Improvising musicians—especially towards the “freer” or more “experimental” end of the spectrum—are often seen as having the space to do just about anything. But actual improvisations are (also) processes of what enactivist philosophers Hanne De …
Why is it that in experimental improvised music (EIM) anything can happen but hardly ever does? And if what musicians play is not determined in advance, what holds performances of EIM together? We address these twin questions through a combination of …
Visionary landscape architect Lawrence Halprin’s *The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment* (1969) is an interdisciplinary model for collaborating through and with notation. In this article, I outline RSVP’s potential to …
Sound artists and musicians understand sound’s impact on health and well-being; their knowledge can make a difference in the planning and construction of healthy cities. As immersive sound experience designers at Charles Morrow Productions LLC, the …
Music that features the interface of notation and improvisation tends to dwell in liminal regions of musical labour. It thus calls much entrenched musical vocabulary into question. The word score is one such example. What seems like a synonym for …
Here I employ techniques of anarchiving to explore the dynamics of notation, improvisatory performance, and analysis in Fluxus artist Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double-Bass (1961). Coined by process philosophers Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, …
When we improvise together in music and dance, our bodies, instruments, and environments not only interact; they become mutually dependent. A bassist's shoulder shifts, bow slides, instrument rings... vibrations bounce off the walls, reach the …