Summary Most animal species group together and coordinate their behavior in quite sophisticated m... more Summary Most animal species group together and coordinate their behavior in quite sophisticated manners for mating, hunting, or defense purposes. In humans, coordination at a macroscopic level (the pacing of movements) is evident both in daily life (e.g., walking) and skilled (e.g., music and dance) behaviors. By examining the fine structure of movement, we here show that interpersonal coordination is established also at a microscopic – submovement – level. Natural movements appear as marked by recurrent (2–3 Hz) speed breaks, i.e., submovements, that are traditionally considered the result of intermittency in (visuo)motor feedback-based control. In a series of interpersonal coordination tasks, we show that submovements produced by interacting partners are not independent but alternate tightly over time, reflecting online mutual adaptation. These findings unveil a potential core mechanism for behavioral coordination that is based on between-persons synchronization of the intrinsic dynamics of action-perception cycles.
Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des échanges d’informations au cours desquels d... more Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des échanges d’informations au cours desquels des états mentaux individuels se succèdent. Comment pouvons-nous dès lors être « ensemble » et partager un moment ? Dans cette thèse, nous optons pour une perspective centrée sur la coordination temporelle des comportements des personnes en interaction, en nous intéressant aux phénomènes de dynamiques collectives incarnées. Ces dynamiques coordonnent communément les comportements et émergent directement du processus d’interaction mutuel lui-même. Pour évaluer cette proposition, nous avons mené trois expériences. Notre méthodologie générale distinguait trois situations types : une situation de coordination individuelle, une situation pseudo-sociale dans laquelle le comportement doit être coordonné à celui d’une autre personne sans que la réciproque soit vraie, et enfin une situation dans laquelle l’interaction est mutuelle. Une première expérience nous a permis de montrer que la mutualité ...
We often think of time in dualistic terms: as a property that is inherent to the objective world ... more We often think of time in dualistic terms: as a property that is inherent to the objective world on the one hand, and as the subjective apprehension of its passage on the other hand. Yet, rather than being a mere cognitive estimation of outer durations, the felt and observable temporality of our behavior has a complex form that implicates many timescales, reflecting the interactions between multiple inter and intra subjective processes. We thus propose that the shape of time as we experience it emerges from the dynamics of our interactions with others and should be described as the entanglement of our respective intrinsic temporalities (Laroche et al., 2014). Indeed, time, instead of being a mere property of the world or an intra-cerebral phenomena, is something that we « make together ». Our very sense of being in time is intertwined with those of others, making time a socially constituted dimension of experience and activity. Collective Improvisation (e.g. in dance, music…) has be...
Sensitivity to temporal contingencies appears early in life and plays a key role in the ontogeny ... more Sensitivity to temporal contingencies appears early in life and plays a key role in the ontogeny of socio-cognitive abili-ties in humans (Nadel et al., 1999; Gratier and Apter-Danon, 2009). The tendency for rhythmic coordination, sometimes referred to as “entrainment, ” requires sensory-motor coupling (Phillips-Silver et al., 2010). In most of the fields of cognitive science, action-perception and agent-world coupling views are replacing the classical stimulus-response dichotomy (Marsh et al., 2009; Silberstein and Chemero, 2012; Schilbach et al., 2013; Novembre and Keller, 2014). Such con-ceptual frameworks are well suited to study coordination phenomena as they emphasize the dynamical nature of cog-
Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as ... more Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as between the interacting bodies. However, little is known about how coupling at the interpersonal level impacts coordination among body parts at the intrapersonal level, especially in ecological, complex, situations. Here, we perturbed interpersonal sensorimotor communication in violin players of an orchestra and investigated how this impacted musicians’ intrapersonal movements coordination. More precisely, first section violinists were asked to turn their back to the conductor and to face the second section of violinists, who still faced the conductor. Motion capture of head and bow kinematics showed that altering the usual interpersonal coupling scheme increased intrapersonal coordination. Our perturbation also induced smaller yet more complex head movements, which spanned multiple, faster timescales that closely matched the metrical levels of the musical score. Importantly, perturbatio...
Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des echanges d’informations au cours desquels d... more Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des echanges d’informations au cours desquels des etats mentaux individuels se succedent. Comment pouvons-nous des lors etre « ensemble » et partager un moment ? Dans cette these, nous optons pour une perspective centree sur la coordination temporelle des comportements des personnes en interaction, en nous interessant aux phenomenes de dynamiques collectives incarnees. Ces dynamiques coordonnent communement les comportements et emergent directement du processus d’interaction mutuel lui-meme. Pour evaluer cette proposition, nous avons mene trois experiences. Notre methodologie generale distinguait trois situations types : une situation de coordination individuelle, une situation pseudo-sociale dans laquelle le comportement doit etre coordonne a celui d’une autre personne sans que la reciproque soit vraie, et enfin une situation dans laquelle l’interaction est mutuelle. Une premiere experience nous a permis de montrer que la mutualite ...
In this article we explore an epistemic approach we name dis/embodiment and introduce “Articulati... more In this article we explore an epistemic approach we name dis/embodiment and introduce “Articulations,” an interdisciplinary project bringing together Virtual Reality (VR) designers, cognitive scientists, dancers, anthropologists, and human–machine interaction specialists. According to Erin Manning, our sense of self and other emerges from processes of bodying and relational movement (becoming oneself by moving in relation with the world). The aim of the project is to exploit the potential of multi-person VR in order to explore the intersubjective dynamics of relational movement and bodying, and to do so with scientific, artistic and therapeutic purposes in mind. To achieve this bridge, we bring up a novel paradigm we name “Shared Diminished Reality”. It consists in using minimalist representation to instantiate users’ bodies in the virtual space. Instead of using humanoid avatars or full body skeletons, we reduce the representation of the moving bodies to three spheres whose traject...
Cet article explore trois cas d'improvisations interactives libres, réalisées entre un élève ... more Cet article explore trois cas d'improvisations interactives libres, réalisées entre un élève et son professeur dans le contexte de la pédagogie Kaddouch. L'analyse musicologique de ces interactions permet de construir un système conceptuel rendant compte des techniques d'interactions utilisées dans cette pédagogie et de leurs effets sur l'apprentissage et la créativité des élèves. L'interprétation psychologique des comportements moteurs observés est proposée, à la lueur notamment des théoriques des systèmes dynamiques (en particulier les dynamiques de coordiantion de Kelso).
Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of knowing. According to the ena... more Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of knowing. According to the enactive approach, we learn to perceive and to know through our bodily interactions with the world (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991). However, such an approach remains incomplete as long as sociality is not taken into account (Froese & Di Paolo, 2009). Recently, an inter-enactive approach has accordingly been proposed. Social interactions are seen as processes of coordinated sense-making that emerge from the dynamics of the inter-action process itself (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). As learning mainly takes place in intersubjective contexts (e.g. as an effect of teaching), this approach is relevant to the issue of pedagogy. Teaching settings are a special case though: cognitive interactions are reciprocal but asymmetrically guided by the teacher. In this paper, the question of the relations between body and education is thus addressed from the point of view of the inter-enactive approach. To ...
Humans manifest remarkable sensorimotor coordination abilities as showcased in the skilful perfor... more Humans manifest remarkable sensorimotor coordination abilities as showcased in the skilful performance expressed by orchestras and dance ensembles. In multi-agent interactions, sensorimotor loops that are normally involved in the control of one9s own movement must accommodate also for sensory data (e.g., visual feedback) informing about others9 movement to adjust performance and ultimately co-adapt to each other. Yet, a mechanistic understanding of how sensorimotor control comes into place to enable interpersonal coordination is still lacking. By examining movement intermittency, we here open a window into the dynamics of visuomotor loop control during interpersonal coordination. Specifically, we analysed submovements, i.e., recurrent (2-3 Hz) force pulses that are naturally engraved in our kinematics and deemed to reflect intrinsic intermittency in (visual-based) motor control. Participants were asked to synchronize rhythmic (0.25 Hz) finger flexion-extension movements. Besides syn...
Shaping both the environment and the embodiment of the users in that virtual world, VR offers des... more Shaping both the environment and the embodiment of the users in that virtual world, VR offers designers and cognitive scientists the unprecedented potential to virtually explore a vast set of interactions between persons, and persons and their environment. By design, VR tools offer a formidable opportunity to revisit the links between body movement and lived experiences, and to experiment with them in a controlled, yet engaging and ecologically valid manner. In our multidisciplinary research-creation project we ask, how can we design (virtual) environments that specifically encourage interactions between multiple persons and that allow designers, scientists, and participants (users or “immersants”) to explore the very process of interaction itself? Building on our combined experience with dance improvisation research and interactive virtual spatial design, we document a multi-user VR experience design approach we name Shared Diminished Reality (SDR), where immersants are co-present ...
Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), Jan 9, 2018
Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a... more Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of "togetherness" associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based on movement and its perception), and so can be simultaneously addressed from the perspective of the performers and the spectators, and be measured. We utilise these multiple levels of description: the first-person, phenomenological level of personal experiences, the third-person description of brain and body activity, and the level of interpersonal dynamics. Here, we describe two of our protocols: a four-person mirror game and a 'rhythm battle' dance improvisation score. Using an interpersonal closeness measure after the practice, we correlate subjective sense of individual/g...
In this talk, I point out the constitutive role of relational dynamics (i.e. the collective dynam... more In this talk, I point out the constitutive role of relational dynamics (i.e. the collective dynamics that emerge from the way coupled components reciprocally affect each other) in the coordination of behavior. More specifically, the focus will be on rhythmic movements (as a privileged window on behavior in general), as well as on interpersonal coordination, in order to promote the idea according to which dynamical autonomy is at work in the domain of social interactions as well. To do this, I first point out that the temporality of the living is an emergent, multiplicative, multiscale phenomenon. Whereas the notion of rhythm (as well as time as classically defined and physically measured) is connotative of regular stability, rhythms have been shown to emerge from the flexible variability of component processes whose interactions take place at multiple timescales, and thereby exhibit complexly structured (fractal-like) fluctuations that play a role in the rhythmic coordination itself...
According to Bernard Stiegler, teaching is the prime issue for philosophy. We address this issue ... more According to Bernard Stiegler, teaching is the prime issue for philosophy. We address this issue through case studies in music education, by analyzing interactive improvisations. We define our pedagogical device as a system of care in which articulations between the different organological levels (human organs, by which a learner get involved with his own individuality ; technical organs, which is the «milieu» of communication ; social organizations, such as the dynamic process of interaction with the teacher) can be both experienced and experimented, and favor the individuation process as well. For music is a temporal object, this pedagogical situation is a privileged window on the individuation process : learner’s individuation coincides with the unfolding of improvisation. We address individuation and transindividuation processes through two concepts (spontaneous achievement zones and core tastes), each leading to two kinds of individuation. This is enabled by the reciprocity of ...
Summary Most animal species group together and coordinate their behavior in quite sophisticated m... more Summary Most animal species group together and coordinate their behavior in quite sophisticated manners for mating, hunting, or defense purposes. In humans, coordination at a macroscopic level (the pacing of movements) is evident both in daily life (e.g., walking) and skilled (e.g., music and dance) behaviors. By examining the fine structure of movement, we here show that interpersonal coordination is established also at a microscopic – submovement – level. Natural movements appear as marked by recurrent (2–3 Hz) speed breaks, i.e., submovements, that are traditionally considered the result of intermittency in (visuo)motor feedback-based control. In a series of interpersonal coordination tasks, we show that submovements produced by interacting partners are not independent but alternate tightly over time, reflecting online mutual adaptation. These findings unveil a potential core mechanism for behavioral coordination that is based on between-persons synchronization of the intrinsic dynamics of action-perception cycles.
Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des échanges d’informations au cours desquels d... more Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des échanges d’informations au cours desquels des états mentaux individuels se succèdent. Comment pouvons-nous dès lors être « ensemble » et partager un moment ? Dans cette thèse, nous optons pour une perspective centrée sur la coordination temporelle des comportements des personnes en interaction, en nous intéressant aux phénomènes de dynamiques collectives incarnées. Ces dynamiques coordonnent communément les comportements et émergent directement du processus d’interaction mutuel lui-même. Pour évaluer cette proposition, nous avons mené trois expériences. Notre méthodologie générale distinguait trois situations types : une situation de coordination individuelle, une situation pseudo-sociale dans laquelle le comportement doit être coordonné à celui d’une autre personne sans que la réciproque soit vraie, et enfin une situation dans laquelle l’interaction est mutuelle. Une première expérience nous a permis de montrer que la mutualité ...
We often think of time in dualistic terms: as a property that is inherent to the objective world ... more We often think of time in dualistic terms: as a property that is inherent to the objective world on the one hand, and as the subjective apprehension of its passage on the other hand. Yet, rather than being a mere cognitive estimation of outer durations, the felt and observable temporality of our behavior has a complex form that implicates many timescales, reflecting the interactions between multiple inter and intra subjective processes. We thus propose that the shape of time as we experience it emerges from the dynamics of our interactions with others and should be described as the entanglement of our respective intrinsic temporalities (Laroche et al., 2014). Indeed, time, instead of being a mere property of the world or an intra-cerebral phenomena, is something that we « make together ». Our very sense of being in time is intertwined with those of others, making time a socially constituted dimension of experience and activity. Collective Improvisation (e.g. in dance, music…) has be...
