Collective improvisation is everywhere in our lives, from street protests to brainstorming sessions at work, from playing football to cooking meals. But how do we do to act together in a way that is both creative and spontaneous? The MICA project aims at analyzing such spontaneous interactions and emergent coordination through the lens of musical improvisation, with a special focus on collective free improvisation. We believe that musical practices make for wonderful labs for the study of joint action and that improvisers can teach us many valuable lessons on how we can do complex things together on the fly. We work at the crossroads between musicology, cognitive sciences and philosophy: ours is a special mix of ethnographical inquiries in the field, empirical studies in the recording studio, and conceptual analysis in the armchair. Together, we aim at elaborating theoretical frameworks for emergent coordination and improvised joint action that are substantiated by rigorous data collection, hoping to shed light on a fundamental aspect of our social lives.
Start date : 2018
Project reference: ANR-17-CE27-0021-01.
