Dear Robert,
A further note on differences between improvising music and ditto text:
Maybe the notion of text is too continuous, in our habitual minds - how
about improvising with language, with syntax, with semantics, with
vocabulary, with paragraph structures, whole-presentation structures,
dialogics, with words, within words, without words (recent question on
Buffpo list: if words have insides, do they have outsides?), with lengths
of silence, with cycles of language, steps of them etc. We imagine that
these are not codified as in music, but they are, only such codification
is suppressed to the supposedly tacit in what you might call aloud
language, its resemblance to speech seeming to beg transparency. And if
language is transparent and we're doing it live, oh no they can see right
back through it to me! In fact this relation (transparency) is just one
of a whole range of relational instruments, so to speak, meaning relations
that can be played and played with between aloud-language improviser and
hearers. There's also expectation, attention, memory, surprise,
misunderstanding, etc etc and old musical favourites such as rhythm, etc
etc.
I worked last year with students at Dartington on improvising with
language and included writing, both visible to the audience and not. That
writing could be cycled back in to new aloud structures, and also borrowed
by other participants. It also took time, very useful at an aural level
with several participants. Visible writing too changed in front of our
eyes.
I gave an improvised "paper" there, not with the primary purpose of
making sense of notes as I went along, but to find the appropriate
structures for the sensed content, to discover content as I went along.
It's a high, you know.
Fiona
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