Digital Methodology Ideas

 My digital methods for archival, community-based, cultural production proposed by Maho Ogawa

1) The meaning of method: Method is systems, ways, mechanism to transmit your ideas to others.
2) What is your digital methods? →My methods are annotating films/ videos / pictures, creating a graph of movement, one on one / group zoom (online) rehearsals, video/still picture recording/sharing of the movements, creating website with those videos/still pictures, online conferences, 3) How will the theme (gesture archiving) be engaged digitally so that you can complete and share a project for your class? → I’m describing my potential digital archiving project [Learn Japanese Gesture Project] below.
4) How will you take care, as method? of your self, the community? →I’ll keep the honest conversations with myself and the community in multiple levels: One on one conversations at the zoom rehearsals, ask to write a journal for real feedbacks, having a conference to discuss together as a community. Exhibiting the process and the archive/ website would be helpful to see the results more visible and articulate to myself and the community.

-potential project -
[Learn Japanese Gesture Project] This is a project for archiving Japanese gestures in Japanese movies(pictures) and translate them into Americans / non Japanese bodies. This project aims to analyze Japanese gestures using both analog and digital methods and exchange those body language with bodies which don’t have Japanese cultural backgrounds. This experiment investigates the relationships between body language and mental/ emotional effects and try to disclose the procreation of a culture as a collective memory.

[process]
1. Archiving the process: I document the entire process of this project on text and video interview. Video interview by myself or with interviewers is helpful to record the process from a third eye view.

2. Archiving body gestures from old Japanese films: I annotate the gestures that I think ‘authentic' from films/ pictures. I make an archive for those gestures with analog and digital ways such as video clips, hand writing movement/ pose instructions, creating a gesture graph (making a chart of the distance between the floor/each body parts/ weight pattens etc) .

3. One-on-one movement collaboration: I create a list of non Japanese people who can collaborate as gesture performers and transmit those gestures into their bodies in multiple ways via internet. Here I also explore the possibilities of mimesis in digital in ways such as
1) Showing(sending) the gesture in original film/ video/ still picture
2) sending the movement instruction( describing the arm position, leg position, movement instruction, eye position, etc.) in text, 3) sending the graphic instruction (geometric version of the gesture, graphically analyzed gesture in chart ).
3) rehearsing over zoom( rehearsing over verbal instructions, mimicking the gesture by listening verbal cue, repeat the gesture for at least 4 times till you’ll get the muscle memory, do the gesture together with the teacher (me) over Page 2 zoom (it’s easier to do it together for mirror neuron affect, and for sharing the rhythm of the gesture),
4) ask them to perform the gesture and record it on video/still picture, or I record their performance at the zoom rehearsal,
5) ask to write a journal how he/she/they felt doing Japanese gesture on their bodies.

4. Collective(community) digital methodology-1 : I create a website or Facebook group or a blog for this archive that the participants (gesture performers=community) can watch other people do other Japanese gestures. This would be inspiring to each participants for the collective experience/ memory. Ask participants to leave comments, and if they want, ask them to chose another gesture to enact on their own choice.

5. Collective(community) digital methodology-2 : I set a conference via zoom with the participants(community) to give their feedbacks about experiencing Japanese Gestures. They exchange feedbacks and getting inspired by each other about watching themselves with newly learned gestures, watching others doing newly learned gestures and as a collective experiences. I’ll take a survey about the experience of digital mimesis (was it passive or productive? Discuss about originality or anonymous, natural or technical on their bodies? ) Record the conference on video/ texts.

6. (Optional) Consecutive Mimesis exploration: More intense investigation- I ask some participants to do the same gesture everyday for 2 weeks = rehearse everyday. Then compare the movement/ mood on the first day and the last day. How do their feeling (physical / mental) change over the movement? Do their personality change? How the movement pattern affects the mental statement with the consecutive movement practice?

[Discussion]
• Audience in this project (digital methodology): The audience member for this project is the audience of the collective page/ website/f.b. page. So the audience member largely involve the participant/ community themselves. When the participants record their learned gesture, the audience is solely themselves. When the participants are rehearsing with me the audience would be me.
• The methodology/process is a combination of simultaneity (conference) and individual activity (individual one-on-one rehearsals, individual journals& recordings.)

[Reference materials for Japanese gestures] Japanese Movies: Ozu ‘Tokyo Story’  ’Good Morning’, Kurosawa ‘Seven Samurai’ ‘Yojinbo’