This article takes as its point of departure Luce Irigaray'sElemental Passions, in which a woman‐speaker tries to make her lover and the discipline of philosophy understand that she is not how they have imagined her to be; that she is not at all but that she keeps becoming through perpetual movement. The article investigates Irigaray's investment in a form of materialist difference feminism that offers conceptual links to the posthumanist work of Karen Barad's agential realism, especially her theorization of intra‐action. (...) The link between Irigaray and Barad is established via a diffractive reading that incorporates the dance/movement research practice of Contact Improvisation. Although expressed through written language,Elemental Passionscreates the impression of the woman‐speaker dancing, of encountering herself, her environment, and her lover through moved and moving contact, searching for a practice of moving‐together, feeling‐with, and feeling‐between that can be experienced in an improvised dance duet. Exploring how touch and the sharing of weight in Contact Improvisation challenges boundaries and establishes ever‐changing configurations and entanglements between dancers, the article proposes that Irigaray's woman‐speaker envisions herself as a posthuman/ist woman and that improvised dancing offers a practice of intra‐action through which she can encounter the world in her becoming. (shrink)

In exploring skilled performance in Contact Improvisation, we utilize an enactive ethnographic methodology combined with an interdisciplinary approach to examine the question of how skill develops in CI. We suggest this involves the development of subtleties of awareness of intra- and interkinaesthetic attunement, and a capacity for interkinaesthetic negative capability—an embodied interpersonal ‘not knowing yet’—including an ease with being off balance and waiting for the next shift or movement to arise, literally a ‘playing with’ balance, falling, nearly falling, (...) momentum and gravity. We draw on insights from an interdisciplinary approach, including from a developmental perspective concerning the experience of dyadic interpersonal embodied skill development in both infancy and CI. Building on Ravn and Høffding’s definition of expertise in improvisation as an “oscillatory process of assuming and relinquishing agency” we propose that a key aspect of expertise in CI involves oscillation between levels and processes of interkinaesthetic sense of agency. These interdisciplinary insights also elucidate limitations within current conceptualisations of sense of agency, including the relationship between sense of agency and sense of control. (shrink)

La técnica de danza colectiva Contact Improvisation surgió hace casi medio siglo en Nueva York como una alteración de los códigos de contacto y de las jerarquías coreográficas; desde las primeras décadas de su desarrollo -ideológico, pedagógico o estético-, se viene produciendo una compleja discusión en torno al género. En este trabajo se analizan las distintas perspectivas del debate que se articulan en lo que se puede considerar la revista fundacional, Contact Quarterly: el cuestionamiento de la masculinidad, (...) las ideas de neutralización y de minimización de lo sexual y varios enfoques feministas entre los que se puede incluir la teoría queer. Más que en la definición de cada una de las posiciones, nos detenemos en la observación crítica de las paradojas, tensiones y puntos de encuentro que se van reflejando en la práctica y van tejiendo una fecunda red discursiva. (shrink)

Dance as a complex human activity is a rich test case for exploring perception in action. In this article, we explore a 4E approach to perception/action in dance, focussing on the intersubjective and ecological aspects of kinaesthetic attunement and their capacity to expand empathic and perceptive experience. We examine the question: what are the ways in which the performance ecology co-created in different dance practices influences empathic and perceptive experience? We adopt an enactive ethnographic and phenomenological approach to explore two (...) distinct dance forms: Contact Improvisation [CI], a duet-system based practice aimed at fostering interkinaesthetic awareness and challenging habits of movement; and Body Weather [BW], an anti-hierarchical movement practice sensitive to the surrounding environment. We argue that through intersubjective kinaesthetic attunement, CI scaffolds the development of perceptive awareness of subtle shifts within ourselves and others, allowing the cultivation of a capacity for flexibly traversing between conscious initiation of action, attuned responding, and the intersection between them. Similarly, we investigate the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement in BW. We suggest that the capacity for empathy is enhanced in BW through drawing attention to, and perception of, the fullness of a place in a way that we do not typically experience. By focussing on the variations in which embodied perceptual skills are enacted in specific dance forms and the expansion of perceptive experience through kinaesthetic attunement, we stress the potential of the performing arts to cultivate and create new ways of empathic engagement with the world in which we find ourselves. (shrink)

We adopted a phenomenological approach, directly engaging with the community of practice of the form of movement under study. We discuss some methodological approaches that we considered in investigating the lived experience of a heterogeneous group of Contact Improvisation (CI) practitioners. We delineate how such a system of movement could provide a unique example for the analysis of the interpersonal dynamics between movers with a different degree of expertise, re-tracing some common paths towards the acquisition of interkinaesthetic knowledge.

