BAPP Task 6a: Informal trial of my Inquiry Tool, developing an interview

The task 6a of the Module 2 of the BA (Hons) in Professional Practice at the Middlesex University consists of after consulting the reader 6, carry out an informal trial of the tool you might use for your inquiry, choosing a tool or method that will inform what you might be doing for your inquiry and explain this in your proposal. These processes should be engaged within your SIG and not with real participants until I will get the ethical approval. The tools include an interview, a survey, a focus group, a pilot observation or looking at documents.

After looking and analysing the different pros and cons of these different methods, I decided to do an informal trial of an interview, due to it is the tool that I will be using the most for my professional inquiry, therefore now it is the perfect opportunity to start developing it. Currently my working title of my project is How the new technologies are developing the Mental Imaginery, aesthetics and the choreographic process in Professional Dance in the 21st Century? Within this title and context, I will be developing several interviews, after I will have received the ethical permission from the University. There will be 2 different types of interviews, the first ones focused on the artistic side (Featuring an artistic Director, a choreographer and a dancer) and the second ones focused on the technological side (Featuring a video designer, a researcher and a technician).

All the interviews that I will realise for this professional practice, they will have the same basic structure:

- Introduction (Introducing myself to the interviewee explaining him why I wanted to interview him/her for my professional inquiry, as well as why his/her knowledge is essential in order to complete my project)

- Questions & Answers (This is the body of the interview, and of course the most important part of it, where I will gain the knowledge from this specific person that I was looking for, this part is semi- structured, based on a minimum of 5 relevant questions for my professional inquiry, see examples below, however because an interview is a live interaction with another person, you can´t plan everything, therefore you always need to give the freedom to your interviewee to use as much as time as wants for his answers as well as the length of them)

- Acknowledgment (This a part that is commonly forgotten by many interviewers, however it is an essential one in order to keep the contact with your interviewee, thanking him/her for his/her time as well as explaining how you will use this information and you will transmit the result both publicly and privately to him/her)

As you can see above the part of the Questions & Answers, will vary depending of my interviewee (From the artistic or technological side). Therefore, I have prepared two different examples of a set of 5 questions. If my interviewee is from the artistic side (Artistic Director, a choreographer or a dancer):

1- What technological developments inspires your mental imaginary as a dancer?

2- Why have you incorporated the video design in your choreography?

3- How the technological developments have influenced your choreographic process?

4- When you decided to collaborate with this institution in order to develop new choreographies using the new technological developments?

5- Why you decided to join that company that develops brand new ballets through scientific and technological research?

If my interviewee is from the technological side (Video designer, a researcher or a technician):

1- What do you intend to represent when you are creating a video design for a piece of dance?

2- Why is it important the research in dance to develop this art further in the 21^st century?

3- How a video design can complement a choreography, make it an essential part of the piece?

4- When and why did you started to be interested to research the cognitive science applied in dance?

5- Why you decided to join that institution that develops brand the connection between art and technology?

These are only generic examples of questions that are related with my topic, however when I will prepare every interview separately, my questions will be much more specific depending of each person and the answers that I ´m looking for.

Let me know what do you think about this inquiry tool as well as my structure of it and don´t forget to keep following this blog and my Google + Community for the updates about my research!

Gonzalo