This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Contemporary Music Review on 11 Nov 2019, available online:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/
10.1080/07494467.2019.1684059

Beyond Skill Acquisition: Improvisation, Interdisciplinarity, and

Enactive Music Cognition

Lauren Hayes

The paradigm of enactive music cognition offers an anti-representational framework for

understanding musical activity as both corporeal and culturally-situated. In this paper, I
discuss live electronic musical improvisation as an exemplary model for the enactive framework
in its ability to demonstrate the importance of participatory, relational, emergent, and
embodied musical activities and processes. Following Gallagher, I argue that the Dreyfus
model of skill acquisition, where performers develop from novices to experts who may
eventually achieve a state of ‘mindless flow’, does not adequately account for what can happen
during various forms of musical play. A critical study of improvisation reveals that a more
generous conception of meaningful musical activity is needed, particularly in terms of who is
able to take part as an improviser. I contextualise these ideas from the position of being an
improviser of live electronic music performed on self-built, hybrid analogue/digital instruments,
my background in creating expressive musical systems for people with profound and complex
learning difficulties, and through my recent explorations of both pedagogical and research
approaches to interdisciplinary improvisation.

Keywords: Improvisation; performance; pedagogy; interdisciplinarity; enactivism; embodied

cognition

Introduction
Musical improvisation has recently drawn attention as a fertile practice to explore from

various perspectives within cognitive science research. For example, David Sudnow’s

(1978) autoethnographic account of learning to play and improvise as a jazz pianist was

rewritten to reflect the broader attention that it was receiving from these fields. His

monograph offers in-depth description by way of both the phenomenological and

physical aspects of embodiment as theorised by philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty

(Sudnow 2001). Sudnow provides a rich account of how ‘knowledge in the hands’

(Merleau-Ponty 1962, 144) is acquired over time. Within empirical neuroscience

research, Charles Limb and Allen Braun have studied jazz pianists, using functional

neuroimaging methods. They claim that,

[t]he process of improvisation is involved in many aspects of human behavior

beyond those of a musical nature, including adaptation to changing
environments, problem solving and perhaps most importantly, the use of natural
language, all of which are unscripted behaviors (Limb & Braun 2008, 1).

Other empirical studies related to musical improvisation have attempted analyses of

recorded musical performance data (Goldman 2013); assessing the judgement of

moments of joint action between pairs of improvisers (Eerola, Jakubowski, Moran,

Keller, & Clayton 2018); and using complex dynamical systems to investigate how

improvisers are able to coordinate their movements to produce new musical material

(Walton, Richardson, Langland-Hassan, & Chemero 2015). Yet Vijay Iyer has raised

the important issue of interdisciplinary ‘clashes’ of ideologies that have arisen through

what is nevertheless a ‘well-intentioned consideration of the arts’ (Iyer 2004, 159) by

scientists. In particular, he questions why much of this research—aforementioned

examples aside—tends to focus on:

the well-trodden examples from pre-1900 European classical tonal music, and
eschew nearly every other form of music, including all non-Western music, any
contemporary or popular work, or any works that might be categorized as
‘experimental’. (Iyer 2004, 159).

In what follows, I discuss live electronic musical improvisation as an exemplary

model for exploring the enactive framework (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991) in its

ability to offer a site for participatory, relational, evolving, and embodied musical

activities or processes to unfold. As George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut note:

 musical improvisation continues to play an important role as a model for how
various fields of scholarship pursue the identification and theorisation of
improvisative structure and function in human endeavour more generally (Lewis
& Piekut 2016, 13).

Specifically, I consider the domain of live electronic music as a candidate for

developing highly experimental, technologically-mediated situations in which numerous

aspects of human and musical behaviours can be studied. I contextualise these ideas

through the lens of my own artistic practice as an improviser of live electronic music

using self-built instruments, and my experience in creating expressive musical systems

for people with profound and complex learning difficulties and disabilities. I offer two

case studies where this thesis is evaluated. The first is an analysis of an undergraduate

course in interdisciplinary improvisation that I established at Arizona State University

in 2016. Students from fields as diverse as film-making, computer science, and music

learn to collaborate across disciplines using improvisational techniques, combining

practices from the visual, sonic, and new media arts. The second case study discusses

the salient themes that emerged from a four day workshop that took place in 2018,

where a select group of early-career researchers, working in various artistic realms, use

improvisation to explore the boundaries of their practices, and forge new, or possibly

‘non-disciplinary’ (Andean 2013, 7) forms, and modes of co-creation.