The object of this investigation is the connection between dance and modern philosophy. The body has been disciplined in modern era in a very peculiar way which is conveyed into governmental processes of optimization of the bodily potentiality. Dance has not only an aesthetic value but a political one. In this contribution I analyse the government of the body through disciplined movement and the research for the intensive variations in the contemporary sperimental 'contact improvisation'.

This paper introduces freely improvised joint actions, a class of joint actions characterized by highly unspecific goals and the unavailability of shared plans. For example, walking together just for the sake of walking together with no specific destination or path in mind provides an ordinary example of FIJAs, along with examples in the arts, e.g., collective free improvisation in music, improv theater, or contact improvisation in dance. We argue that classic philosophical accounts of joint action such as (...) Bratman’s rule them out because the latter require a capacity for planning that is idle in the case of FIJAs. This argument is structurally similar to arguments for minimalist accounts of joint action, and this invites a parallel minimalist account, which we provide in terms of a specific kind of shared intentions that do not require plan states. We further argue that the resulting minimalist account is different in kind from the sort of minimalism suggested by developmental considerations and conclude in favor of a pluralistic minimalism, according to which there are several ways for an account of joint action to be minimal. (shrink)

Penser le « corps énergétique » et la danse revient à considérer cette réalité énergétique au sein du corps dansant, autant au niveau quantitatif que qualitatif. En danse, nous ne parlons pas exactement de « corps énergétique », mais principalement d’énergie déployée. Afin de comprendre le « corps énergétique » en danse, nous nous sommes intéressés à deux pratiques originales mettant en œuvre un jeu de question-réponse énergétique : le contact improvisation et le vol chorégraphique. Le corps énergétique (...) apparaît au fur et à mesure de la réflexion comme une métaphore désignant une triade nécessaire au déploiement d’un seul système, et c’est cette même triade que nous rencontrons à chaque fois que nous appréhendons la complexité du corps dansant. (shrink)

Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non-verbal communication mediates change between individuals and groups in complex scenarios, including political settings. Scenarios in which individuals move together – whether in completely extemporaneous situations or in existing forms such as Contact Improvisation, Argentinian Tango, or Classical Pas de Deux – pose a similarly complex communicative problem. Drawing on the work of Lloyd Bitzer, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory provides methodological insight by (...) which we can better understand the dynamic practice that is always already happening in situations where individuals move together. (shrink)

We report on the performative score “Sharing Perspectives” from the art/science research collaboration, Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting. Sharing Perspectives is developed as a score, inspired by choreography and the postmodern dance form Contact Improvisation, to stage exploration and improvisation, exploring uncertainty, creativity, togetherness, and the relationship between bodies and between bodies and space and artworks. The SP score acts as an experiment in how a brief intervention may affect the way art exhibitions are experienced, exploring how deeper and (...) more sensorial engagement with art may be facilitated, for the benefit of visitors, galleries and artists. Based on questionnaires and qualitative interviews with participants during the Olafur Eliasson exhibition “In Real Life” at the Tate Modern in London in November 2019, we explore how the SP score modulates a playful mode of being, enhancing the experience of a museum art exhibition as a space of transformation and reflection. We find that the SP score encourages curiosity, which allows participants to recognize their habits for art and instead experience art slowly, recognize their comfort zones and move past them. As the score enacts a sensorial and playful approach to the exploration of the exhibition, participants experience a breaking of boundaries between each other, toward the other visitors, as well as to the artworks and the space itself, prompting an experience of being part of the exhibit as a whole. We discuss how the SP score invites a slowness and curiosity that takes on characteristics of play, which can change the participants’ appreciation of an art space. (shrink)

This essay examines the question whether dance can do philosophy by considering the manner in which dance processes used in the studio can advance philosophical investigations of human embodiment. Two contemporary improvisation techniques are discussed, Gaga technique developed by Ohad Naharin and Contact Improvisation developed by Steve Paxton.

