The Complexity of Improvisation and the Improvisation of Complexity

Konturen, 2010

1] In this essay we present the first contours and coordinates of a theory dealing with the field of musical improvisation (FMI). This theory may offer insight into the complexities of the production, interaction, and reception of improvised music. The point of departure is the idea that the FMI can be regarded as a complex system, a network culture. Understanding the FMI means gaining a clear insight into the collective behavior of its agents, behavior that is not predictable in terms of the dynamics of its component parts. The FMI theory especially wants to take into account the dynamic, interactive, and emergent qualities of performance as well as the historical, cultural, and societal contingencies of musicians, audience, and others belonging to the music world.

ephemera: theory and politics in organization, 2014

The aim of this paper is to consider the practice of collective musical improvisation as a form of anarchist organization, exemplifying both its possibilities and its dangers. As such, I argue that it has significant pedagogical value for anarchists. I will also consider how capital has attempted to utilize improvisation, a phenomenon that highlights the fallacy of approaching anarchism simply as a theory of organization. In making these arguments, a number of areas of issues of importance for the intersection of anarchism and critical management studies (CMS) will be highlighted. The practice of ‘musicking’ will be raised as a hitherto underdeveloped area of significance for both areas; the relationship between critical management studies and anarchist thought will be explored through a grounding in practice; and the vital importance of thinking through the relationship of anarchist organizational forms to contemporary forms of capitalism and the concept of communism will be raised.

Dutch Journal of …, 2008

5th Conference on Management and Control of Production Logistics (2010), 2010

Tuning in to organizational innovation-music as a metaphor to understand the improvisational field in organizations What allows today´s companies and organizations to be innovative in a complex world? How can we disclose the secrets of an innovative culture in organizations? Can musical language and a technology of improvisation play a major role as an innovative approach to meet today´s challenges in organizing complex processes? Many have tried to understand why some organizations are innovative and creative and manage to adapt to today´s complexity while others are not. As organizations face increasing uncertainty and complexity, they will need to invent solutions to problems which cannot be anticipated-or even imagined-in advance. In this climate, new knowledge and insight will be created and shared through new types of conversations. These new conversations will need to be deeply creative-as much as the kind of collaborative conversations artists have as they work together. One of the most complex kinds of artistic conversations are musical conversations; the spontaneous and yet highly skilled and present improvisations between musicians.

status: published

2018

The language we use to talk about things, as is self evident, affects what we are able to think and do. Western musical culture, as Small has eloquently argued, has a strong focus on the musical work, music as a thing rather than an activity. There are parallels with judicial process being focused on judgments, the outcomes of the process. However, bringing judicial process and musical improvisation into a dialogue resonates the extent to which terminologies may block understanding and possibilities for progress/alternative views. In this paper I argue that the concept of the musical work is inimical to an understanding of improvisation, and speculate on the extent to which this is paralleled by the notion of judgment as outcome rather than process.

2018

This paper outlines the ambitions, methodology and preliminary results of the artistic research project Music in Disorder. The project investigates 1) the potential for conceptual experimentation to enrich collective improvisation in music; and 2) how process-oriented forms of conceptualization can be used to augment the force of artistic experience to affect other modes of thought and action (especially regarding views of freedom, control and individuality that are at work in a variety socio-political situations). The concept of disorder is central to the project, and our research experiments with how techniques for disordering are artistically related to power dynamics, complexity, difference, and resistance to apparatuses of capture. For example, in collective improvisation power need not be equated with domination, because there are ways to allow for the mutual reinforcement of power. Disorder also invites for differences to act productively against each other rather than seeing...

2014

Improvisation is too simple a name for a complex class of processes. The improvisational label, in fact, covers very different processes, from impromptu, ad-libbed responses to carefully designed organizational choreographies. We discuss different forms of organizational improvisation (ad-hoc, covert, provocative and managed), and trace their roots in the discipline of organization theory, in order to promote a granular and power-sensitive understanding of improvisation in organizations.

Music is a source of pleasure or repulsion, shivers of emotion or agonies of boredom, intellectual passion or cognitive indifference. It is an expression of talent or, conversely, painful ineptitude. It stimulates aesthetic feelings and aesthetic judgements, passions, emotions, intellectual fascination, and cognitive appreciation. Music is grasped by studying the social and organisational practices of its creation, performance and communication, as well as its enjoyment. These are all musical practices, even if they differ greatly from each other and must be investigated in light of their diversity. Interweaving and merging with these practices are those of the social research which studies them (Gherardi and Strati, 2012; Nicolini, Gherardi and Yanow, 2003), and in particular those of aesthetic organisational research. For an important question, on which I shall dwell below, is whether examination of the artistic world of music (Fubini, 1995) and musical practices has influenced the theory and method of the aesthetic study of organisational life.

1. Classical Daoist writings and contemporary freely improvised music are distant both in time and space aspect. At first sight they don’t seem to have much in common . However, considering extraordinary 'liveliness' of the Daoism classics, its timeliness and openness for innovations characterizing freely improvised actions in music, one can start to notice a space for meeting. 2. The classical Daoist writings include an action strategy; it is a strategy of spontaneous action, based on an intuitive insight into Nature and enabling perception of constant movement, of continual transformation. It does not offer ready-made structures of behaviour that can be used in different sorts of activities, but a certain way of perceiving the world, a way which lets us notice its constantly changing, hence unique form and create appropriate structures of behaviour to particular situations. There is a belief referring to this strategy also in Europe – it’s Bergson’s conviction of intuitive cognition, as cognition showing the way to the essence of reality, which in our intellectual cognition is perceived with static images. Free/intuitive improvisation, which appeared in Europe in the 60’s of the 20th century as a method of artistic creation, freed from the corset of stylistic rules and principles, demands this kind of action strategy. 3. The term 'improvisation' does not have particularly positive connotations in European culture, associating not only with an unprepared action, but also or even more with a chaotic, perfunctory action, resulting in unsatisfactory, superficial effects. In our lives we often encounter such situations as those when someone surprised by the turn of events unskilfully tries to adapt to the situation, using a trick or a quick solution to patch things up. It is said then, a bit patronizingly: 'well, it didn’t go too well, but in the end he was improvising'. This saying includes an opinion that improvisation can never result in things as good as the ones resulting from well-planed and prepared actions. 4. I have encountered similar opinions among many musicians who declared unwillingness to improvise, claiming that improvisation, especially free improvisation is associated with high risk; it can work or not work. It follows that improvisation is integrally related to very likely failure in action.