Abstract

This study concerns the application of the paradigm of self-organization science as an informing principle in the realm of artistic creation. In his book Entropy and Art, Rudolf Arnheim presents two cosmological theories and their applicability to art theory. The self-organization paradigm of Ilya Prigogine provides a reconciliation of the two theories, establishing a model of an open, nonlinear system, exchanging matter and energy and fluctuating between periods of order and chaos. Because of the immediacy and accessibility of the creative act in jazz improvisation, an assessment of Prigogine's paradigm of self-organization can be used to address two aspects of the art experience: the creative act of producing a work of art and the expressive form of the work from which meaning is perceived. ;Three concepts concerning the relationship of time and space in painting were developed and applied to the analysis of selected examples of jazz improvisation. Narrative time was shown to arise from certain paintings employing illusionistic perspective and was divided into two distinct modes of expression: linear and nonlinear narrative. Improvised solos by J. J. Johnson and Charlie Parker were analyzed according to principles of temporal ordering presented by the two modes of narrative time. The temporal and spatial relationships presented in works of Analytical Cubism provided the foundation for the concept of Simultaneity which was applied to the hard-bop solos of John Coltrane . The final concept, Timelessness, was developed from the non-objective paintings of Jackson Pollock. This concept was then used to analyze selected improvised solos from Coltrane's late recordings . ;The significance of Time in the Prigoginian paradigm, which is in sharp contrast to the role of time in the Newtonian paradigm, provides a means for assessing the improvised solo in terms of linear and nonlinear concepts of narrative. Furthermore, the relationship of determinacy and indeterminacy so crucial to development of order in self-organization science establishes a model that portrays the creative force of the jazz solo and may even extend to the act of artistic creation in general. This key element of the movement from disorder to order is also apparent in the dissolution of temporal references in the works of Pollock and Coltrane, effectively creating an art where meaning is focused on process rather than product