Capítulo 3: Descripción del motor
3.5 Obtención de los coeficientes de flujo
3.5.1 Ensayo en banco de flujo
Dean Simonton suggests that ‘societal-‐level effects complement and expand rather than render utterly irrelevant a genuine psychological understanding of creativity.’220 His work explores the impact ortgeist (spirit of the place) and
zeitgeist (spirit of the times) has upon creativity, and draws on the work of anthropologist Robert Carneiro to illustrate this point. Carneiro identified the ten most complex known societies, using 354 distinct societal traits to make his determination.221 All these complex societies accommodate(d) full-‐time cultural
workers, leading Simonton to conclude:
Having such full-‐time practitioners probably enhances the prospects for true genius to emerge, given the tremendous amount of effort that is required to develop technique and knowledge to the highest possible level. Outstanding creativity is not the business of amateurs. 222
One particular aspect of the environment that Simonton emphasises is the zeitgeist.223 Drawing on his own study of classical composers, he suggests:
[C]omposers have been shown to alter the style of their melodies and harmonies when works are produced under wartime conditions. In particular, the melodies become much more chaotic and unpredictable, in a sense reflecting the external circumstances in which composition is conceived.224
Ideological diversity, political instability, and those occasions when civilisations are open to an influx of ideas from abroad often contribute to a surge in creative activity. In summary, Simonton’s research demonstrates that ‘a specific set of political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances are associated with a high level of creative activity at a particular place or time.’225
Consideration of ortgeist and zeitgeist are not enough on their own however, and he further concludes:
220 Simonton, ‘Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations’, 320.
221 Robert Carneiro, ‘A Theory of the Origin of the State’, Science 169 (1970), 733–738. 222 Simonton, ‘Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations’, 320.
223 In discussions such as Simonton’s, zeitgeist tends to be presented as a kind of monolithic
determinant exerting pressure on all actors and facets of life. While this might be useful as a broad-‐brush gesture toward some general trends (as used here), zeitgeist remains an unspecific term difficult to define or defend with any sort of scholarly rigour.
224 Simonton, ‘Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations’, 313. 225 Ibid., 319.
Not all creators in the same generation are equally creative; and the most illustrious creators of a generation may conform less to the prevalent milieu than do less illustrious creators – and this independence of thought may be combined with a tendency to advocate extreme positions, and conceive systems and ideas that combine beliefs in unusual combinations.226
Nevertheless, even accounting for these outliers (who may in some cases be the most significant creators in their societies) it appears that there are times and places where creative action is more likely to occur than others, and Simonton’s research offers clues as to the reasons for these occurrences. In light of
Simonton’s conclusions, and in line with jazz scholarship of the past few decades, consideration will be given to the broader social and political contexts within which jazz has been performed and its creative practice discussed in Chapter Two.
Groups
Teresa Amabile and Keith Sawyer both suggest that groups populated with diverse individuals are potentially the most creative.227 Amabile suggests that
such groups are more creative because the combination of different intellectual foundations and approaches can lead to exciting and useful ideas.228 She further
suggests that to be successful team members will all: be excited about the group’s goal(s); be willing to help one another; and recognise the value(s) offered by each of the group’s members. Taken together, ‘These factors enhance not only intrinsic motivation but also expertise and creative-‐thinking skills.’229
Keith Sawyer suggests, ‘Effective teams require participants who
coordinate, communicate, resolve conflicts, solve problems, make decisions, and negotiate.’230 Sawyer describes communication in this context as involving deep
listening, adding, ‘most people spend too much time planning their own actions
226 Simonton, ‘Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations’, 319-‐320. 227 Amabile, ‘How To Kill Creativity’; Sawyer, Group Creativity. 228 See also Sawyer, Group Creativity, 47-‐49; Sawyer, Group Genius, 51. 229 Amabile, ‘How To Kill Creativity’, 21.
and not enough time listening and observing others.’231 In Sawyer’s view, groups
who engage improvisation as a standard practice offer the best sites for innovation because they are good at finding new problems rather than simply solving existing problems.232 These groups are also less structured, because
‘improvisational groups are self-‐organising systems’, leading to the emergence of (sometimes surprising) internal networks that are conducive to innovation and creativity. Such groups are often more effective when the participants are familiar with one another. Sawyer cautions that creativity takes time, both for the work to be accomplished and for the meaning of that work to become clear. He concludes by suggesting that ‘the most effective collaborations involve some structure but not too much, and of a type appropriate’ to what the group seeks to achieve.233 Taken together, these qualities provide a useful prism for considering
the groups examined in Part Two.
Summary
This brief survey of the literature on creativity, filtered to accommodate my purposes, provides a tacit framework for Part Two of this thesis, which explores ideas presented in this chapter as manifest in jazz performances. In that section, I argue that a number of core values present at key moments of jazz achievement (and which I lay out in the next Chapter) are both fundamental to the music and conducive to creativity.
