Marloes - ENTANGLED MUSCLES

ENTANGLED MUSCLES

Entangled Muscles / 2025 and ongoing

Credits
Marloes ten Bhömer, designer, artistic director
James Brouner, electromyography data analysis
Wilbert Eerland, technique
Matide Stolfa, costume assistant
Noam Toran, tuning fork operator, editing
Roel van Tour, cinematographer
Nick Williamson, mechanical engineer of the tuning fork
Yin Yin Wong, production assistant

With many thanks to:
Nika Toran
Minie en Karel ten Bhömer
Nikkel Reinhoud
Floor Margarita Cornelisse

This project was made possible thanks to: Creative Industries Fund NL
https://www.stimuleringsfonds.nl/en

Entangled Muscles
This Research through Design project, titled Entangled Muscles, focuses on cinematic representations of a high-heeled women’s movements and the neuromuscular effect these movements have on film audiences. It further investigates the consequences of these muscular effects on the viewers’ own movement preferences and speculates about subsequent biases about women off-screen. Additionally, with bodily comportment informed by what people wear and the idea of embodiment as it relates to clothing as extensions of the body, the project also looks at the related muscular effect of visual representations of various clothes and footwear. The project consist of a series of experimental video works that are meant to serve as neuromuscular test inputs, while at the same time informing a custom choreography of movement and fashion objects that resists learned gendered comportment and aesthetics. The aim of the project is to foreground the complexity of our embodied relationship to female cinematic representation, and to disrupt the rigid dichotomy of externality and internality; to ‘see’ the moving body as a sensory entity that bonds the viewer to the body on screen, to the persona (character) and person (actress). The overarching motivation for initiating this project is to unpick the concept of agency in relation to doing gender, movement, design and mobility.

Context
In cinema, designed movements such as the kinematics of the high-heeled gait play a role in the construction of women’s identities and character formation and development (ten Bhömer 2018). Besides narratives and scripts, film directors employ choreography, camera movement (the direction of the gaze) and costume design as tools to steer movie audiences’ opinions about female protagonists and/or antagonists. As practitioners and theorists increasingly move towards understanding film as a sensory and tactile artefact, I in turn ‘see’ films as movement training devices. “The observation of movement on screen enhances the imitative abilities of the audience with respect to motor activity” (Bulgakowa 2008). This phenomenon can be explained through the working of mirror neurons, which are motor neurons that typically discharge both when a motor act is executed and when it is observed being performed by someone else. Not only does the observation of a movement produce a covert muscle activation in the viewer (Brass and Hays 2005), when those stimuli are repeatedly watched (and the motor simulation not interfered with, which is mostly the case in passively seated movie go-ers), they are increasingly preferred by the audience (Topolinski and Strack 2009). Subsequently motor activation is also implicated in social bias (Dijksterhuis 2005). In this sense films are mirrors with and beyond muscular agency, shaping audiences’ moves, on which movement preferences and social biases are in part constructed.

Research questions
Cinema is increasingly populated with human actions and movements enhanced through physical special effects - like the use of ‘wire works’ – which create representations of ‘super-human’ abilities. With the real life effects of ‘movement mimicking’ in mind as described above, what does perceiving female protagonists, who perform decidedly inhuman actions, do to the motor response of the audience? What are the consequences of these particular actions on the audiences’ ideas about their own bodily abilities, body image, gender and movement preferences? And in turn what are the implications of this on perceptions of a woman’s physique, action and agency off-screen? By focussing on enhanced body movements, the works proposed here seek to uncover whether an audience’s muscular reactions can detect where the human repertoire begins and ends. Does the body react in different ways when watching superhuman or seemingly impossible movements? Does the body know what is humanly possible, and what isn’t?

Video & tuning fork
For this research project I produced a series of film clips in which I performed (in custom costumes) a choreography of non-humanly possible movements and then measured the motor response of the audience. To allow me to defy the laws of motion, I commissioned mechanical engineer Nick Williamson to design and build a custom-made ‘tuning fork’, a mechanical arm fitted with a harness. A ‘tuning fork’ in this context refers to a device that is used in the film industry as a means by which actors, who are strapped into the device, can defy gravity and have the ability to fly, float and produce extended jumps and kicks.

Choreography
The choregraphies were informed by my analysis of films and animations that feature physically enhanced actions. These were then coordinated into movement categories which included:

Propulsion energy that doesn't originate from the body's muscle contractions.
Velocity that isn't visually in sync with the amount of energy produced.
Animal locomotion and mechanical movements.
Body parts move independently.

While I also aimed to produce movements and fashion objects that “resist learned gendered comportment and aesthetics”, this part of the design process proved to be rather tricky. As with most issues of gender, the pitfall is to reproduce a gender binary with the risk to further uphold a gender bias. While researching I came across a lot of gender differences in comportment, movement and their representations. I aimed to include a wide spectrum of movements without different valuations, without presenting them as oppositional, but all belonging to one person.

Each movement was produced in countering "pairs". That way the muscle activation of the viewer in response to one movement could be tested against the other. The parameters for these oppositional modes included: physically unenhanced - physically enhanced, mobile - immobile, extended body rotation - keeping extremities close to the body, known mundane movements - alternative movements.