This is the first volume to mobilize encounters between the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the rich developments in cultural studies of music and sound. The book takes seriously the intellectual and political challenge that the process philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari poses for previous understandings of music as permanent objects and primarily discursive texts. By elaborating on the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari in innovative ways, the chapters of the book demonstrate how musical and sonic practices (...) and expressions can be reconsidered as instances of becoming, actors in assemblages, and actualizations of virtual tendencies. The collection pushes notions of music and sound beyond such long-term paradigms as identity thinking, the privileging of signification, and the centrality of the human subject. The chapters of the volume bring a range of new topics and methodological approaches in contact with Deleuze and Guattari. These span from movement improvisation, jazz and western art music studies, sound and performance art and reality TV talent shows to deaf musicians and indigenous music. The book also highlights such fresh ways of doing analysis and shaping the methodological tools of music and sound studies that are enabled by Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy. Their philosophy, too, gains renewed capacities and potential when responding to ethnographic, cultural, ethnomusicological, participatory, aesthetic, new materialist, feminist and queer perspectives to music and sound. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and empirical work in cognitive science and neuroscience is brought into contact with the concept of the flow experience. After a brief exposition of brain function, the explicit–implicit distinction is applied to the effortless information processing that is so characteristic of the flow state. The explicit system is associated with the higher cognitive functions of the frontal lobe and medial temporal lobe structures and has evolved to increase cognitive flexibility. In contrast, the implicit system is associated with (...) the skill-based knowledge supported primarily by the basal ganglia and has the advantage of being more efficient. From the analysis of this flexibility/efficiency trade-off emerges a thesis that identifies the flow state as a period during which a highly practiced skill that is represented in the implicit system’s knowledge base is implemented without interference from the explicit system. It is proposed that a necessary prerequisite to the experience of flow is a state of transient hypofrontality that enables the temporary suppression of the analytical and meta-conscious capacities of the explicit system. Examining sensory-motor integration skills that seem to typify flow such as athletic performance, writing, and free-jazz improvisation, the new framework clarifies how this concept relates to creativity and opens new avenues of research. (shrink)

Aesthetics is commonly considered a complicated field of inquiry, particularly for students. Nevertheless, aesthetic experiences often raise questions about the nature of music which philosophical aesthetics is intended to answer. To bring students in contact with aesthetics depends primarily on the choice of appropriate methods. Case studies exemplify aesthetic theory in a small story. They can engage students in aesthetic inquiry directly related to students' musical world. Case studies also offer further applications to music education in terms of performing, (...) improvising, or giving pre-concert lectures. Music education could use the opportunities which aesthetics offers in order to enhance making music and aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

A medical student's ability to present a case history is a critical skill that is difficult to teach. Case histories presented without theatrical engagement may fail to catch the attention of their intended recipients. More engaging presentations incorporate ‘stage presence’, eye contact, vocal inflection, interesting detail and succinct, well organised performances. They convey stories effectively without wasting time. To address the didactic challenge for instructing future doctors in how to ‘act’, the Mayo Medical School and The Mayo Clinic Center (...) for Humanities in Medicine partnered with the Guthrie Theater to pilot the programme ‘Telling the Patient's Story’. Guthrie teaching artists taught storytelling skills to medical students through improvisation, writing, movement and acting exercises. Mayo Clinic doctors participated and provided students with feedback on presentations and stories from their own experiences in patient care. The course's primary objective was to build students' confidence and expertise in storytelling. These skills were then applied to presenting cases and communicating with patients in a fresher, more engaging way. This paper outlines the instructional activities as aligned with course objectives. Progress was tracked by comparing pre-course and post-course surveys from the seven participating students. All agreed that the theatrical techniques were effective teaching methods. Moreover, this project can serve as an innovative model for how arts and humanities professionals can be incorporated for teaching and professional development initiatives at all levels of medical education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian SocietiesE. N. AndersonHealing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. Pp. xiii + 283. Hardcover.Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies, edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel, consists of an Introduction, by (...) the first editor, and eleven case studies. The latter are short ethnographic studies of particular communities or healers in East and South Asian countries. All of these are well-written, detailed accounts of particular healing contexts and behaviors. Several are by first-rate veteran ethnographers, such as Laurel Kendall (writing-as usual-on Korean shamans), Mark Nichter (India), Carol Laderman (Malaya), and Geoffrey Samuel (Tibet). Others are by younger scholars, such as Amanda Harris (the Iban of Sarawak), who are carrying on the great tradition. Other essays by Kalpana Ram (India), Marina Roseman (the Temiar of Malaya), Cynthia Hunter (Indonesia), Sydney White (the Naxi of China), Craig Janes (Tibet), and Vincanne Adams (Tibet) complete the picture. All are fine ethnographic sketches.The unifying theme is a classic anthropological one: traditional, small-scale, indigenous traditions meet international forces of change. Inevitably, the former must accommodate to the overwhelmingly greater wealth and power of the agents of the latter. In the medical arena, nations often push international biomedicine to the exclusion of other modes. In the nations under study here, things are a bit more complex; all have their own elite medical traditions, some much changed by contact with biomedicine (as in the case of China's "Traditional Chinese Medicine," with capital letters; it is a new invention, in spite of the name). So local indigenous healers have to accommodate not only to some much-altered form of biomedicine; they usually have to accommodate also to some much-altered form of their country's elite medicine. They improvise, often with striking success. The spirits of the forest are joined by the spirit of canned sardines (see Roseman's chapter), but spiritual healing practice continues.Naturally, this is confusing, and here the book begins to break down a bit. "Modernity" as a concept is taken over from the writings of Foucault, de Certeau, Homi Bhabha, and the like, which are by no means consistent or clear on its meaning. And the authors of this book are far too sophisticated to think of "modernity" as any one thing or as anything at all simple. They are, perforce, left to say that modernity-especially as written up at enormous length and vagueness in the works of the authorities cited-is too complex to address here. (Someone more irreverent might even suggest that "modernity," if indeed it cannot be tightly defined, is not a concept worthy of much attention.) This leaves the book rather undertheorized.Moreover, the authors follow the aforementioned authorities in leaving out bio-scientific considerations, even from descriptions of local modernizing discourses. One wishes for some biomedical diagnoses of cases, for example, for background data on disease incidence, infant and maternal mortality, nutrition, and other basic health concerns. [End Page 702]A reviewer usually should not complain about what is not treated in a book, but in some cases here, stories really need rounding out. Laurel Kendall speaks of Korean folkloristic interest in shamans, but does not mention the fascinating and hotly debated ideas about shamanism as the fount of Korean morality and fine art. Geoffrey Samuel puts discussion of China's brutal crushing of Tibetans and their culture "beyond the scope of this chapter" (p. 215), which deprives the reader of serious consideration of the most obtrusive force shaping Tibetan medical practice today.Such quibbles are minor. These compelling studies of local healers caught in global currents can stand on their own. [End Page 703]E. N. AndersonUniversity of California, RiversideCopyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

