Improvisation is, broadly speaking, the act of spontaneously creating
something new on the spur of the moment. We improvise with music,
movement and with words. Cognition is, broadly speaking, concerned with
the structure and processing of the way we think. We have carried out a
series of studies which show that when people improvise it has a
profound effect on the way they think.
We have examined the
cognitive changes which happen to people when they improvise with
music, words and movement and we have observed the effects of this on
colour perception, problem solving and on verbal tasks.
In
this lecture we discuss why improvisation has such a profound effect on
the way we think and we discuss some of the issues associated with
asking people to improvise while they are in a brain scanner and
discuss the limitations of the conclusions that can be drawn from such
studies.
In November 2008 I was part of an event held at the
Wellcome Collection in London on the Science of Improvisation called
Music with the Brain in Mind. During the day I spoke about
improvisation with a viola and violin player, I ran a workshop on
verbal improvisation and I did a bit of an improvised tap dance with
two musicians. You can catch a glimpse of it all in this video.
Improvised Comedy
The object of improvised comedy is to
spontaneously create something new from a given stimuli that is unexpected and
funny. The hit TV programme “Whose
Line Is It Anyway” used improvised comedy as its basis. The clip below gives a
good example of how it works. The chair person (Clive Anderson) tells four
comedians to make up something funny based on the stimuli “an ad for a body
product”. Have a look at the video.
Now, based on your definition of improvisation, which we suggest might
be something along the lines of “creating something new on the spur of the
moment, without preplanning” how improvised are the responses? Do you think
they could be pre planned? Are there any comedians who are improvising more
than others? Are the responses of those who say little or only after everyone
else improvising to the same extent as everyone else?
Improvised Dance
This is an example of a group improvised
dance. Who do you think is “leading” the improvisation? Is there just one
leader, no leader or do leaders take it turn to influence the outcome of the
“dance”. How much of this do you think is pre-planned? At how many points
during the improvisation do you think people were creating something new on the
spur of the moment?
This is an example of contact improvisation
performed in public. People seem
to be giving it a wide berth! Why
is that?
Improvised Music
This is an interesting example of
improvised music. Of course, we can never know to what extent this was planned
in advance. What’s interesting to me is the mixture of musical genres and the combination
of a violin and a set of mixing decks.
And this is a more traditional example of
musical improvisation using a cello and piano.