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"Originally published in 2005, the revised edition explores musical free improvisation through the lens of several contemporary sciences"--
List of contents
AcknowledgmentsPreface Preface (first edition)1. The Sound and Science of SurpriseThe Age of Complexity
Sync or Swarm
2. The Study of ImprovisationThe Field of Improvisation Studies
Referent-Based Improvisation
Referent-Free Improvisation
Freedom Music
Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't
Improvisation Is, Improvisation Isn't
A Marvel of Paradox
3. Strange LoopsThe Embodied Mind
Enaction and Prediction
Taking the Note for a Walk
It's a Bit Like Juggling
Lived Body and Living Body
On Repeat
Fractal Correlation
Circular Causality
Hall of Mirrors
4. Rivers of ConsciousnessThe Art of the Trio
Complexity and Emergence
Musical Elephants
The Sound of One Note Clapping
Time and the Qualia of Experience
The Phase Space of Improvisation
Attractors
Hues of Melanin
Fractal Correlation
Flights and Perchings
5. Orderly DisorderChaotics
Complex Adaptive Systems
Dissipative Structuring
Ancient to Future
Sketches of Another Future
6. Sync and SwarmThe Science of Sync
Entrainment
A Coordination Problem
Insect Music
The Art of Improvisation in the Age of Computational Participation
The Puzzle of Coaction
A Web Without a Spider
Reassembling the Social
7. Harnessing ComplexityThe Map is Not the Territory
Situated Musicianship
Group Creativity
Yes, and.
Comprovisation
The Shores of Multiplicity
Complementarity and Metastability
ReferencesIndex
About the author
David Borgo is a saxophonist/composer/improviser, ethnomusicologist, and Professor and Chair of Music at UC San Diego, USA. Sync or Swarm won the Alan P. Merriam Prize in 2006, the Society for Ethnomusicology’s most distinguished award. He has performed around the world, released 13 albums, and published extensively in scholarly and other outlets.
Summary
The revised edition of Sync or Swarm promotes an ecological view of musicking, moving us from a subject-centered to a system-centered view of improvisation. It explores cycles of organismic self-regulation, cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment, and cycles of intersubjective interaction mediated via socio-technological networks. Chapters funnel outward, from the solo improviser (Evan Parker), to nonlinear group dynamics (Sam Rivers trio), to networks that comprise improvisational communities, to pedagogical dynamics that affect how individuals learn, completing the hermeneutic circle. Winner of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Alan Merriam prize in its first edition, the revised edition features new sections that highlight electro-acoustic and transcultural improvisation, and concomitant issues of human-machine interaction and postcolonial studies.
Foreword
Originally published in 2005, the revised edition explores musical free improvisation through the lens of several contemporary sciences.
Additional text
David Borgo's original book is already a landmark in improvisation studies. His approach, which seeks to explore improvisation through the lens of several contemporary sciences such as complexity theory, embodied/enactive cognition and actor-network theory, is absolutely original and opens up a field of interdisciplinary studies that has been expanding more and more in recent decades. This new edition brings important updates to the original work, including reflections on electro-acoustic improvisation, cross-cultural improvisation, man-machine interaction, and postcolonial cultural studies. With regard to this last topic, I am sure that my colleagues (improvisors and researchers) in Latin America will be especially pleased.