“Dance” has been associated with many psychophysiological and medical health effects. However, varying definitions of what constitute “dance” have led to a rather heterogenous body of evidence about such potential effects, leaving the picture piecemeal at best. It remains unclear what exact parameters may be driving positive effects. We believe that this heterogeneity of evidence is partly due to a lack of a clear definition of dance for such empirical purposes. A differentiation is needed between (a) the effects on the (...) individual when the activity of “dancing” is enjoyedas a dancerwithindifferent dance domains(e.g.,professional/”high-art”type of dance,eroticdance,religiousdance,clubdancing,Dance Movement Therapy(DMT), and what is commonly known ashobby, recreationalorsocialdance), and (b) the effects on the individual within these different domains, as a dancer of thedifferent dance styles(solo dance, partnering dance, group dance; and all the different styles within these). Another separate category of dance engagement is, not as a dancer, but as a spectator of all of the above. “Watching dance” as part of an audience has its own set of psychophysiological and neurocognitive effects on the individual, and depends on the context where dance is witnessed. With the help of dance professionals, we first outline some different dance domains and dance styles, and outline aspects that differentiate them, and that may, therefore, cause differential empirical findings when compared regardless (e.g., amount of interpersonal contact, physical exertion, context, cognitive demand, type of movements, complexity of technique and ratio of choreography/improvisation). Then, we outline commonalities between all dance styles. We identify six basic components that are part of any dance practice, as part of a continuum, and review and discuss available research for each of them concerning the possible health and wellbeing effects of each of these components, and how they may relate to the psychophysiological and health effects that are reported for “dancing”: (1) rhythm and music, (2) sociality, (3) technique and fitness, (4) connection and connectedness (self-intimation), (5) flow and mindfulness, (6) aesthetic emotions and imagination. Future research efforts might take into account the important differences between types of dance activities, as well as the six components, for a more targeted assessment of how “dancing” affects the human body. (shrink)

Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The focus, here, however, is on the ability of the time-evolving patterns of (...) inter-musician movement coordination as revealed by the mathematical tools of complex dynamical systems to provide a new understanding of what potentiates the novelty of spontaneous musical action. We demonstrate this approach through the application of cross wavelet spectral analysis, which isolates the strength and patterning of the behavioral coordination that occurs between improvising musicians across a range of nested time-scales. Revealing the sophistication of the previously unexplored dynamics of movement coordination between improvising musicians is an important step towards understanding how creative musical expressions emerge from the spontaneous coordination of multiple musical bodies. (shrink)

In Improvisation, Samuel Wells defines improvisation in the theater as "a practice through which actors seek to develop trust in themselves and one another in order that they may conduct unscripted dramas without fear." Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? Building trust, overcoming fear, conducting relationships, and making choices--all without a script. Wells establishes theatrical improvisation as a model for Christian ethics, a matter of "faithfully improvising on the Christian tradition." He views the Bible not as (...) a "script" but as a "training school" that shapes the habits and practices of the Christian community. Drawing on scriptural narratives and church history, Wells explains six practices that characterize both improvisation and Christian ethics. His model of improvisation reinforces the goal of Christian ethics--to teach Christians to "embody their faith in the practices of discipleship all the time."--Publisher description. (shrink)

