Video game spaces have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and inhabit. Like buildings, cities, and gardens before them, these virtual environments express meaning and communicate ideas and affects through the spatial experiences they afford. Drawing on the emerging field of embodied cognition, this book explores the dynamic interplay between mind, body, and environment that sits at the heart of spatial communication. To capture the wide diversity of forms that spatial expression can take, the book builds a comparative analysis of twelve video games across four types of space, spanning ones designed for exploration and inhabitation, kinetic enjoyment, enacting a situated role, and enhancing perception. Together, these diverse virtual environments suggest the many ways that video games enhance and extend our embodied lives.

This book puts forward a more considered perspective on 3D, which is often seen as a distracting gimmick at odds with artful cinematic storytelling. Owen Weetch looks at how stereography brings added significance and expressivity to individual films that all showcase remarkable uses of the format. Avatar, Gravity, The Hole, The Great Gatsby and Frozen all demonstrate that stereography is a rich and sophisticated process that has the potential to bring extra meaning to a film’s narrative and themes. Through close reading of these five very different examples, Expressive Spaces in Digital 3D Cinema shows how being sensitive to stereographic manipulation can nuance and enrich the critical appreciation of stereoscopic films. It demonstrates that the expressive placement of characters and objects within 3D film worlds can construct meaning in ways that are unavailable to ‘flat’ cinema.

A new way to understand expressive interaction, focusing on the dynamic, fast, pre-reflective processes underlying interactions with music. The expressive moment is that point in time when we grasp a situation and respond quickly, even before we are aware of it. In this book, Marc Leman argues that expression drives this kind of interaction, and he proposes a general framework for understanding expressive interactions. He focuses on the dynamic, fast, and pre-reflective processes underlying our interactions with music—whether we are playing an instrument, dancing, listening, or using new interactive technologies. Music offers a well-established domain for studying these fast and interactive processes, and Leman argues that understanding the power of expressive interaction through music may help us understand cognitive processing in other domains, including language, human action coordination, human-animal interaction, and human-machine interaction. Leman regards expressive interactions with music as energizing and empowering. He argues that music is based on patterns that intervene with a reinforcing loop in the human brain, strengthening learning, motivation, and reward. He argues further that the reinforcing effect is influenced by the interaction flow, by fast processes that handle expressive qualities on the fly. Leman sets out the framework in which expressive interaction is situated, describing, among other things, a pragmatic model of communication in which the fundamental components are enactment and dynamics. He looks in more detail at the cognitive-motivational architecture, discussing sensorimotor and motivational schemes. Finally, he discusses applications for the concepts behind expressive motivation in such fields as sports, entertainment, rehabilitation, multimedia art, and music education.

THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY identifies the nine root elements common to all artistic disciplines. Whether you are a writer, visual artist, or a performer, learning the fundamental elements will help you unlock your full artistic potential and create art that is more expressive, dramatic, and engaging. Hundreds of relevant art examples, citations, and quotations from prominent art professionals, philosophers, and scientists inform the pages of THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY. Authors, painters, sculptors, dancers, and artists from nearly every creative field provide knowledge and insight into many different forms of art, including visual arts, literary arts, dramatic arts, musical arts, dance arts, and various hybrid art forms. For advanced artists and art professionals looking to bring depth and nuance to their work, THE ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE AND EXPRESSIVE ARTISTRY presents thirty-six new elements that branch from the nine root elements and offer additional avenues of exploration for a lifetime of artistic development. For the art critic, it also presents a fundamental basis on which to evaluate artistic work of any domain. Even the non-artist who possesses a general love for art will develop a deeper appreciation of art by understanding the nine root elements.

Expressive Therapies Continuum is distinctive in its application as a foundational theory in the field of art therapy. This book demonstrates how the Expressive Therapies Continuum provides a framework for the organization of assessment information, the formulation of treatment goals, and the planning of art therapy interventions.

