Distributed Free Improvisation: A Cultural Affective-semiotic Perspective on Creativity

This book presents a new model to visualize and understand the creative process in free improvisation: the Interactive Dimensions of the Creative Flow (IDCF). Drawing on theoretical work on distributed creativity and the author’s background as a professional pianist, this short monograph establishes provocative dialogues between the field of music and the cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics to investigate human interactions involved in the act of creating.

New empirical data and literature research on improvisation are used to discuss the historical and sociocultural factors behind collective and collaborative processes.  In this context, the Distributed Free Improvisation Model offers a new theoretical and methodological innovation to the study of musical improvisation, which is presented as the result of a musical practice that develops in a community, in sociocultural contexts, through multiple interactions from which the senses and meanings of what is produced emerge. An inspiring read for students, professionals, and researchers in the field of cultural psychology, music improvisation, and creativity studies, this book opens new pathways to the study of creative processes and affective semiosis.

Diogo Monzo is doing a post-doctorate internship at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Brasília, Brazil. He is a recording artist with a career in popular music and musical improvisation.