Dialogic Quality

One central quality of a dialogic relationship pertains to the how the self is created as a function of the other. This resonates with what Bakhtin cited in Nikulin (1998: 382) has called the 'the independence of a character and the unfinalizability of the human being' in a literary context. Following this notion Kanellopoulos sees the dialogic quality of improvised music practice not in how it allows for a productive encounter of previously formed positions or identities but in how this exchange produces alterity:

through the process of collective musical creation where (…) one’s identity is constantly being lost the very moment it is being found (Kanellopoulos, 2011: 124)

Dialogic Coding practice is from this standpoint not automatically dialogic. The indicator for 'true' dialogue depends on whether the practice creates a 'form of interpersonality or interculturality' as the 'most productive relationship between self and other' (Peeren, 2007: 18). This points to the essential quality in a dialogic relation: Through an interaction with a different (independent and free) other, I recognize the other's difference and become thus able to alter my own position in response. This changing of oneself is an open-ended and continuous (unfinalisable) process. It may take place between people, texts, sentences, musical gestures – and in the local context between human, group, and apparatus. A transformation, even if only temporary, can take place on the level of thinking or

(immersion and outsideness). It is this transformative quality which I propose as an indicator of the quality of a dialogic relationship in improvised musical interaction. Such a transformation is liminal as proposed by Turner (1969): it transgresses between states, categories, or identities. The question is when and how do such transformations happen? Phillips (2011: 32) cites Buber making the point that

Dialogue is an emergent quality of communication that occurs fleetingly and often in surprising rather than in neat, orderly ways, and it cannot be planned or facilitated. 'no one can know in advance what it is that he has to say; genuine dialogue cannot be arranged beforehand'.

Thus, the ephemeral character of any dialogic encounter makes it difficult to clearly identify such changes. It is therefore necessary to look into my personal accounts of performance situations as well as consider the actual entities which are produced in Dialogic Coding practice: the algorithmic structure of the apparatus.

5.1.1 Outsideness and Immersion

As I introduced earlier, Kanellopoulos (2011: 125) has proposed the concept of 'outsideness' and its opposite 'immersion to better understand the 'aesthetic act' within free improvised music. Outsideness in the context of FIM suggests:

a need [in improvisation for] (…) temporary finalizations which occur through the presence of the audience and the musicians’ struggle to raise their minds ‘above’ their playing, looking at their music from outside (ibid.: 113).

The act of distancing oneself or of stepping outside is considered the complementary other to the act of empathising with the other individual, text or work of art (music). Through empathising the improvising performer is immersed 'in the invention of sound structures and interaction between musicians' which 'demands their attention and creates an obligation (…) to be present' (ibid.: 119). Similarly in Dialogic Coding practice I have identified these two positions of consciousness – immersion and outsideness – between which the performer moves during a performance. The experience of these states becomes a reflexive process through the consecutive shifts between those. In other words: a dialogic relationship may first produce an immersive state for the performer continuously

responding to another's action and may then develop toward a distanced position,

in an act of stepping outside the activity and reflecting on it and through this create a transformation in the performer. Formulated into an analytical category I may express the criteria for dialogic quality in Dialogic Coding practice as follows:

• Does the activity provide an immersing experience? – This interaction is characterised by a dissolving of boundaries of time, space and self, in the intuitive performance of the task at hand. The awareness for actions disappears, a performer becomes 'one' with the activity.

• Does the activity provide a challenge/experience of outsideness? – This interaction is characterised by disrupting the flow of creative thinking or habitual ways of acting. It challenges how a performer makes sense of what she perceives by confronting her with something novel, surprising, unexpected or unknown. As a consequence of the interruption a performer becomes aware of her own conscious self and may, from this position, reflect on her own actions in relation to an ongoing improvisation.

