an aesthetic view on interaction between a musician and congenital deafblind children and children with multiple disabilities by birgit kir

An aesthetic view on interaction between a musician and congenital
deafblind children and children with multiple disabilities
By Birgit Kirkebæk, Dr. Ped. Chairman of the board of VIKOM the Danish
Resource Centre on Communication and Multiple Disabilities concerning
Children and Young People without Spoken Language
The background of this presentation is a project about establishing
joint experiences through improvisation. The project made as action
research has been made possible through collaboration between to
resource centres: The resource centre for children and youth with
multiple impairments (with the Danish acronym VIKOM) and the Resource
centre on congenital deafblindness (with the Danish acronym VCDBF).
Vocalist and musician Cathrine Lervig and professor emeritus Birgit
Kirkebæk have been in charge of the project. In addition, three
children with multiple disabilities and three children with congenital
deafblindness have participated. The children have each had ten
lessons with Cathrine Lervig where they communicated through sound and
movement. She has also given a number of concerts for the remaining
children on the two participating schools. As a musician who works
through improvisation, Cathrine Lervig approaches the children by
tuning in to their existing expressions, and the communication takes
place through sound and movement. This approach differs from what you
find in music therapy and music educational theory and practice.
Reciprocal affective tuning to the universe of the other person takes
place together with anticipation of what the other person is about to
express and with joint creation of an expression here and now that
involves both parts equally. The project was concluded late summer
2005.
The point of the project is that an aesthetic perspective based on
Colwyn Trevarthen’s and other researchers’ recognition of the
connection between music and communication may help many of the
children with severe impairments who are today treat with strategies
inspired by behaviourism – or whom we treat with a basis in strategies
which are exclusively directed towards cognition. The argument for the
reasoning chosen is that an aesthetic approach includes emotional
aspects and combine emotion and cognition. This, however, requires
that all expressions are noticed and taken seriously. My presentation
is based on a case study on a young man, Jon, 16 years old. He is
blind, but has residual hearing. Based on the interaction between this
young man and the musician (used as an example) it is discussed, which
changes an aesthetic paradigm, requires in psychology and in
educational theory and practice. What professional standpoints must be
abandoned if a relationistic perspective is to be taken seriously?
Music is communication
Cathrine Lervig seeks through wordless singing and musical
improvisation to establish a common dialogic room of sounds, rhythm
and movements based on the expressions of each individual child. This
is a kind of singing, inspired by Saami jojk and African Ngoma. Ngoma
is a total sentient concept, which holds the expansion of the moment
in rhythm, movement, singing etc (Bjørkvold 1992). The purpose of the
project is to find new special pedagogy insight in which basic factors
that are involved when it comes to establishment of contact, co-action
and communication in regard to children who are in a vulnerable
situation due to the uncertainty that their functional impairments
cause with the surrounding and their difficulties in interacting with
the surroundings in an immediate understandable way.
The basic hypotheses of the project are as follow:
*
Music and communication are two sides of the same coin.
*
Increased awareness of the fact that the elements of the music may
enrich the communication.
*
The relation is balanced in a state on mutual sincerity through
musical improvisation.
Follow-on hypotheses which are important the issue of the project have
been advanced on the basis Cathrine Lervig’s music theoretical insight
and supported by a line of theories (Trevarthen 2000, Bjørkvold 1992,
Bråten 1998 and 2000, Lorentzen 2001 and 2003, Sollied and Kirkebæk
2001 and others).
*
Instead of looking at the child and the situation from without and
in advance contemplate how we wish the child to react, we must be
in the situation, experience it with the child and hereby make it
important through inclusion of the rhythm of the body, the sound
of the voice, the dance of movement.
*
We must not only accept, but also appreciate different sounds,
movements and rituals to a degree that we include them and use
them as a starting point in the communication.
“The lived body” and a musical/aesthetic access to communication
”The lived body” is an expression applied by the French philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It means that ”the body is an expression, which
cannot be separated from what it expresses”. Meaning and participation
are main concepts when we speak on the basis of an aesthetic paradigm.
Merleau-Ponty’s ”perception of the lived body as our original and
meaningful way of accessing the world” may also contribute to the
understanding of what happens in the sequences of interaction which
develop between Cathrine Lervig and Jon when they improvise. They
create a space – a lived space. ”The lived space,” in Merlau-Ponty’s
sense of the expression, comprehends the physical, the bodily, the
psycho-social and the musical space.
Merleau-Ponty’s point is that ”we are bodily present in any
perception”, and hence it is not possible to take a distance from this
even though the world seems different for those directly involved and
those in the audience. Merleau-Ponty highlights the body as an
experiencing subject – in other words as a silent witness. ”The silent
witness”, which Merleau-Ponty speaks about is the lived body, which
means not only the experienced body, but the present, social and
meaning making body, as opposed to the purely biological body. The
most fundamental condition for perception is our body, or, as
Merleau-Ponty expresses it: Our body is not in the time, it inhabits
space and time. So basically we are our body, but the body may also
perceive itself, which is a prerequisite for the instrumental idea
that we have a body”, as the Danish researcher of music theory Svend
Holgersen writes.
