Page 111 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

100 Orchestrating different forms of knowledge

“rounded”; a section of a score causes headaches; a melody agitates (see also
Shusterman 2000: 137ff.). This subjectivising sensory mode of expression in
situative actions rests, on the one hand, on the impossibility of forming a
precise concept; on the other hand, it is an affective response (in some cases
we may also speak of “affective resonance”) that often accompanies and
characterises the practical accomplishment of an action. Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (1964/1993: 135f.) observes that according to Descartes “there is no
vision without thought: but it is not enough to think in order to see. Vision
is a conditioned thought; it is born ‘as occasioned’ by what happens in the
body; it is ‘incited’ to think by the body.” The sensations of experienced
people are relevant for a theory of knowledge because they are in a
dynamic interdependence with the specific situation (see Griffiths & Scarantino
2009; Standish 2015: 303f.). The sensory, feeling and somaesthetic thinking of
experienced practitioners correlates with Dewey’s holistic interpretation of
experience as a transaction between the human organism and its physical and
social environment. Sensations are perceived as being immediate because they
appear ad hoc, but they are embedded in a practical context of which the acting
person is not completely aware.
As a knowing unity, the body is an intelligent entity that is always present
and active: now it reaches for an instrument, tries out some sequences and
improvises freely around them; now it reaches for a pencil, sketches geometrical
shapes, crosses something out, draws new figures, connects them with arrows,
occasionally holds still to focus on certain activities, moves in the room to
stimulate certain thoughts, turns to the computer and looks for something on
Youtube, stops again and listens concentratedly, types something on the
computer, sits down at the keyboard for a moment, etc. A person hears, sees,
touches and feels, imagines, weighs up, remembers, compares, searches,
judges. And in so doing, he or she often interacts with a great variety of
material objects. This is why we speak of body knowledge, or rather knowledge
through the body, in two respects:
First, body states are meaningful. The way the body resonates with percep-
tions and situations – for instance, through goose pimples, accelerated heartbeat,
shivers down the spine, laughter, etc. – contains valuations or judgements.
Such resonances can hence be interpreted as intelligible body responses to
situations, objects and persons. As situational body sensations, they contain a
“kinetic” energy that stirs composers into acting correspondingly – by keep-
ing a sequence of sounds, deleting it, reworking it, etc. Composers react
bodily to sounds, rhythms and volume, but their intelligibility rests on a cultural
musical background that consists of a collectively shared tradition, earlier
experiences and beliefs (see Taylor 2006: 26ff.; Nicolini 2012: 77–95). For
Wittgenstein (1988: § 624) this background exists to an indeterminate extent:
“We judge an action according to its background within human life, and this
background is not monochrome, but we might picture it as a very complicated
filigree pattern, which, to be sure, we can’t copy, but which we can recognise
from the general impression it makes.”