Enactive Music Cognition and Theories of Improvisation

There have been various attempts to theorise musical improvisation ([Benson 2003] and

see [Lewis 2013; Nettl 2013]). When I survey a class of students on which things they

count as improvisation, their responses usually begin with the performing arts, moving

on to sports, then everyday activities such as conversation, and finally to ‘most things in

life’. In order to theorise improvisation we must move beyond attempts to identify what

does or does not count as improvised. Rather, we can consider how improvisation
manifests through various lenses associated with a specific field or disciplinary area(s).

I approach this from the enactivist perspective, where the type of knowing that is

required for improvisation—an activity that is generally understood to involve some

sort of spontaneity—does not require the accumulation of internal programs for action.

Instead, as will be explicated below, it is firmly grounded within the historically rich

sensorimotor interactions of a person in the world, and the diachronic reciprocity that

occurs between bodies as part of the process of social cognition (Gallagher 2017).

Jeff Pressing’s work is notable in presenting a foundational model based around

the notions of instrumental skill and flow (Pressing 1988). In this model, knowledge is

acquired over time, through practice, despite improvisation often being understood to be

a spontaneous activity. For Pressing, this type of embodied knowledge can be both

musical and cultural. Drawing on ideas from biological and cultural evolution, Rodger

Dean and Freya Bailes (2016) develop Pressing’s theory in relation to how creativity in

general might be understood in cognitive terms:

Pressing’s model, together with an enhanced emphasis on process as a separable

element, and on interaction as an additional dimension, may be thought of as
Interactive Object/Feature/Process (IOFP) model. This appropriately brings to
mind many of the core concepts of the cognitive processes in creativity in
general. (42)

In the case of musical improvisation, their IOFP model would comprise three stages:

firstly, musical material is generated by a performer, although arguably this could be

initiated by a machine; then, this material is explored in order to determine its most

salient or useful features; finally, a refinement or selection stage takes place. Their

research demonstrates just one of many recent ‘radically interdisciplinary’ approaches

to theorising improvisation, which Lewis has claimed are now crucial, given that the
breadth of literature now surrounding the field ‘may be a bit more than music scholars

alone can handle’ (Lewis 2013, 1).

The nascent field of enactive music cognition, which offers an anti-

representational framework for understanding musical activity as both corporeal and

culturally-situated action, provides another such perspective. While the nuances of the

various implications for understanding musicking in its various forms—and for

musicking to advance the field of cognitive science—continue to be fleshed out (see, for

example, [Matyja & Schiavio 2013]), the fundamental principles of this approach draw

on the four distinct, yet related understandings of cognition. According to this view,

cognition is non-computational and non-representational, but is dependent on the

body—beyond just the brain—for forming, and constraining, cognitive processes: it is

embodied. Being embedded, cognition is deeply dependent on both the physical and

sociocultural environments in which we live. Thirdly, cognition is extended into the

environment, which not only co-determines cognition, but actually constitutes it when

cognitive load is distributed onto other beings and technologies. Finally, enactive

cognition arises from these three previous tenets as cognition is formed through co-

adaptive couplings between beings and their environments. While these principles

overlap and scaffold one another, they are often referred to collectively as 4E cognition

(see, for example, [Schiavio & van der Schyff 2018], for further discussion of this).

Being so closely reliant on the other three elements, and concerned with how cognition

is formed as a function of the histories of organisms, the enactive framework can be

particularly useful within the study of musical performance.

While research in this field is largely theoretical, the potential applications of

these ideas in various contexts can be further educed. For example, in the field of music
pedagogy, Dylan van der Schyff and his co-authors call for an enactive approach to

music education in which teachers and students learn to:

loosen sedimented or taken-for-granted attitudes, and thus imagine and explore

possibilities for new and more ethical ways of being and knowing as the
autonomous, embodied, social and creative creatures they are (van der Schyff,
Schiavio & Elliott 2016, 100).

My own work has involved large-scale, pedagogical projects that explore inclusive and

embodied approaches to music education with young people through the use of new

technologies in schools (Hayes 2017). In this work, improvisation, exploratory play,

and do-it-yourself instrument building are key strategies for engendering creative

musical activity. In another field, that of music therapy, for example, improvisation has

been a key technique due to ‘its capacity to encourage both coherent interaction and

personalized novelty of expression’ as well as the ‘communication and regulation of

emotions’ (Dean & Bailes 2016, 50). Dean and Bailes note the difficulty that music

which is stylistically free presents in its ability to be analysed by therapists, who must

determine a psychological understanding of meaning and progression over time in such

improvisations. In my own collaborations with people with profound and complex

learning difficulties, I have worked outside the domain of therapy, focusing more on

facilitating person-centred creativity through new technologies, which has afforded me

the freedom of musical world-building based on the specific physiological requirements

and sociocultural environment of a particular person (Hayes 2015).

Beyond the Tropes of Improvisation Discourse

In their work developing the field of critical improvisation studies, Lewis and Piekut

strive to highlight some of the many tropes that surround discussions of improvisation.

Whether it is surprising or not that improvisation was a commonly practiced skill in pre-

nineteenth century Europe, they suggest that it is neither helpful to mourn this decline
of improvisation nor to, on the other hand, ‘(over)valorize’ (Lewis & Piekut 2016, 4)

the practice. Indeed, while ‘instant composition’ is often used to describe a purported,

special type of spontaneity that improvisation affords, Misha Mengelberg, co-founder of

the Instant Composers Pool, had a much less grand connotation in mind; that of ‘instant

coffee’ (Whitehead 2019). Lewis and Piekut also highlight that, historically, an

emphasis has been placed on virtuosity and the mastery of instrumental skill as a crucial

aspect of improvisation research. It is this historical framing of improvisation which

focuses on a certain type of technical virtuosity, along with the persistence of the

various tropes that Lewis and Piekut point out, I will suggest, that leads to a narrow

conception of the practice, and ultimately excludes numerous valuable contributions

from any discussion of its implications or discourses. Raymond MacDonald and

Graeme Wilson have voiced similar concerns, suggesting that while the study of expert

improvisers might produce more observable results in, for example, neuroimaging, this

is essentially missing a much larger opportunity to engage with ‘social psychological

processes within a musical context’ (MacDonald & Wilson 2014, 105), which is in no

way a reductionist account. This also aligns with Iyer’s concerns about focusing on one

particular social group or geographic location: ‘After all, how can one make assertions

about cognitive universals of music without studying the music of more than one

culture?’ (Iyer 2004, 159). Particularly in European music history, there is a complex

relationship between notation, improvisation, and accessibility. Dean and Bailes suggest

that this is not acknowledged in music psychology research, which is ‘often interested

in improvisation primarily as a simple departure from score-based music rather than as a

sophisticated object in itself’ (Dean & Bailes 2016, 44).

So what, then, do the practices surrounding live electronic music research have

to add to the discussion of improvisation and the cognitive sciences? Firstly, it should
be noted that some of the literature surrounding improvisation involving technology

attempts to address—and at the same time, perpetuates—the unhelpful binaries between

composition and improvisation (see, for example, [Eigenfeldt 2007]). Yet within these

discussions are abundant descriptions of possibilities for exploring human-machine co-

creation, automation, and issues of imbuing agency throughout an improvisational

system. As Lewis notes,

Since its inception in the early 1970s, the loosely constituted field of interactive
computer music has drawn on artificial intelligence (AI), cybernetics, and socio-
musical aesthetics that include machines as central actors... Musical computers
were designed to stake out territory, assert both identities and positions, assess
and respond to conditions, and maintain relativities of distance - all elements of
improvisation, in and out of music (Lewis 2017, 91).

Dean and Bailes also comment on the potential for empirical studies to, in turn,

contribute to improvisational processes through technological applications. Specifically,

they suggest that real-time analysis of musical features could be used in conjunction

with virtual cognitive models ‘of whatever degree of elaboration is available’ (Dean &

Bailes 2016, 52). Neural network software simulations for musical purposes are readily

available for this sort of collaborative work.

Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus developed a now commonly cited model of skill

acquisition where, in the musical case, improvisers mature from novices to experts

(Dreyfus 2004), who eventually may achieve a state of what many often describe as a

‘mindless flow’. In attempting to deal with the issue of ‘scaling-up’ the enactivist model

from simple action-perception processes, to more complex cognitive phenomena such

as imagination and memory, philosopher Shaun Gallagher has argued that situated or

embedded ‘reflecting thinking... contra Dreyfus, is a skill as much as... physical coping

[is]’ (Gallagher 2017, 201). Following this, I suggest that a discourse that focuses on

aspects of technical virtuosity does not adequately account for the dynamic relationships
that are reified during musical play. Firstly, this type of language—often used by

improvisers themselves—seems to valorise the practice, reinforcing the myth that

‘[m]usical improvisation is, to many in the Western world, an activity shrouded in

mystery’ (Ashley 2009, 413). A critical study of improvisation suggests an opening up

of how and what we can conceive of as complex musical activity, and who is able to

participate in that.

The case studies that I discuss below demonstrate that, through the lens of—and

practices associated with—live electronic musical performance, improvisation can be an

activity that does not need to be framed within the novice/expert model at all. Here, we

emphasise that the improviser’s knowing emerges from their experiential histories of

interactions with many different materials and objects, digital media, spaces, as well as

social roles and norms. Specifically, this makes evident that the knowing-experiencing

of improvisation does not depend on markers of skilful musical instrumental expertise

at all, but rather on the instantiation of multiple sensitivities of the person as a whole.

This has been evident over the last decade of my work with interactive computer

systems for improvisation, used within numerous different social contexts.

Without undermining the highly-developed practices of improvisers around the

world, we can rapidly move away from the romantic idea of the mindless, immersed

virtuoso. This trope relies on viewing musical improvisation within a very specific

domain, where skill is taken to be the accurate implementation of expert cognitive

programs in a state of flow. Rather, the enactive view preferences the flexible and

diachronically emergent capacities of humans, which allow us to modulate and regulate

improvising situations with recourse to numerous holistically embodied sensitivities.

Furthermore, as cognition is not a solipsistic process, this modulation can readily occur

through moments of joint action and coordination with others. Henceforth, a much
broader variety of moments of skilful improvisation can be examined. From the

enactivist position, we can understand how such instances of musical coarticulation can

be elicited in those who may not consider themselves to have an established practice of

improvisation. Namely, this occurs due to the richly embodied histories that are brought

together within collaborative improvisation, irrespective of any virtuosic/amateur

positioning. Two examples of this interpretation—one related to pedagogy, the other, a

creative practice research project—are described below.

A Pedagogy of Interdisciplinary Improvisation

Moving from working in music departments to a wholly interdisciplinary department—

the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME), at Arizona State University—I’ve

been tasked to design courses that can appeal to students from a variety of backgrounds

and disciplines. Our undergraduate programme in Digital Culture enables students to

major in a variety of disciplines from art, to film, media processing, English, and music.

In addition to a focus on technical skills, such as coding for new media design, along

with a drive towards critical thinking, we have a strong ‘maker’ theme that runs through

many of our courses, supported by state-of-the-art technologies. Research-led teaching

is encouraged within AME in general, and on approaching improvisation with

technology from a pedagogical perspective it was important to consider: how could

improvisation be incorporated successfully into the aforementioned undergraduate

program as a way of making sense of both digital technologies and digital culture? How

could this be approached from an inclusive, interdisciplinary angle, given my

background in live electronic music? What could be learned about the role of

improvisation in relation to music research within the cognitive sciences, particularly

when working with people who are being introduced to its practices for the first time?
How could all this be approached from the cultural diversity of the students within our

program?

Methodology

As with my earlier pedagogical methodologies (Hayes 2017), students are motivated to

find their own personal and encultured responses to creative challenges by being guided

through a series of scaffolded techniques throughout the duration of the course.

Beginning with music and movement-based improvisational practices, the class works

to develop collaborative multimedia performances. Instead of being another course

where students learn a new technique such as, for example, creative coding software,

we critically explore the technologies they are learning to use in other classes through a

practice-based, creative sense-making. We ask questions such as: what sorts of things

can be easily translated between artistic disciplines? Do we arrive at a state of

disciplinary mixing or something more ‘non-disciplinary’ (Andean 2013, 7)? How can

techniques from electroacoustic performance practice be incorporated into this task?

What is the role of documentation in this, and can it become part of the performance

itself?

Before attempting to improvise using instruments or other technology, students

are directed through a series of techniques including those for listening, such as, for

example, Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening methods (Oliveros 2005), and simple

movement and somatic exercises for attentive sensory awareness. Well-established free

improvisation exercises are practiced as a class and in smaller groups, along with

expanded multimodal versions. For example, John Stevens’ Click Piece (Stevens, Doyle

& Crooke 2007), can be performed using voice, body percussion, acoustic instruments,

and also lends itself to electronic and digital instruments—simply operating an ON/OFF
switch will always be enough to achieve the desired click. But, it can also be combined

with similar techniques that are used within movement practices (Meador, Rogers,

O’Neal, Kurt & Cunningham 2004). In the case of this simple exercise, there is the

potential for a class of thirty untrained improvisers to co-create a compelling

performance in a very short amount of time, often producing what David Borgo has

referred to as having the characteristics of swarm dynamics (Borgo 2005). Not only is

sensorimotor exploration involved, but musical meaning is brought forth through an

emergent extended cognitive network that involves complex relationships between the

improvisers involved, technology, and the space in which the performer-instrument

pairings are distributed.

INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE

Figure 1. An augmented reality improvisation ensemble.

Drawing on different areas of live electronic music research, such as laptop

orchestras and networked performance, the class also explores the idea of collaborative

instruments, where, for example, thirty individual laptops can be used to control

parameters within one main sound-making software instrument. Again, here the

interesting dynamics appear not out of individual physical virtuosity, but in how the

many-to-few mappings affect the sonic result, how agency is distributed throughout the

human(s)-machine(s) system, and how performers can attempt to subvert any rules that

are established within a system. For example, rather than physically triggering a certain

sound or changing a particular parameter, some students quickly modified the code on

their own local machines, employing algorithmic processes—for example, setting up

clocks—in order to automate certain activities at rates that would not be possible by

human action alone. Other elements of the class included experimental strategies for
incorporating more than one discipline, such as, for example, amplified painting using

contact microphones attached to a canvas, or using gestural controllers to create both

visual material and at the same time manipulate digital sound. The largest component of

assessment is via final class performances, which comprise collaborative group

improvisations. These have, to date, encompassed a vast range of materials and media

techniques, including incorporating food, augmented reality (see Figure 1), and

breakdancing.

INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE

Figure 2. Persian dance, self-built and augmented instruments, and networked

performance using low-cost hand tracking.

While they focus largely on traditional musical instruments in their discussion of

enactive music pedagogy, Andrea Schiavio and Dylan van der Schyff note that,

If the body plays a key role in determining musical learning, so does the socio-
material and cultural environment in which it is embedded. However, these
dimensions are not separated from the body. Rather, they become manifest
through the body and are co- determined by actions and interactions with other
bodies and things in socio-culturally meaningful contexts (Schiavio & van der
Schyff 2018, 9).

We can take this proposal seriously by developing and augmenting improvisational

practices that build collectively on individual musical and creative sociocultural

histories that individuals bring to the table. For example, one trio that emerged during

the course comprised a practitioner of Persian dance, who performed while wearing a

low-cost hand tracking system, which, in turn, controlled parameters of the sound being

produced by two musicians. One had built her own hybrid acoustic-digital percussion

instrument using self-taught wood-working techniques, and incorporating piano strings

which could be plucked, hit, or scraped; the other was performing using an augmented
electric guitar (see Figure 2). This repurposing of tools, which can be ‘co-opted and

redefined through a completely different performative act’ (Andean 2013, 8), has been a

practice long used by both improvisers and electronic musicians. The performance was

relational, but not only though the usual modes of non-verbal communication such as

eye-contact and gesture, as well as, of course, listening: the particular sounds being

made would affect the dancer’s movement, which, in turn, would directly process these

sounds in real time. Another larger group comprised live projected drawing,

Bharatanatyam dance techniques, and several custom-built electroacoustic instruments

(see Figure 3). In this group, continuous adaptation to numerous auditory and visual

cues demanded sophisticated behavioural coordination by the group. While some of this

may have been visibly highly gestural to the audience, other elements were not. No

comparison to other ensembles could be made, as it is likely that none such identical

assemblages have existed. As someone who is not trained in dance, I could not assess

this work from the perspective of technique alone. Yet, these types of interdisciplinary

improvisations demonstrate that complex and, at times, highly compelling unfolding of

creative activity can be co-articulated between multiple performers, and this can be

evaluated by viewing these processes from a historically-emergent, rather than linear

purely skill-based perspective.

INSERT FIGURE 3 HERE

Figure 3. Live projected drawing, analogue and digital instruments, and Indian dance.

LLEAPP: an Interdisciplinary Model for Creative Practice Research

The Laboratory for Live Electronic Audio Performance Practice (LLEAPP) is a

participatory workshop for postgraduates and early career researchers that was
established in 2009 at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Conceived while I was a

masters student at the same institution, at a time when my co-creators Owen Green,

Jules Rawlinson, and Sean Williams—all then doctoral students—and I were navigating

the recently created degree programs in creative music practice. Indeed, the catalyst for

this series of workshops was our grappling with how to approach this type of research:

What is the place of live electronic music research in the wider endeavour of
musical research? How are its knowledge claims established, and to whom—and
how—are they communicated? What is the scope of these claims? Where are the
borders of our enquiry? How do “practice” and “research” relate? Who is
doing this research? Why? (Green 2014, 1).

As Green notes, these are questions with answers that have not yet been adequately

formalised by those working in the sub-discipline of live electronic music research.

Methodology

The sixth LLEAPP workshop was held at Arizona State University in 2018, with

previous iterations all taking place in the UK—twice at the University of Edinburgh

(2009, 2013), the University of Newcastle (2010), the University of East Anglia (2011),

and De Montfort University (2015)i. The roster of local and invited participants is

dependent both on funding limitations and the location. The format is largely

determined by the hosts and participants in each location, but generally follows a

workshop model where participants collaborate over three days through a loosely

structured process of self-organisation, and then show their work publicly, in whatever

various stages of development or completeness they wish to present. Following this, a

critical feedback and discussion session takes place, usually the following day. The only

prescribed aims of LLEAPP are to provide both time and space to enable intensive

creative practice research and foster a community of participants in order to approach

some of the research questions noted above. For the 2018 edition, LLEAPP was not
restricted to practitioners with musical backgrounds, but instead focused on

interdisciplinary improvisation as a theme. As such, we assembled a diverse group of

international participants from four continents, with the majority—but not all—

currently affiliated with academic institutions.

INSERT FIGURE 4 HERE

Figure 4. Opening concert with separation between dance and musical activities.

As has been the model for the past few LLEAPPs, the program began with an

evening concert where all nine participants, most of whom had just met for the first time

a few hours previously, performed together. This took place in iStage, an 8-channel

surround sound performance space with a sprung dance floor, and multiple options for

lighting effects, motion capture, and video projection. It was evident that there was a

clear divide between performers with experience in movement-based performance

practices, and those for whom it was fairly new. Firstly, in terms of positioning within

the space, as we started to set up our equipment, people tended to frame the perimeter,

some being further separated by the barrier of a table (see Figure 4). Without any prior

discussion of strategy, I did not find any meaningful way to move from behind my

station to explore the floor space in front. James Andean and Alejandro Olarte have

reported similar boundaries occurring between dancers and loudspeakers within their

interdisciplinary investigations:

In general... the dancers find the loudspeaker to be something of a barrier, and

are less comfortable engaging with the more mediated material it presents than
with the performance of an acoustic performer, who is potentially more
localised, whose actions may be more closely linked with their output, and who
is more easily imagined as a part of a general choreography than the fixed and
impersonal loudspeaker (Andean & Olarte 2012, 3).
 In order to challenge this, we spent the remaining three days experimenting and

devising strategies, games, and sharing techniques for exploring the various different

practices and materials that we had brought with us. Flour, squeezable objects, mallets

and beaters (see Figures 5 & 6), lighting, visual projection on the floor and a false paper

ceiling were combined with instruments for live electronic musical performance

including hybrid acoustic-analogue-digital instruments, purely software based

improvisation systems, hybrid audio-visual systems, tangible and portable electronic

instruments, and analogue feedback systems involving radio or wireless devices.

Improvisational play allowed us to conceive ways to shake off disciplinary

boundaries—noting that these did not necessarily exist for all of the practitioners

involved. Through this, we were able to co-construct methods for, for example, moving

through space as an ensemble by devising simple rule-based activities. One such

instance of this included staying within the bounds of an algorithmic, geometric visual

projection that one of the participants had brought to use in a different context. In

another activity, we used sounding objects as a means of traversing space, while at the

same time spatialising audio—both by way of this process, and simultaneously through

the surround sound system. The final public presentation took the form of

approximately forty-five minutes of performance in which the audience was positioned

both at the edges of, and throughout the presentation space. The improvisation was

structured only to the extent that the sounding, portable objects were positioned in the

centre of the space at the beginning, with a pulsating circular geometric projection

falling on them, inviting them to be picked up. Aside from this, many of the ideas,

games, and techniques that we had established in the previous few days were drawn on

by the performers at different times throughout the duration of the performance. In this

way, the shared ‘vocabulary’ that we had rapidly developed became embedded in the
work itself.

INSERT FIGURE 5 HERE

Figure 5. Converging practices in space and with objects.

Yet, this shared sense of self-organisation emerged only from discussion,

experimentation with, and ultimately rejection of—as a group—certain modes of

interaction. For example, while many of the activities involved pushing us out of our

artistic—and at times, personal—comfort zones, certain suggestions were too

uncomfortable for some, given our broad range of sociocultural backgrounds, and were

modified accordingly. One such example was the suggestion of contact improvisation,

in which energy is transferred from person to person through direct touch. This was

altered, instead, to involve exchanging an imagined, weighty physical ball. In their work

on social interaction and enactive theory, Hanne De Jaegher and her co-authors

comment on this tension between individual and group dynamics:

not only is the interaction process autonomous in terms of its internal

organization, it also depends, crucially, on the autonomy of the individuals
participating in it. In this way, for enaction, interactional organization requires
both interactional and individual autonomy (De Jaegher, Peräkylä & Stevanovic
2016, 6).

INSERT FIGURE 6 HERE

Figure 6. Movement, material, and light.

Conclusion

In their work on the emergence of interdisciplinarity as a research trend, Andrew Barry

and Georgina Born (2013) suggest that problems can be framed positively, not as fixed

entities that require a solution—as much interdisciplinary work purports to be

tackling—but ‘as a means of generating questions around which new forms of thought

and experimental practice can coalesce’ (10). Improvisation can be explored and studied

as a highly inclusive, cross-cultural practice in which people co-create extra-musical

worlds through the ongoing and reciprocal processes of exploring materials and the

coordination of action. As the enactivist view makes evident, this is owing to the

historically thick type of knowing involved, which allows such coordinations to occur

without recourse to the discourses surrounding musical skill acquisition. I have

discussed why an interdisciplinary approach—in my case, one that involves practices

which incorporate technology for live performance—can create the potential for shifts

within disciplinary ideologies and offer up techniques which allow people with or

without prior experience of artistic improvising, performing, or indeed collaborating

with others from a different field or cultural background to very rapidly participate in

this type of creative endeavour. The case studies outlined—one pedagogical, the other

research-based—have emerged from the theoretical framework of enactive music

cognition, and should hopefully provide some suggestion as to the scope of

improvisational practices that can be studied under this approach. In particular, I

suggest we might take a more ‘agonistic-antagonistic’ (Barry & Born 2013, 13) stance

in this interdisciplinary work, urging non-practitioners to immerse themselves fully in

practice-based research in order to more fully understand the phenomena that they wish

to study. ‘Improvisation is a process that everybody can engage in; we are all musical

improvisers at some level’ (MacDonald & Wilson 2014, 117). I take MacDonald and
Wilson’s statement to envision improvisation as at once prosaic, ubiquitous, and yet, at

the same, providing a richly diverse range of opportunities for participation and study,

more than is necessarily being explored within current cognitive science research.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of my collaborators in LLEAPP 2018 for their openness and

generous participation: Adnan Marquez-Borbon, Akiko Hatakeyama, Emiddio Vasquez,

Elizabeth Baker, Jules Rawlinson, Lyn Goeringer, Marcin Pietrewszewski, and Rosely

Conz. Thanks to Megan Patzem for the LLEAPP photography. I am grateful for the

valuable suggestions on this text offered by the reviewer.

Funding

LLEAPP 2018 was generously supported by an Interdisciplinary Project Collaboration

Grant from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, in

collaboration with The University of Edinburgh. Thanks also to Synthesis Center for

supporting this project.

Notes on Contributor

Lauren Hayes is a Scottish musician and sound artist who builds hybrid analogue/digital
instruments. She is a “positively ferocious improvisor” (Cycling ’74), her music
refusing to sit nicely between free improv, experimental pop, techno, and noise. Over
the last decade she has developed an unpredictable performance system that explores
the relationships between bodies, sound, and environments. She has created several
haptic (touch-based) interfaces and composes music that can be experienced physically
as vibration throughout the body. Her research explores embodied music cognition,
enactive approaches to digital instrument design, and haptic technologies. She is
currently Assistant Professor of Sound Studies within the School of Arts, Media and
Engineering at Arizona State University where she leads PARIESA (Practice and
Research in Enactive Sonic Art). She is a member of the New BBC Radiophonic
Workshop. www.pariesa.com www.laurensarahhayes.com
References

Andean, J. 2013. “Electroacoustic Performance Practice in Interdisciplinary

Improvisation.” In Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network
Conference.

Andean, J., and A. Olarte. 2012. “Sound, Music and Motion: Sound Art and Music in
Cross-Disciplinary Improvisation.” In Third International Symposium on Music and
Sonic Art. Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Musikinformatik, Karlsruhe.

Ashley, R. 2009. “Musical Improvisation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music

Psychology, edited by S. Hallam, I. Cross, and M. Thaut, 413–420. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Barry, A., and G. Born. 2013. Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and
Natural Sciences. London: Routledge.

Borgo, D. 2005. Sync or Swarm: Improvising Music in a Complex Age. London: A&C
Black.

Benson, B. E. 2003. The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Dean, R. T., and F. Bailes. 2016. “Cognitive processes in musical improvisation.” In

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies Vol. 1., edited by G. E. Lewis
and B. Piekut. New York: Oxford University Press.

De Jaegher, H., A. Peräkylä, and M. Stevanovic. 2016. “The Co-Creation of Meaningful

Action: Bridging Enaction and Interactional Sociology.” Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371 (1693), 20150378.
doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0378.

Dreyfus, S. E. 2004. “The Five-Stage Model of Adult Skill Acquisition.” Bulletin of

Science Technology & Society, 24 (177). Sage.

Eerola, T., K. Jakubowski, N. Moran, P. E. Keller, and M. Clayton. 2018. “Shared

Periodic Performer Movements Coordinate Interactions in Duo Improvisations.” In
Royal Society Open Science 5(2), 171520. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171520

Eigenfeldt, A. 2007. “Real-Time Composition or Computer Improvisation? A

Composer’s Search for Intelligent Tools in Interactive Computer Music.” In
Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference.

Gallagher, S. 2017. Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Goldman, A. 2013. Towards a Cognitive-Scientific Research Program for

Improvisation: Theory and an Experiment. In Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and
Brain 23 (4): 210.

Green, O. 2014. “Four Small LLEAPPs for Electroacoustic Music Studies: Notes on
Performance Strategies from a Series of Participatory Electronic Music Workshops.” In
Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference.

Hayes, L. 2015. “Enacting Musical Worlds: Common Approaches to using NIMEs

within both Performance and Person-Centred Arts Practices.” In Proceedings of the
International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 299-302.
Hayes, L. 2017. “Sound, Electronics and Music: a Radical and Hopeful Experiment in
Early Music Education.” Computer Music Journal 41 (3): 36-49. MIT Press.

Iyer, V. 2004. “Improvisation, Temporality and Embodied Experience.” Journal of

Consciousness Studies 11 (3-4): 159–173.

Lewis, G. E. 2013. “Critical Responses to “Theorizing Improvisation (Musically)”.” In

Music Theory Online 19 (2). Society for Music Theory.

Lewis, G. E. 2017. “From Network Bands to Ubiquitous Computing: Rich Gold and the
Social Aesthetics of Interactivity.” In Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, edited by G.
Born, E. Lewis, & W. Straw. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lewis, G. E., and B. Piekut, 2016. “Introduction: On Critical Improvisation Studies.” In

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies Vol. 1., edited by G. E. Lewis
and B. Piekut. New York: Oxford University Press.

Limb, C. J., and A. R. Braun. 2008. “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical

Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation." PLoS ONE 3.2 (2008): e1679.

MacDonald, R., and G. Wilson, 2014. “Billy Connolly, Daniel Barenboim, Willy
Wonka, Jazz Bastards and the Universality of Improvisation.” In The Oxford Handbook
of Critical Improvisation Studies Vol. 2., edited by G. E. Lewis and B. Piekut. New
York: Oxford University Press.

Matyja, J. R., and A. Schiavio. 2013. Enactive Music Cognition: Background and
Research Themes. Constructivist Foundations, 8 (3): 351–357.
Meador, W. S., T. J. Rogers, K. O’Neal, E. Kurt, and C. Cunningham. 2004. “Mixing
Dance Realities: Collaborative Development of Live-motion Capture in a Performing
Arts Environment.” In Computers in Entertainment 2 (2).

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C.

Smith. Routledge and Kegen Paul.

Nettl, B. 2013. “Contemplating the Concept of Improvisation and Its History in

Scholarship.” In Music Theory Online 19 (2). Society for Music Theory.

Oliveros, P. 2005. Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. Lincoln, NE:

iUniverse.

Pressing, J. 1988. “Improvisation: Methods and Models.” In Generative Processes in

Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation, and Composition, edited by J.
A. Sloboda. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schiavio, A., and D van der Schyff. 2018. 4E Music Pedagogy and the Principles of
Self-Organization. Behavioral Sciences, 8 (8): 72. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs8080072

Stevens, J., J. Doyle, and O. Crooke. 2007. Search and Reflect: A Music Workshop
Handbook. Twickenham: Rockschool.

Sudnow, D. 1978. Ways of the hand : The organization of improvised conduct. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Sudnow, D. 2001. Ways of the Hand: A Rewritten Account. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
van der Schyff, D., A. Schiavio, and D. J. Elliott. 2016. “Critical Ontology for an
Enactive Music Pedagogy.” In Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 15 (5).

Varela, F. J., E. Thompson, and E. Rosch. 1991. The Embodied Mind. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Walton, A. E., M. J. Richardson, P. Langland-Hassan, and A. Chemero. 2015.

“Improvisation and the Self-Organization of Multiple Musical Bodies.” In Frontiers in
Psychology 6 (313).

Whitehead, K. 2019. “Instant Composers Pool History.” Instant Composers Pool

Orchestra. Accessed January 7 2019. http://www.icporchestra.com/history/

i
While most participants have only attended one LLEAPP, this latter iteration is the
only LLEAPP that I have not attended personally.