This article focuses primarily on improvisation in the arts as discussed in philosophical aesthetics, supplemented with accounts of improvisational practice by arts theorists and educators. It begins with an overview of the term improvisation, first as it is used in general and then as it is used to describe particular products and practices in the individual arts. From here, questions and challenges that improvisation raises for the traditional work-of-art concept, the type-token distinction, and the appreciation and evaluation (...) of the arts will be explored. This article concludes with the suggestion that further research and discussion on improvisation in the arts is needed, particularly in the areas of non-jazz improvisation. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of improvisational artistry in live dance performance that construes the contribution of the dance performer as a kind of agency. Andy Clark’s theory of the embodied and extended mind is used in order to consider how this account is supported by research on how a thinking-while-doing person navigates the world. I claim here that while a dance performer’s improvisational artistry does include embodied and extended features that occur outside of the brain and nervous system that (...) this can be construed as “agency” rather than “thought.” Further I claim that trained and individual style accounts for how this agency acquires its artistic nature. This account thus contributes to the philosophy of improvisation in dance performance in a way that includes motor as well as cognized intentions. (shrink)

This book is an important contribution to the philosophy of music. Whereas most books in this field focus on the creation and reproduction of music, Bruce Benson's concern is the phenomenology of music making as an activity. He offers the radical thesis that it is improvisation that is primary in the moment of music making. Succinct and lucid, the book brings together a wide range of musical examples from classical music, jazz, early music and other genres. It offers a (...) rich tapestry incorporating both analytic and continental philosophy, musicology and performance-practice issues. It will be a provocative read for philosophers of art and musicologists and, because it eschews technicality, should appeal to general readers, especially those who perform. (shrink)

In this article, we inquire into Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and Michele Merritt’s descriptions and use of dance improvisation as it relates to “thinking in movement.” We agree with them scholars that improvisational practices present interesting cases for investigating how movement, thinking, and agency intertwine. However, we also find that their descriptions of improvisation overemphasize the dimension of spontaneity as an intuitive “letting happen” of movements. To recalibrate their descriptions of improvisational practices, we couple Ezequiel Di Paolo, Thomas Buhrmann, and (...) Xabier E. Barandiaran’s enactive account of the constitution of agency with case studies of two expert performers of improvisation: a dancer and a musician. Our analyses hereof show that their improvisations unfold as a sophisticated oscillation of agency between specialized forms of mental and bodily control and, indeed, a more spontaneous “letting things happen.” In all, this article’s conclusions frame thinking in movement concerning improvisational practices as contextually embedded, purposively trained, and inherently relational. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates through the analysis of some examples how philosophical research can illuminate the improvisational aspects of installation art. There is little philosophical research on improvisation in the visual arts. Similarly, there is little philosophical research on installation art – in section 2, I mention some key claims that have been put forward. Not surprisingly, then, philosophers have not yet focussed – at least to my knowledge – on improvisation in installation art. The issue, though, is timely. (...) Not only some installation artists have explored improvisation in their practice, both solo and collaboratively (see section 3) but, as I shall argue, it can be claimed that some works of installation art represent or express improvisation (section 4), that some invite the public to engage in improvisation (section 5), and that curatorial teams responsible for the displays of certain installation artworks have the opportunity to introduce improvisational elements in their practice, if they so wish (section 6). (shrink)

In this article I address some questions concerning the emerging conjunction of musical research on improvisation and work in the ‘posthumanities’, in particular the theoretical results of the ‘ontological turn’ in the humanities. Engaging with the work of the composer John Cage, and George E. Lewis’s framing of Cage’s performative indeterminacy as a ‘Eurological’ practice that excludes ‘Afrological’ jazz improvisation, I examine how critical discourse on Cage and his conception of sound is relevant to the improvisation-posthumanities conjunction. (...) After discussing some criticisms of ontological and materialist approaches to sound, I consider the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour, posed as offering an alternative to these approaches. Following an examination of some limitations to ANT based around the themes of critique and abstraction, I draw from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Georgina Born to suggest that work on improvisation and the posthumanities may be fruitful, but must be part of a pluralistic mode of inquiry that does not reject critique and abstraction, as some work in the posthumanities has done. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to bring some colour to a discussion of fraught topics in education. Though the scenes and stories (from education and elsewhere) that feature here deal with racism, the discussion aims to say something to such topics more generally. The philosophers whose work I draw on here are Stanley Cavell and Judith Butler. Both Butler and Cavell develop (or depart from) J.L. Austin's theory of the performative utterance. Butler, following Derrida, argues that in concentrating on the (...) illocutionary force of utterances (their capacity to do things), Austin fails to account for the force of words themselves. The iterability of language means that words are never at one with themselves. They carry their old contexts with them as they enter into new ones. This has important consequences for ethical issues that pertain to what Butler calls the ?performativity? of gender and race. Though we are performed by language, this performance has a dynamic quality that leads to the reshaping of identity. In contrast, for Cavell, the disappointing aspect of Austin's thought relates to the latter's neglect of the perlocutionary effect of language ? what is done ?by words?. By taking on this project, Cavell embraces the unconventional aspects of language characterised by ?passionate? expression and exchange. Butler and Cavell approach the performative utterance from different directions. In the last part of this article, the significance of this difference is discussed in relation to the provision of a moral education with regard to tackling issues surrounding racism. (shrink)

