Filmmaker Elliot Caplan and choreographer Susan Sgorbati have been working on a dance film that merges essential qualities of emergent improvisation in dance, music and science with potentially innovative techniques in filmmaking. The purpose of the film is to reveal emergent improvisation structuring principles through movement and cinematography in order to inform a wide audience of its diverse applications. The film will accomplish this through dance, imagery and a series of interviews with distinguished scientists with whom Susan has collaborated on her supporting research.
What is Emergent Improvisation?
Emergent improvisation is a self-organizing structuring process in which initial conditions (rules for movement, time and sound) give rise to collective forms or patterns. Emergent forms appear in complex, interconnected systems, where there is enough order and interaction to create recognizable patterns, but where the structure is open-ended enough to continuously allow new differentiations and integrations that influence and modify the form. This phenomenon – the creation of order from a rich array of self-organizing interactions – is found not only in dance and music but also in a wide variety of natural settings. Evolution, for example, is decidedly improvisational and emergent as is the brain function that lies at the heart of what it is to be human.
In linking the creative work of art-making (movement, sound, film) to the emergent processes in nature, there is basis for a rich and textured inquiry into how systems come together, transform and reassemble to create powerful instruments of communication, meaning and exchange. This project explores ways in which organic processes underlie artistic expression along with the possibility that art can help illuminate these organic processes.
This film will reflect the meaning, importance and beauty of emergent improvisation and its application across disciplines in Art and Science. It will accomplish this goal by examining two emergent forms through dance and narrative, film imagery, and interviews with scientists.
