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and gradually take shape in the iteration between what you hear and what you chose
to elaborate upon in your playing. For example, as an improvising pianist, I tend
not to relate to advanced jazz harmony implied by other players, because it is not
part of my personal musical heritage. Instead, I concentrate on structures, gestures
and note-to-note relationships, and extract conceptual representations from them, to
elaborate upon in my response.
If I was instead improvising a drawing on an empty paper, the scenario would be
similar. Improvised theatre can also work in this way
2
—you have to accept what has
been done, extrapolate from it and build something on top, this time together with
others. You see hints of meaning, possibly unintended, in the emerging material, and
you enhance and clarify with modifications, which in turn provide new departure
points for your co-players.
8.3.5 Appreciation and Novelty
Many factors affect our traversal of the material space. In addition to the interplay
between conceptual and material representations, there are also factors such as cul-
tural knowledge, of expectations and appreciation. We have learnt to recognise and
appreciate certain subregions of the space, and there might be a pressure from the
outside about what kind of art to produce, what conceptual contents to depict, which
techniques to use, etc. This is evident when such constraints are unconsciously in-
cluded in a conceptual representation, only to be realised when we are confronted
with something that is “wrong” with respect to this property. It is so deeply embed-
ded in our cultural heritage or social expectations that we did not realise that it was
there as a constraint.
An artwork is not interesting
per se
. It is interesting in relation to something, to
what has previously been written and said within that field. The interest is in what
it adds to that, what it contradicts, and how it may provide food for new thoughts
within the field. The cultural baggage of the artist acts as a guiding force in the cre-
ative process—it determines acceptable regions in the space of the possible, because
it defines what the artist considers art, as understandable and interesting, and hence
constrains his conceptual representations. By continuing a bit further on these paths,
or deviating from them (but in relation to them), he creates something new, based
on what was before.
Appreciation is an interesting phenomenon. It often coincides with the moving
edge of an expanding conceptual network, and the corresponding material sub-
spaces. New art has to connect in some way to this, and it can possibly go beyond
the edge of a conceptual network a little bit. If it is completely within existing net-
works, it is uninteresting. If it is completely outside, it is difficult to relate to—there
2
In the 1990s, I worked as an improvising musician with a theatre group, participating extensively
in this kind of emerging performances.