Theatrical improvisation is a joyful, creative, and playful activity of discovery and a spontaneous process. It seems to be the opposite of teaching, which requires proper planning and advance thinking and seems a very “serious business” that deals with values and knowledge. Improvisation is shaped by flexibility and by transformative and equal relations among the participants. In contrast, there is in education usually a very clear hierarchy of teacher and pupils, and the relationships are mostly managed in a (...) one-way direction. This seemingly reasonable comparison of opposites can be continued and developed. If we look beyond these superficial, stereotypical, and binary images of improvisation and teaching.. (shrink)

Speakers routinely rely on a vast store of fixed and semi-fixed institutionalized utterances. In our mother tongue, we know how to combine pre-patterned phrases, complete semi-fixed expressions, and produce deviant versions for humorous effect. There are analogies with the way traditional folk musicians embellish tunes with a largely fixed structure, and the way jazz musicians improvise, and also with oral traditions in which poets composed or improvised tales during performance by using fixed formulas and formulaic phrases (though without the metrical (...) requirements of Homeric poetry). In written literature, the use of ready-made language was long disparaged as the opposite of creativity, but Barthes describes both speech and literature in general as consisting entirely of transformations of words that have already been set in order, and describes individual style as essentially a citational process, and the transformation of earlier formulae. Formulaic language can be shown to underlie much linguistic creativity. (shrink)

The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. What musical knowledge is required for improvisation? How does a musician learn to improvise? What are the neural correlates of improvised performance? In 'The Improvising (...) Mind' these questions are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cognitive neuroscience, study of historical pedagogical treatises on improvisation, interviews with improvisers, and musical analysis of improvised performances. Findings from these treatises and interviews are discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychological theories of learning, memory, and expertise. Musical improvisation has often been compared to 'speaking a musical language.' While past research has focussed on comparisons of music and language perception, few have dealt with this comparison in the performance domain. In this book, learning to improvise is compared with language acquisition, and improvised performance is compared with spontaneous speech from both theoretical and neurobiological perspectives. (shrink)

Wenn eine Kultur etwas als Erfindung akzeptiert, dann hat dieses Etwas bereits den Status einer Tatsache erhalten, die vorhanden ist und auf ihren Nutzen oder auf ihre Funktion hin befragt werden kann. Was aber geschieht davor? Wie gewinnt das Erfundene Wirklichkeit? Wie in der Kunst, wie im Theater, wie in der Literatur und Musik, wie in der Wissenschaft? Und mit welchen Folgen? Die Beiträge in diesem Band beschäftigen sich alle mit einem Moment oder einem bestimmten Modell der Invention. Ausgehend von (...) den jeweils involvierten Medien wird der Versuch unternommen, diese Momente und Modelle zu rekonstruieren. Um etwas über die entsprechenden Inventionen in Erfahrung bringen zu können, werden diese als Ergebnisse oder Effekte von Improvisationsprozessen begriffen: Improvisationen in dem Sinne, dass von einem grundsätzlich offenen Zukunftsspielraum ausgegangen wird, gleichzeitig aber auch davon, dass es ein Umgebungs- und Verfahrenswissen gibt, das im Einzelfall beschrieben werden kann. (shrink)

Jazz improvisation requires a set of phenomenological practices, through which musicians confront their own sonic situatedness. Drawing on writings from Paget Henry, Mike Monahan, and Storm Heter, these phenomenological practices can be characterized as creolizing, and can reveal a sense in which, as Sidney Bechet says, music gives you its own understanding of itself. Specifically, improvising musicians engage their own situatedness by slowing things down, and through repetition. Bass players can listen through other players’ hands, and audiences can hear (...) more of what's happing in jazz by understanding the ways musicians practice. (shrink)