Sensitivity to temporal contingencies appears early in life and plays a key role in the ontogeny ... more Sensitivity to temporal contingencies appears early in life and plays a key role in the ontogeny of socio-cognitive abili-ties in humans (Nadel et al., 1999; Gratier and Apter-Danon, 2009). The tendency for rhythmic coordination, sometimes referred to as “entrainment, ” requires sensory-motor coupling (Phillips-Silver et al., 2010). In most of the fields of cognitive science, action-perception and agent-world coupling views are replacing the classical stimulus-response dichotomy (Marsh et al., 2009; Silberstein and Chemero, 2012; Schilbach et al., 2013; Novembre and Keller, 2014). Such con-ceptual frameworks are well suited to study coordination phenomena as they emphasize the dynamical nature of cog-
Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as ... more Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as between the interacting bodies. However, little is known about how coupling at the interpersonal level impacts coordination among body parts at the intrapersonal level, especially in ecological, complex, situations. Here, we perturbed interpersonal sensorimotor communication in violin players of an orchestra and investigated how this impacted musicians’ intrapersonal movements coordination. More precisely, first section violinists were asked to turn their back to the conductor and to face the second section of violinists, who still faced the conductor. Motion capture of head and bow kinematics showed that altering the usual interpersonal coupling scheme increased intrapersonal coordination. Our perturbation also induced smaller yet more complex head movements, which spanned multiple, faster timescales that closely matched the metrical levels of the musical score. Importantly, perturbatio...
Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des echanges d’informations au cours desquels d... more Les interactions sociales sont souvent vues comme des echanges d’informations au cours desquels des etats mentaux individuels se succedent. Comment pouvons-nous des lors etre « ensemble » et partager un moment ? Dans cette these, nous optons pour une perspective centree sur la coordination temporelle des comportements des personnes en interaction, en nous interessant aux phenomenes de dynamiques collectives incarnees. Ces dynamiques coordonnent communement les comportements et emergent directement du processus d’interaction mutuel lui-meme. Pour evaluer cette proposition, nous avons mene trois experiences. Notre methodologie generale distinguait trois situations types : une situation de coordination individuelle, une situation pseudo-sociale dans laquelle le comportement doit etre coordonne a celui d’une autre personne sans que la reciproque soit vraie, et enfin une situation dans laquelle l’interaction est mutuelle. Une premiere experience nous a permis de montrer que la mutualite ...
In this article we explore an epistemic approach we name dis/embodiment and introduce “Articulati... more In this article we explore an epistemic approach we name dis/embodiment and introduce “Articulations,” an interdisciplinary project bringing together Virtual Reality (VR) designers, cognitive scientists, dancers, anthropologists, and human–machine interaction specialists. According to Erin Manning, our sense of self and other emerges from processes of bodying and relational movement (becoming oneself by moving in relation with the world). The aim of the project is to exploit the potential of multi-person VR in order to explore the intersubjective dynamics of relational movement and bodying, and to do so with scientific, artistic and therapeutic purposes in mind. To achieve this bridge, we bring up a novel paradigm we name “Shared Diminished Reality”. It consists in using minimalist representation to instantiate users’ bodies in the virtual space. Instead of using humanoid avatars or full body skeletons, we reduce the representation of the moving bodies to three spheres whose traject...
Cet article explore trois cas d'improvisations interactives libres, réalisées entre un élève ... more Cet article explore trois cas d'improvisations interactives libres, réalisées entre un élève et son professeur dans le contexte de la pédagogie Kaddouch. L'analyse musicologique de ces interactions permet de construir un système conceptuel rendant compte des techniques d'interactions utilisées dans cette pédagogie et de leurs effets sur l'apprentissage et la créativité des élèves. L'interprétation psychologique des comportements moteurs observés est proposée, à la lueur notamment des théoriques des systèmes dynamiques (en particulier les dynamiques de coordiantion de Kelso).
Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of knowing. According to the ena... more Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of knowing. According to the enactive approach, we learn to perceive and to know through our bodily interactions with the world (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991). However, such an approach remains incomplete as long as sociality is not taken into account (Froese & Di Paolo, 2009). Recently, an inter-enactive approach has accordingly been proposed. Social interactions are seen as processes of coordinated sense-making that emerge from the dynamics of the inter-action process itself (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). As learning mainly takes place in intersubjective contexts (e.g. as an effect of teaching), this approach is relevant to the issue of pedagogy. Teaching settings are a special case though: cognitive interactions are reciprocal but asymmetrically guided by the teacher. In this paper, the question of the relations between body and education is thus addressed from the point of view of the inter-enactive approach. To ...
Humans manifest remarkable sensorimotor coordination abilities as showcased in the skilful perfor... more Humans manifest remarkable sensorimotor coordination abilities as showcased in the skilful performance expressed by orchestras and dance ensembles. In multi-agent interactions, sensorimotor loops that are normally involved in the control of one9s own movement must accommodate also for sensory data (e.g., visual feedback) informing about others9 movement to adjust performance and ultimately co-adapt to each other. Yet, a mechanistic understanding of how sensorimotor control comes into place to enable interpersonal coordination is still lacking. By examining movement intermittency, we here open a window into the dynamics of visuomotor loop control during interpersonal coordination. Specifically, we analysed submovements, i.e., recurrent (2-3 Hz) force pulses that are naturally engraved in our kinematics and deemed to reflect intrinsic intermittency in (visual-based) motor control. Participants were asked to synchronize rhythmic (0.25 Hz) finger flexion-extension movements. Besides syn...
Shaping both the environment and the embodiment of the users in that virtual world, VR offers des... more Shaping both the environment and the embodiment of the users in that virtual world, VR offers designers and cognitive scientists the unprecedented potential to virtually explore a vast set of interactions between persons, and persons and their environment. By design, VR tools offer a formidable opportunity to revisit the links between body movement and lived experiences, and to experiment with them in a controlled, yet engaging and ecologically valid manner. In our multidisciplinary research-creation project we ask, how can we design (virtual) environments that specifically encourage interactions between multiple persons and that allow designers, scientists, and participants (users or “immersants”) to explore the very process of interaction itself? Building on our combined experience with dance improvisation research and interactive virtual spatial design, we document a multi-user VR experience design approach we name Shared Diminished Reality (SDR), where immersants are co-present ...
Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), Jan 9, 2018
Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a... more Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of "togetherness" associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based on movement and its perception), and so can be simultaneously addressed from the perspective of the performers and the spectators, and be measured. We utilise these multiple levels of description: the first-person, phenomenological level of personal experiences, the third-person description of brain and body activity, and the level of interpersonal dynamics. Here, we describe two of our protocols: a four-person mirror game and a 'rhythm battle' dance improvisation score. Using an interpersonal closeness measure after the practice, we correlate subjective sense of individual/g...
In this talk, I point out the constitutive role of relational dynamics (i.e. the collective dynam... more In this talk, I point out the constitutive role of relational dynamics (i.e. the collective dynamics that emerge from the way coupled components reciprocally affect each other) in the coordination of behavior. More specifically, the focus will be on rhythmic movements (as a privileged window on behavior in general), as well as on interpersonal coordination, in order to promote the idea according to which dynamical autonomy is at work in the domain of social interactions as well. To do this, I first point out that the temporality of the living is an emergent, multiplicative, multiscale phenomenon. Whereas the notion of rhythm (as well as time as classically defined and physically measured) is connotative of regular stability, rhythms have been shown to emerge from the flexible variability of component processes whose interactions take place at multiple timescales, and thereby exhibit complexly structured (fractal-like) fluctuations that play a role in the rhythmic coordination itself...
According to Bernard Stiegler, teaching is the prime issue for philosophy. We address this issue ... more According to Bernard Stiegler, teaching is the prime issue for philosophy. We address this issue through case studies in music education, by analyzing interactive improvisations. We define our pedagogical device as a system of care in which articulations between the different organological levels (human organs, by which a learner get involved with his own individuality ; technical organs, which is the «milieu» of communication ; social organizations, such as the dynamic process of interaction with the teacher) can be both experienced and experimented, and favor the individuation process as well. For music is a temporal object, this pedagogical situation is a privileged window on the individuation process : learner’s individuation coincides with the unfolding of improvisation. We address individuation and transindividuation processes through two concepts (spontaneous achievement zones and core tastes), each leading to two kinds of individuation. This is enabled by the reciprocity of ...
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