Costume designs
The choreography, the footwear, the outfits and the camera works are specifically designed to enable the measuring of an audience’s motor activation, as described above. With the choreography categories mentioned above in mind, I created garments and shoes that aimed to magnify each movement group through the use of various materials, shapes and making techniques. Each design is made in "pairs" so that designs can be tested in relation to one another. For example: Despite having been made with the same material and making (folding) technique, one pair of shoes has very little ground contact surface, while the other pair has a lot of visible ground contact. Other oppositional modes that the costume and shoes are based on are: visually and physically enhance or diffuse the movement of the body by means of: muscle/anatomy revealing - muscle/anatomy diffusing, being structurally sound - structurally too weak.

Filming
The tuning fork was too large to test extensively in my studio, so most of the choreography was based on speculation. For the actual filming of the project a full day was allocated. On this day 8 different groups of choreography were filmed and we allowed time for improvisation in each group as well. More experimentation with the arm and materials would have been great.

We realised that filming movement in a circle proved to be a technical challenge. Stabilising the the camera through the use of a gimbal didn’t work because the combination of both up-and down and side by side movements didn’t stabilise the camera, instead produced additional camera shaking.

Electromyography tests
From the footage shot, I selected 9 film clips. The movements ranged from mundane movements (such as bipedal gait) to alternative movements (such as an in the air hoover boarding). From physically enhanced movements to not enhanced movements. From extended body rotation to movements where extremities are kept close to the body. The same movement, but shown from a different camera angle. The same movement, but in a different outfit.

This selection of video clips were shown to two female participants—one an amateur and the other a professional dancer—who were positioned lying down. Using Surface Electromyography (sEMG), we measured their muscular activation while they observed the movements. Surface Electromyography, is a method by which electrodes are adhered topically to the skin above a muscle to pick up electrical activity, which signifies that the brain has sent motor signals to that particular muscle and those muscles are activated. This activity is then displayed on an oscilloscope, revealing levels of muscle activation.

In this particular test the following 3 muscle groups were fitted with stick-on electrodes on each leg:

Tibialis Anterior, used in dorsiflexion (pointing the toes and foot upwards) and inversion of the foot (moving the sole of the foot towards the body)
Medial Gastrocnemius, used in plantar flexion of the foot (moving the sole of the foot away from the body) and flexing the leg at the knee joint. It is primarily used in “fast” movements of the leg.
Soleus, used in plantar flexion of the foot (especially in a bent knee position), it’s used in walking, running, keeping balance and maintaining a standing posture.

This small sample test revealed the following:

Electromyography is an effective method for detecting muscular activation in response to human movement on screen.
Movements that were physically impossible, still triggered muscular reactions.
For example: In one of the clips, I am seen in a pair of shoes that keep my feet side by side, the legs held in an extended, outstretched position, hovering through space. The shoes are made up of foot coverings that are intersected with a thin v shaped sheet, preventing the ankles from moving at all. However the v shaped material looks as though could be bent flat, when all bodyweight would be placed on the feet. In that motion, the ankles would move. The reaction of the muscle reveals that the person watching, activated their stabilising ankle muscles. Muscles that prevent eversion and inversion, respectively the movement of the bottom of the foot away and towards the body. Which is the movement that could not be made in these shoes. but would be required to prevent .

The level of embodied experience of the viewer has a significant influence on the body’s reaction to human movement on screen. In the career dancer we detected greater mimicking abilities in reaction to observed movements. She showed greater embodied proprioception understanding; which body parts were moving and which muscles were used in the movements observed. Upon seeing feet and legs on screen, her feet and leg muscles were activated; locating with her own body what she was observing. When seeing a right leg move on screen, her right leg muscles were activated.

Workshop
Additionally, an embodied workshop was held in which participants watch the vignettes while at the same time performing actions. These movement experiments are based on common coding, a model of cognition which proposes a connection between an organism’s (invert and overt) activation of movement, observation of movement and imagination of movement. This connection means that either one of these representations trigger the two others (Prinz 1992). Creating interference, meaning a difference between the movement watched on screen and the movement performed, establishes a connection. Additionally conversations revealed that during the workshop, participants felt confidence in being able to mimic some of the observed movements, however executing those same actions invoked a lot of bodily scrutiny.

Conclusion
This research affirms that impossible movements as seen in various medias can have a direct, embodied impact on the viewer. With movement biases and preconceptions of women at stake beyond the movie screen, it is important to increase understanding of the neurological muscular mechanisms described above and make them explicit through practice based works. But more importantly to creatively reimagine ‘cinematic tools’ such as an actresses’ movements and fashion/costume. Through experiments in this design and fashion film project, this project allowed me to re-think movement and fashion in relation to doing gender and challenge the tools and systems informing and policing these.

More broadly this project problematises the relationship between movement/mobility and the idea of bodily and physical agency. The mechanism of movement mirroring by audiences of film leads me to question the bodily integrity of those viewers. Who is directing their movements and to what extent? Who is in control over bodily movements? This is especially important because of the restricted way in which women continue to be portrayed in (mainstream) cinema, but also because our mirror neuron system has been shown to underlie our ability for empathise (Zanna Clay, Marco Iacoboni 2011).

Neuromuscular mechanisms have been studied with the use of existing movement on films and objects of design, I am furthering this research, by producing creative work purposefully developed for scientific and cultural testing. The works and findings will be disseminated with the purpose of enhancing the understanding of the far-reaching influence of designed objects and motion/choreography on screen in relation to gender, and what tools a designer can adopt to challenge existing paradigms. Could this knowledge form the basis of a new politics of designing (movement, film, objects and clothes for the body) and perceiving of design and cinema?

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