Contingent Encounters offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation ...studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a function of any encounter between subjects, objects, and environments. Bringing contingency into conversation with the utopian strain of critical improvisation studies, DiPiero shows how particular social investments cause improvisation to be associated with relative freedom, risk-taking, and unpredictability in both scholarship and public discourse. Taking seriously the claim that improvisation is the same thing as living, Contingent Encounters overturns long-standing assumptions about the aesthetic and political implications of this notoriously slippery term.
Playing the Changes Felepchuk, Erin; Finley, Ben
Critical studies in improvisation,
2021, 20210101, Letnik:
14, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Erin Felepchuk and Ben Finley examine the use of improvisation within the language of crisis response. They argue that historic cultural anxieties have generated negative connotations for ...improvisation within such conceptual metaphors as “illness as war” (where improvisation is positioned as a defensive strategy) and, more broadly, “improvisation as disorder,” and draw on improvisation studies theory and discourse to propose alternate metaphors for disease and disease mitigation.
Improvising Across Abilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (AUMI) brings together scholars, musicians, and family members of people with disabilities to collectively ...recount years of personal experiences, research, and perspectives on the societal and community impact of inclusive musical improvisation. One of the lesser-known projects of composer, improviser, and humanitarian, Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016), the AUMI was designed as a liberating and affordable alternative to the constraints of instruments created only for normative bodies, thus opening a doorway for people of all ages, genders, abilities, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds to access artistic practice with others. More than a book about AUMI, this book is an invitation to readers to use AUMI in their own communities. This book, which contains wisdom from many who have been affected by their work with the instrument and the people who use it, is a representation of how music and extemporized performance have touched the lives and minds of scholars and families alike. Not only has AUMI provided the opportunity to grow in listening to others who may speak differently (or not at all), but it has been used as an avenue for a diverse set of people to build friendships with others whom they may have never otherwise even glanced at in the street. By providing a space for every person who comes across AUMI to perform, listen, improvise, and collaborate, the continuing development of this instrument contributes to a world in which every person is heard, welcomed, and celebrated.
This thesis evolves the movement system of Bartenieff Fundamentals centralising questions of bodily-spatial explorations through improvisation. Nuanced relationships with Bartenieff's framework for ...the moving body are developed within approaches to artistic practice in dance. The thesis presents performance work, notes from practice, movement scores, images, and academic text, to demonstrate a new methodological approach to Bartenieff Fundamentals and new methods of practice developed through somatic enquiry. Three performance works - espacement, KnowingUnknowing, and ... whispers are positioned as sites of exploration of Bartenieff's Principles and Fundamentals. A (re)articulation of approaches to Bartenieff Fundamentals specifically in ways which encourage consideration of the practice beyond its established form is demonstrated. Applying methods more common to improvisation practices, notably the use of scores, to Bartenieff Fundamentals illustrates a new approach to it as an artistic practice. The research is developed in relationship with the work of other artist-scholars in the fields of somatics, dance and improvisation, including Ann Cooper Albright, Martha Eddy, Sondra Fraleigh, Erin Manning, Lisa Nelson, and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and the embodied philosophies of Shannon Sullivan. Acknowledging other bodily-spatial perspectives to somatic practice and performance this thesis attends specifically to Bartenieff Fundamentals, drawing particularly on the interpretation of Bartenieff's work through the writing of Peggy Hackney. Bartenieff's philosophies for moving which are inherent in the origins of the practice are renewed through an embodied feminist-transactional approach.
Addressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms—from jazz and cinema to dance and literature—this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the ...social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and political practice, improvisation aids in the creation, contestation, and codification of social realities and identities. Among other topics, the contributors discuss the social aesthetics of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Feminist Improvising Group, and contemporary Malian music, as well as the virtual sociality of interactive computer music, the significance of "uncreative" improvisation, responses to French New Wave cinema, and the work of figures ranging from bell hooks and Billy Strayhorn to Kenneth Goldsmith.
