Becoming ecophronetic: three projects in radical improvisation

Abstract

In this practice-led research, I set out to model instances of sonic ecophronesis. This new category of sound-making, documented through this effort, embodies an approach to sound shaped not by aesthetic considerations in the first instance but by the desire to contribute creatively to emergent social and cultural needs. As a sonic artist and improviser, I thus conceive of sound-making through the values of Aristotelian phronesis—or practical wisdom, enabling the one who practises it to understand ‘the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person, at a particular time’ (Schwartz & Sharpe, 2010, p. 5-6)—and, further, through the ecological reorientation of phronesis toward the common good as ‘ecophronesis’ (Xiang, 2016).

Throughout the thesis, I use a practice-as-research framework to afford a privileged view into the sonic ecophronetic nexus, paying particular attention to how processes of reflection and discernment drove my approach to creative practices during this research. Adopting these dimensions in working with sound enabled me to become a polymathic sound practitioner and improviser, navigating a range of disciplinary domains whilst aiming to make timely contributions to the communities to which I belong. In turn, as I analyse, this necessitated a critical view towards improvisation—the central practice with which I contended to meet specific goals in each project—contributing to its ‘radicalisation’, a process of reappraisal through which it became infused with new functions and fresh possibilities for its application in the world.

This timely project brings attention to the changing roles inhabited by sonic artists today, expanding conceptualisations of how artists can become vital contributors within a range of disciplines, such as decolonisation, knowledge production, politics and more.