Self-expression is a fundamental human drive. The need for self-expression can occur through many means both creative and mundane. The Expressive Instinct explains how the complexity of human experiences and the need to express them manifests more profoundly when distilled into artforms and dispels the idea that creativity is the domain of a select gifted few. The book explores the questions: What is the purpose of art in our lives? Could the desire for beauty, to be surrounded by elements of nature, be an innate need? Are art and creative expression essential for a good life? In this book, Dr. Kaimal links over 10 years of research, theories of evolutionary biology, brain sciences, as well as her own lifelong journey as an artist, scholar and educator in many personal and professional roles (textile designer, art therapist, researcher and educator). This book makes the case for why we as human beings need to stay creative and not lose our abilities to channel our inner lives in adaptive expressive ways. The arts, the book argues, are a container for the range of human experiences. Creative expression helps us practice and externalize imagination which in turn helps build resilience for dealing with uncertainty and change.

Environmental Expressive Therapies contributes to the emerging phenomenon of eco-arts therapy by highlighting the work that international expressive arts therapists have accomplished to establish a framework for incorporating nature as a partner in creative/expressive arts therapy practices. Each of the contributors explores a particular specialization and outlines the implementation of multi-professional and multi-modal "earth-based" creative/expressive interventions that practitioners can use in their daily work with patients with various clinical needs. Different forms of creative/expressive practices—such as creative writing, play therapy techniques, visual arts, expressive music, dramatic performances, and their combinations with wilderness and animal-assisted therapy—are included in order to maximize the spectrum of treatment options. Environmental Expressive Therapies represents a variety of practical approaches and tools for therapists to use to achieve multiple treatment goals and promote sustainable lifestyles for individuals, families, and communities.

From pioneering therapist Cathy A. Malchiodi, this book synthesizes the breadth of research on trauma and the brain and presents an innovative framework for treating trauma through the expressive arts. The volume describes powerful ways to tap into deeply felt bodily and sensory experiences as a foundation for safely exploring emotions, memories, and personal narratives. Rich clinical examples illustrate the use of movement, sound, play, art, and drama with children and adults. Malchiodi's approach not only enables survivors to express experiences that defy verbalization, but also helps them to transform and integrate the trauma, regain a sense of aliveness, and imagine a new future. Purchasers get access to a companion website where they can download and print reproducible tools from the book in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size, as well as full-color versions of 26 figures.

In Expressive Arts Education and Therapy the reader follows the creation of art-making in tandem with the unfolding of sense-making. A dance theatre lab is the stage for exploration where what was discovered was phenomenologically and collaboratively reflected upon, the participatory nature of the creative work pouring into the research methodology. Creative Process-based Research efficacy is contingent upon the interaction of three poles – the creator, the product and an experience of the internal/external creative process of the creator. All three perspectives comprise the dynamics required of this research methodology in order to understand what is occurring in these three distinct and essential elements of the creative process. What results is an experience of cohesion that consciously describes this interplay. The author outlines his influences that contributed to both the art-making and sense-making over the seven year research project. His work in experimental theatre in New York, as an educator with The European Graduate School in Switzerland and his studies with philosopher John de Ruiter in Canada are integrated into the world of research in the field of expressive arts. The visceral component of creating clarity is uncovered and articulated. This book inspires new ways of thinking about participatory, collaborative, arts-centered research where the skill of exposing the artist/researcher’s modus operandi for making art and making sense is named in a myriad of ways that call upon the intellect as well as the artist’s intuitive sense of what to focus on and its relevance to education, therapy and global health.

Expressive Printmaking goes back to first principles to rediscover the full potential of printmaking. Through introducing a tantalizing array of techniques, it shows the artist how to communicate stories and emotions through dynamic prints that sing off the page. It covers printing by hand and by press and techniques range from paper dry point to Mokulito and from monoprint to plaster cast impressions. It also explains how to combine techniques and gives advice on line, tone, form, colour and texture. Along with step-by-step projects and some 500 illustrations, this exciting book leads you to create unique prints that challenge you technically, inspire you visually and encourage you to try more.