This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, enhanced (...) mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

Health care spending comprises about 16% of the total United States gross domestic product and continues to rise. This article examines patterns of health care spending and the factors underlying their proportional growth. We examine the “usual suspects” most frequently cited as drivers of health care costs and explain why these may not be as important as they seem. We suggest that the drive for technological advancement, coupled with the entrepreneurial nature of the health care industry, has produced inherently inequitable (...) and unsustainable health care expenditure and growth patterns. Successful health reform will need to address these factors and their consequences. (shrink)

Virtually all Americans are part of the health care system. They may be patients, health professionals, employers providing benefits, insurers, medical manufacturers, regulators, innovators, or investors. Each has a stake in this burgeoning sector of the United States economy, and each may be critically affected, in multiple and diverse ways, by changes to the system under health reform. As health care expenditures continue to rise, it is increasingly important to understand where these expenditures go and the factors that drive these (...) cost increases. This article examines health care expenditure patterns, considering both the “usual suspects” that frequently are cited as spending drivers, as well as certain significant dynamics that may be the main contributors to rising costs. We conclude that in order to successfully contain costs, health reform will need to address these underlying factors. (shrink)