One of the key principles unanimously agreed by the writers I’ve drawn from is that creative work always builds on the foundations of the domain in which it operates, and on the creative work that preceded it (even if by means of transgression).234 Notions of tradition or convention or precedent are common
to all fields of endeavour, and aligning new ideas to existing paradigms is one of the ways people make sense of what they encounter. Sometimes new work or
231 Sawyer, Group Genius, 14. 232 Ibid., 14-‐16, 25.
233 Sawyer, Group Creativity, 181-‐186; Sawyer, Group Genius, 51-‐52. In Group Creativity Sawyer’s
remarks draw from empirical studies and are primarily focused on collaboration in education settings. His 2007 work suggest the claims are valid for many other kinds of group work as well.
ideas trouble our existing understanding with regard to the boundaries of a domain or the constraints of a definition – is a collage by Robert Rauschenberg really a painting, or is it something else? If it is a painting, then perhaps accepted notions of what a painting is may need to shift a little? – but generally, and whatever we make of new ideas, observers interpret them through the lens of convention.
This interpretation (and subsequent acceptance or rejection of an idea) is the province of the fields that govern domains. For example, Miles Davis’s music from around 1970 and on the album Bitches Brew in particular has been the subject of debate, largely focused on whether or not the music is jazz.235 The
crux of the matter, in this context, is which tradition Bitches Brew builds upon: if rock music, then perhaps the album is contentious in some ways (no vocals; complex improvisational strategies; considerable abstraction in places); if jazz, Bitches Brew would appear to be contentious in other ways (the use of electronic instruments and extensive studio manipulation; straight-‐eighth feels and
backbeats). However, whichever way one cuts it, Bitches Brew emerged from prior practice, not as an immaculate, ex nihilo creation. Ultimately fields make decisions about acceptability, but (in the case of Bitches Brew) determinations about the acceptability or otherwise of the album’s evident discontinuities with jazz (or rock) are complex and engage a range of issues including: aesthetics; cultural privilege; economics; and race (among others).
A key finding of the work of creativity researchers marshaled here is that to understand optimal creative work, the importance of considering the processes engaged trumps the importance of consideration of the product.236 This is
material when considering group creativity (and according to Thomas Kuhn, Howard Becker, Jason Toynbee and Keith Sawyer, all creative work is the result of group action) because to understand the work, consideration needs to be
235 See, for example, Stanley Crouch’s comments regarding Bitches Brew in ‘Play The Right Thing’,
in The Miles Davis Companion, ed. Gary Garner (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 21-‐40. Ted Gioia (in
The History of Jazz [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997]) is happy to include Bitches Brew as jazz in his history of the music.
given to the social processes that enabled its realisation.237 In line with Bruce
Johnson’s advocacy for taking the testimony of participants into account when interpreting improvised group practices, I will draw on the testimony of
musicians and others involved in the work of making the music cited in my case studies.238 This practice corresponds to the ethnographic work of Paul Berliner,
Ingrid Monson and Travis Jackson, although my sources are all secondary.239
Accomplishing the best creative work in groups depends upon a number of conditions at both individual and group levels. At an individual level, optimal conditions for creativity include: the presence of divergent thinking (and in particular the generation of many ideas); a match between skills and experience, and the difficulty or complexity of the tasks undertaken; intrinsic motivation; self-‐monitoring (which takes several forms including metacognition or sublimation); and self-‐belief. For groups, optimal conditions for creativity include: mutual respect among team members; common group goals; and deep listening and/or careful observation within the group.240
A number of strategies may be employed by group leaders to stimulate these conditions, including: employing improvisational strategies in pursuit of group goals; facilitating sites for group work that are non-‐judgmental; offering
participants freedom, particularly concerning means; and ensuring that there is sufficient time for the group members to become familiar with one another and have time properly to address the work at hand.241
Leaders themselves can optimise conditions for creativity from the outset by identifying good combinations of team members who possess similar levels of expertise yet are diversely gifted. The best leaders achieve good results because
237 Becker, Art Worlds; Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Toynbee, Making Popular Music; Sawyer, Group Genius.
238 Johnson, ‘Hear me talkin’ to ya’, 1-‐12.
239 Berliner, Thinking in Jazz; Monson, Saying Something; Travis Jackson, ‘Jazz Performance as
Ritual’, in The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, ed. Ingrid Monson (New York: Garland, 2000), 23-‐82; Sawyer, Group Creativity.
240 Amabile, ‘How to kill creativity’, 77-‐87; Sawyer, Group Creativity. 241 Sawyer, Group Genius.
they have the capacity to think simultaneously at individual and group levels.242
None of the group leaders in the case studies exhibits all of these traits, but they all possessed the ability to assemble strong groups. And all of them made use of many of the strategies identified here, so enabling conditions conducive to creativity. The case studies in Part Two draw attention to these conditions and strategies, and suggest a correlation between them and the creative work the groups considered achieved. Causality is difficult to argue for anything, but the evidence I offer reveals that the conditions listed above and the creative
achievements of the groups considered were frequently co-‐extensive, which is at least highly suggestive of a positive correlation.
