According to G.W von Leibniz, music (as any other time-based art) is the pleasure of an unconscious act of counting. As the prominent German logicians, mathematicians and philosophers of the Enlightenment, I prefer a scientific approach to art and teaching because it is pointless to face a cognitive subject deeply involving ourserlves (ego, ancestral emotions, relationships, beliefs, feelings) with a non objective attitude; it is like dissecting your own parent’s body during anatomy class!
Art and entertainment
Nowadays emotions are the currency of art, especially time-based art languages, have the peculiarity to play with an audience ready and thrilled to be emotionally involved during a performance.
But this is not the true goal of art!
It is central to define what Art is and what Entertainment is.
As professionals, we need to know the secrets of the stage language to be connected with the audience but we can’t reduce the power of art to a mere entertainment. The topic is crucial and requires a long and complex dissertation, for now it is enough to point out that a scientific approach to art doesn’t mean refusing emotions, but working to get a clear picture of the difference between represented and induced emotions.
The neurological pillar
According to the ERGO SUM research, music - as any other time-based art – is a screening of the real life, a sort of virtual reality laboratory where feelings, emotions, taboos, creeds, ancestrals desires, can be analyzed, disassembled and reassembled, scanned and explored in a spotless world.
All of this is possible thanks to the parameter “TIME” whitch is also the focus of my peculiar pedagogical method, that needs a premise before being presented.
We assume the following neuro/psychological behaviours of the brain/mind as a reaction to external inputs:
·The limbic system causes a first, unconscious instinctive reaction;
·The right hemisphere, the emotions’ headquarter, instantly elaborates an emotional unconscious response, getting to a prompt (still unconscious) decision.
·The left hemisphere starts elaborating the decision, working to find enough logical supports to approve and deliberate it;
·If there are not enough logical reasons, the left brain side sends the unapproved decision back to the right one as a new emotional input;
·The emotional object grows becoming more complex;
·The left/right process keeps going until the left hemisphere is ready to deliberate the decision as a conscious event. This delivered final decision can be different or even antithetical from the first one!
The left/right “ping pong” activity, due to the different speed of the hemispheres' process, is responsible for a strong increase of emotions; in other words, an unbalanced hemisphere activity causes stress and anxiety, with dangerous impact on health. Moreover, mass media communication (news, commercials, advertisements) utilizes a strong emotional based language, targeting everyone’s unconscious side, and magnifying the individual imbalance.
This - not yet pathological - form of schizophrenia is the price the human being has to pay in order to be part of a society.
Meditation is the far east cultural approach to the problem: clearing the mind from thoughts, desires and passions, we can feel safe from the damages caused by emotions.
My research on early renaissance poliphonic music pedagogy, shows that the ancient musical system (gamut, exachord, counterpoint and mensuralism) can be considered as a powerful mind exercise, with the same goal of a meditation practice but with antithetical approach: engaging the left hemisphere with a multi cognitive layering (numbers, notes) it is possible to slow down the right hemisphere emotional activity, creating an healthy emotional/rational balance.
A combined pedagogical method
Therefore, my pedagogy combines ancient methods with cutting edge neurological research to help students finding:
·Self discipline motivation
·Personal style of art expression
·Interest for historical topics as a key to understand the present
·Cultural exchanges and cohabitations as a precious opportunity to share different visions of the worid
·Responsibility of playing an important role in an evolving social structure
·Responsibility of being an artist
·Awareness of the pedagogical method proposed by the teacher
·Individual balance
These pedagogical outcomes represent the basic human structure of a student ready to acknowledge the specific techniques of any discipline. Art is free to reveal itself only when the artist’s ego disappears, absorbed by a deep mind at work.
Layering different learning processes: The Modular approach
·Each one of us unconsciously elaborates, since prenatal condition, his/her personal learning method as a tool to deal with reality. Each individual learning process represents a fondamental ability, a starting point that needs to be encouraged, respected and improved by any teaching methods that the studend will face in the school.
·That’s why I consider the frontal classroom teaching as an additional learning layer to be combined to the personal one. Being part of a group of students, one experiences how a social education can impact the personal learning process, becoming aware of it.
Therefore, I insist on the importance of the classroom frontal lessons for lectures and multiple counting exercises (to be performed in group until each individual mind can mentally perform every part).
·The on-line teaching method requires a different approach: each single student needs to drive the session with questions and queries. Interactivity is the key to make this formula a complementary learning method instead of a bad replica of the frontal classroom session.
·Checking each student awarness is the teacher’s responsibility: through face-to face sessions it is possible to discover individual hidden talents (to be eventually shared in the classroom), or problems that needs a personal attention to be solved.
Talent
Training artists is a different category of teaching because it is very easy to confuse a talented artist with a good artist. We all share the belief that talent is a fundamental requirement for anyone who wants to dedicate him/herself to an artistic discipline; but what is talent?
A “talented student” might find the approach to certain topics or to a specific discipline quite easy, but the real talent is the perseverance, strength and patience to face what does NOT come naturally. What the mind rejects and refuses to learn is what actually allows it to become something else from what it is.
In my teaching experience I learned that each student, connected with his/her personality has a specific, peculiar set of skills, sometimes hidden deep down, sometimes more in the surface, in both cases there is always a gift ready to be discovered; when he/she becomes aware of his/her ability, then the real talent emerges with an unexpected discipline and true dedication.
Modular teaching method
My experience at the West Georgia University was featured by a tight collaboration between departments and professors. Respect and indipendence of a modular cooperation has always created a pleasent environment with favorable impact on the student’s learning activity. Almost any department was involved and intrigued by how music and performative arts could be combined with apparently far disciplines such as: finance, economics, law, philosophy. It has been absolutely interesting and constructive to organize together an unexpected series of performances. Modularity is the keyword of my art research and teaching philosophy because it retraces the mind/brain structure making any cooperation spontaneous as a natural ecosystem.
Third language
Any verbal communication act, including the teaching/learning experience, goes through emotional patterns creating unexpected - sometimes unwanted - layers of subliminal communications.
When dealing with a cognitive information exchange, it helps to have a third language (not the professor’s or the students’ mother tongue) as an external neutral meeting place where both parts need a little effort to share ideas, concepts and thoughts: this little effort becomes an opportunity to improve the cognitive system.
The importance of technology and maths’
I was lucky enough to attend the birth of technological spread, the analogic/digital recording migration, the fantastic evolution of video/sound generation software, and I feel very comfortable using any computer device for teaching. Of course any International Modular Project can only run through sharing platforms, and in my future projects there is the idea of implementing a specific platform or even an augmented/virtual reality's video game.
Mathematics has an essential role in any time-based art discipline because it represents a cognitive way to grid the time (counting). It is also evident that (in music) the physics of waves and harmonic sounds is an important field to explore… Geometry is a mathemathical image that film makers and dancers need to master.
Any harmonic resonance, beauty and simmetry has to be reconnected to maths as an objective field where emotions and science can live together.
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