New research project “(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics”, recently awarded 1.7 million Euros by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)’s Young Independent Researcher Group program.
The project, which is led by musician and artistic researcher Christopher A. Williams (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) and ACPA alumnus), anthropologist Caroline Gatt (University of Graz), and philosopher Joshua Bergamin (University of Vienna) with the collaboration of Prof. Deniz Peters (KUG), will investigate the improvisational foundations of ethical processes across a range of human and other-than-human activity.
The researchers will practically experiment with and analyze agency, habituation, and value-formation in action over seven encounters with three leading experimental improvising musical ensembles: Splitter Orchester (Berlin), the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (Norway), and the klingt.org/estra (Vienna).
Feedback between this hands-on artistic collaboration and cutting-edge theoretical work in the humanities and sciences will ground the synthesis of an innovative, holistic conceptual framework through which to understand the ethical significance of improvisation in social life beyond music and the arts.
