Centre for Ideas - Theses

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    Assisted solo: navigating relational & representational failure in music-dance collaboration
    Hunter, Myfanwy ( 2017)
    This practice-based research asks how failure can be harnessed as a generative tool for locating, articulating and extending creative capacity in Assisted Solo music-dance collaboration. Throughout this research, the term Assisted Solo is a solo work derived from improvised interaction between one instrumentalist (myself) and one dancer. The problematic of defining failure in improvisation is addressed through theoretical discourse on relational and representational aesthetics. Failure in praxis is explored in three interrelated bodies of work. Sounding – three audio albums of Assisted Solos based on research-informed provocations of failing, falling, convoluting, and capacity. Seeing – a series of photographs and drypoint etchings reflecting thematics of cracks, gaps, rupture, and repair. Interplay – interactive interviews with creative practitioners exploring the afore-mentioned provocations and thematics. A rhizomatic methodology permits multiple associations between the practical work and the main theoretical, philosophical underpinnings of Heidegger’s non-privative lacunae, Priest’s surplus of failure, and the Japanese concept of ma – a space, gap or interval. The practical and written work coalesce to form an argument in favour of embracing failure as a tool for locating, articulating, and extending capacity within the Assisted Solo and related fields of inquiry. Access the practical work via http://www.assistedsolo.com.