 vertices of an octahedron is identical to naming the 6 surfaces of a cube – since the octahedron and cube are dual polyhedron).
In this Effort-factor-state-drive dynamosphere the placement of each factor, state, or drive shows its relation with each of the others. For example "Weight" is on the opposite side of the polyhedron as is Vision drive (since vision has no weight). Dream state is on the opposite side as Awake state. Flow directly touches the 3 states and 3 drives that include flow... Action Drive directly touches the 3 effort factors and 3 states that are included within action drive...
etc...
I attached 3 jpeg images [below] to show how to make this dynamosphere. [Click the images to make them larger].
It often occurred to me that a persons 'effort profile' could be 'mapped' on a dynamosphere like this one, to show their preferences for factors, states, and drives... and visually display a person's effort preferences as a dynamo-sphere...
Of course... like the kinesphere, ...the possible variations of the dynamospheric networks are endless.
Hope this is interesting.
Take a look at the jpegs..... and I'm curious if this is useful. (ps. one of the images is of the polyhedra layed flat - so it looks strange - but try to 'fold' everything back into 3-D as needed!)
pps.... just making such a sphere..... is an exercise in understanding all the efforts!
Jeffrey Longstaff
Discussion #4 - From Peggy Hackney, June 25, 2010
Hi, Jeffrey and Ben, et al...
I agree with Jeffrey and have, in the past, had many discussions with him about this. I prefer to use the less form-specific term -- "realm" to describe what Jeffrey calls this "parallel 'sphere". So I refer to it as the "Dynamosrealm," or more clearly the Realm of Dynamic Energy/Effort.
Cheers,
Peggy
Discussion #5 - From Karen Bradley, June 25, 2010
Jeffrey,
Thanks so much for responding to Ben's question in such a full and meaningful way. You and he are kindred spirits and should hang out ;)
Karen B.
Discussion #6 - From Ellen Goldman, July 4, 2010
Jeffrey; I am sure you are aware of Haresh Lalavani's mapping of the whole Laban System on the tesseract, the cube, moving through space. He has worked with whole families of polyhedra, and has also mapped the Indian hand mudras on one. It is also a flatted form. Eager to see your photos.
Ellen
Discussion #7 - From Oliver Bandel, July 4, 2010
[Responding to Discussion #6]
Can you provide a link to Lalavani's work? Is there something online?
Ciao,
Oliver
Discussion #8 - From Oliver Bandel, July 4, 2010
[Responding to Discussion #3]
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 02:12:58AM -0700, Jeffrey-Scott Longstaff wrote: “Oliver mentions the archive, but you probably noticed it only goes back as far as August 2004 (when the list serve was updated to include the automatic archive), so the huge quantity of CMA list discussions prior to that will not be in that archive [...]”
Oh, I looked too hasty on Ben's email...
...he already mentioned that he looked at the archive with the search function.
If the discussion is older, I may have it in my mail-backups, but to find them might be a problem, because I'm handling the old backups rather messy... ;)
But I may look for them during the next days.
Would be nice to have a keyword for which I could look (thread subject).
I could maybe also provide the old cmalist mails as one big text file to interested people. But I'm not aware, if I had subscribed the list continuously.
The effort mapping to the "Truncatedoctahedron" and the pics you provided, were very interesting!
Ciao,
Oliver
Discussion #9 - From Gretchen Dunn, July 4, 2010
The spelling is Lalvani:
Discussion #10 - From Oliver Bandel, July 6, 2010
[Responding to Discussion #9]
Ok, thank you.
But I could not find the Laban-Mappings to the hypercube from him.
Ciao,
Oliver
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment