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| Improvisation is as old, if not older, than civilization and permeates our everyday lives, our organizations and our arts. Yet, we don't know much about it. While we recognize it readily, we don't know its limits, we don't know what factors go into it, let alone what mechanisms produce it. The ambition of this seminar is to lay the groundwork for a theory of improvisation. Both the content and the structure of the seminar will be multi-faceted. We will examine works of literature, music, drama, art and digital art from the baroque period to the present. To help us in our approach we will read essays in literary theory, cognition, chaos theory and philosophy. Some of the authors we will consider are Kleist, Goethe, Pirandello, Proust, the Surrealists, Beckett, Perec, Echenoz as well as a number of theoretical works from various disciplines. The seminar will also host a number of guests who will talk to us of their experience as improvisers or who will give a lecture on a topic that will help us understand improvisation. | Spring 2006 Professor Jocelyn Holland, Professor Sydney Lévy
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