The act of drawing a line or uttering a word is often seen as integral to the process of making art. This is especially obvious in music and the visual arts, but applies to literature, performance, and other arts as well. These collected essays, written by scholars from diverse fields, take a historical view of the richness of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) in order to draw out debates, sometimes implicit and sometimes formally stated, about the production and (...) reproduction of cultural meaning in a period of great change and novelty, between the beginnings of the medieval intellectual tradition and the imprint of the Enlightenment. The authors pose the following questions: Do tradition and creativity conflict with one another, or are they complementary? What are the tensions between composition and live performance? What is the role of the audience in perceiving the object of art? Are such objects fixed or flexible? What about the status of the event? Is the event part of creation, in the sense that it disturbs the still waters of historical continuity? These and other questions build on the foundation of Roland Barthes' concept of Degree Zero, offering new insights into what it means to create"--Back cover. (shrink)

Musical improvisation is the expressive capacity of a performer fostered by access to their own “productive” or “reproductive” tonal imagery: a field of consciousness that includes experiences, images that are internal, combined, distorted, associated, or in competition between themselves. In the highly original form of life that is jazz, narrating means directing time: a time of epiphanies and introversions, of intuitions and revelations, of syncopated rhythms and aesthetic insights, which appear and disappear on the edges of interference between consciousness (...) and the unconscious. The performing urgency of gestures, voices, and sounds, although arranged in the same scene, highlights the difference in individual time. In this intense activity of opposition and resolution the experience becomes an unstable territory that rests on the capacity of the body to remember, decide, anticipate, and invent. The ego reveals itself to be an emerging representation of our nerve structures and, even if conscious organization continues to be attributed to it, its role is not at all crucial. Unity, if anything, means coordination. The conscious ego is the expression of the body. In its ultimate form its unity is a biological problem. (shrink)

This paper pursues two main aims. First, it distinguishes two kinds of improvisation: expert and inexpert. Expert improvisation is a (usually artistic) practice that the agent consciously sets as their goal and is evaluated according to (usually artistic) standards of improvisation. Inexpert improvisation, by contrast, supports and structures the agent’s action as it moves them towards their (usually everyday life) goals and is evaluated on its success leading the agent to the achievement of those goals. The (...) second aim is to describe inexpert improvisation as a robustly distributed affair, one that involves the ongoing integration of embodied practices with social and material resources within our surrounding environments. On the wide approach to improvisation fostered in this paper, inexpert improvisation is claimed to be our default way of inhabiting our world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Attentiveness Awareness of the Circumstances of Action Acknowledging the Autonomy of Others Respecting Complexity Memory Respecting Individuality Rethinking the Past The Habit of Resourcefulness Kantian Mutual Respect Genuineness and Insight Sensitivity to the Context of Discourse Excessive Attentiveness The Diversity of Intentional Action.

This article builds upon existing scholarship concerning the relationship between improvisation and composition. Sections 1 to 3 comprise an exploration into and analysis of both the traditional understanding of improvisation and composition as opposing categories, as well as the more modern, nuanced view of their interpenetrating natures. I conclude that the former view should be replaced by the latter. Sections 4 and 5 present and subsequently negate two potential failings of my argument. First, I confront the problem posed (...) by Goehr’s work-concept, whose essence is opposed to the spirit of improvisation, but argue that recording allows for the solidification of these improvisations into works. Secondly, I undermine the view that composition is creation ex nihilo whilst improvisation is the mere reworking of old material. I uncover the originality of improvisation and formulae of composition to restore their compatibility and reinforce improvisation’s status as a method of broad- and narrow-sense composition. (shrink)

Digital contact tracing, in combination with widespread testing, has been a focal point for many plans to “reopen” economies while containing the spread of Covid‐19. Most digital contact tracing projects in the United States and Europe have prioritized privacy protections in the form of local storage of data on smartphones and the deidentification of information. However, in the prioritization of privacy in this narrow form, there is not sufficient attention given to weighing ethical trade‐offs within the context of (...) a public health pandemic or to the need to evaluate safety and effectiveness of software‐based technology applied to public health. (shrink)

This paper discusses mistakes that occur in improvised musical performance. I first develop a couple of distinctions that are useful to understand the varied nature of such mistakes. Particularly, I think that it is important to distinguish mistakes that depend upon formal features of the music, and mistakes that are such in virtue of a failure of the performer’s intentions. Within this latter category, I argue that it is useful to distinguish between two different layers of performance intentions. Subsequently, I (...) discuss the idea that, in improvised performance, mistakes are not merely tolerated but are, in some sense, valuable, showing how the distinction I develop can shed some light on these issues. (shrink)

