Phase one: Case Studies and Overview

This group of students with ASC had previously painted portraits of their own faces over several weeks. Students then moved the expressive portraiture experience into producing a mask (Figs. 21-24), making a mask in the natural woodland using natural materials over a cardboard shape cut to their own design. The masks led some students into movement and dance; they wore and danced their masks in the woodland. Some of the students made masks on trees (Figs. 18, 19 and 20) with clay, which spontaneously led into song from the communicative experience with the tree.

The four case studies include comparative observations of work within a portrait, still life and landscape drawing sessions in an indoor classroom. The making and moving of masks in a natural environment used paint and clay with natural materials found in the woodland.

In one case study, a camera was used in the college campus and in a natural environment with puppets (Fig. 53) and the edited outcome of these films.

101 Figs. 18, 19 and 20 Clay on tree artwork by a participants with ASC

102 Figs. 21, 22, 23 and 24 Masks in Woodland by Participants with ASC. Clockwise

from top left: Ivan, Austin, Ivan, Jack

Of the four student case studies, three of the consenting participants danced their masks (Figs. 21–24) in the woodland, and this seemed to provide an environment with more opportunities for choice. This was in contrast to and challenged the imposed conditions of the college and examination environment, the mechanistic bias of which seemed to hold product outcome in a higher esteem than experience as process outcomes. The woodland environment encouraged the students to allow themselves to play. As outlined in Appendix 7, semi-structured language-based interviews from the participant students with ASC revealed little and it became apparent that there was a richness of expression and feeling held in their artwork, namely the masks they had made in woodland. I wondered if a form of Art Based Research (ABR), working with Schaverien’s (2000, p.56) concept of ‘scapegoat transference’ (Chapter Two, p.89) and Knill’s (1978) ideas about intermodal transfer (table 1 p.85), would allow experience-based data as phenomenological heurism to emerge.

103 3.5 Art-Based Research of the Art Object using Expressive Arts Therapy research tools

My study of neurology outlined in my literature review (Chapter Two 2.2, 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9) explains that the shared perceptive space between NT and ASC perception is held in the primary cortex and can be accessed by the NT person through sensate and creative play. For the NT researcher to experience this shared perception in the primary cortex, a second data-gathering phase based on Schaverien’s (2000, p.56) concept of ‘scapegoat transference’ was employed, which accessed the sensed expressive content held in the masks made by ASC participants. This data was gathered by NT co-researchers from three separate groups, which I shall call the Westcliff, Oxford and Kilkenny groups. These groups used expressive art-based research tools and are further outlined in my analysis of findings Chapter Eight (8.2 p. 236-238). I was trying to elicit the significance of the meanings expressed by people with autism through non-verbal modes. To do this, my research with the ‘ASC mask fieldwork’ data was processed and recorded through Knill’s (1978) intermodal research tools of dancing, painting, and poetic writing. This formed a phenomenological attunement and experiential heuristic link to the life in the painting held in the ASC-produced masks. Raw data emerges from the final intermodal phase of the co-researchers’ process as poetic writing. A traditional contextual discourse analysis, drawing upon reductionistic, deductive skills, would have seemed to quantify what has been felt or sensed in the EXA process. I sensed it would rely on NT perception and would also have destroyed what was intrinsic in the ASC ‘live art’ process. I asked myself, how might I code and triangulate the data held in the intermodal poems without losing its ASC sensate and experiential essence? Robson (1999, p.215) discusses ‘event coding’ as an interval of ‘frequency data’ recorded through complex recording

instruments. I sought ways to construct, find or form an ‘event coding’ that explored ways that avoid the bias of positivistic coding. As Eisner (1981, p.6) posits, ‘Artistic forms of representation have no comparable codifications. They place a premium on the

idiosyncratic use of form..

Kossak (2015) and Herman (2005) explore Expressive Arts Based Research in differing ways, but both use the expressive arts inter and multimodal model method of moving through many art forms one after another. What I have understood from both Kossak and Herman is that one can witness an event or an intention through attunement, either

104 directly by being present through the whole process or indirectly by attuning to a powerful event across time. In my research, I and NT co-researchers worked in three groups,

namely Westcliff, Oxford and Kilkenny. These groups met at different times; the

participants had not met before and knew nothing of each other or the origin of the masks or creators. The original ASC participants’ heuristic transference was held in the form of the mask that they had created. The Westcliff, Oxford and Kilkenny co-research groups’

applied expressive ABR tools in the phenomenological analysis of the ASC-made masks.

