Pil Hansen

Research-Based Practice: Situating Vertical City between Artistic Development and Applied Cognitive Science

Working with an interdisciplinary group of artists on the 2008 performance project Vertical City, Hansen and Barton, the projects dramaturge and director, drew inspiration from cognitive theories of memory and perception. They imagine how artistic questions from Vertical City can be further explored within an innovative model they call Research-Based Practice.

The Dramaturgy of Performance Generating Systems

The term performance generating systems names rule- and task-based dramaturgies that systematically set in motion a self-organising process of dance generation. Asking how such systems work — which aspects actively contribute to generation and how they attract certain forms of behaviour over time — this chapter situates performance generating praxis in relation to task-based creation, examines it through the cognitive framework of Dynamical Systems Theory, and reflects upon the dramaturgical utility and ethical implications of the principles thus revealed.

An earned presence: studying the effect of multi-task improvisation systems on cognitive and learning capacity

ABSTRACT In this article, we articulate preliminary insights from two pilot studies. These studies contribute to an ongoing process of developing empirical, cross-disciplinary measures to understand the cognitive and learning effects of complex artistic practices – effects that we situate between theory of embodied concepts and conceptually calibrated physical attention and action. The stage of this process that we report on here was led by the cognitive performance studies scholar and dramaturge, Pil Hansen, and undertaken in collaboration with the experimental psychologist, Vina Goghari, and the behavioural economist, Robert Oxoby, assisted by four research assistants from Drama, Music, and Psychology at the University of Calgary. Our team set out to test the following hypothesis: Active participation in performance generating systems has a positive effect on advanced student performers’ working memory capacity, executive functions, and learning. Our results have implications, in particular, for understandings of embodied learning in the educational sector, however a perhaps more significant contribution is a better understanding of the measures and constructs needed to arrive at a more complex, yet operational concept of embodied learning and forward the experimental study of relationships between performing arts practices, cognition, and learning.

Dancing Performance Generating Systems

This article invites you on a simple, experiential journey into the complex mystery of dance works that systematically generate performance onstage. This praxis is situated in a lineage of task-based creation; it is brought to life through descriptions of two works by internationally recognized choreographers from Canada; and it is examined through a dramaturgical lens with the aim of revealing how the systems work and are danced.

Risking Intimacy: Strategies of Vulnerability in Vertical City’s All Good Things and Trace

Vertical City (VC) is an interdisciplinary performance hub located in Calgary, Canada. In this essay Barton and Hansen use two recent VC performances—All Good Things and Trace—to explore the physical, emotional, and perceptual intimacy in micro performances that is generated through the interweaving of embodied, sensory-triggered personal memories (associated with specific sounds, odours, tastes, textures, etc.) and composed through rule-based principles during performance. With its most recent production, Trace (2014), VC is attempting to realise a fragile and intimate dramaturgy of embrace, one that is only possible in a context of mutual vulnerability of both the performers and the audience. In this essay Barton and Hansen offer a detailed articulation of these complex and evolving composition and performance processes.