Chosen Stimulus

 

 Chosen Stimulus

In this blog I’m going to share the journey we went on as a group to find our chosen Stimulus, along with all our ideas and background findings.

The first stage of finding our stimulus was each person in our group had a week to brainstorm ideas of what they thought would be interesting to chose as a stimulus, after the week we all came together and had a discussion on all the ideas and came up with one set idea that we would base our choreography on. Following the discussion, we then had three strong themes that we decided to link together to create the main idea.

The three ideas we started with was with the photo shown below by the artist Lena Macka that Daisy had found, where we interpreted the idea of connection from the string they are holding above their heads and we liked the fact it linked within a group. Ref ( Isabelle, 2019)

 

 

 

 

This idea then led to our second which was social experiments specifically looking at conformity experiments one of the ones that was researched into is Asch Conformity experiments 1950s and also, looking at the Bystander effect.

Asch Conformity experiments:

-test subjects asked to choose a line that matched the length of 1 of 3 lines                                                                                   

-individually they answered correctly                                                                                                                                                      

 -when asked in a room (with people who were in on the experiment and told to answer incorrectly) 75% of them went along with what everyone else said                                                                                                                                                         

 -this highlights the power of conformity                                                                                                                                                                             

-students said whilst they knew the rest of the group was wrong they didn’t want to risk facing ridicule or looking dumb

Bystander Effect- when something is happening but no one’s responding, people tend to take their social cues from the group and assume that a response is not required.

 

Lastly, the third was the photo of the London underground tube routes shown below this idea linked to the first two ideas through the theme of connection from the routes of the different lines and social setting/ behavior. This is shown by the picture below.

 

 

Final Idea

Conformity within society

We combined the ideas together to form the ultimate message to portray which is encouraging individuality.

The definition of conformity is an individual’s tendency to follow unspoken rules or behaviors in a social setting. Below are some of the points why we chose to have our final idea around conformity.

·         Group dance> multiple people > group/social settings

·         Abstract ideas – lots of potential ideas for choreography

·         Science related – lots of pre existing research and articles- easier to formulate and brainstorm ideas

Conformity to ideas and trends is so prominent in todays society, it would be interesting that our group choreography to focus, analyze and present this in a creative way that would get the audience thinking. Conformity can be influenced by a want to fit in and peer pressure.

Factors that affect conformity:

-Tends to increase when the task becomes difficult. In a situation where someone asks you a question and you don’t know the answer, if someone else has an answer (regardless of whether they’re correct or not) you’re more inclined to believe them just because they have an answer and you don’t. 

 -when people are able to respond privately, conformity decreases

Ways it presented in our generation:

-wearing certain clothes or following certain styles to fit in                                                                      

 -drinking at a party because you don’t want to feel left out                                                                         

-social media trends

Questions we have linked to the idea of conformity that we wat to be able to answer within our choreography are:

·         Why are we influenced by those around us?

·         Are we fearful of individuality?

 

 

References

Saul Mcleod . (2018). Solomon Asch - Conformity Experiment. Available: https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html. Last accessed 13th October 2020.

Isabella Gillespie. (2019). Recognising the Tribe & Influencer Culture. Available: https://hemptemple.org/blogs/news/recognising-the-tribe-influencer-culture. Last accessed 13th October 2020.