Spontaneous Group Composition and Distributed Governance

EastWest Studios, Los Angeles. Photo by Ara Nalbandian

Musical improvisation is a unique artistic format where the acts of performance and composition occur simultaneously, even if the levels of predetermination varies according to the context and performer. Without the instruction and guideline of pre-written sheet music, what is there to inform the music that is being created? Improvisation necessitates and illuminates an understanding of the conditions that ineluctably determine a performance – an intervention in time and space. In group settings where multiple artists spontaneously compose, this intervention occurs within the simultaneous performance of the collaborators. Decisions are made without being given the time to respond, only to listen: whether to play with density or sparseness, what sound means to stop, or to keep playing?

It’s not that there are no answers to these questions; the answers differ according to who you ask (and at which point of their practice), so the inquiry is how do individual artists each with their own framework – based on ability, methodology, school of thought and intuition – come together to achieve in continuous moments the harmonies, rhythms and arcs of coherence, let alone a sound that moves the human heart like the music of Ornette Coleman, or compositions that expands the possibilities of sound like Cecil Taylor’s?

In spontaneous group composition, just as in collective or distributed governance systems, varying degrees of contribution, or even what constitutes a contribution, are based on amorphous but mutually understood and agreed upon objectives. Although the term ‘governance’ has shot to lexicon stardom on platforms in the last few years in referring to governance enabled by blockchain technologies, it is helpful to consider governance prior to and beyond its applications within web3 communities in order to fully grasp its fundamental meaning. Governance, simply put, pertains to the frameworks on which decisions are made and enforced in the functioning of an organization. With public blockchains and cryptographic mechanisms and algorithms come the technical ability – and aspiration – to create frameworks of distributed governance: where the interests of different stakeholders are directly and legitimately represented and accounted for, determining the organization’s activities, state and direction.

What spontaneous group composition necessitates is what is oftentimes missing in current governance mechanisms: allowing agency to the individual to safely explore options while being supported by the other stakeholders, in formally stated and non-verbal terms, in real-time and in anticipation. Sometimes it may become a thematic motif or at other times a brief interlude or counterpoint but what is required is for the rest of the ensemble (community) to explore possibility (or even merit) of what is being contributed. The system at work is not merely acoustic; it is social, environmental, even cybernetic, should one choose to see the instrument as a machine. There are no binary decisions. It is not as simple as voting yes or no to an idea, it is about creating the conditions for sense within spontaneity, interpersonal bonds in a sea of connectivity, and choice amidst infinite possibilities.

The psychologist Rudolf Arnheim premised his essay Entropy and Art on a paradox in information theory: the less predictable a sequence, the more information it will be said to yield – but if information is identified with order, the least structured sequence would be called the most orderly. Musical improvisation, especially when complicated by the setting of a group, offers a glimmer of resolve to Arnheim’s paradox. Order is developed through the process of the unpredicted becoming real, which occurs through participation in the creation of a system, which is ongoing and never instantaneous. In improvisation, between sound and silence, anything can happen.

Where all ideas are possible we quickly pass through multiverses of possibility; nothing is fixed and every moment is a moving part, always open to chart another course based on the whim or inclination of an individual, yet it requires the collective body to allow these inclinations to manifest, for an idea to be enhanced in synchrony at times and also at times where lines, rhythms or timbres form separately. As each idea is presented, other members of the group must nurture the idea for the benefit of the composition, and the idea is evolved or at the very least explored for what it can offer. Musicians know this to be paramount to the success of the music for what they are looking to achieve is a level of coherence and sense, to be able to communicate to their audiences (those not making but receiving the artistic decisions) as a fully formed offering.

Perhaps this is inherent to the struggle of current governance systems. More than the lack of technical tools or infrastructure they lack the vision to see a system in its creative potential. To understand an operating system can be as compelling as art for it does what great art does - it communicates, it inspires, it emboldens, it creates a connective vulnerability in its viewer or listener and compels them to look at their relationship to the work. If we want to compose original frameworks for how communities are built, run and sustained, we ought to realize that the collective good begins with the individual idea that must be supported and acknowledged by the whole.

This research thus proposes musical improvisation as a conceptual, epistemological and practice-oriented framework for distributed governance. We believe such a cross-disciplinary application is a powerful position to consider the information systems that make up institutions and communities of varying scales.

This is an ongoing research project – if you’d like to get involved, please write to us. We’d love to hear from you.