Abstract
A widespread belief is that large groups engaged in joint actions that require a high level of flexibility are unable to coordinate without the introduction of additional resources such as shared plans or hierarchical organizations. Here, we put this belief to a test, by empirically investigating coordination within a large group of 16 musicians performing collective free improvisation—a genre in which improvisers aim at creating music that is as complex and unprecedented as possible without relying on shared plans or on an external conductor. We show that musicians freely improvising within a large ensemble can achieve significant levels of coordination, both at the level of their musical actions (i.e., their individual decisions to play or to stop playing) and at the level of their directional intentions (i.e., their intentions to change or to support the music produced by the group). Taken together, these results invite us to reconsider the range and scope of actions achievable by large groups, and to explore alternative organizational models that emphasize decentralized and unscripted forms of collective behavior.
Highlights
A widespread belief is that large groups engaged in joint actions that require a high level of flexibility are unable to coordinate without the introduction of additional resources such as shared plans or hierarchical organizations
Larger groups seem to be more prone to coordination loss[5]: while group performance may sometimes increase with the number of agents involved in disjunctive problem solving, or in collective decision-making involving verbal d eliberations[6], such group performance is more likely to decrease in tasks requiring tight coordination between group members, because of the higher number of “interaction links” at play[7]
Despite the complexity and the density of the sonic landscape they created in their performance, which could arguably impact the performers’ ability to swiftly react to one another or even to precisely hear each other, improvisers’ musical actions, as well as their directional intentions to support or change the music, were highly interdependent
Summary
A widespread belief is that large groups engaged in joint actions that require a high level of flexibility are unable to coordinate without the introduction of additional resources such as shared plans or hierarchical organizations. Large groups engaged in joint actions that require a high level of flexibility and adaptability are generally taken to be unable to successfully coordinate on their own without additional resources such as sufficiently specific shared plans that are common knowledge among the p articipants[8], or leaders that supervise and guide the interactional dynamics at play within the g roup[9] This is no less true in the case of music p erformance[10]. It is well known that music can be played in large ensembles, involving a dozen up to a 100 participants, such as symphonic orchestras, jazz big bands, and batucada or gamelan ensembles In such cases, the increased difficulty of coordination is typically met by specific properties of the situation, such as the existence of explicit and fine-grained shared plans of the music to be played (e.g., a score, a set of oral instructions, etc.), and/or a functional and hierarchical organization of the ensemble (e.g., a conductor and section leaders, instrumental sections with different roles, etc.). One can wonder if large musical ensembles could function at all without these resources, and create music that is, at least to some extent, comparable in its Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:20377
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