contact Gonzo or the art of touching (1)

When were you punched last time? Have you ever been kicked by someone? Was it a serious incident? Were you just physically playing with some of your friends? It is a rare occasion for modern adults, who live a safe and secure life, to punch or kick someone else. It is rarer to do so in public. Only some professionals fight with each other in front of audience because they need to earn income by doing so. Thanks to those fighters, we can imagine how it would be to punch or kick others. How would you feel, then, if you are waiting for a friend of yours at a station and notice that a bunch of youth next to you suddenly start hitting and kicking each other?

Frighten? Excited? or do you hate it? I

do not know how you would react to it, but I am sure that you cannot help paying an attention to the youth. You cannot disguise that you are totally uninterested in their punching and kicking with each other. Physical contact is so attractive and convincing that it is difficult to refuse to witness it.

contact Gonzo is a group of four young, male

artists (for the performance I witnessed), who occasionally punch and kick with each other in public as a performance. You would for the first glance believe that they are fighting with each other. No wonder you are led to believe so because they actually do harm with each other. But what they are doing is touching with each other as claimed by those youth. It is a manifestation of an art, say, the art of touching.

What is the art of touching? The notion of touching is provocative. It is a great leap for the modern adults to touch someone else physically when you have no particular reason. You need a reason when you touch someone. You may touch someone's chest to diagnose his condition if you are medical doctor. You may touch someone's back if you are asked to massage her. We accept her touching you if she does it as part of her job. We seem to allow someone to touch you if it has a purpose or a rational. What I think of as a reason for touching has something to do with care or an intended action for healing someone else.

Touching is often healing or helping some others. We even pay him sometimes if he touches you for good reason. Okay, good. Now let turn to their performance. Are they touching with each other? Yes, because punching is touching. Then, next question. Are they healing each other? Well, they might be doing it as a ceremony to expel a bad spirit of their bodies. I believe that Zen Buddhists appreciate being hit while meditating if they do not concentrate on them. Contact Gonzo does it as a spiritual exercise. Are you persuaded? No, I am not, neither. (to be continued)

26th November, 2003 (6 years ago)

Allow me, for a while, to reflect on past events to explain the history of our research. What they meant was not obvious at the time they happened, but I believe that I can now describe them better than before.

On 26th November, 2003, these pictures were taken. During the term, I was responsible for running a lecture of Cognitive Science. It was the second time I taught the subject at the institute. I failed somehow to convince myself to teach our students the subject, Cognitive Science, in traditional manners because I was not, and am still not, certain whether focusing on our reasoning abilities was appropriate when we talk about human. I thus adopted an exercise in which students had to move their own bodies to acquire some skill. The skill was Samba :-)





I was fascinated by the music, then, and proposed them to observe their acquisition process where they gradually leant to play the shaker on the rhythm. I do not know why the did not object to my proposal. They might have expected me to do something strange or unusual. In previous year, in fact, I employed a trainer for the lecture, who instructed the participants to do some physical exercises. I was notorious for forcing participants to do things unusual :-)

Here is an example what they were doing:
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~fuji/movie/reflections/20031126.mov

I told the participants that we would have a presentation session in the end, where all of them should belong to some group and play the music in front of other participants. We observed then how well they played music and the source of their abilities. They understood certainly how difficult it is to play an unfamiliar rhythm and how long it takes to acquire the skill. I was in the beginning afraid that they might not spend much time for practice, but they seemed to enjoy playing the instrument as a group, to my relief.

Here is another example, in which a group of students are teaching each other how to play the instrument.
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~fuji/movie/reflections/20031126a.mov

Today, I can explain why we needed to do the practice. I was interested to know how important the physical coordination among participants is in establishing a common ground for communication although I could not spell out the idea fully. Mimetic ability consists of memorizing your bodily coordination among joints and muscles, recalling it later intentionally, adjusting it to coincide your movement with others, etc. Apes do not have such abilities. Mimetic skill is central for us to be human.

It took long time for me to come to the idea. I believe that I could not have reached this stage without students' commitment to my lecture of Cognitive Science. I am thankful to their patience and enthusiasm, which led the lecture to success. Our research has been supported by these people.

The basic posture for playing the Shamisen

Having experienced the remarkable effects of Alexander Technique last week, I asked my teacher, Ms. Kazue Takagi, to show me how she sits on the chair in great detail. (17th November, 2009)



The side view depicts her sitting on the chair vertical. Excellent!





When I observed her from her back, however, I noticed that her right shoulder was slightly lower than the left one. My impression was that the weight of her upper body was supported by her lower back and its right side was particularly loaded with her weight. She told me of her pain around the neck-shoulder and her lower back. It is reasonable to conjecture that her pain is caused by her posture, i.e., the spine turning rightwards.

She was not aware of her posture until I pointed it out to her. It is hard for anyone to notice the slight bent especially on stage because the feature is so subtle that it is easily hidden by clothing. She knew however that there was a problem with her right shoulder as she feels difficulties when she put her clothes (Japanese Kimono) on her for stage performances. She said to me that she could not keep Kimono stay horizontal around her neck.



We discussed why her right shoulder tends to be lowered. Ms. Takagi pointed it out to me that she needed to pluck the third string, the furthest string, which requires her to push her right arm forward. That is right.




I may add to her comment that she is also holding her left arm (mostly) up to run her fingers on the instrument's neck. Hm... Similar phenomena are likely to be found for the Guitar players, too.





She told me that she used to sit down on the flour when she learnt to play the instrument. She started learning quite early, say, around thirteen or fourteen years old. (I have to ask her for the exact year.) I asked her thus to sit dow on the flour. Her shoulders were now adjusted towards the vertical position. I am not completely sure why such an adjustment occurred. Was her upper body supported better by her lower back? hm...

I know there is a some relation between the posture and the way she sits down. I know other shamisen players not belonging to Tsugaru tradition, i.e., the players playing traditional Japanese music with quieter tone, do not hold the instrument that way. They tend to sit on straight on the flour, but their playing styles are more restricted compared to the ones for playing Tsugaru shamisen. Any solution to remove her pain while preserving both niceties?