The knowledge of a free improviser is a highly specialised, complex and embodied knowledge used to generate and elaborate musical material, musical structures, and interaction with other players, all of which at the same time of the performance. Deciphering free improvisation requires the researcher-practitioner to shed light into a complex, emergent, at times self-organising matter while being immersed in it. My practice-led research, carried out at the MuTri Doctoral School - Sibelius Academy, proposes a multidisciplinary and holistic framework that seeks to reveal, to the performers (including myself) and the audience alike, the multifaceted nature of this embodied knowledge and how it is used in an improvised performance. A series of five doctoral concerts will be the laboratory settings in which the disembodiment process will take place in real-time, with the help of interactive software, visualisations, improvising machines and machine learning algorithms. The doctoral concerts will stimulate innovation in the improvisation performance field, by creating performance settings where the live and virtual players, the audience, and the use of technology and visualisation are interweaved. New improvised music will emerge and, together with the work with highly respected Finnish and international collaborators, it will help to dynamize the Finnish free improvisation community and its relevance in the contemporary and experimental music scene. In parallel, my doctoral work puts the artistic practice of improvisation in relation with societal issues via the theoretical tools of postmodernism and critical theory. I consider free improvisation as a model for a present-day critical theory, for its support to alternative social constructions and values, freedom, and equality.

2021