To do this, they intermodally danced, drew and poeticised the original ASC-made masks, the resultant data being held in the intermodal poetry.

The co-researchers were briefed to ‘shelve or bracket’ their own issues, or simply be aware of their own response to the experiential process and putting it to one side. This self-awareness, or knowing what were their inner responses and what were their client’s, is something that they were experienced with as therapeutic practitioners. The NT co-researchers who knew nothing of the ASC mask-maker’s neural condition were then asked to act as a channel or pathway for the emergent, decentred, expressive experience held in the mask. The co-researcher participant dancers were briefed to first attune to the mask that they would be dancing, to dance, then to draw and, finally, make a poem or free writing as a stream of non-cognitive, imaginal experience between the three intermodal art processes. Coding of the resultant intermodal poem/texts presented further problems, as discussed in the next section.

To conserve the emergent, qualitative, and experiential qualities of the original ASC artwork, the resultant intermodal poetic texts must be processed in the liminal space of a right-brain form of aesthetic textual analysis. Herman (2005, p.472) describes the experiential process of moving in liminal space through the arts:

When we fully engage a powerful image, we cross into a moment where our customary ways of thinking and being are challenged and we must make meaning differently to stay present to our experience. We must create different modes to express what is happening to us. Often our new knowledge from such an encounter is best shared through a poem, a dance, a musical piece.

105 The rooms for each of the three co-researchers’ groups were architecturally different and varied and comprised a dance studio, an office suite and a hotel conference room. These practical differences opened possibilities to explore alternative ways to attune to the ASC participants’ masks. In the Westcliff group, the participants were able to do this using a mirrored dance studio and attune to the reflected image of the ASC-made masks that they, the co-researchers, wore. Without this facility, the Oxford group attuned to the ASC-made mask worn by a paired co-researcher and, in the Kilkenny group, the co-researcher either paired with another co-researcher or sat alone with the mask’s ‘gaze’. Seen through the mask, there is reciprocity between the wearer and the mover and this is reflected as a mirror.

As outlined in Chapter Two my literature review (p. 67 - 69), Limb et al. (2008) posit that, during engaged creative activity, there is a loss in the ability to make left-brain EF

analysis projected from past knowledge schemas. (Limb et al., 2008, p.12 ) further suggest that ‘creative intuition may operate when an attenuated DLPFC – a region of the frontal lobes that is most typically associated with executive functions – no longer regulates the contents of consciousness, allowing unfiltered, unconscious, or random thoughts and sensations to emerge’. Vallortigara et al. (2008, p.2) speak of the change from left to right-brain hemisphere dominance in the absence of executive function analysis:

‘However, we discuss the possibility that manipulations that suppress activity of the left hemisphere and enhance control by the right hemisphere shift attention to the details of individual stimuli.’This lack of DLPFC left-brain filtering by engaged creative activity allows the right brain to perceive through attention to detail through local CC, experienced as unfiltered, schema free, sensation. This approximates a neurological state shared with ASC perception of ‘weak or local’ CC (Happe and Frith, 2006), what Knill et al. (2005) call a decentred state. In dancing the original ASC-made masks, the NT co-researchers’

dances shift or decentre the creative process into non-ordinary reality of right-brain aesthetic analysis. This phenomenological, decentred, experiential sensation is intermodally sustained by taking the process into a second art mode of drawing as a sensed response to their dance movement. The co-researchers’ drawings (Figs. 25, 26 and appendix 10) took on a form full of vitality of line and texture. The co-researchers then intermodally moved into poetic, free writing. This resultant right-brain poetic process provides the heuristic raw data held in the ASC-made mask. This poetic interpretation of

106 the meanings embedded in the masks accessed a heuristic experience of a presence shared with both NT and ASC perception. What emerged was a holistically sensed ASC/NT shared state of awareness. The coded/frame outcomes from this work suggest that an emergent new meaning outside of classification through ‘top-down’ and ‘outside-in’ NT, EF filtering can become a foundation for further ASC/NT interaction in education and therapy models.

Fig. 25 Co-researchers taking the process into drawing as a sensed response to their movement

107 Fig. 26 Co-researchers taking the process into drawing as a sensed response to their

movement