To improvise together for the pure curiosity, joy, and beauty of it constitutes a central but often neglected ability of human beings. Integrating pragmatic, practical, and technical skills with conceptual understanding, improvisation is adaptive and collaborative. It seems made to counter the challenges of living in a fleeting present, unconstrained by physical and historical boundaries, and very likely has deep evolutionary roots. I present an account of joint improvisation in the performative arts based in reviews of empirical research (...) in the cognitive sciences, phenomenology, neuroscience, and philosophy, using examples from modern dance and jazz music. The account may be used for generating cross-disciplinary hypotheses about improvisation for investigation within a multitude of fields and is meant to encourage interdisciplinary work and collaboration between practitioners and academic researchers. The major goal is to elucidate the interaction dynamics that underlies joint improvisation by considering the variety of processes that support sensorimotor, experiential, emotional, meta-cognitive, and collaborative forms of interaction and lead to the coordination and synchronization of behavior. I claim that improvisation is an intelligent cognitive skill associated with meta-awareness, open to monitoring and control. It involves both automatized and flexible behavior and can occur without conscious awareness. Improvising in principle is independent of verbal language and higher-order thought, but nevertheless profits from the presence of multiple converging processes. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to argue the case for understanding improvising as a real-time emergent process grounded in collaborative action, while noting that talking about improvisation, bluntly put, is not the same as improvising. The ways in which improvisers respond and adapt to changing circumstances in the moment and over time, it is argued, connect directly to the discipline of process philosophy and involve pattern recognition and creation skills as well as the ability to predict the (...) actions of conspecifics. The conclusion considers some benefits and challenges in approaching improvisation from a process-based and systems-theoretical perspective. (shrink)

"The Contact Between Minds: A Metaphysical Hypothesis" by Cecil Delisle Burns is a thought-provoking book that explores the fascinating concept of mind-to-mind communication. Burns, a respected philosopher, delves into the realms of metaphysics to propose a hypothesis that challenges conventional notions of communication and the boundaries of human consciousness. With meticulous reasoning and deep philosophical inquiry, Burns presents his ideas on how minds may connect and exchange information beyond the limitations of traditional communication channels. This book invites readers to (...) contemplate the mysteries of the human mind and opens up new possibilities for understanding the interconnectedness of consciousness. (shrink)

Scrap yard challenge : junkyard wars -- Freedom, origination, and irony -- Mimesis and cruelty -- Improvisation, origination, re-novation -- Conclusion : improvisation, thinking, writing.

Improvising involves participants adopting attitudes and dispositions that make them welcoming towards what happens, even when it is unforeseen. How is the discourse on improvisation and a disposition to improvise in the community connected to the concept of inquiry? What type of reasoning can be developed? This paper aims to reflect on two different perspectives. On the one hand, we consider the feasibility of improvising inquiry in the community, promoting inquiry as an activity that can be developed extemporaneously when (...) teacher and students form a community with an “improvising” habitus. On the other hand, we underscore the intrinsic improvisational dimension of inquiry that takes shape in philosophical dialogue in the community. To develop these two educational and formative perspectives, participants students and particularly teachers must first acquire a “readiness” for improvisation which is a sort of complex attitude. Some results of previous research on improvisation are presented to explain and emphasize the features of this complex disposition. Teachers who improvise suddenly open a window on events happening in the community, serving as an example for the class which is invited to do the same. Teachers thus become improviser-facilitators within the community, embracing the feature of a new jazz-pedagogy at the same time. (shrink)

En focalisant notre attention sur l'atelier comme lieu de formation des improvisateurs et improvisatrices de théâtre, cet article vise à réintroduire le Théâtre d'Improvisation dans le processus d'apprentissage qui l'accompagne. Dirigé par un·e chef·fe d'atelier chargé·e de la gestion des exercices, des consignes ainsi que des retours, l'atelier se construit comme un jeu interactionnel et discursif visant à transmettre des compétences à improviser. Ce processus suppose des modalités d'ajustements collectifs et de compréhension mutuelle entre les comédien·ne·s qui s'exercent et (...) le·la chef·fe d'atelier qui prend le rôle de conseiller·ère, d'évaluateur·rice et d'enseignant·e. En ce sens, le travail d'atelier relève d'une dynamique particulière en tant que performance avant la performance publique, impliquant d'élargir la notion d'exercice à ses débordements interactionnels. Au sein de ce cadre pédagogique, le retour, moment d'échanges en aval de l'exercice, devient un phénomène primordial. S'il recouvre différentes fonctions telles que l'évaluation, la critique ou le conseil, le retour offre aussi la possibilité de déréférencer le propos de l'exercice en question pour traiter du Théâtre d'Improvisation comme pratique. Le retour dans sa dimension épisémiotique permet dès lors de saisir le passage de l'exercice, comme phénomène éphémère et localisé à la pratique du Théâtre d'Improvisation, comme discipline stabilisée et collective. (shrink)