ifkad articles

Little less conversation and little more action: Musical intervention as space for play and embodied communication

Virpi Sorsa, Heini Merkkiniemi, Nada Endrissat

The paper contributes to our understanding of the social dynamics of collective (musical) play and helps to explain the transformative possibilities of musical interventions and its communicative constitution that opens up new forms of organizing. By drawing from a case study of a Finnish national league hockey team, we explore how musical interventions work, paying particular attention to the aesthetic, embodied experience and the communication processes that it involves. To theorize our findings we build on a CCO framework and develop the notion of embodied communication. Musical interventions provide organizations with a space for play where reason and cognition give way to embodied experiences and new forms of communication. While artistic interventions have received increased attention among scholars and practitioners alike, theorization around these phenomena is still underdeveloped. Musical intervention transforms our personal experiences into social ones. The intervention facilitates to experience reciprocity non-verbally and this way creates space for embodied communication. Embodied communication is key in realizing the potential for new forms of organizing.

IN: Proceedings IFKAD 2016 – Towards a New Architecture of Knowledge: Big Data, Culture and Creativity
PP: 1578-1593