The Primal Metaphor: Music, Movement and the Problem of Meaning Construction

Paul Mason
PhD student, MARCS

Abstract

The current project focuses on Australian Contemporary Dance and draws upon contemporary evolutionary theory, western choreomusicology and cognitive ethnomusicology. Brain and culture can both be considered as evolutionary-like systems coexisting at different levels of complexity, forming a neuro-cultural network. A fundamental prerequisite for the processes of natural selection within an evolutionary system is the presence of formacy. Formacy arises in the context of a population of variants. It emerges when some structurally different variants within a system are functionally similar with respect to context. An analysis of formacy in neuro-cultural networks can be performed by examining the structural, functional and contextual relationships between two elements of a system. Taking Australian Contemporary Dance as a system, structure-function-context analysis can be performed using existing theory and methods from Choreomusicology, the study of the relationship between music and dance. Music and dance can have a context-driven (extrinsic) relationship or a context-free (intrinsic) relationship. In a short series of experiments, a causal interdependence between music and dance shall be manufactured and a structural, functional and contextual comparison of musical and movement elements shall be performed.