(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics

(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics’ is an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented research project funded by the Austrian Science fund (FWF, grant ZK93). Over four years, the researchers are investigating the improvised nature of ethical behavior, using live encounters with musical ensembles as case studies.

We take as our starting point an understanding of ethical agency as an enactment of acquired habits together with their spontaneous refinement, driven by a sensitivity to social and environmental context: in a word, improvisation. 

Together, we are developing a conceptual framework for understanding the ethical significance of improvisation across a range of human activity. We hope this framework will be of interest to artists, scholars, and lay people alike. 

More information and publications here: http://www.improv-ethics.net/