CLAT Step 4A - Describe the event & its genre(s) as a whole Flashcards
Each section in the CLAT manual describing the (7) Events Lenses contains these (5) parts:
- basic description
- research questions
- research activities
- artistic domain connections
- meaning connections (cultural meanings, symbolism, and broader themes–Step C)
“Take a first glance at an event’s genre” set of (8) basic questions
what, who, when, where, why, to whom, with what connotations, how are new instances created?
Take a first glance questions (source)
Seeger (2004)
(4) questions that relate fundamentally to how artistic events fit into a culture:
- What is the apparent purpose(s) of the event?
- How did participants feel about it? What emotions were expressed during the event?
- What community values were shown (hierarchies, conformity/nonconformity, interactions, etc.)?
- What kinds of communal investments were made (resources & people invested, to what extent, etc.)?
Seeger (2004)
(who, what, why, etc.) list modified from his suggestion to start with journalistic questions for broad strokes
Space Lens
Space is the location, demarcation, and physical characteristics of the area used, which can affect the form of artistic communication; includes the people responsible for the space, and broader physical context (national/regional/local)
Materials Lens
The tangible things associated with an event, like clothing, regalia, instruments, props, and lighting.
Participant Organization
the people (present or not) involved in the event in terms of the roles they play, the ways they interact with each other through time, and how they use the space around them.
Shape through Time Lens
How an event’s segments are organized hierarchically
- transitions between segments are indicated by markers (“significant changes in elements of the event as viewed through each of the other lenses”)
- the shortest segment in which we’re interested is the motif = smallest meaningful collection of performance features
- broader temporal context (year, month, day, time)
Performance Features Lens
“observable, patterned characteristics of a performance that emerge from an event’s unique combination of physical and social contexts, and participants’ actions”
- anything that can be transcribed
- produced by participants
- choosing embodied actions (within acceptable variation; based on source material)
- derived from formal systems (according to genre expectations)
- and temporal patterns
- experienced (1) by participants (2) through communication channels
Performance Feature Lens>Research Activities>Feature Perception through [(5) Sensory] Communication Channels
Write a free-flowing account of your answers to these questions: what can you perceive through each of your 5 senses (hear? see? smell? touch? taste?)
Performance Feature Lens>Research Activities>Feature Perception through Communication Channels>Communication Channels (source)
Finnegan (2002)
Performance Feature Lens>Research Activities>Feature Production (4-part question)
What do participants do with voices, bodies, words, objects?
Performance Feature Lens>Research Activities>Similarities/contrasts between clusters of performance features (2 questions)
How did they express intensity, weight, flow? How did they organize time?
Important Performance Features are marked by (6) things. . .
- repeated actions
- actions that provoke strong reactions
- heavy contrasts between sets of bundled features
- where participants focus their attention
- what other people have told you is important
- use your own intuition as to what might be important
