Swinging within the iron cage: Modernity, creativity, and embodied practice in American postsecondary jazz education

Wilf, Eitan

doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01273.x

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In other words, this practice complicates the distinction between imitation and creativity because the subject of imitation is individual creativity that is experienced as such by those who imitate and replicate it. Whereas scholars have frequently studied imitation in contexts in which its subject is a normative text that all or many of society's members should aspire to hone or emulate (see Wilf 2010 for a survey of such studies in relation to embodied practice), I ask what would a practice of radical imitation whose subject is individual creativity look like, and what would be its implications for the institutionalized distinction between imitation and creative practice?…”

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confidence: 99%

Rituals of Creativity: Tradition, Modernity, and the “Acoustic Unconscious” in a U.S. Collegiate Jazz Music Program

Wilf

2012

American Anthropologist

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In this article, I seek to complicate the distinction between imitation and creativity, which has played a dominant role in the modern imaginary and anthropological theory. I focus on a U.S. collegiate jazz music program, in which jazz educators use advanced sound technologies to reestablish immersive interaction with the sounds of past jazz masters against the backdrop of the disappearance of performance venues for jazz. I analyze a key pedagogical practice in the course of which students produce precise replications of the recorded improvisations of past jazz masters and then play them in synchrony with the recordings. Through such synchronous iconization, students inhabit and reenact the creativity epitomized by these recordings. I argue that such a practice, which I call a "ritual of creativity," suggests a coconstitutive relationship between imitation and creativity, which has intensified under modernity because of the availability of new technologies of digital reproduction.

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Rituals of Creativity: Tradition, Modernity, and the “Acoustic Unconscious” in a U.S. Collegiate Jazz Music Program

Wilf

2012

American Anthropologist

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“…Eitan Wilf is committed to both projects. He has published insightful accounts of the ways in which colleges, universities, and conservatories try to create new contexts and activities for transmitting or renewing an established art form, for example, jazz (Wilf 2010(Wilf , 2011(Wilf , 2012, and he has used his insider-outsider observations of music production and performance to theorize about paradoxes hidden in our very notions of tradition and innovation. In the latest installment of this double project, Wilf engages his readers to reexamine the notion of culture as style while hinting at the challenge that anthropologists face when studying computermediated sociability.…”

Section: Alessandro Durantimentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Specifically, I had been intrigued by James's ongoing research on the development of robots that improvise rather than play precomposed pieces. In my message I had described my previous study of contemporary modes of socialization into jazz in US academic jazz programs as a way of framing my interest in Syrus (Wilf 2010(Wilf , 2012(Wilf , 2014. I had explained that my previous research was about the rationalization of jazz socialization in higher education and that James's attempt to "train" Syrus to play jazz via computerized algorithms might be conceptualized as an extension of this rationalization.…”

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confidence: 96%

Toward an Anthropology of Computer-Mediated, Algorithmic Forms of Sociality

Wilf¹

2013

Current Anthropology

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This article argues that contemporary, computer-mediated, algorithmic forms of sociality problematize a long and major tradition in cultural anthropology, which has appropriated the notion of artistic style to theorize culture as a relatively distinct, coherent, and durable configuration of behavioral dispositions. The article's ethnographic site is a lab in a major institute of technology in the United States, in which computer scientists develop computerized algorithms that are able to simulate the improvisation styles of past jazz masters and mix them with one another to create new styles of improvisation. The article argues that the technology that allows the scientists to simulate and mix styles is playing an increasingly important role in mediating contemporary forms of sociality over the Internet and that the anthropological tradition that has theorized culture as artistic style has to be reconfigured to account for the dynamic nature of these contemporary forms of sociality not as styles but as styles of styling styles.

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“…Gabriella added that because of such fixedness “you have to find a different trigger, a different starting point to come up with something surprising.” Asking consumers what new things they might want or letting innovation architects hypothesize about this might yield a steady stream of ideas, but these ideas are likely to be identical to existing products and services because of the tenacity of different kinds of cognitive fixedness (cf. Wilf :572–576, 2011:473–478, 2013:612–614).…”

Section: Planned Accidents Are Good To Innovate Withmentioning

confidence: 99%

Routinized Business Innovation: An Undertheorized Engine of Cultural Evolution

Wilf

2015

American Anthropologist

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Scholars of cultural evolution and change have tended to conceptualize innovation as a process that results from individual experimentation involving random or very loosely guided trial-and-error alterations to existing cultural elements. Alternatively, they have focused on individual experimentation via decision rules and different heuristics with already existing, potentially innovative cultural elements whose emergence is left unexplained. Based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted with a number of business innovation consultancy groups in the United States, I theorize institutionalized innovation as a new engine of cultural evolution that might be unique to complex industrial societies characterized by intense intragroup competition that puts pressure on constant innovation. This engine might be responsible for a faster pace of cultural evolution. At stake is a systematic strategy of purposeful innovation that is neither entirely random nor entirely calculation based. Rather, it is based in the rationalized and rule-governed production of what I call "structured contingency," and it is capable of being applied to products and services across different business domains, including to itself. [innovation, cultural evolution, business anthropology, bricolage, economic anthropology, United States] RESUMEN Investigadores de cambio y evolución cultural han tendido a conceptualizar innovación como un proceso que resulta de la experimentación individual envolviendo alteraciones al azar o relajadamente guiadas de ensayo y error a elementos culturales existentes. Alternativamente, se han concentrado en experimentación individual vía reglas de decisión y heurística diferente con ya existentes, potencialmente innovativos elementos culturales cuya emergencia es dejada sin explicar. Basado en un trabajo de campo etnográfico que conduje con un número de grupos de consultoría de innovación en negocios en los Estados Unidos, teorizo la innovación institucionalizada como un nuevo motor de evolución cultural que puede serúnico a sociedades industriales complejas caracterizadas por intensa competencia entre grupos que pone presión en innovación constante. Este motor puede ser responsable por un ritmo más rápido de evolución cultural. En juego está una estrategia sistemática de innovación con un propósito que no es enteramente al azar ni enteradamente basada en cálculo. En cambio, está basada en la producción racionalizada y gobernada por reglas de lo que llamo "contingencia estructurada", y es capaz de ser aplicada a productos y servicios a través de diferentes dominios de negocios incluyéndoseél mismo. [innovación, evolución cultural, antropología de negocios, bricolaje, antropología económica, Estados Unidos]

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Swinging within the iron cage: Modernity, creativity, and embodied practice in American postsecondary jazz education

Cited by 23 publications

References 40 publications

Rituals of Creativity: Tradition, Modernity, and the “Acoustic Unconscious” in a U.S. Collegiate Jazz Music Program

Rituals of Creativity: Tradition, Modernity, and the “Acoustic Unconscious” in a U.S. Collegiate Jazz Music Program

Toward an Anthropology of Computer-Mediated, Algorithmic Forms of Sociality

Routinized Business Innovation: An Undertheorized Engine of Cultural Evolution

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