Merleau-Ponty describes the meaning making relation between the child
and its environment as intentional. He has a particular category for
movement, which he calls locomotive intention. Intention has something
to do with meaning making through interaction. For Merleau-Ponty the
body is the original unit for meaning making. The world is not it in
itself meaningful, but ”it is meaningful to us due to our bodily
existence and access to the world.” Merleau-Ponty thinks that we see
things in their entity and not only in their actually featured part.
The lived body, for him, is doomed to make meaning – in other words,
it just cannot at all waive it.
When Cathrine Lervig and I myself have a focus of the innate rhythmic
pulsation, of non-verbal communication and the child’s effort to
create meaningful coherence and flow, an aesthetic paradigm is its
basis. A major point of this aesthetic is that the product is
completed by the co-operation of the Other – in other words that
nothing is fulfilled before it is seen and interpreted by an Other.
An outside perspective on Cathrine’s interaction with Jon
When one analyses the video recorded interaction between Cathrine and
Jon on this background, a lot of questions emerge. What do the
constantly occurring head movements which Jon makes mean to him? Which
experiences do they give him, and which emotional expressions may we
find in his behaviour - and in that of Cathrine? What happens between
them? And how does the artist encounter the individual, with whom she
is going to meet for the first time? The encounter had the following
development (described in further details in the Danish book” No sound
is wrong”).
Jon sits in a wheelchair opposite Cathrine. He moves his head from
side to side. Cathrine and Jon start by holding hands. Jon then lets
go of Cathrine’s hand and makes sign of taking off his shirt. Cathrine
tries to join him by singing, in the rhythm of Jon’s head movements.
Here there is a break. Jon gets a grip of his own hand and briefly
stops moving his head. He produces deep sounds, as well as a kind of
spitting sounds. Cathrine imitates Jon’s small sounds. She continues
with non-sense talk and sings again. Jon now dances with his fingers.
He seems to obey to his own basic rhythm. Cathrine seems seeking and a
bit insecure. Jon turns his head rhythmically and ”dances” with his
hands/fingers and produces small sounds. Cathrine awaits Jon’s
initiatives and tries to answer his sound productions, and she answers
these and tries to take Jon’s hand. Jon withdraws his hand, and Jon’s
teacher suggests that Cathrine touches Jon’s arms and shoulders in
stead. Cathrine follows up on this, and Jon accepts this way of
touching. Cathrine sings in the same rhythm as Jon moves his head. She
adds something new to his movements; the sound of her voice. There is
a break. Jon seems to be listening attentively. Cathrine lays her
hands on his shoulders. Jon explores her hands briefly and then puts
his fingers in his hands for a short while. Jon swings his head
intensively and murmurs. Cathrine follows up with a very wavering
voice or vibrato. Jon is indeed attentive – he is very participating
and very listening. There is a close head-to-head contact. Vibrato in
a low pitch in accordance with Jon’s proper sounds. There is harmony
and shared experience through vibrating sounds. Pause and
consideration. Jon sits totally quiet without swinging his head.
Cathrine starts to sing in a higher pitch tone, but still has the
deep, ”raw” sounds as her basic rhythm – the same rhythm as Jon’s head
movements. Jon straightens up, strokes his forehead and again swings
his head from side to side. Cathrine’s hand is on his shoulder. Now
Jon begins to explore her hands, at first with his left and then with
his right hand. He briefly holds her hand with his right hand.
Cathrine then approaches him with deep, strong and vibrating sounds.
Jon listens again. Cathrine’s initiative is dramatic. Jon still holds
Cathrine’s hand. Again he lifts up his shirt - several times. What
does this mean? Jon puts his fingers in his mouth, listens, his face
towards Cathrine and again swings his head. Cathrine puts her hand
against his shoulder. There is an exchange of murmuring sounds. Jon
has his fingers in his mouth. Harmonised murmuring sounds head by
head. Jon yawns. ”Do you have enough of this now?” Cathrine asks. Jon
reaches his hand towards her. Again their heads are touching. Jon lets
his head fall down on Cathrine’s arm. For a long time they sit like
this. Jon stretches out like after a good sleep. Thank you for the
class!”
