Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Arts
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

6.1 The Subjective Experience of Social Interactive Gestures

Before going deeper into a case study that focuses on the temporal deployment of social interactive gestures, it is interesting to consider the subjective experience of social interactive gestures. One of the major effects of gesture on the experience of social interaction is social bonding. In social psychology, for example, gesture has been studied in the context of courtship, non-verbal communication, and interpersonal orientations. According to Bargh and Chartrand (1999), most of a person’s everyday life is determined by automatic and non-conscious processes. Such processes often rely on non-conscious imitation or mimicry behaviour expressed in movement synchrony, behaviour matching, as effectuated in speech patterns, facial expressions, emotions, moods, postures, gestures, mannerisms, and idiosyncratic movements (Lakin et al. 2003; Niedenthal et al. 2005). Within a social group setting, a subject is more likely to get along harmoniously with others in the group if it behaves similarly to them, and the reverse is true if it is “out of sync” and behaves differently. According to Bargh and Chartrand (1999) all of these effects tend to keep us in touch with the realities of our world in a way that transcends the limits of our capabilities for conscious self-regulation. Studies in social psychology show an interesting relationship between non-conscious imitation on the one hand, and feelings of affection on the other (Lakin et al. 2003). Mimicking the behaviours of others actually increases feelings of affection between interactive partners. It leads to feelings of closeness and fondness, and makes social bonding easier and more harmonious. These studies show that the body is in fact closely tied to the processing of social and emotional information and that, via the body, important and socially relevant information can be accessed by the mind, such as information about stereotypes and traits, attitude change and mood congruence (Niedenthal et al. 2005). The role of music-driven gestures in social bonding is well known in musicology as well. McNeill (1995) observed that, throughout history, moving and singing together have made collective tasks far more efficient, playing a profound role in creating and sustaining human communities. The underlying mechanism of “muscular bonding,” that is, a corporeal connectedness, can, in view of the above discussion about the embodiment mechanism, now be understood in terms of a mirror system, re-enactment, synchronization and anticipation (see also Clayton 2007; Keller 2008).

Apart from social bonding there is another important effect of music interaction, namely, the capacity to have empathy with music, or art in general. Empathy is the ability to share another’s feelings and emotions as if they were your own. For example, Lipps (1903) argued that the understanding of an expressive movement (or Ausdrucksbewegung) in music is based on empathy (inneren Mitmachen, Einfühlung), which he conceived as founded upon the use of motor muscles that are involved when genuine emotions are felt. Through such embodiment, we have access to the intended emotional meaning of the music (for the neurological foundations for this idea see Sebanz et al. 2006; Jackson and Decety 2004; Decety and Jackson 2004; Berthoz and Jorland 2004).

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