Paper presented at the CI for Critical Response conference 1st April 2014
*Studio Photos by Carolyn Arnold
It was never my plan to use Contact Improvisation, or any other movement practice for that matter, in my research. The weekly CI jams were the place I would go to to clear my mind and get away from the academic work.
My research involves designing habitat for intertidal species on artificial concrete structures. Sea snails, crustaceans and various other species that would otherwise find it harder colonising the flat concrete surfaces of seawalls, jetties and other extensions of our built environments encroaching into the sea.
Early on in the project I found the scientific literature I was relying on to learn about these species did not provide me with the full range of knowledge I needed for the design process. I needed a way to make up for the tacit knowledge designers rely on when designing for people, knowledge embedded in their memory and life experience and in the basic fact that they are humans designing for other humans. I needed a way to make the scientific knowledge tangible, embedded in my own body, so I could close my eyes and imagine the world from the point of view of my animal clients.
Designers often use role playing to familiarise themselves with the worlds of their clients, to learn about their possibilities and limitations. If done well this provides the designer with useful information that can help navigate the micro-decisions that make up a design project. From choice of materials, size, texture or colour to delivering an experience or desired feeling.
Initially I tried compensating for this lack of intimate knowledge of the animals I was designing for by spending as much time as I could on the beach and in the water observing their habitats and behaviours.
Then, one evening at a CI jam, after spending the day reading and watching videos of limpets defending themselves against starfish, questions from my research found their way into the dance space. Squashed between the floor and a fellow mover, I thought: is this what it feels like to be a limpet under attack by a starfish? I began moving the way I knew it would move, lifting my shell up and dropping it down on the sticky arms of my predator.
Other moment of cross-species connection followed along with more questions worthy of further exploration.
With the help of Malaika and Richard Sarco-Thomas we set up a small experiment during a CI jam; a stroll into intertidal worlds, a crash-course in limpet and barnacle behaviour for movers.
Limpets are Gastropods, from Ancient Greek, gastr- stomach, and pod-foot, thus stomach-foots. We started by exploring movement executed exclusively from our core area, with our limbs serving only for balance and sensing our environments. We played with the notion of leaving a chemical trail wherever we go, guiding us back to our starting point, our home scar. Scraping micro-algae off the surface of the floor in order to feed.
Limpets are territorial and can become aggressive if another individual tresspasses on thier grasing grounds. They settle their disputes in a duel, trying to flip each other over with their shells. This can prove potentially lethal if they can’t flip back in time before a predator comes along or the tide goes out.
Photo by Paul Naylor
The familiar score of trying to get underneath each other had a new sense of urgency to it when what was a stake was loosing your food source or potentially your life.
In the next score we were barnacles. We started our lifecycle, as every barnacle does, in the form of larvae swimming around in the ocean’s plankton soup, moved around by currents and waves, sampling the surfaces we encounter along the way in search of a permanent place to settle.
It came to our attention that the conditions in one area of the studio had the right geomorphological and chemical composition to start a new settlement.
We cemented ourselves to the surface secreting a protein compound and began our metamorphosis into juvenile barnacles. To simulate our growth we moved closer together till there was no more space between us. The exercise here was to try and harbour the feeling of having ones external shape determined by the areas of contact with other individuals.
Barnacles feed by lifting their fan-like limbs in the air and filtered nutrients from the sea around them
Image from wikipedia.org
We fed, unaware that we were being observed by our greatest enemy- the dog whelk.
Barnacles can be quite helpless when it comes to defending themselves against dog whelks
Image from wikipedia.org
Mussels on the other hand have evolved a way of fighting back. For this next experiment our encrustation of barnacles is transformed into a bed of mussels.
As the dog whelk glides along the mussel bed trying to drill holes into the mussels’ shell in order to get at the food source inside, the mussels pool their efforts trying to attach byssal threads to the dog whelk, holding it in place till it finally starves.
Image from http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/bio270/predators.html
Close-up of the byssal thread:
The colony was saved!
After that we went on to jamming, though the sense of an area of the studio having better conditions for intertidal living seemed to stay on throughout the evening.
Synanthropic ecologies 