Somatosensory Activation and Attentional States in Creative Making

Abstract

The methods for capturing the creative process come with associated tensions around memory recall, articulation, and communication during the act of making, as well as how to record these considerations. This paper has a twofold purpose: first, to offer an example of a mixed methodology, drawn from dance anthropology, sensory ethnography, and design, that applies embodied methods as an alternative for documenting creative making. Specifically, this incorporates the researcher-as-participant and the collation of fieldnotes, embodied knowledge/movement recall, with notation forms, and participant interviews. These are existing methods in dance anthropology; however, using them alongside exploratory prototyping and workshop approaches broadened this work into transdisciplinary practice. Second, it discusses the activation of somatosensory systems through wearable technology and the facilitation of heightened sensory awareness for the practitioner, leading to a subsequent ability to focus on creative decisions linked to reflection and metacognition.