"Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals subconsciously.
John Borg attests that human communication consists of 93 percent body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves; however, Albert Mehrabian, the researcher whose 1960s work is the source of these statistics, has stated that this is a misunderstanding of the findings. Others assert that "Research has suggested that between 60 and 70 percent of all meaning is derived from nonverbal behavior."
Body language may provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person. For example, it may indicate aggression, attentiveness, boredom, relaxed state, pleasure, amusement, and intoxication, among many other cues."
Definition from wikipedia.org
“When a frightening event occurs, there might not be time to look for the fearful contortions in an individual’s face, but a quick glance at the body may tell us all we need to know.”
“Human and non-human primates are especially sensitive to the gestural signals made by other primates, and use these signals as guides for their own behaviour. Fearful faces signal a threat, but do not provide information about either the source of the threat or the best way to deal with it.”
De Gelder, Beatrice. "Towards the neurobiology of emotional body language."
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7.3 (2006): 242-249. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 9 Feb. 2011.
Abstract from above article:
“People’s faces show fear in many different circumstances. However, when people are terrified, as well as showing emotion, they run for cover. When we see a bodily expression of emotion, we immediately know what specific action is associated with a particular emotion, leaving little need for interpretation of the signal, as is the case for facial expressions. Research on emotional body language is rapidly emerging as a new field in cognitive and affective neuroscience. This article reviews how whole-body signals are automatically perceived and understood, and their role in emotional communication and decision-making.”
other helpful websites:
The idea of body language became of interest to me after being introduced to Laurence Demaison's work. Since all of her work is composed of distorted and abstracted self portraits, her body plays the most important role in each photograph. As I stated before, her pictures are beautiful, sad, frightening, etc., all depending on the composition and lighting effect. If effective enough, portraying a certain emotion through body language could potentially also affect the viewer, which is what I hope to get across. I have been experimenting with long exposure self portraits including objects with history, and am continuing to look back to my Concepts project from a few years ago with the different situations, text, and mirrors.
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