The expansion of the notion of the unnecessary self was inspired by the line of thoughts presented in the paper Sounds of Future Past (Holzer, Frisk, and Holzapfel 2021) where the concept of an ethics of instruments is explored. This radical idea was first presented by professor of history of art John Tresch and professor of music Emily I. Dolan in the paper Toward an Organology of Music (Tresch and Dolan 2013). It is based on some of the conditions for, or elements of, ethical relations which in turn connects to Foucault’s notion of the technologies of the self (Foucault 1988a). Tresch and Dolan explore this experimental ethics of instruments through four analytical categories which in essence are adaptations of the four axes that make up “Foucault’s analysis of the self’s relation to the self.” Tresch and Dolan “have tweaked and tuned them in order to apply them to instruments” (Tresch and Dolan 2013, 284). The four categories relate to the instrument’s materiality, its mediation or level of presence, its greater context and its telos (see Holzer 2025 for a more in depth discussion). Their idea of an ethics of instruments leans on the notion that these categories can provide grounds for an analysis of an ethics of instruments such as the Dataton 3000. As an analytical model, it offers a framework for examining obsolete instruments and exploring how complex issues—such as accuracy, responsibility, and freedom—can be addressed. Whether or not it is possible to consider that material objects possess a notion of ethics is a different question and beyond the scope of this paper, but one may argue that priority should be given to ensuring that all humans and animals enjoy basic ethical living conditions before considering the moral rights of objects.

Thoreau’s effort to efface the self from the work of art illustrates how the author’s individual ego or personality becomes dissolved in the creative process. This is difficult at a time where artistic works are exploited on markets and social media and where the transactions are so convoluted and opaque that they are impossible to disentangle. In the attempt to understand the role of the creator, both a new work concept and a review of the self and its roles are necessary. In the way that the relations between them can be unwrapped the artistic practice may be seen to explore a particular form for ethics. The ethics in artistic practices, that is, the moral values that are expressed through artistic practices in music, specifically improvisation, is by all means an important aspect when investigating the roles of the self. These values are disclosed in the way music is negotiated in improvisation and may turn out to work in ways that are different, or even opposed to social ethics.

The notion of the care of the self, as discussed in Volume Three of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (Foucault 1988b), may be used as a method to approach this complex area. The care of the self is a particular development between self and others, a method for developing an ethics through engaging with the self’s relation to the self, a self that is rooted in “practices of freedom” (Foucault 1997, 283). Foucault proceeds to outline the relationship between freedom and ethics, positing that freedom is the essential condition for ethical practice, while also insisting on the need for critical reflection on the nature of freedom (ibid., 284). The care of the self is the activity in which freedom and ethics are a integral parts, and it is not to be understood as a solipsistic activity merely concerned with clothing, possessions and physical attributes.

The care of the self is the care of the activity, in this case the artistic activity, and not the care of the soul-as-substance to use Foucault’s terminology.³ The practice, the doing, transcends the self and has priority over it and the principle that uses the tools of artistic practice is in essence the aesthetics of the creative act rather than the self. Hence, I argue that there is a useful relation here between the concept of the soul-as-substance—as well as the general critique of the dominance of the author discussed above—and the ambition to give up the self in artistic practices. It may even be necessary to first give up the self in order to see how the practice may contribute to the necessary freedom. It can appear counter-intuitive at first that giving up the self is a process associated with Foucault’s care for the self, but in this reading it is a condition for the self’s relation to the self and its freedom. The soul-as-substance here is a domination of the self propelled by capitalism in ways that makes the subject normative rather than one that allows for an engagement of free play: it is a threat to freedom as a necessary condition for improvisation.

Though Thoreau may not have thought of it this way, the absent speaker that was discussed above references the care of the self in odd and interesting ways. Both give priority to the activity rather than the subject, and the practice is a tool through which the care for the self is developed. The giving up of the self and the care of the self are not in opposition as they may first appear, but rather they feed upon each other. They both allow for an epistemology of creativity and an understanding of practice as the core of human activity more closely aligned with others than the self. The care for the self is the care of the relations to the other and a method for giving up of the self.

Freedom is the precondition for ethics as well as for improvisation.⁴ This notion appears to open up a possible connection between ethics and improvisation in that both depend on some concept of freedom. This freedom, however, is elusive and may easily be mistaken for the freedom of the self, a freedom rather attached to a popularized notion of self-emancipation and consumer freedom in a capitalist market economy. But if improvisation is to be considered an act of ethics a further paraphrasing of Foucault may read: Musical improvisation is one of the considered forms that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection. This highlights the importance of the reflective act, necessary in most artistic processes, as the mediator between freedom and improvisation. Reflection, then, is the activity that instantiates a recursive process between freedom and improvisation.

The ethics of improvisation arises from freedom. The condition for this relation to develop is the self’s reflection upon itself and upon the practice, but it is mainly the results of this process that are of interest, not the self itself. This can be compared to philosopher Gary Peters’ remark that “free-improvisation is not driven by a concern for the other improvisers but by a concern or care for the work itself” (Peters 2009, 58). To summarize, my claim is that improvisation on obsolete instruments such as the Dataton 3000 is driven by a care for the context of the instruments as well as a process of a care for the self as a method that results in a self entangled with the process rather than the work and thus rendered unnecessary.