Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art is a book written by Stephen Nachmanovitch [1] [2] and originally published in 1990 by Jeremy Tarcher of the Penguin Group.
Free Play can be described as the creative activity of spontaneous free improvisation, by children, artists, and people all around the world.
According to Stephen Nachmanovitch, free play is more than improvisation. It runs deeper than our activities involving music and art. It is the essence of our being, something we were born with then strive to recapture.
This book reflects the experience of an improvisational violinist as a doorway into understanding the acts of creation in which every human being engages in his or her daily life. Improvisation and creativity are not the property of a few professional artists or scientists but the essence of all our natural, spontaneous interactions. Every conversation is unrehearsed and reflects the activity of improvising as a basic life function.
From the opening of the first chapter: "There is an old Sanskrit word, Lila (Leela), which means play. Richer than our word, it means divine play, the play of creation and destruction and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of the cosmos. Lila, free and deep, is both delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of God. It also means love. Lila may be the simplest thing there is—spontaneous, childish, disarming. But as we grow and experience the complexities of life, it may also be the most difficult and hard won achievement imaginable, and it's coming to fruition is a kind of homecoming to our true selves."
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.
Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.
Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was the founder of "eclecticism", a briefly influential school of French philosophy that combined elements of German idealism and Scottish Common Sense Realism. As the administrator of public instruction for over a decade, Cousin also had an important influence on French educational policy.
John William Stevens was an English drummer, and a founding member of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.
Lila or leela can be loosely translated as "divine play". The concept of lila asserts that creation, instead of being an objective for achieving any purpose, is rather an outcome of the playful nature of the divine. As the divine is perfect, it could have no want fullfilled, thereby signifying freedom, instead of necessity, behind the creation.
Artivism is a portmanteau word combining art and activism, and is sometimes also referred to as Social Artivism.
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music. One definition is a "performance given extempore without planning or preparation". Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies". Encyclopædia Britannica defines it as "the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text." Improvisation is often done within a pre-existing harmonic framework or chord progression. Improvisation is a major part of some types of 20th-century music, such as blues, rock music, jazz, and jazz fusion, in which instrumental performers improvise solos, melody lines and accompaniment parts.
Nadir Afonso, GOSE was a Portuguese geometric abstractionist painter. Formally trained in architecture, which he practiced early in his career with Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, Nadir Afonso later studied painting in Paris and became one of the pioneers of Kinetic art, working alongside Victor Vasarely, Fernand Léger, Auguste Herbin, and André Bloc.
Edmond Couchot was a French digital artist and art theoretician who taught at the University Paris VIII.
Stephen Nachmanovitch is an American musician, author, artist, and educator. He performs and teaches internationally as an improvisational violinist, and at the intersections of performing and multimedia arts, philosophy, and ecology.
Free Play may refer to:
Antón Lamazares is a Spanish painter, who is, along with José María Sicilia, Miquel Barceló and Víctor Mira, a member of the "generación de los 80". Working elaborate surfaces of wood and cardboard with varnish and other materials, he has created a very personal medium and artistic language. From an initially playful expressionism, his style has developed toward abstract expressionism and straightforward abstraction, and, more recently, a sort of minimalism in which an intimate dialogue between soul and memory, the spiritual and the sensual, poetry and dream-life can take place. His works have been exhibited throughout the world and are held by numerous important institutions, including the National Museum Reina Sofía, the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, the Madrid Museum of Contemporary Art and the Marugame Hirai Museum of Japan, as well as by many private collectors and foundations.
Daniel Manrique was a Mexican artist whose life and work mostly revolved around his home neighborhood of Tepito in Mexico City. He was born into a poor family, who did not support his artistic ambitions, but he maintained his Tepito identity despite. Manrique is best known for his mural work, which depicts the life and popular culture of poor urban neighborhoods such as Tepito, as well as aspects of Mexican and Latin American history since the Spanish conquest. Most of this work was done in Tepito as part of the program he founded called Tepito Arte Acá, but he also did murals in other countries such as Canada and Argentina. His work and the work of Tepito Arte Acá has been recognized by UNESCO, several universities, the Museo de Arte Moderno, CONACULTA, INBA and he was accepted into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.
Alejandra Llamas is a Mexican-American best-selling author, speaker, founder of the MMK Process and personal empowerment expert. She is the author of best-selling books El Arte de la Pareja, El Arte de Educar, Maestría de Vida,El Arte de Conocerte, Una Vida Sin Límites, Libérate and Esencia de Líder, published by Penguin RandomHouse. She is the founder of the MMK Institute., approved by the International Coach Federation.
On the Art of the Cinema is a 1973 treatise by the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. It is considered the most authoritative work on North Korean filmmaking.
Cyborg art, also known as cyborgism, is an art movement that began in the mid-2000s in Britain. It is based on the creation and addition of new senses to the body via cybernetic implants and the creation of art works through new senses. Cyborg artworks are created by cyborg artists; artists whose senses have been voluntarily enhanced through cybernetic implants. Among the early artists shaping the cyborg art movement are Neil Harbisson, whose antenna implant allows him to perceive ultraviolet and infrared colours, and Moon Ribas whose implants in her feet allow her to feel earthquakes and moonquakes. Other cyborg artists include:
Edith Alonso Sánchez is a Spanish composer, improviser, pianist, sound artist and academic who has been involved in the creation of an experimental electronic style that incorporates spoken word, musical sound and visual imagery. She has received a number of awards for her work.
Jorge Luis Farjat is an Argentinian producer of audiovisual and literary works, mainly dedicated to his theory about the audiovisual art, which is understood to be the language aesthetics that combines fixed images (photography) with sound, specially music, in a whole organized montage and shown under the same conditions as cinema. His audiovisual works comprise several periods and amount to twenty-six productions of mean and long duration, mostly documentaries. His literary work includes seventeen books which belongs to the Audiovisual Art and Memory Collection, and which are about his audiovisual theory development, the immigration history, and philosophy, such as Migraciones y supervivencia or, art in general, such as La crisis y deshumanización del arte en el siglo XX. Su manifestación en la música The crisis and dehumanization of art in the 20th century: its representation in music. The books in this collection were declared of cultural interest by the Government of the Province of Buenos Aires.
Ojo de Buey is a Latin reggae band that fuses Afro-Caribbean rhythms with Latin American sounds and lyrics that seek to convey positive messages. The lyrics to their songs talk about everyday life, love, personal struggles and reality. Using reggae as a root, fusion is an important component of the group's essence. Afro-Caribbean rhythms, Latin elements, rock'n roll overtones and positive messages in their lyrics, give a fresh air to their compositions and a flavor that invites movement.
Suzi Ferrer (born Susan Nudelman, also known as Sasha Ferrer, was a visual artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico from the mid-1960s to 1975. She is known for her transgressive, irreverent, avant-garde, art brut and feminist work.