Music and Embodied Creative Space

Research paper presentation at Creativity Conference hosted by Southern Oregon University. You can view the conference schedule and program here. The Creativity Conference will take place at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon on July 11-14, 2019. The conference will provide a wealth of information for those who study the science of creativity, seek to leverage research on creative thinking, or simply consider themselves to be creative!

MUSIC AND EMBODIED CREATIVE SPACE

Abstract

Informed by theoretical and empirical research in the cognitive sciences this paper seeks to identify a relationship between musical creativity and embodiment. While focusing on the central hypothesis that exposure to specific musical practices leads to the formation of multimodal creative agency, the author makes an argument for the emergence of an embodied creative space.

The author defines the embodiment of musical creativity as a cognitive and performative causality: a relationship between the cause and effect when composing, performing, or listening to music. Expanding on this model, the author further considers music-making as an embodied activity that stems from the causality of these interdependent attributes of creativity: the cognitive actions controlled and sustained by our mind, and the performative interactions mediated by our body and the environment. By exploring the actions and interactions commonly associated with composing and performing music, the author makes an argument for embodied creative musical space as an interactive agency that lives at the threshold of cognition and performativity. The notion of musical creativity as embodied, lived experience extends the social and collaborative concepts of creativity. Delivered from the perspective of a composer, performer, and music scholar, the paper contributes to the growing interdisciplinary discourse on musical creativity.