These two experiences are mutually exclusive for it is impossible to be immersed and unaware of one's actions in an activity yet reflect upon them at the same time. However, they may appear in rapid succession to each other, or as Cox and McLean (2013: 25) put it '[p]rogrammers oscillate between these modes at the level of the human-computer interface, translating between machine behavior and human perception.' In other words, the temporal distance between these two modes of interaction may be rather small. Both, immersion and outsideness manifest in dialogic moments rather than in a continuous way.

5.1.2 Transformation Through a Re flexive Practice

The transformation of the self (as well as of utterances, texts or musical gestures) through dialogic interaction is founded in the fact that it is a practice which transgresses borders of disciplines and conventions, and shifts traditional performer roles and ways of improvising. Turner's (1969) concept of liminality has been used to describe such practices highlighting their transformative potential through performative action. Following the pseudo-autonomy of the apparatus, a performer's habitual flow of actions and thinking is interrupted through encountering unexpected behaviour. The more such 'responses' by the programmed agent can be perceived as 'other' (in dialogic terms), that is independent of the performer's actions, the easier it will be to accept these, work with them and thus turn the interaction into a learning experience. Recalling the double responsibility of the performer, the difficulty is contained in the fact that the 'programmer-performer' is, of course, the inventor of that same apparatus algorithm and may infer the functioning of the apparatus. However, it is necessary

to 'take a step back' or switch the role/perspective into that of a functionary to make a transformation through performative action possible. Ideally, these insights through doing the practice may make the performer stronger and more confident as a reflected practitioner. I adopt a term by Lewis (2013) to consider Dialogic Coding practice a form of an 'epistemology of self'. This describes the capacity of the practice to provide methods for producing knowledge as well as being a form of knowledge in itself.

5.1.3 Forms of Immersion

The experience of immersion in the improvisatory activity is aptly described in the concept of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). The state of flow describes the state of total immersion, a holistic feeling in which the awareness for actions disappears. It is characterised as a:

unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which [the person] is in control of his actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and

environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present, and future (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014: 151).

Attaining a state of flow blurs the boundaries to our environment and our own self. It creates a state of timelessness in which only the momentary present exists. This description reminds of how Buber conceived of a dialogic relation with another individual (see section 2.4.1.3). The game or the activity of playing is considered 'the flow experience par excellence' (ibid.) yet the playing of a game, on the contrary, does not automatically guarantee an experience of flow. The key sign for a flow state is the merging of action and awareness. This includes the awareness of one's self and identity. Logically, it is impossible to reflect on one's own activity while in flow. The actual flow experience is therefore not constant but rather a moving in and out-of-this mental state. This description resonates with the concepts of immersion and outsideness in the improvisatory process and how they rapidly alternate (experiencing oneself as in- and outside of the activity).

5.1.4 Forms of Challenge

The second step in a transformation through Dialogic Coding, is the experience of a productive challenge81 _{through the interaction with other subjects, with symbols}

81_{The term 'challenge' may be understood here as a situation in which the performer is surprised as} well as irritated by an unexpected response or behaviour from the partner in the interaction. This response may also interrupt or block the ongoing activity (e.g. the pressing of keys on the keyboard).

of textual or musical form or with the interfaces of the apparatus. Such a challenge takes place in the specific 'language' of the interaction with the other. This includes the language of program code, sound and musical gestures, of performative gestures (the visual and non-verbal). The consequence of being faced with a challenge is an interruption in the flow of activities – thinking or playing/acting. This interruption becomes productive if it directs a performer's awareness towards her own activity and makes reflection possible. These interruptive moments hold the potential to inspire the performer's creativity towards inventing a new successive action. However, if the interruption does not produce a moment of reflection and inspiration it may rather feel like being forcefully restricted by someone else in one's own freedom to act/think. The realisation of such outsideness must subjectively be perceived as an active gesture of distancing oneself from the activity and not as a passive one of being excluded from it. It needs to be stressed again that this is a subjective and relative viewpoint: a question of perception and its interpretation. Consequentially the quality of a dialogic interaction depends on the responsibility of the performer to perceive any interaction as an opportunity to dialogically relate.