(An informal monthly-ish gathering focused on Laban Movement Analysis. Attending: Peggy Hackney, Brenton Cheng.)
Highlights:
- There is a desire among motion capture researchers to validate the Laban Efforts using their technology. However, this has proved difficult. Even among human observers, the only way to get inter-observer reliability with Efforts is for the observers to have trained together, using absolutely identical Effort definitions and observation subjects. Assessment of Space Effort and Weight Effort seem especially sensitive to the observer’s background. For me, this raises questions about whether one can really claim these qualities as objectively observable. If they are not objectively observable in any kind of consistent way, then we should certainly not expect a machine to be able to capture them. Perhaps this is the litmus test: if a machine might (one day) be able to discern a particular quality, then it can be included within the class of objectively observable qualities for which inter-observer reliability is possible. So what should we do with the other qualities that fail this test?
- LMA should have a collection of little videos online, illustrating Laban qualities, showing exercises, demonstrating hands-on interventions, etc. One example site doing this is Movements Afoot.