We have seen, in this brief overview, that creativity is complex and assumes many forms. These forms have been categorised in various ways and mapped onto the manner in which creative work has affected the fields and domains to which it belongs. Creativity researchers concerned with products of creative action have suggested a continuum that ranges from crystallisation of style (where the conventions of an idiom are perfectly captured but where no new insight is offered) where it is thought creativity is not present (perhaps, for example, an idiomatically ‘perfect’ performance of a Bach invention by a
programmed sequencer); through to ideas that change history (for example, the discovery of penicillin).243 In between are ideas that may be new to the
individual who had them but which are in fact well-‐known (and which Margaret Boden describes as P [for personally] creative); through ideas that are new but do not change the domains in which they are accepted and which are described as ‘little c’ creative; on to those which add something significant to their domain, potentially changing the domain or in extreme cases initiating a new domain – described as H creative (for Historically creative) or as ‘Big C’ creativity.244 This
range of creative achievement is significant in this study because all of the musicians I consider accomplished work at both ends of the continuum between P creativity and H creativity and at many points in between. As I shall argue, the
242 Sawyer, Group Genius; Amabile, ‘How to kill creativity’, 77-‐87. 243 Toynbee, Making Popular Music, 105; Kaufman, Creativity 101, 44. 244 Boden, ‘Creativity: How does it work?’, 237-‐250.
historically creative work – for which these musicians are primarily celebrated – depended upon their more modest achievements. In light of this all of the
creative work of a subject is important in a discussion of their creativity when it is focused on tangible outcomes.
To further develop the distinction made between different kinds of creativity and their effects upon their domains, Margaret Boden identifies three categories of creative action. Of particular significance to this study are the two
mechanisms these three types employ. Exploratory and Transformational creativity operate in an iterative manner, making use of conventions to
incrementally progress a domain. Most creative work is exploratory in nature, and in general the gains of such work (in terms of evolution of the domain) are modest.245 In some cases however, one of the conventions of standard procedure
is changed in a manner that leads to a radical innovation. An example from the literary world might be James Joyce’s innovative admission of interior
monologue from multiple actors in a literary text, thereby initiating stream of consciousness writing with Ulysses. In the case of Joyce, we are left with
something that is still a novel, still uses words familiar to the reader, but offers an utterly new experience because Joyce offers an innovative way to mediate the voice of the narrator(s).
Such exploratory and transformational creativity has also occurred in jazz contexts. In Part Two of this thesis, Boden’s Exploratory and Transformational categories are used to view the incremental work of jazz musicians as they make use of the conventions of jazz in developing unique sounds and approaches. The examples I invoke include the work of Miles Davis, with particular attention paid to the ‘problem-‐finding’ strategies he used.
The second mechanism Boden identifies is found in her category of combination creativity (homologous to Arthur Koestler’s idea of ‘bi-‐
sociation’).246 Creativity of this kind combines conventional ideas from a genre
with ideas from outside of that genre, leading to a new combination. This kind of
245 Boden, ‘Creativity: How does it work?’, 241. 246 Koestler, The Act of Creation.
combinatorial approach has been valuable in jazz creativity and in the case studies can be found in the music of Miles Davis and Jan Garbarek in particular.
Finally, there is the question of value. The products of creative work are generally considered valuable for the benefits that inhere within the work produced: a new piece of software is valuable because it makes our computers operate more efficiently, thereby saving disc space and time, for example. In this way, a new album by Wayne Shorter is valuable because as a product of creative action it provides (among other things) income for Shorter and the musicians with whom he recorded, the record company who manufacture and distribute the album, and the retailers who on-‐sell it. It is valuable to listeners because they gain personal benefit from listening to the music (or perhaps from ‘owning’ it). Finally, and in rare cases, it may be valuable because it offers a new idea (or ideas) that influences the field of jazz, moving it in new directions.
However, there are other kinds of value associated with creative work. An important one from the example just offered (for my purposes) is the experience of agency available to Wayne Shorter (and his fellow-‐musicians) in realising musical ideas. The work of Jonathan Rowson, Keith Negus and Michael Pickering suggests that it is this experience of agency that galvanises people to engage creativity in their lives, both in quotidian matters and in more traditionally defined ‘creative’ work (such as writing poetry).247 Specifically within the
sphere of the creative arts, Negus and Pickering suggest that work is creative when it communicates experience. Such an inclusive definition embraces work that is creative in generally accepted terms (which is to say, novel and useful), but also admits work as creative even when that work does not actually offer anything particularly new. All work that achieves this threshold (i.e.
communication of experience) is valuable in Negus and Pickering’s framework because it affords those who make the work an opportunity to express
themselves (thereby achieving a kind of self-‐creation) and affords audiences of that work the kind of emotional connection that is one of the reasons we value the arts – because artworks ‘speak to us’. This framework is applied tacitly to the work of all of the musicians I consider in Part Two, and explicitly in discussions
247 Rowson, ‘How are we disposed to be creative?’; Negus and Pickering, Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value.
of the work of musicians when their practice did not offer anything particularly new, but did achieve the kind of communicative value that we ascribe to
musicians when they are 'saying something’.