Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity ed. by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman (review)

Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity contributes to a growing body of multidisciplinary research that resonates within the sphere of critical improvisation studies, a burgeoning field that seeks to "examine improvisation's effects, interrogate its discourses, interpret narratives and histories related to it, discover implications of those narratives and histories, and uncover its ideologies" (The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, ed. George E. Lewis and Benjamin Piekut, 2 vols. [New York: Oxford University Press, 2016], 1:3). From creative practices in music, art, dance, theater, and literature to everyday human activities, scholars of this field apply research methods from an expanding range of disciplines—musicology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, gender studies, literary theory, and more—to engage with diverse improvisational paradigms. By virtue of its longer-standing association with improvisation, however, at present the vast majority of studies in this field center on or emanate from music scholarship and practice.

Negotiated Moments is the fourth coauthored and coedited volume in Im prov i sation, Community, and Social Prac tice, a series from the International Institute for Critical Studies in Im prov isation that aims to "advocate musical improvisation as a crucial model for political, cultural, and ethical dialogue and action" (http://www.improvcommunity.ca/publications/books [accessed 6 June 2018]). Within this framework, the editors of Negotiated Moments, Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman, sought to "reveal the intricacies of improvisational relationships through agency and interagency, body and bodies, self and selves, sounding and (other means of) sensing" (p. 17). They argue that musical improvisation is "ineluctably embodied," and "its creative and political force is manifested through sounds and gestures that are the traces of experience" (p. 1).

The sixteen essays in this collection explore intersections of music, technology, embodiment, and identity. The contributing authors discuss sound-walks and soundscapes, interactive electroacoustic music and audio art installations, multisite networked performances, free jazz, and taiko drumming. Although music is the primary focus, some contributors explore music-adjacent topics such as political street theater, kinesthetic group improvisation, and literary representations of improvisation. Despite an overwhelming North American slant, the contributors represent a diverse range of perspectives, including early-, mid-, and senior-level scholars and scholar-practitioners in music performance, composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, gender studies, American studies, and interdisciplinary art. Their collective insights touch on a number of themes that cut to the core of critical improvisation studies.

The role of listening in music improvisation emerges as an important theme. Andra McCartney (chap. 2) draws on ideas from acoustic ecology and feminist theory in describing the listening processes that inform her approach to soundwalking (walks with focus on listening to the environment). McCartney argues that participants in a curated soundwalk can play a creative, improvisatory role by remaining open to the variable possibilities of the experience. Soundwalkers have the ability to plot new pathways through a space, redirect listening attention to foreground or background sounds in the moment, and audition different listening perspectives (i.e., they can attune to the musical, historical, political, social, evocative, or sensual aspects of the sonic environment) (p. 44). McCartney also encourages soundwalkers to consider the power of "intimate listening" (from Luce Irigaray's theorizing on love)—"listening to the sound environment as if it were a dear friend or lover"—to elevate aural awareness and emphasize difference (p. 40).

For readers familiar with the work of Pauline Oliveros—namely, her concept of deep listening—it will come as no surprise that her contribution also focuses on listening, as well as the embodied and cognitive processes operative in her practice as an improviser (chap. 4). Referencing neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet's work on sensory input and consciousness, Oliveros draws a parallel between the time delay that occurs in her live sampling improvisations (i.e., the initial recording of a...