Making Dementia Matter Through Sound Gysels, Marjolein; Tonelli, Chris; Johannsen, Thomas
Voices : a world forum for music therapy,
03/2024, Letnik:
24, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper investigates the working practices of the Genetic Choir and the “Stem&Luister” project, in which the ensemble uses voice, sound and improvisation to explore and develop ways of connecting ...with people with dementia, thereby seeking to improve the experience of care. Their musical sessions are multilayered. First, through listening they develop a sense of the people and the environment. Then through introducing their vocal practices, they breach the prevailing sonic regime. Second, through immersing the residents in sound-making and singing, they draw on the material and sensorial qualities of sound. This gives access to those who were difficult to reach and offers both an alternative means of communication and enables the recognition of selves. A third layer concerns the strategic use of improvisation, of which the deployment of “ensemble” and “instant composition” are analysed. Recognising the compositional efforts in improvisation shows their work to be a form of design. It facilitates attention to personhood, relations, and diversity. This specific practice appears as an untapped resource for the health and wellbeing of people with cognitive and speech impairments. Theoretically, the findings have implications for the notion of care and provide support from practice to existing neurological evidence of the significance of music as a fundamental faculty for survival and wellbeing.
The author writes about how creativity can be applied inside and outside the workplace, to benefit individuals, and organizations. This means application of both wonder and rigor; in addition to what ...she terms as the 3 I's: Inquiry, Improvisation, and Intuition. In her words, within inquiry she points out that “Inquiry is the root of wisdom and the precursor of empathy.” Within improvisation, “Examples of great improvisation show up in jazz, rap, comedy, sales pitches, and scientific experimentation.” Within, Intuition, “Harriet Tubman, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs are examples of famous innovators and leaders who relied on and valued their intuition, coupling it with their rational intellect to make decisions.” For the book from which this article is adapted, she “interviewed 56 people with diverse backgrounds—farming, law, plumbing, architecture, perfumery, medicine, education, and technology, to name a few—between June 2018 and August 2019. I wanted to understand how creativity manifests in their work.” She cites such examples/research from the educational nonprofit Leadership+Design (L+D), Nissan Design International, Columbia Business School professor William Duggan, Comcast Corporation, and others. The article concludes with a call to action: “Ultimately, just start. Don't make excuses; follow the bread crumbs and see where they lead you.”
ABSTRACT - Arthur Lessac: an essay on Body energies in actor's training - This article is a reflection on the four body energy states developed by Arthur Lessac: Buoyancy, Radiancy, Potency e ...Inter-Involvement and their use in the training of actors. Through a descriptive analysis of three explorations carried out according to Lessac's approach, this article indicates ways to use these energies to animate the game of improvisation, to the characterization of characters and to the vocal action. The deer on sudden guard at the first scent of intruders - the great "lighter-than-air" tap dancing of immortal Bill Robinson - the night-watch always loose in order to be always on guard - the track-runner just before the Go signal - the symphony musicians on sudden "nerve-tingly" anticipation of their maestro's first downbeat - all of these images obtain to radiancy energy". Where the former manipulates the feeling process proficiently but with only one-quarter yield, the artist will orchestrate the different elements of the harmonic overtone sensory system and exploit the psycho-physical instrument to its fullest potential.
The independent work of the musician on a huge creative heritage in the field of jazz music, reflected in audio and video recordings, is an important component of the complex process of teaching jazz ...improvisation. This article discusses some aspects of the formation of improvisation skills associated with the study of records of jazz compositions performed by outstanding masters.
Organizational improvisation refers to how members of organizations respond intentionally and creatively to situations with abysmal planning. This is an important skill to have because organizations ...are constantly faced with novel situations to which they often have very little time to respond. The thesis reviews the literature on organizational improvisation and organizes the literature in three perspectives. In turn this allows the study to identify that the hitherto research on improvisation has overlooked lived experience, emotions and values, as well as to note that accounts of improvisation are conceptualised, to a large degree, through stable, separable entities rather than through ongoing enmeshed processes. Seeking to pay particular attention to addressing the aforementioned limitations of the literature, this study attempts to answer the question of how improvisation is enacted and experienced. To do so the study synthesizes insights from phenomenology, practice theory and strands of ecological psychology and applies these insights to the interpretation of data collected using ethnographic techniques from an air traffic control unit. This study contributes to the literature by introducing and synthesizing new conceptual distinctions that better enable research to capture the ongoing, value-laden and lived qualities of experiencing and enacting improvisation.
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