Appendix: Post-Reflection and Outlook

This documentation set out to explore the following research questions:
How does one develop one’s own artistic practice through a deeper understanding of free improvisation?
What constitutes practicing in this domain, and how do we conceptualize it on both an individual and a group level?

Over the course of this project, it has become evident that developing one’s artistic practice within the domain of free improvisation is not a linear process of skill acquisition but a deeply reflexive, open-ended negotiation with one’s materials, environment, and personal history. Practicing, in this sense, extends far beyond repetition and refinement—it becomes a method for listening, questioning, unlearning, and re-contextualizing.

Individual practice often begins with material engagement—with the instrument, with extended techniques, with sound itself—but quickly expands into a form of embodied research that interweaves preparation, exploration, and critical reflection. On a group level, the concept of practicing takes on a relational dimension, where shared listening, negotiation of roles, and mutual adaptation form the fabric of collective improvisation.

Through both the solo and ensemble-based work, and particularly the Performing Reflection series, this project has shown how reflection can be integrated into performance itself—not merely as a tool for analysis but as a constitutive part of the improvisational process. This approach suggests that free improvisation offers a model for thinking-through-doing, a way of knowing that is enacted, relational, and responsive.

Looking ahead, several possible directions for future research and artistic work present themselves. One avenue could involve expanding the format of Performing Reflection into interdisciplinary collaborations, exploring how reflection functions across embodied practices such as dance, theatre, philosophy, or digital media. Another direction lies in developing pedagogical frameworks for improvisation, drawing from the workshop experiences described in this documentation to establish an approach that balances openness with structured critical reflection. The explorations with disembodied sound in In Absentia also point toward a fertile intersection between improvisation and technology, where questions of liveness, agency, and mediation become central. Finally, further investigation into the social dimensions of improvisation could illuminate its potential as a model for egalitarian structures, distributed authorship, and collective meaning-making, both within and beyond artistic contexts.

In all of these extensions, the aim is not to codify improvisation, but to continue unfolding its potential—as method, as metaphor, and as practice. The final performance (video below) included in this documentation offers a condensed, embodied reflection on this process. In it, I attempt to “read” the accumulation of knowledge—both sonic and theoretical—that has become embedded in my system through the course of the doctorate. This performance builds upon my earlier solo work in Performing Reflection, employing the full range of instrumental techniques, technological extensions, and conceptual tools I have developed, in an act of simultaneous playing and reflecting, one that approaches reflection as an emergent reading of the traces left in my neural and bodily memory.