The things which caught my attention were partly the fact that Jon
tries to take off his shirt and partly the effect Cathrine’s vibratio
has on him. Finally I was very absorbed by Jon’s use of his hand
movements, they seemed to be used very intentionally. However, what
struck me most was how Jon being deafblind confirms and reconfirms his
communication with Cathrine. In the beginning Jon is in his own basic
rhythm. As Cathrine adds a “leading part” to this basic rhythm with
her voice, Jon becomes attentive and participating. It supports him
that she touches his shoulder, but as he uses his hands and fingers
partly for dancing and partly for exploring Cathrine, he does not want
her to hold on to his hands. As I see it, the dance of the hands is a
way of sharing the experience with Cathrine. When she confirms him by
adding something new (the sound of her voice) to his basic rhythm (his
head movements), he then re-confirms her by adding the dance of his
hands. Together they explore the ”head-by-head” effect of the
vibrations. They share the experience. Perhaps the attempts to take of
his shirt are a way of expressing enthusiasm – an excitement – which
may be compared to the reaction in a soccer player when he scores a
goal. But it may also be considered as a re-confirmation of the
dramatic expression with which Cathrine confirmed that at Jon
independently explores her hands and wants to know who she is. If she
is hot tempered and “dramatic”, he will, by tearing off his shirt,
manifest that he, too, is hot tempered and “dramatic”.
The episode described and our interpretation of it is indeed what the
Norwegian psychologist understands as an aesthetic paradigm. It has to
do with moments of aesthesia, such as the Norwegian professor of
musicology Jon-Roar Bjørkvold describes it. When Cathrine adds
something new to Jon’s expression, and when he responds to it and
considers her suggestion, they co-create a new aesthetic expression,
which contains something from them both.
What Jon uses in his communication are the head movements from side to
side and his vocalisations: In my ”from the outside” observations
Jon’s sounds and the use of the hands a major role, just as his
unreserved acceptance of Cathrine must be highlighted as something
special. But also the head movements, I think, are something much more
than stereotypes and introvert activity.
The head movements have very different meaning and are used for
different purposes:
They set a rhythm of rest which has a sleep inducing character, he is
relaxed and on his way to sleep.
They are used as a personal flow, which make his world coherent.
They are used as a rhythmical instrument, which sets both the rhythm
and the tenderness or ferocity in the expression of the piece of
music.
They also set the pace and dynamics and are parts of the shared flow,
which he co-creates with Cathrine.
They are used to provide the particular sensory experience which it
gives when you move the head from side to side according to a sound
source with different rhythms – it is a kind of amplification of which
he himself is in control.
When his head movements stop, he signalises: I am responsive to the
new things you will bring to me.
His hands also seem to be used for several different purposes:
*
Jon calls on, accepts or rejects Cathrine’s hands and thus
signalises both limits and an accommodating attitude.
*
Jon explores Cathrine’s hands and finds out how she is.
*
Jon uses his hands and fingers as an instrument and plays on
Cathrine’s hands as if they were the keys of a piano.
*
Jon uses his hands to communicate frustration: He presses his
finger into Cathrine’s hand, and he hits himself. He also protects
himself or prevents himself from doing things by sitting on his
hands.
*
Jon uses his hands to pull up his shirt and thereby signalises
receptiveness – or he uses them to feel his stomach and signalise
”this is me” – or to pull up his shirt and bite it, perhaps as a
sign of insecurity or need for a break?
Jon’s vocalisations are varied and manifold. If I close my eyes and
listen to the sound track of the video recording, the pattern which
Jon and Cathrine create together seems very melodic. They tune in to
each other and harmonise their sounds. With the eyes open the sounds
must be perceived together with the movements in Jon’s head and hands
underlining the emotional value of the interaction in general. Jon
wishes to communicate in a musical way with Cathrine, but he also
decides for how long and how he wants to participate.
The example illustrates many of the points of this presentation. In
regard to special pedagogy efforts the new infant paradigm of the
teaching of children with functional impairments meant a revolution in
regard to taking the starting point in the relation and the early
contact patterns. However, the question is, have we spend enough time
and energy on understanding the musical qualities from where the
mother-child contact arises? If it is a matter of creating
significance and through improvisation open up for each other’s
perception of the world, this is not only a new infant paradigm coming
up but also an aesthetical paradigm characterised by the fact that the
expressions of the Other are taken so seriously that improvisation and
musical elements are given space not only in the establishment of
contact but also as important parts of further development of contact
and communication.
Litterature:
Bjørkvold, Jon Roar: Det musiske menneske. Hans Reitzels Forlag,
København 1992
Bråten, Stein: Kommunikasjon og samspil. Tano Aschehoug, Oslo 1998.
Bråten,Stein: Modellmakt og altersentriske spedbarn. Sigma, Bergen
2000.
Kirkebaek, Birgit, Lervig, Cathrine: … ingen lyd er forkert. Musisk
improvisation og samoplevelse. Døveskolernes Materialecenter, Ålborg
2005.
Kirkebaek, Birgit, Lervig, Cathrine: No sound is wrong --- music is
communication. In: Dbi Review Number 37, January – June 2006.
Trevarthen, Colwyn (Department of Psychology, The University of
Edinburgh): Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse: evidence from
human psychobiology and infant communication. In: Musicæ Scientiæ.
Rhythm, Musical Narrative, and Origins of Human Communication. The
Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.
Special Issue 1999-2000.
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