Musical Ecologies of Persons and Things; dissertation in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology
Abstract:
This dissertation considers the development of musical form in improvised music performances from a perspective based in embodied and ecological theories of cognition. Here, improvised music refers to a wide range of musical practices which utilize “free” improvisation as a foundational process for structuring musical form. As a temporally extended, embodied, and often cooperative creative practice, improvised music composition and performance may be enriched by a perspective informed by theories of cognition which help explain embodied, dynamic, and distributed cognitive tasks. Drawing primarily on the enactive cognition of Humberto Maturana and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I develop a perspective on improvised musical forms as contingent on performer’s interacting with musical possibilities for action afforded by their environment. Such a perspective suggests that improvised music performances are structured ecologically, as a musical ecology. This has implications for pre-performance organizations of musical form, such as in composition, wherein the musical ecology may be manipulated through a variety of interdisciplinary means, a practice I call systems composition. Furthermore, improvising performers may adopt the ecological perspective in order to better understand adapting to a musical ecology as improvisational skill, emphasizing openness and attention to musical affordances over physical or technical virtuosity alone. Finally, I explore ways in which I have applied the enactive and ecological perspectives in my own practice as a composer and improviser, discussing a number of pieces from my dissertation concert, Musical Ecologies of Persons and Things.